A professor from the University of Southern California who is the director of the Center for Urban Education at the Rossier School of Education wants universities across the country to discriminate against white applicants for faculty positions.
Professor Estela Mara Bensimon wrote an op-ed for Inside Higher Ed in which she opined:
The only way we will successfully close the racial equity gaps produced by our higher education system when it comes to black, Latino, Native American and marginalized Asian-American students is to address racial imbalance on our faculties. … Some public institutions are convinced they can’t compete for talent against better-resourced private ones. They rarely view the problem as having to do with how they go about hiring or how their racial beliefs about quality, competence and fit are the root cause of the whiteness of the faculty.
Last fall, the Center for Urban Education convened the first Institute for Equity in Faculty Hiring at Community Colleges. Writing about the event on the School of Education website, it was claimed that universities were suffering from “implicit bias” as they hired white applicants:
In one session, participants were led through an analysis of the language in their job announcements, examining factors such as whether the announcements highlighted the importance of experience teaching first-generation African American and Latino college students. Another session included a video presentation on how implicit bias can hinder efforts to recruit and hire diverse faculty, along with steps that faculty, staff and administrators can take to change the process.
As Daniel Payne of The College Fix notes, Bensimon complains in her op-ed that universities display “datacentric approaches” that “focus on structures, not people, to achieve more equitable outcomes,” adding, “It’s hard to see how a predominantly white faculty that isn’t prepared to teach students from a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds can achieve equity with these practices alone.”
Speaking of the Institute for Equity in Faculty Hiring at Community Colleges, Bensimon stated, “The Center for Urban Education surveyed summit participants on their faculty hiring processes and found that 84 percent of respondents said their institution faces challenges when hiring faculty of color and their hiring processes are not designed to yield a diverse faculty.”
Later, Bensimon cited California Lutheran University, which changed their hiring practices. Fully in line with the politically-correct terms used by the Left, she made sure to refer to “microaggressions,” writing:
Faculty members complained that a “culture of niceness” was a major obstacle to confronting practices and language that create a negative environment for minority faculty members. Black and Latino faculty who experienced discrimination and microaggressions were reluctant to confront their colleagues or administrators because they were aware that conflict avoidance was highly valued.
VIA DailyWire
