DEI at Michigan--NYT article

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Didn't Earn It for sure.

You are a disgusting POS.

[Anonymous]

The football coach and assistants make much more.

#priorities

https://footballscoop.com/news/contract-and-salary-details-for-two-of-michigans-new-coordinators#:~:text=New%20head%20coach%20Sherrone%20Moore,his%20first%20million%2Ddollar%20coordinator.&text=Jim%20Harbaugh's%20staff%20at%20Michigan,Ben%20Herbert%20(%241%20million).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The $250,000 million would be better spent in the schools in Detroit with concentrated reading classes and concentrated math classes to learn the basics of English and Math.

So your recommendation is that the Michigan legislature should have somehow estimated how much the University of Michigan was spending out of its mostly private budget on DEI, reduced the state funding by that much each year, and given it only to Detroit Public Schools as supplemental money above the existing per pupil uniform state allowance?

Sounds like DeSantis policy to me.

Very unlikely that could actually be enacted, but if the R's were able to redirect a controversial funding stream, they would probably try to get the charter schools and religious schools in on the deal.

Don't forget Betsy DeVos is from Michigan.

Something I find curious is that civil rights law is heavily based on the concept of disparate impact. Even if something isn't "about race," it's illegal if it has a negative disparate impact on a protected class. IQ tests are mostly illegal in hiring, for example, because blacks tend to do less well on them.

In what country?

The fukn military uses an IQ test called the asvab that determines what job you get in the military. Are THEY engaging in illegal hiring practices.

But with DEI, everything has to be explicitly "about race" (or gender). You can't do things that would quietly disparately benefit black students, like say professionalize the lowest level math and English classes (where black students are disproportionately likely to end up) and ensuring that the curriculum allows students from those levels to complete reasonably challenging degrees. That would have been a good use of $250 million. Just for example.

I realize that race is a hard topic and sometimes it has to be in people's faces, but making DEI just about the in your face stuff (forced trainings, coerced diversity statements, high profile DEI hires, the grievance system) has left a bad taste in people's mouths and not accomplished much in terms of student outcomes.

This is probably true. That 250 million would probably have been better spent on other hings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The football coach and assistants make much more.

#priorities

https://footballscoop.com/news/contract-and-salary-details-for-two-of-michigans-new-coordinators#:~:text=New%20head%20coach%20Sherrone%20Moore,his%20first%20million%2Ddollar%20coordinator.&text=Jim%20Harbaugh's%20staff%20at%20Michigan,Ben%20Herbert%20(%241%20million).

But people know what they actually do. What has the DEI department done for the university lately?

[Anonymous]

Reminds me of my time at Kenyon from 2019-2023 where my senior year a very left-leaning professor (whose face I never saw because he was still double masking in fall 2022) was just trying to get people to consider a counterargument in an environmental studies class--not even playing "devil's advocate"--and was jumped by numerous students for being Eurocentric and racist. It was utterly ridiculous. DEI is a good idea on paper, but there is just no pleasing this generation of left-wingers. One demand leads to the next without any acknowledgement of the bounds universities are going to to meet their increasingly stringent list of grievances. The buck has to stop somewhere. U of M just comes off as wasteful for sinking that much money into DEI. First gen college applicants and applicants with lesser socioeconomic circumstances should absolutely get a bit of a boost, but this is just nuts.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Malcolm X was right, guilt ridden UMC white libs are the worst. Always "whitesplaining" to us black "folk" cause it makes them "feels" good to be the white knight. As a black person reading some of these posts it's really something to behold.

Do you think racism exists in the US today?

If so, do you think it should be addressed? How?

Probably not by sending a bunch of emails and surveys to disaffected students again and again the way Michigan does.

You’re minimizing the work they’ve done over the last decade, including better representation in faculty.

You mean they've mau-maued the faculty into regularly hiring less qualified candidates and made everyone sign terroristic "diversity statements". Yeah good job.

Do you know what terrorism means? It takes like 10 minutes for a faculty applicant to write how they’ve mentored a student of color before. It’s not an unreasonable demand.

Harvard and MIT thought it was an unreasonable demand, and ended the practice.

It wasn't terrorism. It was compelled speech and that's very antithetical to american values but not terrorism.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Okay so takeaway is:

Michigan = bad
Don't let your kids apply to it.




Please

Right? As a Michigan parent, this is not going to matter. Michigan is still (like all the other top schools) going to be a huge prize. My kid is having the time of his life and getting a great education. People are always thrilled for him that he got in and is there. This article isn't changing anything.

He may be assumed to be a "DEI" grad by potential employers.

Yes, we lie awake nights concerned about our white, top grades, econ major kid being pigeon-holed in this manor.
But seriously, as others have posted, we have no regrets about part of the tuition money we've spent going to fund this experiment (if it even has - didn't see where the funds came from). Race relations in this country are fraught and complicated and Michigan is at least trying.

+1

I’ll take them doing something imperfectly over doing nothing.

What if what they are doing is making things worse?

This is like a medieval doctor deciding to bleed a patient because they are really sick and he has to do something…

What’s your solution?

DP.
What's the problem?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The football coach and assistants make much more.

#priorities

https://footballscoop.com/news/contract-and-salary-details-for-two-of-michigans-new-coordinators#:~:text=New%20head%20coach%20Sherrone%20Moore,his%20first%20million%2Ddollar%20coordinator.&text=Jim%20Harbaugh's%20staff%20at%20Michigan,Ben%20Herbert%20(%241%20million).

Maybe the DEI staff could make the same amount of money if they had the same turnout at their events that the football team does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm X was right, guilt ridden UMC white libs are the worst. Always "whitesplaining" to us black "folk" cause it makes them "feels" good to be the white knight. As a black person reading some of these posts it's really something to behold.

Do you think racism exists in the US today?

If so, do you think it should be addressed? How?

Probably not by sending a bunch of emails and surveys to disaffected students again and again the way Michigan does.

You’re minimizing the work they’ve done over the last decade, including better representation in faculty.

You mean they've mau-maued the faculty into regularly hiring less qualified candidates and made everyone sign terroristic "diversity statements". Yeah good job.

Do you know what terrorism means? It takes like 10 minutes for a faculty applicant to write how they’ve mentored a student of color before. It’s not an unreasonable demand.

Harvard and MIT thought it was an unreasonable demand, and ended the practice.

This is an incorrect read. They thought it was compelled speech.

An institution could force all of its faculty to walk for 5 minutes. That is not an unreasonable demand, but it is one that is unnecessary perhaps. Know what unreasonable means.

They didn't suddenly realize it was compelled speech. They knew it was compelled speech. They didn't care that it was compelled speech until the cost of compelling that speech was higher than the benefits of compelling that speech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm X was right, guilt ridden UMC white libs are the worst. Always "whitesplaining" to us black "folk" cause it makes them "feels" good to be the white knight. As a black person reading some of these posts it's really something to behold.

Do you think racism exists in the US today?

If so, do you think it should be addressed? How?

Probably not by sending a bunch of emails and surveys to disaffected students again and again the way Michigan does.

You’re minimizing the work they’ve done over the last decade, including better representation in faculty.

You mean they've mau-maued the faculty into regularly hiring less qualified candidates and made everyone sign terroristic "diversity statements". Yeah good job.

Do you know what terrorism means? It takes like 10 minutes for a faculty applicant to write how they’ve mentored a student of color before. It’s not an unreasonable demand.

Harvard and MIT thought it was an unreasonable demand, and ended the practice.

This is an incorrect read. They thought it was compelled speech.

An institution could force all of its faculty to walk for 5 minutes. That is not an unreasonable demand, but it is one that is unnecessary perhaps. Know what unreasonable means.

Reasonable compelled speech? Did you go to law school to come up with that distinction?

DP

Is the oath taken to become a citizen compelled speech?
It is the nature of the speech that is being compelled and the circumstances under which it is being compelled that makes it bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm X was right, guilt ridden UMC white libs are the worst. Always "whitesplaining" to us black "folk" cause it makes them "feels" good to be the white knight. As a black person reading some of these posts it's really something to behold.

Do you think racism exists in the US today?

If so, do you think it should be addressed? How?

Probably not by sending a bunch of emails and surveys to disaffected students again and again the way Michigan does.

You’re minimizing the work they’ve done over the last decade, including better representation in faculty.

You mean they've mau-maued the faculty into regularly hiring less qualified candidates and made everyone sign terroristic "diversity statements". Yeah good job.

“Interesting” that you automatically assume that means “less qualified”.

Guess we still need DEI.

DP

If they weren't less qualified, they wouldn't need DEI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm X was right, guilt ridden UMC white libs are the worst. Always "whitesplaining" to us black "folk" cause it makes them "feels" good to be the white knight. As a black person reading some of these posts it's really something to behold.

Do you think racism exists in the US today?

If so, do you think it should be addressed? How?

Probably not by sending a bunch of emails and surveys to disaffected students again and again the way Michigan does.

You’re minimizing the work they’ve done over the last decade, including better representation in faculty.

You mean they've mau-maued the faculty into regularly hiring less qualified candidates and made everyone sign terroristic "diversity statements". Yeah good job.

“Interesting” that you automatically assume that means “less qualified”.

Guess we still need DEI.

DP

If they weren't less qualified, they wouldn't need DEI.

We need DEI so people will understand that “qualified” is full of biases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The money would probably be better spent on scholarships for disadvantaged, low income kids.

They have that for in-state kids.

https://goblueguarantee.umich.edu/ann-arbor/

Now compare the funding.

The clearest brochure I could find says $333M in undergrad aid in 2022-2023 (one year). Other literature is showing 90-100% of estimated financial need met under very middle class income levels.

I re-read the article. The $250M sum appears to be funding since 2016 when the DEI initiative being directly examined began.

So crudely, the DEI initiative since 2016 is in the same magnitude as one year of aid (low hundreds of $M). There are a lot of ways to deconstruct spending and all the details are not public, so I'll go with this as a comparison point. Elsewhere I saw that an older year (2019-20) of free college was $20M for just the "free" guarantee. So that would be $160M at that rate over 8 years. There were other sources of grants.

Found elsewhere: a proposed 570 space parking lot is $35M. For those who care about parking.

A new building for the B-school was $150M ish a decade or so back. Plus $135M renovation to other buildings in the complex.

I understand that many people implicitly oppose $250M in spend on DEI programs over 8 years. But the spend amount is not way out of line with other big ticket items and initiatives that the University is engaged in (and there are many of those). A services-providing organization that has revenues in the $10B range deals with large sums.

Rereading the article, I get the impression that the unexpected circumstances of the pandemic definitely complicate the assessment of success or failure. Particularly organizational culture and sentiment analysis.

It would be instructive to look at general societal surveys with similar time frames.

Or we could just declare the experiment a failure.

It's proven itself a failure, hasn't it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm X was right, guilt ridden UMC white libs are the worst. Always "whitesplaining" to us black "folk" cause it makes them "feels" good to be the white knight. As a black person reading some of these posts it's really something to behold.

Do you think racism exists in the US today?

If so, do you think it should be addressed? How?

Probably not by sending a bunch of emails and surveys to disaffected students again and again the way Michigan does.

You’re minimizing the work they’ve done over the last decade, including better representation in faculty.

You mean they've mau-maued the faculty into regularly hiring less qualified candidates and made everyone sign terroristic "diversity statements". Yeah good job.

“Interesting” that you automatically assume that means “less qualified”.

Guess we still need DEI.

Anytime they look into this it’s clear that faculty who are hired for diversity reasons are significantly less qualified by objective measures; publications, cites, research etc. Can you automatically assume that every candidate is less qualified? No, but odds are they were significantly less qualified.

Maybe facts and objective measures are racist. Did you ever think of that you racist?

You think they are less qualified just because they have fewer and lower quality qualifications. Clearly you are racist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The football coach and assistants make much more.

#priorities

https://footballscoop.com/news/contract-and-salary-details-for-two-of-michigans-new-coordinators#:~:text=New%20head%20coach%20Sherrone%20Moore,his%20first%20million%2Ddollar%20coordinator.&text=Jim%20Harbaugh's%20staff%20at%20Michigan,Ben%20Herbert%20(%241%20million).

They bring in income to the school. The income they bring in supports all sports at the University including womens sports.