The more amusing response is to take the claim that racism means prejudice plus power seriously and start pointing out that it means all those KKK members out there howling in the dark aren't racist. And that it makes it almost definitionally impossible to fire anyone for being racist since the firing itself undermines the claim they were wielding power.
What really bothers me about a "Just Societies" requirement is that it's such blatant rent-seeking. By incorporating this into the official academic standards, it automatically produces a huge pool of mandatory paying customers and a guaranteed revenue stream for any department that offers courses for this program. My suspicion is that if such courses were not required then the actual demand might be small. Let the market decide!
“If you work in DEI and want to see people who need to learn about the just treatment of others, spare us another self-righteous lecture and look in the mirror.” Boom!
My theory is that DEI is a way for organisations to avoid flack without necessarily fixing stuff. If they wanted to they could pay all minority staff more but that would be complicated and add fixed costs. So what they do is hire some people to point at and wait for the labour market to tighten so they can fire them. They don't think about what it does to add something to the system which doesn't actually fix anything.
The remedy seems to be A) make it costly to add some people without falsifiable roles to the system B) discuss loudly what the problem is - eg not hiring enough black people? use blind hiring and send applications to online communities with lots of African Americans, or pay them more - how do we actually fix the problem?
Similarly with your class, it looks like they want a cheap way not to think about it. But what problems do they actually want to solve and what metrics are meaningful. I doubt minority students think that a class is going to fix their problems so perhaps push on what a win would look like. There might be more consensus than you think.
The more amusing response is to take the claim that racism means prejudice plus power seriously and start pointing out that it means all those KKK members out there howling in the dark aren't racist. And that it makes it almost definitionally impossible to fire anyone for being racist since the firing itself undermines the claim they were wielding power.
What really bothers me about a "Just Societies" requirement is that it's such blatant rent-seeking. By incorporating this into the official academic standards, it automatically produces a huge pool of mandatory paying customers and a guaranteed revenue stream for any department that offers courses for this program. My suspicion is that if such courses were not required then the actual demand might be small. Let the market decide!
“If you work in DEI and want to see people who need to learn about the just treatment of others, spare us another self-righteous lecture and look in the mirror.” Boom!
i'll try to make it to the meetup in boston!
My theory is that DEI is a way for organisations to avoid flack without necessarily fixing stuff. If they wanted to they could pay all minority staff more but that would be complicated and add fixed costs. So what they do is hire some people to point at and wait for the labour market to tighten so they can fire them. They don't think about what it does to add something to the system which doesn't actually fix anything.
The remedy seems to be A) make it costly to add some people without falsifiable roles to the system B) discuss loudly what the problem is - eg not hiring enough black people? use blind hiring and send applications to online communities with lots of African Americans, or pay them more - how do we actually fix the problem?
Similarly with your class, it looks like they want a cheap way not to think about it. But what problems do they actually want to solve and what metrics are meaningful. I doubt minority students think that a class is going to fix their problems so perhaps push on what a win would look like. There might be more consensus than you think.