Resolution 165: UFC-F: In Support of the WG-F Recommendation for a Required Educational Program for Faculty

132 thoughts on “Resolution 165: UFC-F: In Support of the WG-F Recommendation for a Required Educational Program for Faculty”

1. How much will the “required faculty programming” cost? Who will be getting the money?

   https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/ethnic-studies-diversity-consultants-schools-sean-cooper

2. Will the required faculty programming tell faculty not to assign material from the following book: Gail Heriot & Maimon Schwarzchild eds., A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education (Encounter Books 2021)?

   Thank you.

3. I would like to offer a reorientation for how we think about this proposed programming:
   Inequity and bias are scientifically well documented.
   It is our university vision to serve all our students equally well. We are falling short of it.
   It is our moral duty as well as our vision to give all our colleagues (potential and existing) equal opportunity. We are falling short of it.
   The proposed programming will give faculty tools to work towards fulfilling our vision of inclusion and equal opportunity. We will work together to ensure that the programming is of such quality that it can meet this goal.

   1. I’m not persuaded by the proposed “reorientation.” It does not even try to address the core objection: coercion. It does not even try to explain why the University is permitted to use coercion — violence, as some would put it — to enforce the “moral duty” described. That reorients the issue, but only by evading it.

4. I’m not sure why the University simply does not face facts. This University will not be free from claims that it is racist unless and until whatever racial disparities exist across its various units have been eliminated. Period. Nor will any institution. Only then will “equity” be achieved. Only then will the possibility of peace exist. But I doubt it. If I am wrong about that, I would ask someone who believes they are more familiar with the theory of anti-racism than am I to please correct me. I really would like to know, in concrete terms applicable to this University, what the goal here is. It does not help me understand if I’m told the goal is to make people feel comfortable, or to avoid microaggressions, or to stop systemic racism, and so on and on. That language is beguiling — it has beguiled or silenced (to use a word from the movement) — many people. But I have no idea how anyone is to know if and when those goals have been reached. Perhaps that’s the point: although the proposed training is supposed, as one commentator wrote, to end “ignorance,” perhaps its real point is just the opposite: to keep people ignorant. To make it such that they never really know when they are being racist so that someone else can tell them when they are. Perpetual fear and anxiety.

   If I am right, if the goal is to end any and all racial disparities, why can’t the University simply cut to the chase: it should simply tell the people who are doing the hiring in each unit that that is what they must do — end racial disparities — or else. Let the University issue its threats to the people doing the hiring. And to themselves as well, since they are the ones who ultimately do all the hiring. But leave free from your violence (another word from the movement) people who want to remain free thinkers.

   Of course, saying that openly would set them up for a lawsuit. So don’t say it openly. Do it covertly. In my experience, University administrators are exceptionally skilled at avoiding plain talk, second only to politicians. They don’t see it that way, of course. They are simply being diplomatic. But their capacity for self-deception is rivaled only by their capacity to avoid plain talk.

   Just don’t compel faculty who disagree with the anti-racism agenda to participate, contrary to any basic notion of academic freedom (indeed, freedom, period) in a coercive charade designed to give the University cover for failing to achieve “equity” — defined, specifically, as eliminating any and all racial disparities across the entire University. Don’t use violence (see how effective the simple use of a word can be on how you feel) on the bodies of non-believers in order to advance the goals of the believers.

5. I believe that the manner in which we will vote on the F and S resolutions explained at yesterday’s meeting is brilliant and essential: we will have a box to add a comment. I deeply appreciate the discussions we have been having and especially appreciate this manner of voting. Thanks Charlie and Neema! I appreciate the theme that we struck yesterday that we need to experiment with the manner of F training and evaluate the results. One of my departmental colleagues has provided what I feel is the seed of a good solution: there be a requirement that each faculty member read a training document and sign to attest that they have read. I would add a box to that for the reader to include their comments. Personally, I feel that of all the modes of education, observing dramatic presentations is most effective. I wish to join an effort / welcome any senator that wishes to join me to try to hammer out an amended F resolution. I believe that based on what I am hearing in my department and from yesterday’s senate meeting that we can get something useful done. We are playing the long game here. Sincerely, Carl (Carl Franck, Physics Senator, cpf1)

6. I would also encourage opponents of this proposal to join Heterodox Academy.

7. I would encourage any faculty member who opposes the proposal to visit the following website https://www.fairforall.org/donate/. This is an organization whose goal is to fill the void left by the ACLU.

8. I believe anti-racism is an emerging religion, as do many others, at least outside the modern-day university, so-called. It doesn’t take much effort to discover what I take to be persuasive arguments in support of this point of view. No thanks. I will keep my old one. I don’t mind being excommunicated from this new religion, but I don’t believe I should be forced to learn its ever-evolving dogmas. Will the University be providing a religious exemption for those like me?

9. I don’t believe this will serve to indoctrinate or brainwash this intelligent and thoughtful group of people. At best, it will serve to alienate more than a few of us.

   My wife was born and raised in China, I have described all this to her in detail, and she thinks it stinks. She jokingly asks whether the phrases “struggle session” and “self criticism” can be of some use in labeling some aspects.

   More than a few of my ancestors fought in the armies of two free countries to defend us from precisely this sort of menace to freedom and common sense.

   If we are forced into these sorts of mandatory re-education efforts. I personally will feel it is my duty to resist and disrupt them while I am sitting through my two-and-a-half hours.

10. If and when – I should probably say when – the proposed required programming becomes official University policy, I will assume that anti-racism has become the official orthodoxy of Cornell University, if it isn’t already. That means, in part, that I will henceforth, as is my duty, teach my student nothing, nor expose them to anything, that is inconsistent with the various theses put forward by Professor Kendi’s philosophy of anti-racism. I welcome this turn of events. I will no longer need to engage in any study or thought: all I will need to do is read the work of Professor Kendi and believe. I thank the University for lightening my cognitive load.

    I would like to ask, however, if the following works will be placed – not openly, of course – on Cornell’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum, all of which I believe contain heretical theses inconsistent with those advanced by Professor Kendi:

    1. Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities (2019)
    2. Joseph Cesario, David J. Johnson & William Terrill, Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Officer Use of Deadly Force? Analyses of Officer-Involved Fatal Shootings in 2015-16, Social Psychological and Personality Studies, volume 10, pp. 586-595.
    3. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)
    4. Eric Kaufman, The Social Construction of Racism in the United States (April 2021), available at https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/social-construction-racism-united-states-EK.pdf
    5. Lee Jussim, Social Perception and Social Reliability: Why Accuracy Dominates Bias and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (2012).

    These are, of course, but a few of the many works I imagine will find their way on to the University’s de facto Index once it fully transitions to anti-racism. The required faculty programming is an important step in that direction, but thankfully the University has finally set itself on the path to equity. I look forward to the required faculty programming teaching me the falsehoods contained in the above works, and to helping me see the falsehoods contained in many others. Fortunately, once I have completed the required programming, I imagine much more space will be available on my office shelves for work dedicated to anti-racism.

    1. I don’t imagine that any works would be prohibited. but i hope that people might be able to see how flawed something like that manhattan institute publication is *without* having to take any required course.

       1. I would be grateful for details. In just what way is the document “flawed?” Here is one sentence from the author’s conclusion: “Across a range
          of surveys and questions, I found that ideology—and, to a lesser degree, social media exposure and university education—has heightened people’s perceptions of racism.” Is that statement true or false? As I read the document, it tried to offer evidence in support of the truth of that statement. The commentator must believe evidence exists to prove the falsity of that statement. Great. Let’s have a debate about that. Perhaps a citation? But let’s not coerce faculty, as the proposal will do, to sit and listen to the claims associated with a controversial ideology.

          But, to press the point, I wonder why it should be that no works will be prohibited. I agree they probably won’t be, but why not? The University has, or is coming very close to, embracing anti-racism as official policy. What does that mean? Well, it might mean that the University has, or is coming close to, embracing as official policy the claims Kendi makes in his book. If anyone has offered a clear statement — or as clear a statement as one is apt to find — of what anti-racism is, wouldn’t Kendi be that person? Where else does one turn to know what anti-racism means? And Kendi says that all ideas must be racist or anti-racist. One or the other. Surely the claims made in the Manhatten Institute document, insofar as they must fall into one category or the other, must fall into the racist category. And if they do, and if the University is anti-racist, what would prevent a student from taking to Twitter and claiming to be harmed when a member of the faculty has exposed them to such racist ideas, citing Kendi and the University’s commitment to anti-racism? The University would probably (one hopes) defend the right of the faculty member to ask students to discuss the Manhatten Insitute document, but I would bet my bottom dollar that any such defense would be quick to include some diplomatic language designed indirectly or obliquely to dissociate the University from the faculty member’s actions. Under those circumstances, why would any member of the faculty choose to take the risk of exposing students to ideas that might be construed as inconsistent with anti-racist ideology? Why would anyone take that risk? If the University does not value the give and take of ideas, why should the faculty? Speaking for myself, I can continue to go through the motions of teaching my subject matter in a way designed to avoid any and all controversy; I can continue to tip-toe through my classes; and I can continue to write as I usually do. No harm to me. The ones who suffer are the students who, if they don’t, should want to be challenged by ideas they disagree with or even find disagreeable, no matter what their pre-existing politics. But if the University does not have the back of its faculty, why should anyone be surprised if the faculty becomes even more ideologically homogenous than it already is? Maybe that’s what the University wants. I believe that should be an odd thing for a Univerity to want, but maybe it does. If it does, so be it. Let this proposal be done. Let the free exchange of ideas wither and die. Let us all march in unison.

       2. Is the book by Lee Jussim, published by Oxford University Press, not the Manhatten Institute, also “flawed”?

11. Here’s my take on the situation and I am sorry it took me so long to be able to articulate this.
    1. I have discovered (maybe) the depths of my ignorance and will take this as an opportunity to make it a little shallower. I would prefer excellent training, but I can learn something from almost any training if I try.
    2. I am not comfortable requiring staff and students to do something that I am not willing to do myself.
    3. I am willing to spend some of my time to help improve the situation for colleagues, friends and people I don’t even know who have spent so much time having to deal with a culture that I, even if not intentionally, have helped to perpetuate.

    I want to thank my friends in NYS IPM who helped me realize that I need to comment publicly.

    Elizabeth Lamb, CALS RTE

    1. If members of the faculty want to shed their ignorance, then by all means do so. Opportunities for enlightenment are not the problem The problem is that the “required faculty programming” is not an opportunity. It is what it says it is: a requirement. And what that means is that if you do not submit, you will be punished. That is the reality. It should not be disguised in bureaucratic language. That makes it all the more insidious.

       With respect to (2), the question is whether staff and students should be subject to required programming. Presumably, students who would have the temerity to refuse to participate would be expelled; and the poor staff have no choice whatsoever. They can’t afford to speak their minds. So the obvious solution is to eliminate the required programming for them too, not to extend the University’s coercive reach to faculty.

       Indeed, faculty can’t afford to speak their minds either. Which is why almost no one who objects to the proposal is prepared to identify themselves, one courageous soul to the contrary notwithstanding. No sentient being would expose themselves to the abuse and retribution open opposition to the proposal would likely bring upon them. What about that aspect of the culture the University is perpetuating?

12. What will be the effect of the required faculty programming?

    Its proponents must believe it will have any number of good effects, although I can’t say I truly know what they are. Presumably, faculty who would have acted in a “racist” manner before being exposed to the programming won’t act that way after. But what — specifically — are those racist actions? One should have thought the drafters could have provided a long list of such examples in light of the perceived urgent need for the programming they recommend. If the required programming is not intended to change actions, then it must be intended to change beliefs, and beliefs only — through coerced attendance. But, if that is the intended end, one can see why words such as “indoctrination” and “thought control” are being used to describe the proposal.

    Anyway, I can safely predict one effect the required programming will have on me. I teach a required course each year with between 60 and 100 students. The course is not in math or science. Nor is the course one from which a student can infer based only on the title of the course that the course and/or its instructor has a particular political point of view. I believe, although I don’t know, that the course usually has a mix of students with different political points of view, if they have any political point of view at all. I suspect most of them simply want to learn whatever they need to learn to pass the final exam.

    Anyway, it would not be implausible to suppose that, in connection with the course, a student might like to know — to take a hypothetical example — what my thoughts are, and what the thoughts of his or her classmates are, on the claims made in the recent documentary entitled “What Killed Michael Brown?” In fact, I doubt any student nowadays would actually raise in class any question about that documentary, even though they might have questions about it.

    Before the required faculty programming, I would have done my best to facilitate a discussion among the students. I would have tried to make it a short discussion because the subject matter of the film is not directly relevant to the material I believe I am supposed to cover, although some of my colleagues would disagree as to what material is relevant for the course. Facilitating the discussion would have made me uncomfortable. I would guess it would make many students uncomfortable too. But I would have done my best.

    After the programming, I will proceed differently. Whatever its intended effect on my thoughts and actions, the actual effect of the required programming will be as follows. Because I believe the required programming represents the University’s official embrace of anti-racism as a political philosophy (despite predictable protestations to the contrary) I will henceforth carry with me before entering class a laminated card. I will carry the laminated card with me so I can get my wording just right, so I can be consistent in each of the classes I teach, and so that I have some evidence of what I said. Here is what my card will say:

    “I’m sorry but I cannot answer your question. I believe the ideas to which you refer are inconsistent with the anti-racism policy of my employer. I believe any discussion of those ideas would further perpetuate systemic racism and may cause harm to some of your classmates.

    I would like to add that my employer insists that I am mistaken: that I am free to discuss any ideas in this class. However, I do not take my employer’s claims at face value. In particular, my employer says free expression has limits. I agree. But I do not know how far the limits to which my employer refers extend. My employer has not clearly described what those limits are. Therefore, rather than risk any adverse employment action, I believe I must refuse to discuss any ideas that anyone might remotely regard as contrary to my employer’s official anti-racist policy.”

    After having read from my script, I would add: “Because I believe the claims made in the film you mention, insofar as I understand what those claims are, might plausibly be construed as inconsistent with anti-racism, I’m afraid I am not permitted to discuss them. On the contrary, I must tell you that my employer has implicitly instructed me that the ideas expressed in the film, insofar as they are inconsistent with anti-racism, must be condemned.”

    I would guess that the proponents of the required faculty programming do not intend any such consequence. They will probably say my laminated card and the words it bears are a wild over-reaction. They might even believe or suspect I am a racist for reacting in the way described. I could be wrong about all that. Indeed, I can imagine some proponents applauding the above-described consequence. But whatever the reaction to my reaction to the required faculty programming, that is the effect it will have on me. I would also add that I do not entirely regret this effect. I believe the implicit message the required faculty programming sends provides me with a valid reason – indeed, an employment-conditioned obligation – to refuse to discuss any issue that someone might consider inconsistent with anti-racism. That reason will enable me to avoid the discomfort such questions tend to create.

    If the proposal becomes University policy, I believe the University will have crossed a Rubicon.

13. When I was a laboratory director over thirty years ago I was required to attend such a session for faculty administrators. The subject was sexual harassment. It was taught by people who seemed used to doing such things for corporations. They had no idea what a university was and no sense of who they were talking to. It was worse than a waste of time. It was an embarrassment. After the first session I said I was not going to any others, and that they could fire me as lab director if they didn’t like that.

    Presumably things have improved since then, but judging from the emails from CU that I receive as a professor emeritus, I’m inclined to doubt that. This sounds like a terrible idea, both for faculty and for students.

14. I would like to thank the Committee that has developed the report. Bias in hiring, education, and the university as a workplace is scientifically well-documented and we should all be interested in working against the harms and exclusions it causes. How we overcome bias and racism successfully by attending training is less clear. I would appreciate the Committee making a case for the effectiveness of proposed training.

    I also suggest enriching and scaffolding the proposed content. I have attended a number of university trainings. Most aimed at faculty with little analytical knowledge or social awareness of bias and racism. The audience that seems to have been envisaged for much of the programming is white faculty. These are serious problems. We ALL have something to learn. The University needs to enable that by providing different kinds and levels of content and programming. (For novices, people with some knowledge, for experts; and for people from all backgrounds.) Only then can the University ensure that the training provided will not replicate white supremacy and racism.

    1. One should note that the “training” at issue here is not being “provided”: it is being “required,” where “required” apparently means that if you do not attend or do whatever it is you are asked to do, you will no longer be allowed to teach, among other things. In other words, the proposed training is an obligation backed up by the threat of punishment. It is being “provided” in the same way the state “provides” for criminal liability based on a failure to discharge an obligation to act.

    2. I’m persuaded that racial disparities in “hiring, education, and the university as a workplace” have been “scientifically well-document.”

       I’m not yet persuaded that those disparities are exclusively the result of what the comment refers to as “bias.” Let me try to be more precise about what I mean when I refer to “bias.” Bias, as used here, involves a choice one person makes that will affect what happens to another person (i.e., the person will be hired or not, given admission to the university or not, etc.), where the first person’s choice is based on ill-will or indifference toward the affected person, and where the first person would not have harbored ill-will or indifference toward the affected person if the affected person had been of the same race as the first person. If the comment means something else by the use of the word “bias,” it would be helpful to know what it meant.

       At any rate, could the commentator please provide references to the social scientific literature he or she has in mind. I agree with the commentator, albeit based on nothing more than intuition, that coerced programming will probably do little or nothing to reduce whatever racial disparities exist across the University, although it might. For example, anyone on a hiring committee whose school does not eliminate whatever racial disparities exist in that school might believe they will be required to undertake additional training, or might run the risk that any decision they make not to hire a Black candidate will result in their being called racist. If so, that might create an additional incentive to end existing racial disparities. Still, if the University administration is serious about ending disparities, it should face that problem directly: it should tell all units that they need to end whatever disparities exist in their units by a date certain. And, if they fail to do so, they will lose money or suffer whatever bureaucratic pain the University bureaucracy is authorized to administer.

       In short: The University should address its punitive force to units based on the failure of those who run those units to achieve whatever racial balance the University wants them to achieve. It should not direct its punitive force to individual faculty members who refuse to participate in any exercise intended to change the contents of their minds.

       One final thought. Some commentators believe that the University’s proposed required faculty training is a pretense, whether University officials self-consciously recognized it as such or not. I personally would not ascribe such Machiavellian sophistication to any University administrator. Be that as it may, the commentators to which I refer believe that the required faculty programming is merely a pretext the effect of which is to distract interested constituencies from the University’s failure to make more direct changes in its policy — such as refusing to approve any unit’s proposed hires unless and until that unit eliminates whatever racial disparities are on display within the unit. That is an idea worth exploring.

15. I am opposed to this initiative. It will not have the intended effects, and it will further divide the faculty, many of whom rightly object to the assumption that they are unaware of the long histories of racism (and their present manifestations) in the United States. I believe that the true beneficiaries of this initiative will be university administrators, whose jobs will be made more secure by the need to produce corporate diversity products and then to monitor their consumption.

    It is a sad state of affairs when a community of critical thinkers is unable to see the larger structural forces behind these efforts to create diversity bureaucracies. No one should believe that mandatory diversity training will change minds or practices at a systemic level at Cornell, and no one should be pleased that this sort of flaccid corporate HR approach is the best that our faculty could do in the service of addressing long-standing issues of inequality and racism in American higher education.

16. Here is an argument against the proposed “required faculty programming.”

    1. The “required faculty programming” is punitive.
    2. The “required faculty programming” is punitive because it attaches material burdens or deprivations to non-compliance, and the University intends to impose those material burdens or deprivations for non-compliance.
    3. The punitive “required faculty programming” is intended to cause, or will have the foreseeable effect of causing, members of the faculty reasonably to believe that they are not permitted, as a matter of University “anti-racist” policy, to express in their capacity as members of the faculty any belief inconsistent with the beliefs expressed in Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist.”
    4. Any punitive “required faculty programming” with the intended, or reasonably foreseeable, effect described in (3) is inconsistent with what should be any university’s commitment to free expression and the open exchange of ideas.
    5. Cornell University should not enact any policy the intended, or reasonably foreseeable, effect of which is inconsistent with the free expression and the open exchange of ideas, unless such a policy is intended to inform its faculty of their obligations under existing law.
    6. Therefore, Cornell University should not enact the punitive “required faculty programming.”

    I would be grateful if proponents of the “required faculty programming” could explain which premise in the above argument is false, or how the argument is otherwise unsound.

17. I am opposed to the proposed faculty educational requirement. I believe that it is well-intentioned, and that those who propose it sincerely believe that requiring faculty to sacrifice 2 hours of their time per semester to watch corporate diversity videos will have a meaningful impact on racism in America and at Cornell. But I also believe that they are incorrect. Such training will not have these effects, either at Cornell or in America.

    But I am most opposed to this requirement because in my opinion, it represents yet another opportunity for neoliberalism and corporate managerialism to infest our university community, exploiting the real grievances held by minoritized and racialized members of our university community for the purposes of whitewashing systems that perpetuate of inequality. Rather than pressing for structural change or radical transformation of systems of inequality, such initiatives package antiracism as a products that the university can purchase for faculty consumption. Drink Coke: make friends! Watch Corporate Videos: become anti-racist!

    They represent, in the end, yet another mechanism through which capitalist forces exploit the simmering identitarian conflict on our campus. Such efforts divide the faculty. They creating a self-perpetuating and self-justifying logic of diversity consumerism that must be opposed by faculty who seek meaningful change to systems of oppression in higher education.

    1. The above comment, as I understand it, states that the University should do whatever must be done in order to produce “structural change or radical transformation of systems of inequality” within the University. But the reader is left wondering exactly what that means. What rules, specifically, that currently govern us within the University must be changed in order to achieve the sought-after ends? What, specifically, are the rules that would replace them?

       What about the following proposal: The University shall approve no appointment to any unit unless and until the proportion of “minoritized and racialized members of our university community” teaching within that unit is equal to the proportion of “minoritized and racialized” people in the population at large. This, one assumes, would produce one measure of “equity.” If that is the proposal, then very good. Let us debate its merits.

       But let’s not enact a policy that deploys coercion to force faculty members to attend “training” sessions the goal of which is to produce beliefs in conformity to the precepts of a controversial political and social theory. If the University protests that such a change in belief is not the intended goal of the proposed “training,” then I would refer to Shakespeare: “That which we call a rose / By Any Other Name would smell as sweet.”

18. I am deeply ashamed to be part of a University that would indoctrinate its own faculty on any matter, and would punish or ostracize those who refuse to either conform their thoughts to the official ideology, or to keep silent and pretend to agree.

    Many have commented here that coercing participation is objectionable specifically because the ideology in question is a political one. I agree that coerced participation is objectionable, but for me this is not primarily because of any particular flaws in the ideology that is to be transmitted. Rather, any sort of enforced conformity to any ideology is an offense against free inquiry and the freedom of thought.

    The University can set whatever policies it wishes concerning my behavior and my interactions with others. But when it threatens punishment unless I actively pretend to accept a set of ideas and viewpoints, it corrodes the intellectual integrity that is essential to our work.

    The report states that “Faculty also need to have an understanding of structural racism, systemic bias, indigeneity, colonialism and
    related topics.” Which faculty, and why? Perhaps the authors meant to state that the University would benefit if more faculty expressed desirable opinions on these topics, and acted in line with those opinions? There are many other topics that faculty “need” to know, relating to the many other crises that our society faces. Will we eventually have compulsory education in all of them?

    The report states that “All faculty should see the need to participate in the educational requirement…However, incentives need to be put in place to ensure full participation.” These are chilling statements, particularly because the incentive offered turns out to be the privilege of continuing to function as a faculty member.

    I am astonished that a proposal of this sort has seen the light of day.

19. I assume the drafters of the Resolution, as part of their due diligence, gathered information on how many other colleges and universities require faculty to participate in the kind of “programming” the Resolution contemplates, and in particular, programming that coerces participation, as opposed to making such participation voluntary. It would be helpful to know if Cornell would be following a trend or leading what its proponents hope will be a trend. Could the drafters please provide that information, and could the information provided please, please be specific, by which I mean could it please provide the names of the colleges and universities that employ such coerced programming?

    Thank you.

20. I have strong reservations about this proposal that align with what others have written. If the administration is going to impose this on us, they need to first articulate clearly and with measurable goals what they want to be accomplished. I strongly support diversity and work to make Cornell, my department, and my profession more diverse and inclusive. The diversity training I have experienced here (and elsewhere) has been a total waste of time. The goals are not a waste of time, but these “training sessions” are ineffective and wasteful. Add up the value of 2 hours of every faculty member’s time at this University. Can anyone honestly argue that the value of any training course would justify this cost? This policy is an example of the problem with current diversity approaches: costly requirements that have no effect but make it look like we are doing something. It’s completely performative.

    The University does have a role in ensuring that faculty treat students, staff, and each other with respect, that we do not engage in biased behavior based on someone’s background, and that we further the institution’s diversity goals. I fail to see how this “training” will accomplish any of these goals. In order to make real progress on these issues, we need to have a clear-eyed and accurate accounting of the challenges we face in meeting these goals. While faculty bias could be one dimension, it certainly isn’t the only one. I would argue that it’s likely not even the major one, although reasonable people could disagree on this point. Implementing an overly-coercive policy based on no evidence regarding effectiveness that at best addresses only one part of the problem does not seem like a good idea. I cannot support this proposal.

21. The proposed policy reflects far left ideology grounded in Critical Theory rather than science. A required educational program reflecting the ideals of the political far left is enforced indoctrination of an extreme dogma.

22. Although I have no doubt that this resolution is well intended, I am strongly opposed. In part because:
    1) where does mandatory training end? There are at least three issues that I consider even more pressing than racial equality, namely world overpopulation, anthropogenic climate change, and economic/attendant political inequality. Will we push for mandatory training on these topics, too?
    2) the punishment for not participating is so extreme compared to punishments for other campus transgressions, that it betrays the zealotry/lack of objectivity of those promoting it.
    3) it all reminds me of the fundamentalist church I grew up in. God loves us all (unless you break arbitrary rule x, and then we’ll excommunicate you). Cornell wants to include everyone (but if you don’t participate in this mandatory training about inclusion, we’ll exclude you.)
    Provide genuinely useful content, and I’ll be happy to read/watch it voluntarily. Other than the well-regarded “it depends on the lens” video, in my experience our university has an appalling track record on producing required content to comply with various government regulations. And when it comes to DEI content, specifically, the staff I’ve spoken to who are taking the current mandatory course are not impressed. Poor content can be worse than no content at all.

23. Racism is a real problem that we should all think about. But before we impose a mandatory education requirement on the whole community, it would be prudent to think about whether such a requirement will achieve its goals. Such training is not a new thing in corporate America; it has been going on for decades, and its effectiveness has been evaluated. A number of prominent studies have shown that diversity and inclusion training, when mandatory, is ineffective and even actively counterproductive. In other words, it often worsens the problem it is trying to solve. We seem to be marching down a well-trodden path, paved with good intentions, that the available science warns us against.

24. 1. Let’s refer to the meetings proposed as “re-education” and “struggle sessions”, just to be clear about what they would represent to many of us.

    2. If forced to attend such activities, there will be faculty members who will not be brainwashed but instead will actively resist and disrupt the proceedings.

25. In re-reading what I wrote I want to clarify. I very much value the IDP and other training for helping me come up with new practices for my classroom. I have used many of them and will continue to learn from them. I just think that it will take _more_ than this, and this program should encourage faculty to expand their horizons and invest themselves intellectually in understanding these issues.

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