Unexpectedly, Higher Ed Official Says Something Unexpected

Sandra Miles, Director of Student Services and University Ombudsman at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus, shocked attendees at a recent conference of student affairs administrators by saying something so thoroughly unsurprising that it would be shocking only to those who live inside the higher education ghetto: “straight white men feel alienated in the higher education workplace.”

Ms. Miles mentioned that the responses of white men from a survey of student affairs officials she had conducted revealed that “many of them feel unfairly judged and at times professionally limited because of their race and gender.”

“I feel that being a white male often makes me a target within the higher ed community,” one respondent said, adding that he’s been “accused” of being racist and insensitive. Another said he believed a minority colleague resented him for getting a position they both applied for, chalking it up to “white privilege.”

“White men dominate the field,” one man said. “I fully support affirmative action, but I also recognize that, at times, it makes advancement for white men more difficult….”

Some men said they’d be fired for voicing these thoughts in the workplace.

Really? Who’d a thought that judging people and limiting them professionally because of their race or gender might lead some of them (not all) to think they’d been treated unfairly?

These views, not unexpectedly, met some resistance from the audience:

But, a black woman in the room countered, how can you fairly judge merit, when some groups have a much better chance to learn it than others?

“While it can’t be all on what you look like,” she said, “it can’t just be merit. It has to be a marriage of both.”

Affirmative action, her comment revealed, is not opposed to merit … as long as it stays in its place.

“Though a fair number of people in the room at NASPA shared their own thoughts,” Inside Higher Ed reports, “one demographic was silent to the point of getting called out – twice – by Miles: white men.”

Ms. Miles herself gave what can be regarded (by others, not Ms. Miles) as a concise summary of the effects of a generation or more of affirmative action:

“We’re all unhappy – apparently that’s what equality looks like,” she said. “Every other group feels discriminated against as well, and when having these conversations with people who are members of these other groups, it’s important that you understand that.”