Wednesday, November 23, 2011

diversity a code word for narcissism?

City Journal | California’s budget crisis has reduced the University of California to near-penury, claim its spokesmen. “Our campuses and the UC Office of the President already have cut to the bone,” the university system’s vice president for budget and capital resources warned earlier this month, in advance of this week’s meeting of the university’s regents. Well, not exactly to the bone. Even as UC campuses jettison entire degree programs and lose faculty to competing universities, one fiefdom has remained virtually sacrosanct: the diversity machine.

Not only have diversity sinecures been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing. The University of California at San Diego, for example, is creating a new full-time “vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion.” This position would augment UC San Diego’s already massive diversity apparatus, which includes the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women’s Center.

It’s not surprising that the new vice chancellor’s mission is rather opaque, given its superfluity. According to outgoing UCSD chancellor Marye Anne Fox, the new VC for EDI “will be responsible for building on existing diversity plans to develop and implement a campus-wide strategy on equity, diversity and inclusion.” UCSD has been churning out such diversity strategies for years. The “campus-wide strategy on equity, diversity and inclusion” that the new hire will supposedly produce differs from its predecessors only in being self-referential: it will define the very scope of the VC’s duties and the number of underlings he will command. “The strategic plan,” says Fox, “will inform the final organizational structure for the office of the VC EDI, will propose metrics to gauge progress, and will identify potential additional areas of responsibility.”

What a boon for a taxpayer-funded bureaucrat, to be able to define his own portfolio and determine how many staff lines he will control! UC Berkeley’s own vice chancellor for equity and inclusion shows how voracious a diversity apparatchik’s appetite for power can be. Gibor Basri has 17 people working for him in his immediate office, including a “chief of staff,” two “project/policy analysts,” and a “director of special projects.” The funding propping up Basri’s vast office could support many an English or history professor. According to state databases, Basri’s base pay in 2009 was $194,000, which does not include a variety of possible add-ons, including summer salary and administrative stipends. By comparison, the official salary for assistant professors at UC starts at around $53,000. Add to Basri’s salary those of his minions, and you’re looking at more than $1 million a year.

UC San Diego is adding diversity fat even as it snuffs out substantive academic programs. In March, the Academic Senate decided that the school would no longer offer a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering; it also eliminated a master’s program in comparative literature and courses in French, German, Spanish, and English literature. At the same time, the body mandated a new campus-wide diversity requirement for graduation. The cultivation of “a student’s understanding of her or his identity,” as the diversity requirement proposal put it, would focus on “African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, Chicanos, Latinos, Native Americans, or other groups” through the “framework” of “race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, language, ability/disability, class or age.” Training computer scientists to compete with the growing technical prowess of China and India, apparently, can wait. More pressing is guaranteeing that students graduate from UCSD having fully explored their “identity.” Why study Cervantes, Voltaire, or Goethe when you can contemplate yourself? “Diversity,” it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism. Fist tap Big Don.

8 comments:

nanakwame said...

He did say early that to be POTUS you had to have a little Megalomania personality. Sad we didn't listen to the liitle things our leaders said. Or b/c he seems different, we turned off. 

"The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history" Bertrand Russell

nanakwame said...

But Gingrich’s behavior is
not as surprising as the willingness of a large number of citizens to support
him in spite of what he has done and said. Perhaps it is an indication that
ideology matters more to some voters than character. It may also be the result
of de-sensitization, where all politicians are seen by the electorate as
unethical if not corrupt, making it important to at least back someone with a
similar viewpoint. But should someone like Gingrich even be considered for the
highest office in the United States?


 


Maybe the main problem with
American politics is not the partisanship and ideologic rigidity visible every
day, but its politicians’ lack of character. If our political system is to be
transformed, ethical conduct and moral compass must count. Until the public
demands stringent ethical standards from its elected officials, it will get
highly flawed men and women running for office and nothing will change.


 


A VietNam vet and a Columbia
history major who became a medical doctor, Bob Levine has watched the evolution
of American politics over the past 40 years with increasing alarm. He knows
he’s not alone. Partisan grid-lock, massive cash contributions and even more
massive expenditures on lobbyists have undermined real democracy, and there is
more than just a whiff of corruption emanating from Washington. If the nation
is to overcome lockstep partisanship, restore growth to the economy and bring
its debt under control, Levine argues that it will require a strong centrist
third party to bring about the necessary reforms. Levine’s previous book, Shock
Therapy For the American Health Care System took a realist approach to health
care from a physician’s informed point of view; Resurrecting Democracy takes a
similar pragmatic approach, putting aside ideology and taking a hard look at
facts on the ground. In his latest book, Levine shines a light that cuts
through the miasma of party propaganda and reactionary thinking, and reveals a
new path for American politics. This post is cross posted from his blog.

CNu said...

but this is not about politicians Nana, rather, it's about a spiraling meme within conservative circles which equates ethnic and racial "diversity" with narcissism.  I thought about title-ing this post "where Cobb got it from" - because of the prima facie ridiculous argument Cobb has been attempting to make in defense of the lily-like complexion of silicon valley; http://cobb.typepad.com/cobb/2011/10/obligatory-seriousness-on-racial-bias-silicon-valley-g.html

This is also an article that Big Don gleefully noted to my attention backchannel as further proof of the intrinsic and hereditary intellectual inferiority of the lesser human species....,

nanakwame said...

The relationship for me if we continue to place folks with known political malfeasance to prove our meme in power, than we are going to accept an open dictator. This is the biggest problem for me. Obama came through the ranks like all other POTUS, groomed, money, educated.  The idea of lesser human species is a background noise. Stay attuned.

http://themoderatevoice.com/129804/doesnt-character-count-anymore-guest-voice/

CNu said...

Sorry, I don't follow how what you're written pertains to the diversity=narcissism meme being broadly circulated within conservative ranks. Those folks already believe Obama to be a socialist dictator misusing the power of the state to redistribute wealth and take away their god-given "freedoms".

Linking that to the imposition of diversity programs in higher education is a deft trick, particularly when so much of "diverse" higher education is focused in unproductive areas like race and gender studies, instead of science, technology, engineering and math...,

nanakwame said...

Pardon, but its a non issue for me, wouldn't do again. My mind can't compute the connection you entertained diversity=narcissism for an old techie friend. Is that what they said about the Greeks in the 1950's in the Fashion Field? 

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