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No $$$ for a new HC but......

RUsilencer

Sophomore
Oct 27, 2013
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Alexander Library
We have tons of money to pull this crap off. Barchi is an absolute jackass who needs to be shown the door.

President Robert Barchi blasted out an e-mail to the university list serve on Tuesday evening announcing a brand new diversity (!) initiative, headed-up by the brand new Orwellian-sounding “University-wide Diversity and Inclusion Office,” with an expensive twist:

Should an academic unit select a faculty candidate who increases the diversity of that unit, as broadly defined above, the unit will be eligible to receive fifty percent of that individual’s salary for three years, as well as additional funds to support mentoring and retention activities.”



Members of the Rutgers community:

As part of the restructuring of Rutgers University occasioned by the
integration of the former University of Medicine and Dentistry of New
Jersey (UMDNJ), we are creating a University-wide Diversity and
Inclusion Office, headed by Senior Vice President Barbara Lee. In
addition, this fall we are launching a University-wide faculty diversity
hiring initiative.

Diversity and inclusion are a key foundational element of the
University’s Strategic Plan. Although we have been extraordinarily
successful in attracting and retaining a diverse student body, the
University has been less successful in hiring and retaining diverse
faculty. An earlier program focused on increasing diverse faculty hires
had some success, but the program ended several years ago. This new
program will focus on creating a diverse recruitment pool, hiring
excellent faculty, and mentoring and retaining those faculty by
providing scholarly and career support, particularly for untenured faculty.

In our goal to enhance faculty diversity, we are defining diversity very
broadly. Diversity may include, but is not limited to, gender,
ethnicity, race, culture, national origin, or other personal or
professional characteristics that are either unrepresented or
underrepresented in the particular department or unit of intended hire.

This definition of diversity thus has “inclusion” as a critical and
literal component, in that the inclusion of a diversity of individuals,
groups, and points of view will be stressed in faculty recruitment and
retention, as opposed to the privileging of a particular group or groups
over others. In order to be supported, such diverse or inclusive hires
will have to demonstrably enhance the academic unit’s scholarly and
teaching excellence.

The initiative will focus on ensuring that academic units participating
in this program will develop an inclusive pool of qualified candidates
after developing a recruitment plan that is informed by data on the
demographic mix of the national or international labor market for that
discipline. The plan will also include a determination of whether any
demographic group is underrepresented within the existing unit faculty
in relation to its representation in the pool of qualified potential
candidates. Units proposing faculty hires will be required to post the
position description in outlets that are likely to be accessed by
diverse potential applicants, including national and international
higher education publications, disciplinary listservs, minority group
academic listservs, etc. Search committees will be required to reach
out to graduate programs, federal agencies (such as NIH), and/or
nonprofit organizations and foundations that collect names and contact
information for diverse candidates.

Should an academic unit select a faculty candidate who increases the
diversity of that unit, as broadly defined above, the unit will be
eligible to receive fifty percent of that individual’s salary for three
years, as well as additional funds to support mentoring and retention
activities.

Funds for this salary support will be available for diverse faculty
hiring at Rutgers University–Camden, Rutgers University–Newark, Rutgers
University–New Brunswick, and RBHS. Questions about the program may be
directed to SVP Lee at svpaa@oldqueens.rutgers.edu.

Sincerely,

Robert Barchi
 
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Going to guess that this relates to some type of Government Diversity goals that need to be met. Just a guess.
 
We have tons of money to pull this crap off. Barchi is an absolute jackass who needs to be shown the door.
So the gist of your post is that the establishment of a diversity office is a wasteful use of money that could be better directed toward football coaching staff.

Leaving aside whether diversity is an important part of a University's mission, I think the obvious issue you are ignoring here is the current size of our University subsidy. We have the largest athletics subsidy in the nation. People who hate Barchi and want him gone for his "failure to properly support athletics" seem to have a complete inability to register this fact. We support our AD with more university money than any other school in the nation.

The school would be crucified by the media if the subsidy is increased any further. The State legislature would use the issue, again, to justify further university-wide budget cuts. It would be a PR disaster. Barchi has not shown any unwillingness to properly support athletics. Rather, he has recognized the reality that if the athletics department needs more money, it needs to raise that money on its own. The answer, at this point, is not to throw more university money at the problem. Other schools have nice things because the donors step up. We need to do the same.
 
In some departments, hiring a Caucasian American would make the department more diverse. Is this Affirmative Action in reverse????
 
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oh boy, shouldn't this be moved to the crazy board? Mods?

Anyway, here is an important part:

In our goal to enhance faculty diversity, we are defining diversity very broadly. Diversity may include, but is not limited to, gender, ethnicity, race, culture, national origin, or other personal or professional characteristics that are either unrepresented or underrepresented in the particular department or unit of intended hire.


This definition of diversity thus has “inclusion” as a critical and literal component, in that the inclusion of a diversity of individuals, groups, and points of view will be stressed in faculty recruitment and retention, as opposed to the privileging of a particular group or groups over others. In order to be supported, such diverse or inclusive hires will have to demonstrably enhance the academic unit’s scholarly and teaching excellence.
 
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I don't care if the faculty member is black, white, yellow, pink, or green. As long as he/she is the most qualified
Who is a better QB - Johnny Unitas or Tom Brady - probably a different answer if you are from Boston or Baltimore, or are over 50 or under 30.

Amazingly most qualified is often a pretty hard thing to quantify in almost any field, and can be heavily influenced by the biases and personal connections of the person making the decision.

But the two arent really connected. If RU spent HALF of what it spends as a whole, it would still demand that the athletic department stop getting the largest subsidy in the P5.

Conversely, in five years when athletics is self-sufficient, no one will really care about how much it spends, as long as it doesn't get a subsidy, even if the overall budget continues to go down.
 
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You realize this has ZERO to do with athletics, OR athletic funding issues, right? And what, exactly, is wrong with this announcement otherwise??

Agree that it has nothing to do with athletics. I think the issue may be that there is a financial incentive to departments to increase diversity and finding the money to do that. The one issue is that departments may seek to just increase diversity without regard to a persons qualifications just to gain the financial incentive.....though Rutgers has been hiring unqualified people for various positions throughout the administration for years. In any event I don't have a problem with this initiative but don't see the need to tie it to a financial incentive. That actually seems to lessen it IMO.
 
Faculty not diverse??? I'm in the school of engineering, yes, but my professors:
1 from Great Britain (heavy accent)
1 from Russia (heavy accent)
1 from Nepal (heavy accent)
2 other South-Asian/Indian professors.

If diversity means they have to hire Caucasian-Americans, than yes, this plan is acceptable!
 
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If you care about facts... just google Faculty Diversity Hiring Initiative and you will see that many colleges across the us are doing the same thing this year.
 
How about a university wide initiative to hire the most prolific , noteworthy and competent faculty ever recruited to Rutgers without any regard to diversity? You know , based strictly on merit and achievement.
 
I don't care if the faculty member is black, white, yellow, pink, or green. As long as he/she is the most qualified

That's the problem. There is no better way to have a society go backwards than to put race above competence, which exactly what this does.

So happy my kids will never have to be subjected to this nonsense.
 
The origins of this weaponized diversity is cultural Marxism - as found in most university depts that focus on identity politics. It traces back to Italian Marxist Antonio Gramci - who said marginal groups should be united in an "ensemble" to militate against the core society in order to cripple it and render it open to transformation. "Political correctness" is a neo-Marxist creation. They use "civil rights" jargon to destabilize and defame institutions, people etc. They don't really care about "rights" and fairness" and thats why they ignore rights and fairness for vast majority of people while instituting insanity for some small groups we are told its unfair to ignore. Its these people currently ignoring the world catching fire and focusing on making military safe for cross-dressers etc.

These people and their "diversity officers" (like old Soviet "political officers") never make anything better. Everything gets worse. Everything gets crazier. They got the general things they years ago and wanted now they to address "microagressions". All colleges are contaminated with this. Nobody wins as the various "minority" causes lose to other causes until the genuinely disordered rise over all and nothing works anymore. Barchi is just another useful idiot running a college and caving to the loudest groups (who are resentment based - they dont mean well at all )

John H. McWhorter (RU Grad)
The Campus Diversity Fraud
http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_1_the_campus.html
 
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I don't care if the faculty member is black, white, yellow, pink, or green. As long as he/she is the most qualified

That's the problem. There is no better way to have a society go backwards than to put race above competence, which exactly what this does.

So happy my kids will never have to be subjected to this nonsense.
 
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I hate the whole diversity thing. Everything should only be based on qualifications and merit. That's it. End of story. All diversity based actions do is prop up the undeserving and degrade the deserving.
 
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That's the problem. There is no better way to have a society go backwards than to put race above competence, which exactly what this does.

So happy my kids will never have to be subjected to this nonsense.

Name me a time in history when race (or other defining characteristics of religion, sexual preference etc.) has not been put above competence? There's certainly an argument to be made that this is tilting in the wrong direction. There's no argument to be made that this is somehow new, other than the fact that it is no longer the dominant religion/race that is benefiting.
 
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Name me a time in history when race (or other defining characteristics of religion, sexual preference etc.) has not been put above competence? There's certainly an argument to be made that this is tilting in the wrong direction. There's no argument to be made that this is somehow new, other than the fact that it is no longer the dominant religion/race that is benefiting.

I don't know, I thought they idea was to run away from race based decisions and more towards accomplishment based decisions as it relates to hiring.

So what is the optimal "diversity" for the university. I want numbers.

Liberals love to put people in boxes. This is just another example.

Sadly, schools like Rutgers are taking the hit. When has Rutgers not been, "diverse?" It's always listed as one of the most diverse schools in the nation.

The more diverse the school gets, the further our rankings drop. Coincidence? Probably not.

Martin Luther King must be turning over in his grave right now.
 
How about a university wide initiative to hire the most prolific , noteworthy and competent faculty ever recruited to Rutgers without any regard to diversity? You know , based strictly on merit and achievement.
Good - now tell me wich measures you would use to measure competency or prolificness or noteworthiness. The question isn't in the easy ones - everyone knows that the world's leading expert on a field is a good hire regardless of race (and these days that person isnt really all that likely to be a white American anyway in alot of fields). The question is - when you get down to the assistant prof for some out of the way major - how do you even begin to measure things in an objective way that is still is meaningful. So you start to get back into the subjective, in which case, as I said, personal connections, and personal bias come into play.

Now frankly, I dont think its that big o a deal at RU in alot of departments. On the other hand - in my department when I was a grad student a while back - the entire tenured faculty were white (it was only I think five people though) and all but one was a man and when she left, she was replaced by another white guy.
Thats partially because meteorology is still a very white field for a scientific field. But could it also have been because of the implicit or even explicit biases of the people doing the hiring? I dont see why not.
 
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This needs to be implemented in sports. Clearly football and basketball are bastions of institutional racism.
 
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