Interesting and Detailed N.Y. Times Article About DEI at the University of Michigan

It's The University of Michigan Doubled Down on D.E.I. What Went Wrong?, by Nicholas Confessore; the subtitle is "A decade and a quarter of a billion dollars later, students and faculty are more frustrated than ever."

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

I’m a liberal Democrat and my sources include the N.Y, Times. I’m not interested in left wing slant. If there’s stuff I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to be protected from it. Imagine a take down of right wing orthodoxy on Fox News.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Fox News is RINO/Left.

[David Nieporent]

Dr. Ed is stupid/dumb.

[Frank Drackman]

David Niepotent is nie/potent

[Don Nico]

capt,
I don't understand what your complaint is. Who was trying to protect you from anything?
Certainly the NYT isn't.

[Ridgeway]

The NYT Magazine has for a long time been more "heterodox" in their thinking than the rest of the newspaper. It is definitely not conservative, but they sometimes do buck left-wing orthodoxy. Another example that jumps to mind was the article a while back about Boeing and the 737 Max, which was very favorable to Boeing.

The advice columns are (unintentionally?) hilarious, providing fascinating insights into the psychology of typical Times readers.

[Frank Drackman]

Be nice if I could read it without having to give my personal information or Shekels, I recognize the name though, he's one of the many Eunuch Talking Heads on PMS-NBC

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I wonder if the New York Times is going for a limited hangout:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout

[Sarcastr0]

This is making the rounds where I work. Not really defensible what they outline - that's a pretty ridiculous program over there.

If your plan is endless trainings and metrics, you're not interested in making an impact, you're interested in getting your budget spent.

[Riva]

DEI is ridiculous, offensive, and damaging to any institution that tries to force it on their employees or students, no matter how it’s implemented. And it's particularly damaging to government. Case in point. Kamala Harris.

[David Nieporent]

Shorter Riva: black people suck.

[Riva]

Uh no. I’m not obsessed with exploiting race like Democrats so I don’t really pay attention to color. Kamala Harris doesn’t suck because of her ethnicity. She’s just an inept communist. And I’m using “suck” as synonymous competence here because I’m sure Willie Brown might tell a different story.

Bonus headline from 2016: “Kamala Harris becomes first Indian-American U.S. senator” (courtesy of the esteemed Associated Press). I guess that was the ethnicity to exploit way back in 2016.

[Sarcastr0]

You don't appear to know what DEI is. Jus like you don't know what Marxism is.
You live in a world of cultural signifiers that break down to good or bad. The kind of simple ontology a bot might use.

[Riva]

So you’re finally admitting that you’re a Marxist? And a Marxist that doesn’t recognize a distinction between good and evil, although perhaps that’s endemic with all Marxists.

And, the ability to recognize right and wrong, or good vs evil, is a human trait you imbecile.

[Sarcastr0]

Me: You don't know what Marxism means.
You: So you’re finally admitting that you’re a Marxist?

One has nothing to do with the other.

You're not Manichean, you're just simple.

[Riva]

Not sure I follow you. You’re not a cultural Marxists who supports DEI? Although yeah, that’s a little redundant, because DEI is cultural Marxism, just dressed differently.

[Sarcastr0]

You're doing yourself no favors on the 'Riva knows what Marxism means' front.

And tons of favors on the 'Riva just has a collection of things he thinks are bad and lumps them together' front.

[Riva]

You’re doing yourself no favors by avoiding the question. Are you a cultural Marxist, or Marxist if you prefer, who supports DEI? Don’t know why it’s so difficult to say “no” to the question. But you assiduously avoid doing so. Methinks the reason is obvious. Because that’s exactly what you are, a cultural Marxist who supports the "good" racism of DEI.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not a Marxist.
As I've told you before.
And you just said I was lying.

Which makes one wonder why you ask the question.

And in your scrambling to deal with not knowing what the words you use mean, you have, as DMN noted, leaning on Nazi-invented rhetoric. Which makes sense, since you can't and won't go beyond 'Marxism bad.'

[Riva]

I think you’re playing word games. But fine, it doesn’t matter really how you want to identify. In substance you’re essentially someone who supports the cultural Marxist agenda that includes the offensive “good” racism of DEI.

[David Nieporent]

"Cultural marxist" is literally a term invented and used solely by the Nazis. It doesn't even make sense. That's two reasons why Riva would use it.

[Riva]

That’s an impressively stupid demonstration of Godwins’ law. But you are an impressively ignorant guy. Cultural Marxism has been used in commentary for long time but I’m not even sure it existed when the Nazis were in power.

[Sarcastr0]

Cultural Marxism has been used in commentary by people who don't know what the fuck Marxism is, but want to hate on it.

Just as intended by the Nazis who started using the term.

It's just bad propaganda.

[Riva]

Again, not even sure the term actually existed in contemporaneous Nazi writings. Now Nazis may not have liked Marxists and vice versa. Doesn't make Marxists a sympathetic bunch. They're both repulsive clowns. Like Democrats. And given the Democrats' embrace of the Islamo-fascist anti-Semites protesting across the country, I find your disparagement of Nazis a little strange.

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't know why anyone would need to appeal to "cultural Marxism" when there are plenty of idiots in academia who will tell you outright that they're actual Marxists.

But apparently the Nazis did have a term "Cultural Boshevism".

Culture in the Third Reich: Overview

[Riva]

And just so you know, there is no such thing as “good” racism, except in the fevered imaginations of cultural Marxists, and Democrats, who try to victimize and the country with DEI.

Now I concede that telling the difference between a Marxist and a Democrat is difficult these days, when they’re pretty much the same thing. The openly Marxist ones may even just be the honest Democrats.

[Z Crazy]

Some of the girls give good head, I heard.

I like white girls though

[mike petrik]

No, people who resort to calling people with whom they disagree racists suck. Loathsome cheap shot artists.

[David Welker]

Mr. Nieporent,

You have ALWAYS been wrong, but in the past you at least to be more logical.

[Kazinski]

Well to be fair University of Michigan is is handicapped by 2006 Question 2, which outlawed racial preferences by state institutions, which went all the way to the US Supreme Court to be upheld.

If they could mandate quotas, they would, but they couldn't so they figured if they measured it to death then maybe people would get the idea.

Its just they don't like the idea of racial preferences.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sure, if they measure race, and make that information available to everybody making the decisions, they don't need an explicit quota, everybody knows what to do.

One of my happier moments in the voting booth was getting to vote for Proposal 2, a couple years before I had to move out of Michigan.

[Sarcastr0]

Some of the metrics mentioned in the article seem burdensome, and that must be take into account along with privacy concerns.

But absent those legitimate concerns, act of gathering information is a pretty good idea. It's just knowledge.
It is not the same as a particular way that information could be secretly used, Brett. Even if you have yet again weaved a whole conspiracy that "everybody knows."

Your paranoia has made you anti-science.

[Brett Bellmore]

The gathering of race information by people with a history of unapologetic racial discrimination, is NOT a "pretty good idea". Because you already know what they're going to use it for.

That YOU might approve of what they'll use it for doesn't change that.

[Sarcastr0]

People who had a history of FOLLOWING THE LAW when that was the law.

The rest is the usual Brett telepathic fan fiction.

I said above quite clearly that I don't approve of what they're doing. Not that you'll be able to untangle such complexity.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sarcastr0, orchestras didn't exactly have a reputation for lawlessness, but they found blind auditions necessary to avoid discrimination.

Here you have a university administration chock full of people who will openly tell you that they think racial discrimination is morally obligatory, (Though they won't use precisely that phrase to describe their discrimination.) and you're handing them both the race information, and feed back on how the university is doing in hitting it's quota.

And you claim to think they won't act on the basis of that information. I don't think you're foolish enough to believe that.

[Randal]

Oh, look! Brett suddenly believes in systemic racism and unconscious bias! Good for you, Brett.

[Don Nico]

"anti-science."
WARNING - this reply is off-topic
I just listened to a Sabine Hosenfelder YouTube about scientific fraud. It certainly made even this trained scientist suspicious of "science."
I am afraid that AI generated "facts are only going to make matter worse.

[Sarcastr0]

Lost in Math is so good.

[Don Nico]

"you’re not interested in making an impact, "
I think you have it just right.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And the Chronicle of Higher Ed is asking where all the White students went...

[Brett Bellmore]

U-M DEI 2.0

It sounds to me like they integrated DIE so thoroughly into their bureaucracy that the DIE department is now in control of the university, and can't be removed by any internal action. DIE is calling the shots at U of M now.

And this makes clear that they have absolutely no intention of letting the passage of Proposal 2 change anything.

[Sarcastr0]

Did you bother to read the article? It talks about DEI 2.0.

Yeah, these people suck.

You on the other hand are as usual off on a speculative ('It is clear!') frolic all your own. That whole thing you wrote about making a probabilistic assessment of what is likely? I guess this is too clear to bother with that whole process, eh?
This clarity comes upon you often. Like, really often. Like you don't assess probabilities at all.

[Brett Bellmore]

If you mean the U of M report on "DEI 2.0" that I linked to, I've read that. If you mean the NYT article, no, I have not read that, it's paywalled.

Sarcastr0, I lived in Michigan until 2008, I followed the debate over Proposal 2, I'm well familiar with U of M.

They're absolutely devoted to racial discrimination, if they can't do it openly, they'll do it covertly, because they think it's the right thing to do. And they don't mean to let it being illegal stop them.

They were quite entangled with BAMN (By Any Means Necessary, and they mean that "any".) at the time, and so far as I can see, the "DEI" report demonstrates that they're still in that BAMN mindset. They're just going to do what they want, even if it's illegal, and then lie a bit about what they're doing if they have to.

Because they think the cause is more important than the law.

[Sarcastr0]

Use https://archive.is/ to get past paywalls.

Your personals observation carries little weight. You delude yourself into false partisan stuff no one else sees.

Like here, when you have divined an absolute devotion and ends justifies the means from...like you lived in the state 10 years ago?

That you think this is evidence of anything just underscores how unmoored you are.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Helpful link.

[KRB]

As someone who has lived in Ann Arbor for the past 35 years, I would say that Brett is spot on. Anyone familiar with universities in this country knows, whether he will admit it or not, that they are filled with people who think that racial preferences are a moral imperative and that violating the law prohibiting them is highly virtuous.

[Sarcastr0]

Rando reason.com-based commenter's telepathic take on the secret plans of academics from living near them who knows how long ago is still not a convincing source!

In general, try not to have opinions that include someone you don't know for sure being in bad faith. It makes you look paranoid and petty at the same time.

[Brett Bellmore]

Now, why would anybody think that a University that fought all the way up to the Supreme court for the right to racially discriminate, wants to racially discriminate? It surpasses all understanding, one would have to be a telepath to deduce any motives from something like that. [/sarc]

In fact, you scarcely need to read between the lines to see that the university intends to continue racially discriminating. They're going to make sure sure they achieve their 'diversity goals', and 'diversity goals' is just a euphemism for "racial quotas".

"Additionally, in Summer 2010, U-M joined the national Common Application membership association. (This means there is no longer a University of Michigan-specific application.) The Common App’s potential benefits—based on the experience of our peer schools that are also members—include increases in racial and ethnic diversity among applicants, additional geographic and socioeconomic diversity, and larger applicant volumes overall, as well as enhanced quality of the applicant pool overall."

IOW, it allows them to hit their quotas.

They will 'follow the law', and they will interpret the law to allow what they want to do until told in excruciating detail that they're wrong. And then they'll just be more secretive about it, because 'diversity', racial discrimination, is a moral crusade for them.

And they put the DEI people who are most obsessed about it in charge of everything.

[Sarcastr0]

I'm willing to believe these people suck. Their DEI is very bad.

But this is you, saying stuff is obvious based on assumptions you bring in: They’re going to make sure sure they achieve their ‘diversity goals’, and ‘diversity goals’ is just a euphemism for “racial quotas”.

"increases in racial and ethnic diversity among applicants, additional geographic and socioeconomic diversity, and larger applicant volumes overall, as well as enhanced quality of the applicant pool overall" is explicitly about a lot more than race. But not when Brett and his telepathic brain get on the case!

This is what I'm talking about. You might be right, but you don't realize you need to prove things with evidence. It's hard! You've never needed to bother since you always take a left turn in telepathyville and quit there, thinking you've proven your case.

Which is why Brettworld is increasingly unrelated to the real world.

[Randal]

Of course they have diversity goals and still want to meet them. That’s not the bad faith that Sarcastr0’s accusing you of psychically deducing. It’s the part where you accuse them of being willing to act illegally.

Diversity goals are not illegal, and there are many legal ways to achieve them. For example, the Common Application. If the group of people who fill out the UofM application is 10% Black, but the Common Application, because of its broader base, is 20% Black, then switching to the Common Application is likely to bring in more Black students. What’s wrong with that? No one is being discriminated against.

I think you’ll see diversity efforts move from the acceptance phase to the recruitment and matriculation phases, where there are lots of ways to improve diversity that are less direct but also don’t look as much like discrimination (and would be very difficult to make illegal).

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I just read the article. It's quite a takedown of Michgan's DEI program, the critics mainly seem to be leftists. There's mention of how DEI bureaucrats are more leftist as a whole than the faculty as a whole.

The article suggests that the DEI program goes too far, according to reputable and reliable left-wing sources. There's an anecdote of a lefty professor facing a student complaint after volunteering an apology for potentially being affected by his male majority perspective. There's only sparse discussion of the impact on non-leftists.

As I said above, I think the Times is trying to do a "limited hangout," acknowledging that at least this particular DEI program is flawed. In particular, they're warning the DEI types to stop messing with fellow leftists.