I remember how it was -- JR
GMU’s President Gets It Wrong: DEI Has Overtaken His School
Does having a bevy of officers who push race, sex, and LGBT victim/oppressor theories on university students enhance or detract from their learning?
This is the question that George Mason University’s president, Gregory Washington, never addresses in his unusually public criticism of our report for The Heritage Foundation on the extravagant “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucracies he oversees at GMU. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.)
Instead, Washington claims that we overcount the resources his school dedicates to diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, and argues that he actually isn’t 100% all in on DEI—just mostly all in.
Even if he were correct about the numbers (and we explain below why he isn’t), the burden is squarely on GMU’s president to justify why spending on divisive programs that breed anxiety and resentment among students should be anything other than zero.
Washington was so concerned by our exposé that he emailed all 40,000 GMU students Tuesday afternoon with an attempted rebuttal. But Washington doth protest too much, and we stand behind our findings.
We start by noting that Washington fails to acknowledge that GMU endorses one-sided and extreme ideological content as evidenced on the university’s own websites, including pages urging students to sign petitions in support of passage of specific legislation, vote for certain kinds of politicians, and donate to advocacy organizations with radical agendas.
As our report pointed out, George Mason University hosts a “Black Lives Matter” website that endorses racially discriminatory behavior. It is inappropriate, we said, for a university funded by taxpayers of all political persuasions to ask for donations to such causes as defunding the police or diminishing the family, particularly at a time when American cities are gripped by a horrendous crime wave that can be directly traced to family destruction.
Washington’s silence on all this speaks volumes. We equally take his studied attempt to downplay any support of DEI itself as a testament to the toxicity surrounding these practices.
Therefore, again, we remain curious to know whether, as GMU’s president, Washington believes that taking political positions such as this with university resources is an appropriate role for a public university.
And if Washington believes it is, we would like to know why GMU selected these pieces of legislation and these politicians and advocacy organizations for endorsement and not others.
Now, in response to Washington’s three stated concerns with our report:
1. Number of DEI staff at GMU: Washington no longer insists that George Mason University only has 17 DEI employees, as he did in an email to all faculty Friday evening. But he does allege that “the report grossly overstates the number of DEI staff at 69.”
We published 20 of GMU’s DEI job titles in our report and publicly posted all 69 on Saturday evening. Even after that, Washington continues to claim that we came up with more than three times too many DEI personnel by including outdated positions, double-counting positions, counting faculty who didn’t have DEI bureaucracy roles, and including “an overwhelming number of part-time student positions.”
We took all 69 job titles from GMU websites and publicly posted links to where these titles may be found. We also have 65 unique names that we did not post, out of respect for privacy. But we would be happy to share those names with Washington if he is unable to identify all of those working to promote DEI at the university he runs.
Four names are repeated because they were listed on different websites with different roles that might have been filled by someone else and not yet updated on the websites. Some of the 69 individuals also may hold faculty positions, but all of them had roles and job titles as part of DEI bureaucracies.
Our definition of DEI staff in the study excluded faculty members whose responsibilities were focused on the core university responsibilities of teaching and research. However, we clearly included student interns in DEI roles as part of our definition of DEI staff.
Only 17 of the 69 positions are held by GMU graduate or undergraduate students, not “an overwhelming number,” as Washington alleges.
These students are properly included in our count. GMU itself seems to believe the contributions of these students are significant, since its own websites list the students under the heading “staff” or “professionals.”
If Washington continues to insist that the correct number of DEI positions at GMU is “less than a third” of the 69 we listed, we would like him to publicly post all the job titles of those he believes should be counted, along with links to where their positions may be found.
We also expect that this list of fewer than 23 DEI job titles (which Washington must have in his coat pocket) would include those with specific responsibilities to serve veterans, students with disabilities, international students, low-income students, students who are parents, first-generation students, and those from many religious traditions.
We include none of them in our list of 69, but they do fall within the expansive definition of diversity, equity, and inclusion that Washington offered in his email to faculty Friday evening.
We note in passing that veteran heroes generally chafe at being included on lists of victims or “oppressed” groups.
2. Indexing DEI staff to tenured/tenure-track faculty: Washington also objects to our comparison of the size of each Virginia university’s DEI bureaucracy to the number of tenure-track and tenured faculty at the school to gauge which institution has the largest DEI bloat.
The reason we focus on tenure-track faculty is simple—it represents the magnitude of each university’s commitment to employing long-term staff to fulfill the core responsibilities of teaching and research. The more a university devotes resources to those promoting DEI rather than serving these core responsibilities, the more wasteful the institution is.
Washington’s argument that George Mason University has an especially large number of adjunct and temporary instructors who contribute far less to research and mentoring of students isn’t the point that most university presidents would choose to highlight. His argument also doesn’t demonstrate GMU’s commitment to its core responsibilities as opposed to promoting DEI.
One doesn’t usually find words such as “Leading the nation in the number of temporary teachers!” in the text of universities’ promotional brochures.
3. Including GMU with Power 5 schools: Washington objects to our comparing the size of his DEI bureaucracy to those found in universities that belong to one of the Power 5 athletic conferences.
In 2021, we chose to collect information on the size of DEI bureaucracies at the 65 universities that at the time were members of one of the Power 5 conferences. We described the reasons for selecting those universities for examination:
The focus was on these universities because they tend to be large, public institutions chosen by many students simply because of geographic proximity. These universities tend not to be highly selective institutions with explicit DEI missions intended to attract ideologically aligned students. Instead, Power 5 universities tend to be mainstream institutions that students select—and state legislatures support—without much thought to their political and cultural aims. … These 65 universities serve over 2.2 million students, representing about 16% of all students enrolled in four-year universities, thereby presenting a broad picture of higher education.
When we expanded our data to highlight the size of DEI bureaucracies in Virginia’s public universities, we included GMU because it met all these criteria.
“George Mason University belongs to the Atlantic 10 Conference, which is not among the Power 5,” Washington observed. That is relevant to GMU’s share of sports broadcasting revenue, but is not disqualifying for our purposes.
We are pleased that Washington says he still would like to meet to discuss these issues further. He offers to give us “an orientation” on diversity, equity, and inclusion. If this DEI orientation is anything like what GMU freshmen have to endure, though, we’ll pass.
If, instead, Washington is open to having a real discussion in a public forum about how much and what kind of DEI content is sponsored by George Mason University, we’re happy to join that debate, receipts in hand.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/27/gmus-president-gets-it-wrong-dei-has-overtaken-his-school
*********************************************Australia: The disability commission was split on special schools. Some with lived experience want them closed
Some disablement is pretty severe. Where are you going to put them? Putting them into mainstream schools will require a lot of teacher attention and hamper the education of other students
Disability Royal Commissioner Dr Rhonda Galbally said governments should give significant weight to her own and two colleagues’ lived experience with disabilities when deciding whether to back their call for all special schools to be shut within 30 years, after the commission split over the future of segregated education.
The division among the six commissioners about the future of special schools was a key feature of the landmark 12-volume final report of the Disability Royal Commission, with a three-three split among the experts leaving governments without a clear authority on the issue and facing a choice about the best way forward.
In an interview following the public release of the report on Friday, Galbally acknowledged that the lack of consensus on segregated education had diluted the commission’s influence on the matter, as she stressed that the three commissioners urging the closure of special schools had direct experience with disabilities.
“But on the other hand, the two commissioners with disability are recommending this and the other commissioner who is recommending it is a parent of a grown woman with a disability,” Galbally, a former board member of the National Disability Insurance Agency, said.
“I think governments will give really significant weight to lived experience, to the expertise of people with disabilities. I think that will really be very weighty for them.”
Over the course of the 4½-year commission – which cost $600 million and received evidence from more than 9000 people with disabilities, their families, carers and advocates – no dedicated public hearings were held on special schools.
Hinting at friction among the commissioners on this issue, Galbally said this aspect was “very disappointing”, adding: “some of us raised it many times and would have wished it was different.”
Galbally and commissioner Alastair McEwin, who both live with a disability, joined with commissioner Barbara Bennett in recommending that no new special schools be built from 2025 and that all existing schools be closed by 2051. Bennett’s daughter was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 12 years old.
In a joint position, they concluded that “segregated education stems from, and contributes to, the devaluing of people with disability” and the continued maintenance of segregation in education settings was “incompatible” with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
But their position diverged with that advocated by the commission’s chair, Ronald Sackville, and commissioners John Ryan and Andrea Mason, who found that separate settings did not need to – and should not – involve people with a disability being isolated from their peers or the general community. They recommended a range of measures aimed at ensuring there was regular interaction between students at special schools and those at mainstream schools.
But Galbally said this approach risked being tokenistic and would not drive the attitude change needed for people with disabilities to be seen as equal to able-bodied people.
“Students having contact that’s not gritty and day-to-day and in the process of doing what one does at school, which is learning and playing, it can become a little token,” Galbally said.
She said it was clear that the dual system of education was “failing” children with disabilities, pointing to modelling done by the commission.
“If you go to a special school, you’re 85 per cent more likely to end up in a sheltered workshop and with very limited living options as an adult,” Galbally said.
The three commissioners’ proposal to phase out special schools was welcomed by peak body Children and Young People with Disability Australia, and Down Syndrome Australia, but they also expressed disappointment at the long timeline to 2051.
Galbally said that she understood the dismay from those groups, but said it was driven by a need to ensure there was as much consensus as possible and encourage governments to embrace it.
“If governments feel they could do this sooner, that would be really great. We were aware that out of all the settings we’ve addressed … this schooling one is the one governments would probably find most difficult and so it was an attempt to really try and allow them time to get this done,” she said.
However, some experts have questioned the feasibility of closing all non-mainstream schools and removing choice for parents, while others say the lack of unanimity from the royal commission could erode the political will and substantial funding commitments required to overhaul the education sector to remove segregation.
Former NDIS board member Martin Lavery, chief executive of one of Australia’s largest charitable providers, said he was “really concerned that the royal commission has outlined a destination that we as a society haven’t yet grappled with how to pay for”.
“If we see the end of special schools too, the end of group homes too suddenly, and supported employment being turned off too suddenly, our society hasn’t yet got the mechanism to meet those costs,” he said.
Laverty said the taskforce established by the federal government in response to the commission’s findings needed to hear the message that segregation must end, and determine the “pace at which the taxpayer, the families, the charitable organisations, but most importantly, the people with disabilities want that transition to occur.”
***************************************************
The niche, elitist research of universities: a waste of money
Each year more than $12 billion disappears into the abyss vaguely described as ‘research and development’ in the higher education sector. By way of return on this ‘investment’, there has been a steady flow of research projects demonstrating an unhealthy fixation on the niche, the ideological, and the political.
Hardworking Australians would be justified in asking where their money goes and who oversees its dispersal.
The allocation of grant largesse is decided by the team of bureaucrats at the Australian Research Council (ARC). The fate of the intellectual culture of our nation rests in their hands.
Yet, research released by the Institute of Public Affairs in 2019 confirmed the extent to which university grants are focused on class, race, and gender and just how much Australians are paying for it. The IPA report Humanities in Crisis: An Audit of Taxpayer-funded ARC Grants found the ARC had distributed $1.34 billion in funding to humanities research between 2002 and 2019. The dominance of identity politics in successful grant applications raises questions about the objectivity of the allocation process.
The ARC claims its mission is ‘to grow knowledge and innovation’ for the benefit of the Australian community. However, the audit found that ‘identity politics’ and ‘Indigenous history’ were the two most common themes in successful grant applications. In contrast, the ‘rule of law’ and ‘free speech’ were among the least common themes. This more than suggests that post-modernist themes are being promoted at the expense of the values, culture and history of Western Civilisation.
In fact, tertiary research that fails to pay tribute to postmodern thought is disadvantaged on two fronts. Not only is it less likely to secure a grant, but it is further undermined by the funded postmodern research which attacks rather than promotes Western thought.
When the IPA first released its research there was a justified outcry, but the caravan moved on quickly and to this day taxpayers continue to receive a very poor return on their money.
One of the most glaring examples is that of the Sydney Environment Institute’s (SEI) 2024 collaborative grants. From calculating the carbon footprint of medical procedures to interrogating the environmental narrative around the Botany Wetlands, SEI grants highlight the decline of research into a process of propaganda production.
The first grant tackles the theme ‘environmental justices’ which is part of the SEI’s broader goal to ‘reconceptualise justice’ itself. ‘What would justice across the human-more-than-human world look like and entail?’ SEI researchers ask. It must be ‘sufficiently capacious’ to accommodate ‘climate change, Indigenous rights, resource depletion, and industrial farming.’ This leads them to conclude, conveniently, that the solution to injustice is more collaboration between academics like themselves, artists and activists.
A second grant examines the theme of ‘biocultural diversities’ which focuses on finding ‘inclusive solutions’ to issues like biodiversity loss and social inequality. ‘This theme champions and values biological and cultural diversities by elevating Indigenous knowledges and exploring diverse ways of engaging with our living world,’ SEI researchers explain. ‘We aim to better understand and cultivate appreciation for diverse human and non-human lives, knowledges and cultures.’
A third grant falls under the theme of ‘climate disaster and adaptation’. SEI researchers note that ‘communities and ecosystems are increasingly threatened, disrupted, and displaced’. They continue: ‘Mitigation and resilience are no longer sufficient and new climate realities require adaptation, and radical shifts in how diverse communities respond to disasters.’
These research themes raise a few important questions. First, in the case of ‘environmental justices’ has the SEI manufactured a problem and then a solution? If justice is not reconceptualised, the problems they discovered disappear rather quickly. Second, why does the ‘biocultural diversities’ theme emphasise ‘Indigenous knowledges’? Is there a hidden political agenda at play here? Third, why does the SEI’s description of ‘climate disaster and adaption’ use language like ‘radical shift’ and ‘disaster’? The apocalyptic language and sense of urgency evoked does not appear to suit the tone of a research institute.
According to the SEI, based at Sydney University, its research addresses ‘some of the greatest challenges of our time’. However, designing a ‘carbon footprint calculator’ or the ‘implications for justice’ linked to mangroves would be considered a top priority by very few.
These vanity projects highlight the gulf between mainstream Australians and those individuals who hold positions of power in governments and the tertiary sector. Ultimately, the millions spent on research and development each year do little to serve the public interest.
Mainstream Australians have every right to ask why they should fund projects which, far from benefiting society, are designed to undermine the values, principles and knowledge that made the West as free, prosperous and successful as it has been.
What is more, Australian universities are established by government legislation, built on public property and largely backed by government grants and state-subsidised loans. Consequently, universities are effectively public institutions dependent upon and, therefore responsible to, taxpayers.
Finally, IPA research reveals a two-fold problem. Firstly, with the prioritisation of certain research themes in the grant allocation process. Secondly, with the flow-on effects on researchers who are likely aware there is a higher chance of being awarded a grant if they focus on issues of class, race and gender. The evident bias represents a profound problem for the integrity of tertiary research in Australia.
It is clear the system requires comprehensive reform. With the future of higher education hanging in the balance, mainstream Australians need to exert pressure on politicians to demand more from universities, and to hold them to a higher standard and deliver research that benefits us all.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/the-niche-elitist-research-of-universities-a-waste-of-money
******************************************************My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
******************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment