In May 2005 I wrote (here) about a draft diversity plan at the University of Oregon that caused an uproar on the campus.
The draft plan … called for changing tenure and post-tenure reviews to include assessments of professors’ “cultural competency.” It also called for hiring 30 to 40 professors in the next seven years in several diversity-related areas, including race, gender, disability, and gay-and-lesbian studies.
Now, thanks to reader of all things Fred Ray, we can see they’re at it again, this time with a toned-down but still controversial version. The new draft no longer makes “cultural competency” a requirement for hiring and promotion, but much of the old plan is still retained.
The revision keeps the six major themes of the old plan: developing a culturally responsive community, improving campus climate, building a critical mass, expanding and filling the pipeline, developing and strengthening community linkages and developing and reinforcing diversity infrastructure.
If they sold tickets, I might buy one to watch the spectacle of “developing a culturally responsive communty” and “building a critical mass.”
Some, of course, think the new draft “doesn’t go far enough,” but I think chemistry professor Michael Kellman has it about right.
UO chemistry professor Michael Kellman said the new plan is an improvement, but he said it’s still centered on different treatment for particular groups and said that’s not in the best interest of the university or the people the plan seeks to help.
“This plan is still obsessed with group identity, it’s still full of group preferences in scholarships and faculty hiring,” he said. “I think those things are bad public policy so I object to the plan on those grounds.”
Also, Kellman believes the document fails to address the university’s one legitimate diversity issue.
“The real kind of diversity that the University of Oregon needs, and which the University of Oregon and most other universities is sorely lacking, is intellectual diversity,” he said.
As the article cited here, points out, “[d]iversity has been a regular flash point at the UO for a number of years.”
That’s certainly the “diversity” we’ve come to understand: “a regular flash point.” It produces comity and consensus almost nowhere, but at least it’s not viewed as virtually subversive and racist, the way enlightened opinion on most campuses views the old-fashioned principle that people ought to be treated without regard to their race.
