126 sats \ 4 replies \ @SimpleStacker 8 Oct \ parent \ on: What is a resolution to the divisions in the USA? mostly_harmless
I think I do less steelmanning and more just telling them that the situation isn't as dire as it sometimes seems.
I speak from experience within a large public university. Yes, there are woke people and woke administrators, and yes the woke policies are getting in the way of education. But the amount of wokeness is a lot less than many people think. It's usually a handful of true believers in key positions, coupled with lipservice by the non-believers. If you can just navigate around the true believers, it's usually okay.
At a macro level though, these small margins eat away at the efficiency of our organizations, so it's still a big problem overall.
I think I do less steelmanning and more just telling them that the situation isn't as dire as it sometimes seems.I speak from experience within a large public university. Yes, there are woke people and woke administrators, and yes the woke policies are getting in the way of education. But the amount of wokeness is a lot less than many people think. It's usually a handful of true believers in key positions, coupled with lipservice by the non-believers. If you can just navigate around the true believers, it's usually okay.At a macro level though, these small margins eat away at the efficiency of our organizations, so it's still a big problem overall.
interesting -- do you see these handful of true believers
a) going away?
b) holding their ground?
c) expanding their influence and/or recruiting more peeps to their ideas?
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a) Within the university, I don't see them going away, because a lot have tenure and universities aren't subject to the brutality of market forces as much as private sector. (They're not totally immune either, so when budget cuts come I do think some of the DEI positions will be the first to get cut. The positions will get cut, but the faculty staffing those positions will likely remain on faculty.)
b/c) I think they are losing influence. I've seen more and more people get comfortable speaking out openly against DEI. At first, it was fine to pay lip service when it didn't affect operations too much. But I think they pushed too hard and now people are pushing back. At my own institutions they introduced some really insane and productivity-hampering hiring policies and many departments are quite upset about it, including my own.
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University can’t be saved or reformed
We need to build something new
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I concur.
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