Professors are Prejudiced too

The New York Times ^ | 5/9/14 | Dolly Chugh

[Republicanprofessor]

In the world of higher education, we professors like to believe that we are free from the racial and gender biases that afflict so many other people in society. But is this self-conception accurate?

.......

Professors were more responsive to white male students than to female, black, Hispanic, Indian or Chinese students in almost every discipline and across all types of universities. We found the most severe bias in disciplines paying higher faculty salaries and at private universities. In a perverse twist of academic fate, our own discipline of business showed the most bias, with 87 percent of white males receiving a response compared with just 62 percent of all females and minorities combined.

[Republicanprofessor]

The hypocrisy of the liberals in education is maddening, especially as I am one of their colleagues.

[Dr. Pritchett]

Yowza! That is one racist study! How about that racist list of names??

[A_perfect_lady]

Well, before they assume the reaction is bias, it would be worth it to compare the value of the comments they were responding to. I mean... what if white males are actually making more objective observations rather than grievance-based reactions? Just a thought.

[A_perfect_lady]

Oops... did the post-without-reading thing again. They sent identical emails. My bad. I thought they were talking about how professors respond to comments in class.

[Savage Beast]

The phrase "like to believe" is an indication that what's to follow is determined denial and self-deception, just as "not being inquisitive, but" indicates that what's to follow is exactly that and the conduction "but" indicates that what's to follow is a contradiction of what's just been said.

[MIchaelTArchangel]

I am going to assume that “Lamar Washington” is supposed to be an African American? Is “Lamar Smith” an African-American name?

[Organic Panic]

Always whitey.

[AZLiberty]

They dance around this, but ironically, black professors were also more receptive to "white" students than they were to "black" ones.

From the article: "Did reaching out to someone of the same gender or race — such as a black student emailing a black professor — reduce bias? No. We saw the same levels of bias in both same-race and same-gender faculty-student pairs that we saw in pairs not sharing a race or gender (the one exception was Chinese students writing to Chinese professors)."

[Svartalfiar]

Even before reaching the formal admissions stage, women and minorities faced bias. In sum, each of the supposed hidden advantages of being a woman or minority proved to be no more than a phantom.

FALSE. The advantage minorities receive isn't in talking to professors, it's in the formal application process. They get bonus points in actual admissions. In randomly emailing professors, this just shows a personal bias amongst the professors. The institutional bias is still to their advantage.