Perhaps the notion of deconstructing "merit" because it crowds out "diversity" has died a death of obscurity.
Campus Reform flagged an
Inside Higher Ed article by posting a clickbaitish headline. "Merit system is unjust because it rewards productive individuals, professors argue." Well, I guess it worked, if with a lag, I came across it because one of the sites I go to flagged it late last week, although that article was posted at the beginning of the academic year in 2021. The key takeaway might be that, although it is easy enough to
gripe about supposed injustices in the promotion and compensation measures in use in the academy, proposing concrete improvements is hard.
That's a shame, as the Inside Higher Ed contributors allege the current measures leave money on the table. "We applaud the compilation of cutting-edge social science research, sometimes based unapologetically on critical race theory, on how bias and stereotypes disadvantage the health and welfare of millions of Americans and ultimately lay open the possibility of the U.S. being unable to maintain the innovation necessary to remain a world leader."
I would be delighted to sew a causal argument, let alone an attempt to quantify that effect. None forthcoming.
At the summit, we were hopeful when speakers called for making the invisible visible as a precondition to that change. We were hopeful when we heard about the great social science research studies underway.
That hope quickly dissipated, however, when it became clear that even many of the leaders in the field find it difficult to name the actual systems and structures that necessarily must change. People seem to agree that the system supports and protects the status quo, but very few appear able to point to the specific parts of the system that do so. How can we fix what we don’t name? The problem is much bigger than increasing the representation of women and people of color in STEM.
To be sure, achieving a more equitable representation of our population is an important goal, but it is for naught if the system doesn’t also change. After all, we don’t want to send our talented marginalized and minoritized researchers to work without identifying and removing the underlying barriers to lasting change.
They then ask, "But what exactly is it that we are trying to change?"
That question has never had a satisfactory answer. Fifteen years ago,
I found an amusing quote from one of those weblogs run by anonymous neurotic humanities cat ladies, offering the excuse that answering the "what exactly" question was too much work, because overcoming those (unspecified) barriers was work enough already. Or something. That weblog has since closed down.
Long before that, advocates of affirmative action in colleges of law came to terms with the high failure rate of students admitted under, shall we say,
affirmative action standards by suggesting even more such students be admitted. There, dear reader, was the beginning of the argument that the standards themselves were the problem.
It’s taken decades for us to get to a place where most people agree that the academy is not the objective, level playing field we all hoped it would be. Now it is time to not just say the system is inequitable but also to start putting our finger on the particular pieces that require a reset. We call on all academics, funding agencies, professional organizations and leaders to consider the following structures as a jumping-off place for change. It feels too big to try and change a system, but if we can name parts of the system, then we can put ourselves on an inspirational path forward that finally leads to real change.
I'll be churlish and suggest that an academy ought have standards of objectivity that aren't level for sloppy thinkers. Sometimes the best way to
disguise sloppy thinking is with wordnoise. Here it comes.
On the first day of the summit, a speaker discussed the construction of the meaning of merit. Admitting that the normative definitions of success and merit are in and of themselves barriers to achieving the goals of justice, diversity, equity and inclusion is necessary but not sufficient to create change. Most of the academy functions by using a narrow definition of merit limited to a neoliberal view of the university: that merit is indicated by obtaining funding dollars or by producing lots of peer-reviewed journals or juried exhibits in prestigious outlets that garner a high number of citations or visits. Some institutions also include attracting many doctoral students or obtaining high numbers of student credit hours in their definitions of success.
That hegemonic, numbers-crunching conceptualization of merit in the American academy today stifles innovation and constitutes one of the main techniques of maintaining the status quo and reproducing the social order that undermines efforts toward DEI. We are not the first to point this out, of course, but thinking about merit as embedded in the system helps us focus on change strategies.
In the academy, we have been using the same metrics to assess merit in annual performance and promotion reviews for eons, despite the fact that our work lives and expectations have changed significantly over the last half a century. For example, the advent of the internet has meant that, at a minimum, many new outlets for and forms of scholarship should be part of the reward structure.
Is that final sentence a lament for the demise of the neurotic humanities cat lady weblogs, or might it be contributors to Inside Higher Ed attempting to work the compensation committee the way Earl Weaver would work the umpire? (Read on, one institution has created a tenure track in which doing diversity, inclusion, and equity "work" fulfills the requirement, perhaps to the exclusion of the grants and publications.)
In the past thirty years, the proliferation of affirmative action efforts in the academy have gone right along with the decline in the esteem of the enterprise. These two things
might not be correlated. And yet I can't help but think that the Ayn Randian competition in misery that inspired the title of the post isn't really where all this "normative definitions of merit" talk
is leading.
Put another way, in a universe where there is no cosmic justice, there will be people who might have better chances, no matter how hard we work at ensuring everyone a fair go, and in a world where humans are free to associate or not, there will be insiders and outsiders. Privilege-checking strikes me as the least effective way to appeal to the better angels of our nature, as it's just a big guilt trip, including for people who might be subject to multiple oppressions only to learn they are less oppressed than others.
On the other hand, maybe such a "privilege level" chart might become part of the promotion or pay raise application. So far, though, I have seen no such proposals at Inside Higher Ed. Maybe the anonymous humanities cat ladies are thinking such things, but they're not posting much.
