Inside higher ed: Reimagine this

A faithful reader writes from deep inside higher education:

One of my responsibilities is tracking down ads for our recent PhDs. I just came across this one for SDI Training Manager. It’s self-parody, and so is good for laughs. Until one looks up the office of the vice chancellor under whom the successful candidate for this $70,000 position (more money, incidentally, than most college professors make) would be working.

That’s right. There are more than 20 programs reporting to this vice chancellor—a racquet ball court of deans, associate deans, assistant deans, directors, associate directors, executive administrative assistants, etc., etc.

It can’t be repeated often enough: the skyrocketing costs of higher education are caused by the left, whose ideological crusades (and demands for federal and state funding) bring these bloated bureaucracies into being.

These bureaucracies are permanent and they are sinister. That begins to appear when one observes the tell-tale doublespeak in the job ad. Prospective applicants would be helping to bring about “diversity,” and should therefore look over the “Berkeley Workplace Culture” statement, to “consider the alignment” of that statement “with their potential for success.” Toe this line, or do not bother to apply.

But wait a minute—the “Culture” statement doesn’t seem all that unreasonable. Yes, it’s pompous and self-important in a way that only an academic would not find ridiculous (“As employees of Berkeley, when we reimagine the possibilities of our own world, we shape the one around us”) but it seems fairly anodyne, no? Why, it even includes “different points of view” among those many “different things” that warrant “respect,” no? No.

This is Berkeley. Take another look at that office of Diversity and Inclusion, and click on the links on the bottom left, just below the “Support Diversity” button, and watch the respected points of view narrow. The most recent news item concerns a hundred thousand dollar grant awarded to the office to fund proposals that will explore ways to make the Berkeley “campus climate” more equitable. Yes, the “campus climate” at Berkeley.

Its faculty have been “reimagining” their world for over a century, but it seems that the campus is still not equitable. In fact, a recent “campus climate” survey “revealed that one in four people experienced some form of exclusion, intimidation, bullying, or isolation.” The Office of Diversity and Inclusion means to stamp out all such forms, and to do so it will doubtless soon need still more staff for its diversity and inclusion and “check your privilege at the door” training programs, to say nothing of its curricular reform programs.

The office will of course be helped enormously in its efforts by the Campus Climate Intolerance Report Form. Report any “discrimination, intolerance, and hate” that you witness. And remember, these can be manifest in very, very subtle ways.

Reimagine your world as Maoist.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses