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A Perverse ?Diverse? Perspective On Virginia Tech?s ?Diversity? Dilemma

For the past several months you?ve been spared exposure to the Chronicle of Higher Education?s commentator on all things ?diverse,? Penn anthropologist John L. Jackson Jr., at least via my criticisms of his columns (the last one was here, citing five earlier ones). Alas, your luck just ran out.

Today Prof. Jackson laments Virginia Tech?s backsliding on its commitment to ?diversity.? (You will recall from past posts that Virginia Tech first appeared ?to require faculty members to show a commitment to diversity [by demonstrating their ?involvement in diversity initiatives?] as part of their bids for tenure and promotion? but then, under pressure from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the National Association of Scholars, abandoned ?the mandated reporting of contributions to ?diversity? for tenure candidates.?

Professor Jackson regards this abandonment of mandated reporting of contributions to ?diversity? as rushing headlong in the wrong direction.

At a moment when some American universities are re-emphasizing their broad-based commitments to diversity (re-doubling their efforts at diversifying faculties and student bodies), Virginia Tech has taken an institutionalized step in the other direction.

Jackson?s argument, such as it is, trips over itself, and I will begin with it even though the argument is much less worthy of attention than several of his other odd comments.

Jackson begins by suggesting that this whole controversy was much ado about nothing. He notes, with typical clarity, that

a Virginia Tech spokesperson has been very clear about the fact that a conspicuous commitment to diversity was never a formal requirement for promotion, conceding that the document?s language wasn?t clear enough on that matter.

Hmm. So, a conspicuous commitment to diversity was never a formal requirement for promotion. Was it an informal requirement? Or maybe an inconspicuous commitment was a formal requirement? Perhaps Professor Jackson, as an anthropologist, is highly trained in teasing clear meanings out of opaque tribal utterances, but the rest of us may leave this passage wondering how this Virginia Tech spokesperson could have been very clear about the relationship of that commitment (conspicuous or not) to a requirement for promotion (formal or not) while at the same time conceding that the document ?wasn?t clear enough.?

No matter. It is clear enough to anthropologist Jackson that no one was required to do anything, ?diversity?-wise, to earn promotion. Nevertheless, that unclear language clearly expressing no (formal) requirement to do anything is now being revised.

It looks like that diversity language will not be removed completely from Viriginia Tech?s promotion guidelines, only clarified such that it reads less like an official mandate and more like a wish list for what faculty might be encouraged (though not required) to do. (And they certainly will not be formally judged on those grounds.)

Excuse me, but if the new language merely clarifies the original policy, why is Jackson so upset? Why does he regard this clarification as ?an institutionalized step in the other direction??

There are some other inconsistencies in Prof. Jackson?s column, but they are not worth more than noting. For example, he objects to those who treat ?diversity? as though it is merely a code word for race and ethnicity, but then he writes that ?faculty of color ... literally embody diversification.? He writes that FIRE and friends are attempting ?to politiicize academic culture? by pushing back against that culture?s ?commitments to ethnic and racial inclusion,? as though those commitments themselves, and the racial preference policies necessary to implement them, are not political. He calls FIRE a ?conservative organization? because it ?reject[s] any and all nods to affirmative action or other diversity initiatives within the academy, characterizing them as lillte more than ?political litmus tests,?? without recognizing that they are ?political litmus tests? if demonstrating fealty to them is mandatory and that it is such mandatory requirements, not ?nods,? to which FIRE et. al. object.

Sometimes Prof. Jackson is merely indecipherable, as in his confusing criticism that

For groups like FIRE, there are no legitimate social/political constituencies other than national ones. We are individuals, and just about anything else is an ideological straitjacket.

I have no idea what this means, although I suspect it is based on a preference for elevating our race/ethnic group membership over our individual identity. But ?national? constituencies? You figure it out.

I said above that what is most interesting in Prof. Jackson?s column is not his argument, which is fundamentally incoherent (how can no real change be institutionalized backsliding?). What animates him is not the defense of a particular ?diversity? policy from abandonment or even revision; he is angry because his deity is being dissed by groups like FIRE and NAS.

The dead giveaway is the way he states his objection to Virginia Tech ?remove[ing]/revis[ing] the current invocation of diversity from its official ?guidelines on tenure and promotion.??

Note well: invocation of diversity in official guidelines.

in?vo?ca?tion

1. the act of invoking or calling upon a deity, spirit, etc., for aid, protection, inspiration, or the like; supplication.

2. any petitioning or supplication for help or aid.

3. a form of prayer invoking God?s presence, esp. one said at the beginning of a religious service or public ceremony.

4. an entreaty for aid and guidance from a Muse, deity, etc., at the beginning of an epic or epiclike poem....

Prof. Jackson may be a highly trained anthropologist, but as this and his other columns show, he is also just another member of the ?diversity?-worshipping tribal cult now in control of American higher education.

Full post as published by Discriminations on April 17, 2009 (boomark / email).