Clown Quarter Contagion
In the comments, Farnsworth M Muldoon steers us to this unhappy development:
Male, pale and stale university professors are to be given “reverse mentors” to teach them about unconscious bias, under a new Government funded scheme. Under the project, white men in senior academic posts will be assigned a junior female colleague from an ethnic minority as a mentor… Prof Jon Rowe, who is overseeing the project at Birmingham University, said he hoped the scheme will allow eminent professors to confront their own biases and leave them “feeling quite uncomfortable.”
Professor Rowe admits that no evidence of “overt prejudice” against women and minorities has been found, but he nonetheless hopes to inflict discomfort on those deemed sufficiently pale. As if, in itself, this would be some kind of triumph. “We are mindful that previous attempts at addressing such imbalances have not been successful,” says the professor. And so, rather than revisiting his own egalitarian assumptions regarding the distribution of interest, aptitude and talent, he and his team will be searching for witches and racial ectoplasm.
It’s not unreasonable to suppose that the role of “reverse mentor” will attract people already sympathetic to the hokum being peddled, and intrigued by the personal leverage it affords, and who may feel an ideological obligation to unearth some damning but invisible sin, fairly or otherwise, if only to validate their own conceits. Which is to say, the so-called mentors – who’ve agreed to participate in a project that by definition assumes white guilt regardless of evidence or lack thereof – seem more likely to be racially bigoted than any random member of staff.
The speed with which patent woo can propagate among the supposedly intelligent is quite remarkable. The pseudoscience of “unconscious bias” testing and correction has been repeatedly exposed as both laughable and pernicious – a kind of diversity Scientology – and yet it spreads, thanks to ideological modishness and taxpayer funding. And when minority students reject the excuses and woo being peddled ostensibly for their benefit, they may find themselves denounced by their self-appointed saviours.
What’s objectionable, among so much else, is the conceit that these clowns, with their weird racial fixations, and other clowns just like them, have any business at all probing the unconscious of staff based on their race and sex, their maleness and paleness, in order to find bigotry that they assume must exist solely because of their skin colour.
It seems to me that when you’re reduced to hunting for “unconscious bias,” as supposedly confirmed by a person’s preferred charity or the random positioning of a chair, then you’ve crossed a line into something approaching hysteria. And a license for malice.
And yet we appear to have arrived at a point where people are expected to simply accept this kind of insulting presumption and intrusion, with an understanding that one mustn’t question the competence and motives of the clowns doing the ectoplasmic probing.
[ Expanded via the comments. ]
If a professor said he wanted to make minority staff ‘feel quite uncomfortable’ what would happen?
Wow.
They think they have won but have been shown insufficient respect. And so they insist on the right to publicly disrespect the losers and thus gain the face the losers have unfairly denied them.
These are evil people.
If a professor said he wanted to make minority staff ‘feel quite uncomfortable’ what would happen?
I somehow doubt that boasting about it would be acclaimed, or attract funding, or enhance his career prospects.
Do the “reverse mentors” get “unconscious bias” training too? Or is it just wypipo?
*crickets*
Translation: Birmingham University implies all its white male staff are racist and sexist.
Isn’t that a hostile work environment for anyone white and male?
Translation: Birmingham University implies all its white male staff are racist and sexist.
Isn’t that a hostile work environment for anyone white and male?
Quite.
Seems apposite, somehow.
The horror!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/10/driving-me-nuts-german-police-rescue-man-baby-squirrel
Do the “reverse mentors” get “unconscious bias” training too? Or is it just wypipo?
It’s not unreasonable to assume that the role of “reverse mentor” will attract people sympathetic to the hokum being peddled, and the personal leverage it affords, and who may feel an obligation to unearth some damning but invisible sin, fairly or otherwise. Which is to say, the so-called mentors – who’ve agreed to participate in a project that by definition assumes white guilt – are more likely to be bigoted than any random member of staff.
Young Girls Creeped Out By Older Scientists Constantly Trying To Lure Them Into STEM
Young Girls Creeped Out By Older Scientists Constantly Trying To Lure Them Into STEM
Heh.
As demonstrated in one of the supporting links to this post, anything can and will be used as evidence of “unconscious bias,” and thus, participating in such kibuki is a fool’s game. Still, such are the ways of all hysteriæ throughout recorded history.
The professors would be better off refusing to cooperate and demanding specific evidence of incidents in the classroom or among colleagues demonstrating bad behavior.
As demonstrated in one of the supporting links to this post, anything can and will be used as evidence of “unconscious bias,”
The random positioning of a chair, for instance.
R. Sherman, I agree. Any concession to these loons is effectively feeding the parasites. And when you feed a parasite it only gets bigger and hungrier. Unfortunately, too many serious academics have taken the line of least resistance and the pseudo-academic loons, effectively the parasites of academia, are taking over once serious institutions. The serious academics will have to grow a spine and stand up to the parasites before the host institutions are killed off. Unfortunately with the exception of Jordan Peterson, I don’t see much evidence of this occurring.
Which is to say, the so-called mentors – who’ve agreed to participate in a project that by definition assumes white guilt – seem more likely to be racially bigoted than any random member of staff.
That.
That.
As so often with these things, the opportunities for abuse and indulging personal grudges, and the kinds of personalities attracted to such opportunities, somehow passes without comment, along with the obvious public insult to white, male staff. As if those involved could only have the purest and most noble of motives.
@DrD
I’ve thought for some time that there will have to be a separation of the “hard” sciences from the humanities & “soft”/pseudo-sciences if the former are to survive. The latter need to be isolated in the modern equivalent of faith-based seminaries so as not to infect the rest of the academy. Dr. Deborah Soh’s travails recently mentioned on these pages are evidence of the need for such a separation.
The professors would be better off refusing to cooperate and demanding specific evidence of incidents in the classroom or among colleagues demonstrating bad behavior.
Report to the auditorium immediately for your Struggle Session, Mr. Sherman.
Why don’t we tend to see this sort of hokum pop up in Foreign Languages departments? Or, if it does, why doesn’t it appear to have taken hold to the same degree? I’ve trawled David’s posts to try and find evidence of this stuff in the languages departments, and I can’t seem to find many examples.
The professors would be better off refusing to cooperate…
As I said before, it is a Catch-22, unless they do this alle zusammen and damn the torpedoes, it would only be used as evidence by the U of B Academic And Workers Woke People’s Tribunal of bias. As DrD alludes, if there is one guy fearful of losing a job/pension over this, they are all up a creek in a chicken wire canoe.
What is interesting is that other than being a white male his own bad self, the U of B appears to have whitewashed (whitewash – I denounce myself) Mr. Rowe’s academic background, however, it appears from what paper citations can be found, he was not a Useless Studies graduate, so one wonders what is behind his motivation for promulgating this steaming pile.
Cue the harassment charges in 3…2…1…
The professors would be better off refusing to cooperate and demanding specific evidence of incidents in the classroom or among colleagues demonstrating bad behavior.
Refusing to cooperate is exactly what I and other functioning–and very irked—coworkers have done when we’ve had that nonfunctioning mindset turn up at one job or another . . . and the reaction from the idiots is often a shocked Um, err, um, wait, you’re not going along with the lies?!?!!?
It also didn’t and doesn’t help the opposing mindset on the occasion when something workable and helpful was actually suggested by one such idiot, and my immediate response was to agree and insist that the good idea be implemented.
My unconscious bias works as a warning system to remind to maybe not trust those black teens or muslim refugees on the corner and find another way to get where I am going. It never shuts down because we need to protect ourselves from the orcs who walk among us.
My conscious system has read countless reports of black teen and muslim refugee violence. That trickles down into my unconscious and works while I am busy doing other things than considering the well being of those who may not have my well-being in mind..
So we are relegated to pretend to take our ‘racist spirit guide’ seriously or lose out jobs? Is that it? That’s what it looks like to an intelligent person who also possesses common sense and a presence in reality.
From Jake’s Thing by Kingsley Amis: Jake, who was supposed to be taking the for side in a discussion on admitting women to his Oxford college, gets fed up and reveals his conscious bias…
. . . the “hard” sciences from the humanities & “soft”/pseudo-sciences . . . The latter need to be isolated in the modern equivalent of faith-based seminaries so as not to infect the rest of the academy.
Not too difficult, one would think. The latter are the exact same thing as all other faith-based seminaries . . .
Why don’t we tend to see this sort of hokum pop up in Foreign Languages departments?
The “problem” with languages over gibberish is that languages, and changes that occur in languages, is right there on the paper, and that documenting paper—and other forms of documentation—and its usage is all over the place and too difficult to be made to go away.
All that’s needed with and when in the languages is for someone to repeatedly just tap a finger on the documentation and point out that x remains x in this instance, it does not transform into a giraffe, nor has it ever been a watermelon.
“The mentor scheme is one element of a broader project aimed at challenging bias, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council…Prof Rowe, who is director of research at Birmingham University’s College of Engineering and Physical Science, said he hoped to interrogate the “underlying causes” that lead to the underrepresentation of female and ethnic minority academics at the top of academia.”
The cancer appears inoperable.
At least Prof Rowe was able to secure a research grant for himself and the University while they root out the “pale, stale” (i.e. stale because pale) white academics who have been standing in the way of female and minority advancements (by being in the jobs they covet).
Why don’t we tend to see this sort of hokum pop up in Foreign Languages departments? Or, if it does, why doesn’t it appear to have taken hold to the same degree? I’ve trawled David’s posts to try and find evidence of this stuff in the languages departments, and I can’t seem to find many examples.
I suspect that the effort involved in learning a foreign language to a level sufficient for advanced academic study is too great, and that the dim poseurs who just want a way to rationalise their grievances tend to get put off by the thought of all that work.
i.e. stale because pale
Stale because older than a millennial.
The twins start 10th grade tomorrow … and, of course, the ‘counselors’ changed their requested classes into a more “four year college course” rather than what each boy is leaning towards as a career.
I’m actually happy neither boy wants to go to 4 year college right out of high school. One wants military, the other into tech of some sort. Not only will they be avoiding debt but the fever swamps of identity politics.
We should decline to call them “reverse mentors” and instead insist that they be called by their true names: Kommissars (or Gestapo agents.) Only mockery and insults for those who call them “mentors”.
Why don’t we tend to see this sort of hokum pop up in Foreign Languages departments?
It does.
Words and Actions: Teaching Languages through the Lens of Social Justice
Multilingualism, Second Language Learning, and Gender
Of course the language departments are embedded among the “liberal arts” colleges so you get claptrap like this from LSU:
You just know from that any actual language instruction will be served with a heaping helping of SJW arglebargle.
Report to the auditorium immediately for your Struggle Session, Mr. Sherman.
Oh, I’ve “been there; done that” quite a while ago, actually. Americans of a certain age will recall the Satanic Child Abuse Hysteria which ran through the country in the ’80s. I was a freshly minted lawyer thrown into some of these cases as an appointed lawyer for children, and I have retained possession of a deposition from a national “expert,” proprietor of an “institute” at a major university which got lots and lots of grant money, wherein he opines that the presence of certain facts constitutes evidence of X, while absence of the same facts not only fails to refute X but also constitutes evidence of X. His conclusion (quoting from memory, because I don’t want to drive to my office and dig it up):
“Really, it’s the accusation that’s important.”
I shit you not.
My refusal to play along caused me to be summoned before our state’s children’s services bureau for a “come to Jesus” meeting.
Which is why I noted above that this “implicit bias” business bears the markings of other historical hysteriæ.
Why don’t we tend to see this sort of hokum pop up in Foreign Languages departments?
Adding to Farnsworth’s comment above, while the introductory and intermediate language courses remain relatively free of such stuff, the upper level courses have been changed from literature courses to “studies” courses in the politics and current culture and society in the target language’s country of origin. Thus, it’s now possible in places to get a German degree without ever having read Goethe or Schiller, or even knowing who they are.
Americans of a certain age will recall the Satanic Child Abuse Hysteria which ran through the country in the ’80s.
I was a young mom at the time … and I remember hearing such stuff as “children never lie about these things” and then reports of secret basements, underground tunnels and animal sacrifice.
The McMartin Preschool trial didn’t exactly cover the Los Angeles DA office in glory.
I remember wondering WTH was happening with people?
I remember wondering WTH was happening with people?
It was a wild and strange time, especially for an idealistic young lawyer who thought things like “evidence” and “court rules” were things to be celebrated. I learned early on, the fix was in and it was advanced by a cabal of academics and the ’80s version of SJWs and social engineers grubbing for government money without regard to quaint, “hundred year old” concepts like due process and “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
I recall a state attorney objecting to my cross examination of the person referred to above, not because it was legally objectionable, but because I was questioning Dr. X “is the nationally renowned expert in the field!” To which, I responded, “Why?” The judge smiled and overruled the objection.
And that’s how I knew the hysteria was subsiding.
As I said, the parallels with today’s racism hysteria are striking.
Because the same Marxian tripe is behind both.
who thought things like “evidence” and “court rules” were things to be celebrated
Like “objectivity”, that’s just your CisgenderHeteronormativeWhiteMale Patriarchy talking!
You know, this stuff would stop almost overnight if universities simply required martial-arts training for any type of degree. You spend 4 years in engineering studies, you spend 4 years in the dojo. You spend 4 years in Angry Studies, you spend 4 years in the dojo. The reason this would make a difference is that when your partner hits your foam shield hard enough to spin you around, when you know he’s holding back, feminist fantasies are immediately exposed for what they are (and you will spend the rest of your life laughing at grrrl power movies).
This is never going to happen, but if it did, reality would return to colleges in a jiffy.
…he hoped the scheme will allow eminent professors to confront their own biases and leave them “feeling quite uncomfortable.”
What is a sadist to do, if you think you can refuse?
R. Sherman, have you read Debbie Nathan’s book on the Satanic panic, and, if so, what do you think of it? Also, at about the same time we had the multiple- personality scam, did you encounter that?
For those unfamiliar with it, the multiple-personality scam worked as follows. Rich girl goes to psychiatrist. Psychiatrist convinces her that her problem is that when she was a kid Dad raped her, and she forgot all about it, but she developed other personalities who do remember. Threatening to go public with this charge, they shake down Dad for years of expensive “treatment.” Then, as fads go, it filtered down to the peasantry, and psychiatrists milked insurance companies. The beginning of the end was when insurance companies caught on and began refusing to pay claims.
you spend 4 years in the dojo.
During my few but intense years of receiving formal training in a martial art, getting paired off for sparring with one of the few females at the dojang was always a trial. What was I supposed to do? It was like stepping into a boxing ring only to discover, at the last second, that your opponent was a kitten. Short of outright throwing the fight, there is no way of getting out without feeling bad for either a) causing pain or injury to someone far weaker than you, or b) embarrassing them with a half-assed, no- or light-contact dance performed, quite obviously, in order to avoid hurting them.
We were light-contact. (Our stuff dated back to the samurai era, so with full contact you could have killed or maimed someone.). I think light-contact would be the way to go with the Pogonip Plan. When you know the guy’s holding back, that’s quite a sobering experience!
Short of outright throwing the fight, there is no way of getting out without feeling bad for either a) causing pain or injury to someone far weaker than you, or b) embarrassing them with a half-assed, no- or light-contact dance performed, quite obviously, in order to avoid hurting them.
I was doing student mentoring back when they first introduced co-ed wrestling since there weren’t enough females to make up a full team (go figure why). My male, 15 year old student was on the small side so he often was matched up against a female. This was such a bad idea in sooo many ways. And this was 20 years ago. Let’s face it, the stupid will drag us down until there is a very hard, very discernible crash.
Hey, do they have MAs in Britain, or does Bond James Bond train all by his lonesome?
I’ve always been curious about the European MAs, which seem completely ignored.
Short of outright throwing the fight, there is no way of getting out without feeling bad for either a) causing pain or injury to someone far weaker than you, or b) embarrassing them with a half-assed, no- or light-contact dance performed, quite obviously, in order to avoid hurting them.
If your partner connects with a knockout punch, cue you-go-girl crowing – I’m 98lbs but I’m hella fierce. If you connect with a knockout punch, cue speculation about your abusive tendencies – it’s only a training bout, it’s only a 98lb girl, what sort of toxic male are you?
A boy would be happier and surer of himself these days in a ballet class, where male and female dancers have delineated and complementary roles, than in Girlpower Fight Club with its double binds and moral hazards.
Girlpower Fight Club
Jane Austen’s Fight Club.
Prof. Rowe needs to consult a dictionary, ‘mentor’ is not the correct translation of zampolit.
I wonder how they will vet the prospective ‘mentors’? There will very likely be a traning session required to produce the correct level of resentful hate-filled bigotry.
And they will certainly report daily to the Central Committee so that each victim’s ‘wokeness’ score (according to that day’s ever-shifting prejudices) can be computed by the algorithm which I am certain is already written. Then comes monitors in each classroom, recording of e-mail, and listening devices in the office and at home. I’m sure there are manuals available from the Stasi.
“The pseudoscience of “unconscious bias” testing and correction has been repeatedly exposed as both laughable and pernicious – a kind of diversity Scientology – and yet it spreads, thanks to ideological modishness and taxpayer funding.”
In a related vein:
http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2018/08/fireside-is-at-it-again-blackspecfic.html
The phrase in the “conclusions” I found most hilarious was:
“The field is segregated, and whether that’s due to variable submission rates, variable acceptance rates, and/or other factors, the data expose a clear instance of structural racism.”
Yeah.