INTERNALIZING STEREOTYPE THREAT?

The affirmative action asterisk is real, and the efforts of Student Affairs types to condition student morale don't help. "Affirmative action policies tend to worsen racial stereotypes and harm cross-racial understanding, in violation of Supreme Court requirements."  Nor do such policies improve faculty morale.

Campus discontent was not limited to [underrepresented] students. The report found that “[g]reater numerical diversity” was associated with faculty dissatisfaction with students’ pre-college preparedness and work ethic, as well as the quality of education their institutions offer.

It’s not enough for “pro-diversity researchers” to achieve diversity by numbers, which is just the “pre-condition” for inclusion policies such as hiring more [underrepresented minority] faculty and making a more “inclusive curriculum,” [Center for Equal Opportunity] author [Althea] Nagai writes.

That doesn't come as a surprise.

Nor am I surprised that Northern Illinois University continue with the same failed policies, hoping, this time, to get different results.

The Academic, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Department will host a virtual town hall event, “What is Holding us Back?” Understanding- isms (Part 1) from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Feb. 4.

The town hall conversation will allow students to engage and ask questions about “Isms,” along with a panel of guest experts. A meaningful dialogue on what are “Isms?” and how they can create barriers to inclusive communities will also be discussed, according to the NIU event page.

Yeah, right, but that's just the usual suspects being true to form.

It could be worse, you could be at the University of Leicester, which is losing all the good of the intellect.

In January, the University of Leicester announced a consultation over proposals across a number of departments. It also plans to cut 60 posts, putting 145 staff at risk of redundancy.

Under the restructuring, the English department would no longer teach medieval literature due to "a drop in demand from undergraduate and postgraduate students in recent years".

If adopted, the changes would also mean the university discontinuing BA English with English language, and MA English Language and Linguistics.

The university said it would instead offer "a range of modules which are excitingly innovative", such as modules on race, ethnicity, sexuality and diversity.

The university said the changes would provide a "decolonised curriculum".

A university spokeswoman said this means reconsidering how the subject is taught "to make it more inclusive and reflect emerging developments".

"For example, many reading lists are dominated by white authors," she said.

"This ignores many great [nonwhite] scholars and also means that [nonwhite] students do not see themselves reflected in what they are being taught."

I'm not sure what's more distressing, the business jargon that crowds out the substance, the trendy methods that crowd out the learning, or the category error (which several of the people interviewed in the article emphasize) that equates the ancestry of the scholar with the relevance of the message.

In addition, I wonder whether the very attempts to be more inclusive, whether it be in affirmative action goals, or in decolonised reading lists, impede the development of the next generation of scholars, particularly those holding protected status under the civil rights laws.