“Disappointing” Diversity At Buffalo

The president of the University of Buffalo called the numbers included in a report by the Faculty Senate Affirmative Action Committee “disappointing.”

Funny, but in a long article discussing faculty handwringing over this problem there was not one mention of intellectual diversity.

Imagine that.

Say What? (7)

  1. Michelle Dulak Thomson December 16, 2005 at 12:48 am | | Reply

    What John, did you actually expect them to talk about it? You only mention the cover story in front of the plebes — sorry, the “general public.”

    I liked this:

    Basaran countered that like the number of minority faculty members, the number of minority engineering graduate students has decreased.

    Are you imagining a mostly-white engineering grad student body here? Because I’m not. Are you thinking that Basaran will be happy if there are more Asian-Americans in the program than there now are? I doubt it very much. Asian-Americans do not count as “minorities” if we are talking about graduate engineering programs. Neither do the folks the British would think of as “Asians” — Indians and Pakistanis. All these may be tiny minorities in this country, but that’s not, naturally, what Basaran means by “minority.” It’s a term of art, and no one would dare be so gauche as to ask what it means.

  2. Richard Nieporent December 16, 2005 at 8:04 am | | Reply

    Basaran countered that like the number of minority faculty members, the number of minority engineering graduate students has decreased.

    Maybe what they are experiencing is a Twilight Zone episode where the “minority” students start disappearing from the class one by one. After all Rod Serling was from upstate New York.

  3. Fred December 16, 2005 at 12:25 pm | | Reply

    I always get a kick out of Conservatives who whine like frenchmen that the conservative point of view is under-represented in institutes of higher education. If you want to have an incressed representation, just bring back the draft.

  4. Michelle Dulak Thomson December 16, 2005 at 12:58 pm | | Reply

    Fred, the point is that the ostensible reason for affirmative action is providing a “diversity of viewpoints,” yet no one seems particularly interested in seeing whether the “diversity of viewpoints” is actually showing up in the classroom. There are admissions programs, like Texas and Florida’s “Top 10%” plans, which really do bring in a “diversity of viewpoints” in that they give admission to the best students in poor and rural schools, not just the best underrepresented-minority students by test scores (who will mostly be the children of well-off and educated parents, and raised in the same suburban atmosphere as their white peers). These aren’t popular with advocates of affirmative action, though. Why not?

  5. John Rosenberg December 16, 2005 at 2:01 pm | | Reply

    Fred:

    If you want to have an incressed representation, just bring back the draft.

    I actually think this might be a good idea. Since part of the problem (granting for the sake of argument that there is a problem) of “underrepresentation” of minorities in engineering, math, and science programs is that minorities choose, heavily disproportionately, to go into programs such as education, the soft social sciences, health, social work, etc., etc., perhaps we should consider drafting some of them and sending them to engineering schools, science programs, etc. This would of course come at the small cost of overriding personal choice, but but that would seem a small price to pay for the overwhelming benefits that the increased “diversity” in the engineering programs, etc., would bring to the Asians and whites who have suffered so long without it.

  6. Richard Nieporent December 16, 2005 at 9:57 pm | | Reply

    A package of M&Ms is the perfect example of the type of diversity that the left likes. The candy look different on the outside, but they all taste exactly the same.

  7. eddy December 17, 2005 at 12:32 pm | | Reply

    These are not ‘diversity’ programs, since they begin and end with race they should be called ‘diversity-lite’ programs.

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