Lynn, having served on numerous search committees at three different research universities over 33 years, I can say that whoever was chairing those committees needed serious retraining in how to run a search. HR needed to be called immediately, because dumping applications out of the pool on the basis of race and gender is NOT what inclusion, equity, and diversity mean. Those are horrible, outlying examples. And I never saw that happen in any of the searches in which I participated.
Deb, dumping applications on the basis of race and gender is a violation of equal opportunity legislation but in my limited experience some academics believe that those rules do not apply to themselves only to others. I must admit that this was extreme but true example. However there were and are more indirect methods to narrow the field to get the candidate with the characteristics you want. Thanks for your reply and congratulations on your 33 years in academia.
This is a perfect storm of people like Chris Rufo who are trying to radically shift higher education to a Hilsdale College model of an unwoke paradise for conservatives where they can party like it’s 1899! And let’s not forget that they tried to impeach the king. Major no no law firms and schools. And let’s not forget this is an administration deeply hostile to science. Universities are where we get vaccines and climate change research. The fossil fuel owners of Trump need payback for their precious petro dollars 💵😡😳🤪
This was brilliant, Daniel, thank you. As someone who has not dwelt in the groves of academe other than as a student (four decades ago and that too in Britain, not the US), I have watched these savage attacks on America's elite research universities in horrified fascination.
The reference to the donor class and its reactionary leanings is the key thing here. It shows how out of touch Larry Summers is that he thought donors would ride to the rescue of these universities. Judases like Ackman, Rowan, and Kraft abound; yet it is perversely inverted because they are the ones who come bearing the pieces of silver. Adam Tooze, to his credit, warned what this meant for his university (Columbia) during the House hearings for university presidents, but of course it applies even more to far richer places, like Harvard.
And it looks as if it is going to get worse. The Heritage Foundation's Project Esther, which the NYT wrote about on May 18th, intends to incite a "civil war" inside these universities. It plans to turn the "conservative" faculties of Business, Economics, Engineering and a few others against the Humanities departments and Medical and Public Health Schools using threats of cutting funds to everyone.
I remember enough of my Gramsci, Althusser and Poulantzas to wonder how we came to this pass. For them, the capitalist state supported bourgeois liberal cultural institutions, which produced consent through their hegemonic power. The revolutionary proletariat government they hoped would follow would need to cleanse these places of their ideology while also changing the material relations in society. Yet, what we are seeing in the US is something quite different: an avowedly capitalist state has been seized by forces from within, and state power is being used to bludgeon these hegemonic institutions. This is a cultural revolution (or counter-revolution if you wish) that is on the same scale as China's in the 1960s.
Dan, simply put the chickens are coming home to roost. For decades research universities lived off nursing from the federal tit with no responsibility to the people paying the freight (American taxpayer). Now we have an administration ready to hold them responsible. Let me give you an example: over two decades ago I was on the selection committee for a tenure track position in our humble department. We began by the chair saying we will not consider a white male candidate. Really that was said out loud, and a black male candidate was chosen. The next year we had another opening and the chair took the stack of vitas we were reviewing and threw away all the vitas of male candidates saying we have to chose a woman, nothing wrong with that right. Now this is just from one corner of academia but it serves as a book mark that the blatant preference for excluding white males was began decades ago and not yesterday.
I 100% believe that you have experienced this and that it does go on. But I want to add that in my experience this is not the norm. It may be field- or discipline-specific, or institution-specific, or department chair-specific.
Even when an institution has a serious commitment to diversifying the faculty, all of the faculty search committees and chair search committees and vice provost search committees that I have served on at three institutions are most interested in hiring "the best candidate", and that is often defined by some pretty conventional metrics. While more recently I have seen sincere attempts to have a finalist pool (usually 2-4 individuals, all who could end up getting an offer if #1 declines and so on) that is, broadly defined, "diverse" (meaning not everyone is a white male), in the end the committees on which I have served have elevated who they believed to be the best candidates.
I'm not saying this to defend the status quo or the practices that you describe here. I want to work against a narrative that "this is what always happens in academia".
Emmy, I hope I did not imply that it always happens in academia, however I would wager it happens a lot more then the public would think. I am reminded of my good friend, a tenured professor in Colorado, he wrote a piece a few years ago pointing to the dangers of the DEI philosophy spreading on college campuses, not a hit piece but documenting the pluses and minuses. Well, his graduate assistants got taken away one year, the next year his office was moved to the basement under the story that the building was being updated. Then he was moved out of the building to a storage room (no windows) in the athletic training building. The following year he took early retirement. As the saying goes, the viciousness in academics is inversely associated with the importance of the issue. Again not saying this is always the case but it happens. Thanks again for the reply.
What is true of the universities is true of every US institution now: media, NGOs, local and state governments, the courts, sporting organizations and more. An openly fascist government with solid (if not majority) public support is bringing the full power of the US state to bear with demands for submission. At this point, resistance is morally obligatory but highly unlikely to succeed. US democracy is over.
Wesleyan is a great institution and ROTH is certainly well suited. The biggest reason that more Uni presidents don't act like Roth is that their schools take in a lot of Federal funds, mostly in the form of research grants. Liberal Arts colleges and small Universities like Wesleyan don't have that burden.
I agree with you that university presidents are in a bad place. But at this point there is no gain from capitulation. Mass layoffs are coming thanks to research destruction anyway. Ideological purges are coming anyway.
We are already losing our democracy. Personal delay gains nothing. The sooner the presidents realize the truth, the better.
Except for military service, I spent my entire adult life in higher ed--student, professor, administrator, & trustee at a liberal arts college. You don't get to be a college president, even at a liberal arts college, unless you are risk averse. Since the average president lasts less than a decade, it's hard to get them to think long-term. Rather than make hard decisions, they prefer to kick the can down the road for the next guy or two. Controversy, scandal, angry faculty, protesting students, outraged alums, whatever risk, they prefer to avoid it.
Your identification of the difference between colleges that are primarily liberal arts (Wesleyan) and those that are “research” institutions (e.g., Harvard) is apt (even if the thought that faculty at Wesleyan don’t do research isn’t … they’re just not funded by the Federal government). Perhaps we’ll return to a model where university research (primarily in the sciences) is carved off into technically separable research institutions, or even, where science faculty become part-time at universities with their other part being in the private sector (per medical research). Probably not a good solution but what is these days?
‘“Your complaints at the Heterodox conferences for almost 10 years now—about being too woke, about not having enough jobs for white people, about too many women in the academy—have found resonance with an authoritarian push to control our spaces,” Wesleyan University president Michael Roth said Tuesday during a plenary panel at the event.’
When the boy cries wolf and there’s no wolf, people get mad.
When the boy cries wolf and the wolf comes, people get mad.
Keep in mind that there are a lot of well-heeled alumni out there who still resent the fact that their alma maters now allow black people and women to attend.
Lynn, having served on numerous search committees at three different research universities over 33 years, I can say that whoever was chairing those committees needed serious retraining in how to run a search. HR needed to be called immediately, because dumping applications out of the pool on the basis of race and gender is NOT what inclusion, equity, and diversity mean. Those are horrible, outlying examples. And I never saw that happen in any of the searches in which I participated.
Deb, dumping applications on the basis of race and gender is a violation of equal opportunity legislation but in my limited experience some academics believe that those rules do not apply to themselves only to others. I must admit that this was extreme but true example. However there were and are more indirect methods to narrow the field to get the candidate with the characteristics you want. Thanks for your reply and congratulations on your 33 years in academia.
This is a perfect storm of people like Chris Rufo who are trying to radically shift higher education to a Hilsdale College model of an unwoke paradise for conservatives where they can party like it’s 1899! And let’s not forget that they tried to impeach the king. Major no no law firms and schools. And let’s not forget this is an administration deeply hostile to science. Universities are where we get vaccines and climate change research. The fossil fuel owners of Trump need payback for their precious petro dollars 💵😡😳🤪
This was brilliant, Daniel, thank you. As someone who has not dwelt in the groves of academe other than as a student (four decades ago and that too in Britain, not the US), I have watched these savage attacks on America's elite research universities in horrified fascination.
The reference to the donor class and its reactionary leanings is the key thing here. It shows how out of touch Larry Summers is that he thought donors would ride to the rescue of these universities. Judases like Ackman, Rowan, and Kraft abound; yet it is perversely inverted because they are the ones who come bearing the pieces of silver. Adam Tooze, to his credit, warned what this meant for his university (Columbia) during the House hearings for university presidents, but of course it applies even more to far richer places, like Harvard.
And it looks as if it is going to get worse. The Heritage Foundation's Project Esther, which the NYT wrote about on May 18th, intends to incite a "civil war" inside these universities. It plans to turn the "conservative" faculties of Business, Economics, Engineering and a few others against the Humanities departments and Medical and Public Health Schools using threats of cutting funds to everyone.
I remember enough of my Gramsci, Althusser and Poulantzas to wonder how we came to this pass. For them, the capitalist state supported bourgeois liberal cultural institutions, which produced consent through their hegemonic power. The revolutionary proletariat government they hoped would follow would need to cleanse these places of their ideology while also changing the material relations in society. Yet, what we are seeing in the US is something quite different: an avowedly capitalist state has been seized by forces from within, and state power is being used to bludgeon these hegemonic institutions. This is a cultural revolution (or counter-revolution if you wish) that is on the same scale as China's in the 1960s.
Dan, simply put the chickens are coming home to roost. For decades research universities lived off nursing from the federal tit with no responsibility to the people paying the freight (American taxpayer). Now we have an administration ready to hold them responsible. Let me give you an example: over two decades ago I was on the selection committee for a tenure track position in our humble department. We began by the chair saying we will not consider a white male candidate. Really that was said out loud, and a black male candidate was chosen. The next year we had another opening and the chair took the stack of vitas we were reviewing and threw away all the vitas of male candidates saying we have to chose a woman, nothing wrong with that right. Now this is just from one corner of academia but it serves as a book mark that the blatant preference for excluding white males was began decades ago and not yesterday.
I 100% believe that you have experienced this and that it does go on. But I want to add that in my experience this is not the norm. It may be field- or discipline-specific, or institution-specific, or department chair-specific.
Even when an institution has a serious commitment to diversifying the faculty, all of the faculty search committees and chair search committees and vice provost search committees that I have served on at three institutions are most interested in hiring "the best candidate", and that is often defined by some pretty conventional metrics. While more recently I have seen sincere attempts to have a finalist pool (usually 2-4 individuals, all who could end up getting an offer if #1 declines and so on) that is, broadly defined, "diverse" (meaning not everyone is a white male), in the end the committees on which I have served have elevated who they believed to be the best candidates.
I'm not saying this to defend the status quo or the practices that you describe here. I want to work against a narrative that "this is what always happens in academia".
Emmy, I hope I did not imply that it always happens in academia, however I would wager it happens a lot more then the public would think. I am reminded of my good friend, a tenured professor in Colorado, he wrote a piece a few years ago pointing to the dangers of the DEI philosophy spreading on college campuses, not a hit piece but documenting the pluses and minuses. Well, his graduate assistants got taken away one year, the next year his office was moved to the basement under the story that the building was being updated. Then he was moved out of the building to a storage room (no windows) in the athletic training building. The following year he took early retirement. As the saying goes, the viciousness in academics is inversely associated with the importance of the issue. Again not saying this is always the case but it happens. Thanks again for the reply.
What is true of the universities is true of every US institution now: media, NGOs, local and state governments, the courts, sporting organizations and more. An openly fascist government with solid (if not majority) public support is bringing the full power of the US state to bear with demands for submission. At this point, resistance is morally obligatory but highly unlikely to succeed. US democracy is over.
Wesleyan is a great institution and ROTH is certainly well suited. The biggest reason that more Uni presidents don't act like Roth is that their schools take in a lot of Federal funds, mostly in the form of research grants. Liberal Arts colleges and small Universities like Wesleyan don't have that burden.
I agree with you that university presidents are in a bad place. But at this point there is no gain from capitulation. Mass layoffs are coming thanks to research destruction anyway. Ideological purges are coming anyway.
We are already losing our democracy. Personal delay gains nothing. The sooner the presidents realize the truth, the better.
Except for military service, I spent my entire adult life in higher ed--student, professor, administrator, & trustee at a liberal arts college. You don't get to be a college president, even at a liberal arts college, unless you are risk averse. Since the average president lasts less than a decade, it's hard to get them to think long-term. Rather than make hard decisions, they prefer to kick the can down the road for the next guy or two. Controversy, scandal, angry faculty, protesting students, outraged alums, whatever risk, they prefer to avoid it.
Your identification of the difference between colleges that are primarily liberal arts (Wesleyan) and those that are “research” institutions (e.g., Harvard) is apt (even if the thought that faculty at Wesleyan don’t do research isn’t … they’re just not funded by the Federal government). Perhaps we’ll return to a model where university research (primarily in the sciences) is carved off into technically separable research institutions, or even, where science faculty become part-time at universities with their other part being in the private sector (per medical research). Probably not a good solution but what is these days?
This whole funding system sounds wrong. It should never have been left to the whims of any single administration.
Can you elaborate on that? What aspects sound wrong? I know that there are some, but what specifically are you referring to?
The government gives money to universities. That money is subject to political control. That's wrong.
‘“Your complaints at the Heterodox conferences for almost 10 years now—about being too woke, about not having enough jobs for white people, about too many women in the academy—have found resonance with an authoritarian push to control our spaces,” Wesleyan University president Michael Roth said Tuesday during a plenary panel at the event.’
When the boy cries wolf and there’s no wolf, people get mad.
When the boy cries wolf and the wolf comes, people get mad.
Everyone loves to shoot the messenger.
Keep in mind that there are a lot of well-heeled alumni out there who still resent the fact that their alma maters now allow black people and women to attend.
what century do you live in?