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Diversity as a Spoils System

September 28, 2005 10:40 AM

As a retired professor who saw many of these under-published, self-protective "scholars" in universities, I, like Victor Hanson in this extraordinary Essay, long ago concluded that "diversity" was something meager scholars applied to people they hired rather than themselves. Once they achieved tenure during the shortages of the 1960s, they pulled up the ladder on those behind them and substituted standards they could never meet. They applied diversity to new hires, but not to themselves.

I know personally two of the university presidents named by Hanson in his article; they were impressive scientists themselves, though always in the accepted way of doing things. They did not change, the constraints they operate under in the office of university president are very different now. But, are these jobs so valuable that they cannot do the simple, honest things that anyone can see are needed? Probably not. Such people could not be hired on today's campus. And they couldn't move the correct decisions through the entangled faculty/bureaucracy that runs most campuses. Protected faculty with tenure and unaccountable bureaucrats are mismanaging and over managing universities in too many cases.

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Comments

Posted by: Flower Online [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 12, 2006 2:52 AM

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