Thursday, August 04, 2011

Diversity Thursday

There is a reason I call it an "Industry." There are a lot of people who not only get a psychological buzz from feeding their base instincts - but they have a paycheck in it.

Diversity is not just a harmless fetid fetish - no - it has real costs.
California’s budget crisis has reduced the University of California to near-penury, claim its spokesmen. “Our campuses and the UC Office of the President already have cut to the bone,” the university system’s vice president for budget and capital resources warned earlier this month, in advance of this week’s meeting of the university’s regents. Well, not exactly to the bone. Even as UC campuses jettison entire degree programs and lose faculty to competing universities, one fiefdom has remained virtually sacrosanct: the diversity machine.

Not only have diversity sinecures been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing. The University of California at San Diego, for example, is creating a new full-time “vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion.” This position would augment UC San Diego’s already massive diversity apparatus, which includes the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women’s Center.
...
UC Berkeley’s own vice chancellor for equity and inclusion shows how voracious a diversity apparatchik’s appetite for power can be. Gibor Basri has 17 people working for him in his immediate office, including a “chief of staff,” two “project/policy analysts,” and a “director of special projects.” The funding propping up Basri’s vast office could support many an English or history professor. According to state databases, Basri’s base pay in 2009 was $194,000, which does not include a variety of possible add-ons, including summer salary and administrative stipends. By comparison, the official salary for assistant professors at UC starts at around $53,000. Add to Basri’s salary those of his minions, and you’re looking at more than $1 million a year.
Here are the details.
UC San Diego is adding diversity fat even as it snuffs out substantive academic programs. In March, the Academic Senate decided that the school would no longer offer a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering; it also eliminated a master’s program in comparative literature and courses in French, German, Spanish, and English literature. At the same time, the body mandated a new campus-wide diversity requirement for graduation. The cultivation of “a student’s understanding of her or his identity,” as the diversity requirement proposal put it, would focus on “African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, Chicanos, Latinos, Native Americans, or other groups” through the “framework” of “race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, language, ability/disability, class or age.” Training computer scientists to compete with the growing technical prowess of China and India, apparently, can wait. More pressing is guaranteeing that students graduate from UCSD having fully explored their “identity.” Why study Cervantes, Voltaire, or Goethe when you can contemplate yourself? “Diversity,” it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism.
These are the people we are bringing in to our Navy more and more each day.

We've talked about VADM Curtis's three line LCDR working Diversity at CNSL - our manning documents are already full of these leaches.

Fight them or more billets will be lost to this cancerous fried air.

Hat tip K.

4 comments:

august said...

". . .no longer offer a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering. . ."

It has been many years since I studied at UCSD, but if the above is true, then the department webpage needs an update. When I was there, they offered PhD, MS and MEng programs. Master of Engineering was considered a terminal degree, as opposed to the PhD candidates who picked up an MS in the middle of their indentured service. MEng has been cut, but not MS, as far as I know.

Bubba Bob said...

This is a letter published in the Florida Bar News. A biweekly newpaper published by the state bar association. 

Enjoy.




"I had to re-read the above-the-fold article in the June 15 News: “Voluntary associations use Bar grants to promote diversity at the local level.” The first paragraph says: 
“[w]hile the legal community in Miami-Dade County is likely the most diverse in the state, it can — at times — seem quite segregated as there are so many specialty bar options catering to different racial, gender, and practice age groups.” 

The irony was just too great to pass up comment. All of the separate bar associations (made up exclusively of lawyers) are joining together to launch a Diversity Inclusion and Consortium Project. In the spirit of Brown v. Board of Education, 387 U.S. 483 (1954), I would like to suggest an alternative: Shutter the doors of all these diversity groups made up of segregated lawyers and everyone join the Dade County Bar Association. What a simple way to end the segregation of Dade County’s legal community. 

After all, we all practice before the same judges. We all pick our juries from the same venire. The last wills I drafted were for a Puerto Rican couple (man and woman). The last power of attorney — a Hispanic. I sue Jews. I defend Muslims. Earlier today, I drafted a motion to dismiss for an albino — apparently a group so small there is no association in Dade County to look out for his unique interests. 

I call on the presidents of the Miami-Dade Chapter of the Florida Association for Women Lawyers, the Cuban American Bar Association, the Puerto Rican Bar Association, the Gwen S. Cherry Black Women Lawyers Bar Association, the Wilkie D. Ferguson Bar Association, and the Muslim Bar Association, together with other segregated bar associations not mentioned in the article, to disband. Everyone can then meet at the DCBA like one big happy family. 

One more suggestion — set up the tables in one big circle. That way, no-one will feel slighted if asked to sit on the back row. 

Evan B. Plotka
Hollywood"

Yarrr said...

A call for racial quotas, direct from the USMC Commandant:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/military/article_856ede56-801e-5982-b33b-41185edfe30e.html

Grumpy Old Ham said...

Even as UC campuses jettison entire degree programs and lose faculty to competing universities, one fiefdom has remained virtually sacrosanct: the diversity machine.

Which is exactly the reason all pleas for donations from my alma mater are sent directly to the circular file or /dev/null, depending on the form.  I did, however, once reply to one of Chancellor Block's pleas for donations and told him exactly what I thought of his funding priorities; as expected, no response was forthcoming.