Two courageous professors at the University of Nebraska have some advice for their colleagues:
University of Nebraska-Lincoln faculty members need to read and comment on the proposed UNL Strategic Plan for Diversity by Halloween. The timing is utterly appropriate. The policy is available at the following link:
http://www.unl.edu/ucomm/chancllr/index.shtml.
Among the items they find frightening:
1. From now on, your annual evaluations will include being graded on the extent to which you have contributed (or not) to a climate of “inclusiveness” and the extent to which you have participated in “campus programs to improve climate …”
“Inclusiveness” is not defined in the document, nor is the nature of these programs specified. Thus, these words can mean whatever your department chairperson or others in the administration want them to mean – and can’t we all guess?
Does anyone doubt that all this constitutes a politically based litmus test for continued employment? Simply expressing disagreement with affirmative action, or with UNL’s implementation of it, could easily be cast as contributing to a “non-inclusive climate.” Having the “wrong” book on your bookshelf or the “wrong” cartoon on your office door could be judged “non-inclusive.”
2. All potential new hires must be grilled on their willingness and ability to “contribute positively” to the “campus climate.”
As a candidate, if you slip up during an interview and reveal that you think the diversity emperor has no clothes, you’ve lost your chance at a UNL job — based on your political opinions….
3. All academic units will have “diversity curricula” and an assessment of their effectiveness. This asserts administrative hegemony over one of the very few areas over which faculty members still maintain some control: curriculum. This is a direct violation of the academic freedom of faculty members.
4. There are to be recruitment “targets” for female and minority faculty. Deans and department chairpersons will be graded on their ability to meet those targets. The administration will thus force lower and mid-level administrators and faculty search committees into illegal reverse discrimination.
If you plan to join a search committee, keep in mind that you may therefore be called upon to display “non-inclusive” behavior. That is, you may be required or “encouraged” to exclude non-Hispanic white male applicants. Thus, you will be in violation of the other parts of the plan that require you to be “inclusive….”
I assume both these authors have tenure (one is an associate professor; the other a full professor). If you think their analysis extreme, consider how likely it is that someone without tenure would be willing to express these views publicly.
One can almost hear the Maoist confessions of being insufficiently “inclusive” ending with the usual pleas of the accused —
“Comrade Chancellor this faculty member admits to being a lackey of the entrenched white privilege power structure and denounces his own failings in being sufficiently “inclusive” and begs from the state mercy, forgiveness, and continued employment.”
Those confessions will be compelled by a university leadership that is itself, as usual, rather lacking in the inclusiveness it demands for others.
The Nebraska website gives pictures of the Chancellor’s senior administrative team. Eleven folks are listed including the Chancellor. Eight are white. One is African-American (in the usual vice president for “diversity” slot.)
Two of the eleven have kind of Hispanic sounding names “Juan” and “Nunez” though Nunez looks to be pretty Anglo.
I think the president of UNL should lead by example. Tone at the top is key. Therefore, the UNL president should put this plan into action by immediately announcing his retirement and forming a search committee whose charge is to locate and hire a more “diverse” president.