I would rewrite that as, “And those who can’t teach gym become diversity and inclusion officers.” (Apologies to gym teachers here.)
Note that this applies to far more than just academia. On Jan. 31, media company Politico joined the “diversity” onslaught:
“ARLINGTON, VA – POLITICO today announced that Sonia Fernandes has been named as the global Chief Human Resources and Diversity Officer. In this new role, she will be responsible for leading, integrating, and harmonizing POLITICO’s talent functions across continents. Fernandes will drive positive change that will impact and elevate the well-being, professional growth, and experience of every POLITICO across seven newsrooms, two continents and seven time zones.”
Are we relieved?
Meanwhile, the perspicacious Free Beacon, which exposed the original plagiarism discoveries regarding Ms. Gay, now Harvard’s former president, has become a virtual nightmare for that and similar institutions. It writes:
“The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston’s thin publication record.”
Are we surprised? I am not in the slightest. Sometimes, the whole “diversity” game seems like one big psychological operation.
But there’s more affecting the premises of academia directly.
The Ph.D. system outside the STEM subjects—Ms. Charleston is a historian—fairly invites such plagiarism in the writing of the thesis that is the principal qualification for the degree.
These tomes, written for the most part to punch a ticket that would allow one to teach, are rarely read by anybody beyond a few thesis advisers who are part of the same system.
They aren’t keen to disrupt it. Someone might examine their thesis.
Few of said tomes make it to the public. These theses largely end up in university libraries, not to be read again, except occasionally by people writing other theses in the subject area who could well be plagiarizing and paraphrasing from them, often without notice or apprehension.
Moreover, hardly anyone likes writing these theses because they have so little real purpose beyond the diploma. It’s a well-known grind of grinds, like a penance. This, too, encourages plagiarism, while tending to make supervision perfunctory.
This is the opposite of writing a book for the public, where, at least ostensibly, you need to have something unique to say, a reason for the market to pay attention, and a justification for why, in the final analysis, someone has gone to the effort of writing a book.
Other than some bogus academic qualification, doctoral theses have no such justification. So what, in the end, is the Ph.D. about? Not much, outside STEM, where real research can be monitored.
They also don’t really tell us whether the author knows a great deal about the subject or whether he or she would be a good teacher.
This is one of the subthemes of the movie “The Holdovers,” currently a finalist for this year’s best picture Oscar. The lead character, played by Paul Giamatti, was kicked out of Harvard before he was able to graduate, yet (we are led to believe) he is in many ways a very good, if highly neurotic, teacher.
And yet so many seek this honorific of being called a doctor that should really belong to a cardiologist, not a sociologist, someone in an area of study that, like so many others, has sought to elevate itself by adding a pseudo-scientific imprimatur to its name.
“The Doctor character is normally used in the Commedia dell'Arte plays to put a break in the action, with empty, pre-fabricated and supposedly erudite monologues.”
Yes, in all of this, there is the element of farce, all the more so when the exposure has happened to an “officer” of “diversity, equity, and inclusion”—a field that also shouldn’t exist, no matter what Politico or Harvard tell us.
