Diversity

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

WOC Phd links me to 2 articles by Gay Prof, on the subject of diversity in academia. The goodness of these articles cannot be overstated. Get thou to the links and read!


Where is the Diversity?Choice Quote:"The stories of minority groups in this nation are not simply festive, colored pegs that can be plugged into a core white background. The history of race in this nation is the history of this nation."



Enough Minorities, Minority Enough? Part 1 Choice Quote: "African Americans, Latino/as, and Asian Americans in the humanities often have to walk a complicated tightrope between expectations about their racial identity and their academic scholarship. Many (Most? All?) departments depend upon positions focused on minority scholarship as the major (only?) method to increase the racial diversity of the faculty. Minority scholars are therefore viewed with suspicion if they are seen as not sufficiently “academic” enough and “distanced” from their subject matter. If minority faculty advocate for increasing the role of Latino/a Studies or African-American Studies, they are seen as “pushing an agenda” or simply wanting to hire their friends. The intellectual value that comes from a more diverse faculty is not seriously considered (much less the need to reinvent the way that we all teach U.S. history at the university level)."


Enough Minorities, Minority Enough> Part 2 Choice Quote: I can't decide.

Comments

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

Academia is pretty slow to catch up, and the reasons are probably multifaceted. While there is an appreciable number of black students here taking Calculus courses and doing well in them, there is an egregious vacuum of African Americans here at MSU studying pure mathematics at the graduate level. I've only met two black men who are studying pure math in the grad program right now - one's African, and the other's Jamaican.

I can't speak for the other departments. Maybe they're doing better. Maybe reaching the loftiest, most detached floors of the ivory tower isn't a priority when economics and standard of living are at issue. I don't know what exactly it is, but my generation isn't going to be the first generation of diverse mathematics faculty, if I extrapolate my anecdotal evidence correctly. Not even close. If I want to see something like this, then I have no choice but to live for a very long time.

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

As a gut feeling or general impression, my best case scenario places this generation is in preschool right now. MAYBE we can catch them in middle school with a halfway decent education program if we start reworking everything right now.

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

I think that the way Math is taught is abominable. The basics are massacred, leaving ppl like myself forever behind and therefore of the firm belief that Math is bad. We need a whole scale revolution in terms of teacher quality across the board. And that's before we address the racism factor.