Metastasizing Academic Cancer (Walter Williams)

Creators Syndicate ^ | April 12, 2017 | Walter E. Williams

[jazusamo]

The average American has little knowledge of the extent to which our institutions of higher learning have been infected with a spreading cancer. One aspect of that cancer is akin to the loyalty oaths of the 1940s and '50s. Professors were often required to sign statements that affirmed their loyalty to the United States government plus swear they were not members of any organizations, including the Communist Party USA, that sought the overthrow of the United States government. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down loyalty oaths as a condition of employment in 1964.

Today we're seeing the re-emergence of the mentality that gave us loyalty oaths, in the form of mandating that faculty members write "diversity statements," especially as part of hiring and promotion procedures. They are forced to pledge allegiance to the college's diversity agenda. For example, the University of California, San Diego requires that one's "Contributions to Diversity Statement" describe one's "past experience, activities and future plans to advance diversity, equity and inclusion, in alignment with UC San Diego's mission to reflect the diversity of California and to meet the educational needs and interests of its diverse population (http://tinyurl.com/mm6vzzq)." George Leef, director of research at The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, has written an article titled "Loyalty Oaths Return with Faculty 'Diversity Statements'" (http://tinyurl.com/mxy363c). His article documents the growing trend of mandated faculty diversity statements — such as that at Virginia Tech, in which "candidates should include a list of activities that promote or contribute to inclusive teaching, research, outreach, and service."

[onedoug]

Bob Jones bump.
I also like The Citadel, but I’d read some stuff in their “Brigadier” cadet newspaper that stuck me as a bit PC.

[Trumpocrat]

The social justice, multiculturalism, pro-inclusiveness faction denies the genetic diversity between racial groups and clans. Any differential in academic outcomes between races or ethnicities must be cultural i.e. Due to “White privilege”

[DeweyCA]

FTA: By the way, the next time you hear a college president boasting about how diverse his college is, ask him how many Republican faculty members there are in his journalism, psychology, English and sociology departments. In many cases, there is none, and in others, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans might be 20-to-1. Nearly 100 percent of political campaign contributions from liberal arts faculty go to Democrats. At Cornell University, for example, 97 percent of contributions from faculty went to Democrats. At Georgetown University, it was 96 percent.

A study by my George Mason University colleague Daniel B. Klein, along with Charlotta Stern, titled “Professors and Their Politics: The Policy Views of Social Scientists” (http://tinyurl.com/qxne3db), concluded: “The academic social sciences are pretty much a one-party system. Were the Democratic tent broad, the one-party system might have intellectual diversity. But the data show almost no diversity of opinion among the Democratic professors when it comes to the regulatory, redistributive state: they like it. Especially when it comes to the minimum wage, workplace-safety regulation, pharmaceutical regulation, environmental regulation, discrimination regulation, gun control, income redistribution, and public schooling.”

I like how Walter Williams included good statistics and URL links in his article to give proof of what he wrote.