I Love It When A Five-Year Plan Comes Together
For the dedicated follower of controversy, this (PDF link) is required reading. Ladies and gentlemen, the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity’s Five-Year Diversity Plan: it’s what we’re all going to be screaming at each other about next year.
(By the way, I would like to take this opportunity to declare a pre-emptive moratorium on “five-year plan” jokes. Seriously, couldn’t they have picked a different number?)
Released without fanfare (and, coincidentally enough, one day before the final University Senate meeting of the year) to an uncritical write-up from the ODE, the brouhaha surrounding this document has been steadily building over the last couple of weeks as more people have actually gotten a chance to read it. (Including, as detailed here, some who were rather upset to learn that they had supposedly been involved in writing it.) Put simply, it is an audacious institutional power grab on the part of the OIED – as the plan currently reads, they would have a say in the funding of new academic positions, hiring decisions, tenure review, salary levels, and virtually every significant operational aspect of every University department. The standard by which all departments will be judged is the nebulously-defined one of “cultural competency”, and you won’t need three guesses to figure out which branch of the University administration will be in charge of deciding who is “culturally competent” and who is not.
This is, as they say, developing – and it’s likely to get interesting before too long. First salvo: the MCC is apparently holding a demonstration in the EMU amphitheater at 2 PM today in support of the plan. Hold on to your hats, folks.
