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Sunday, July 03, 2005
FREEDOM OF THOUGHTVincent said the allusions to mind control and George Orwell's "1984" are unfounded. These are comments the author of Oregon’s diversity plan - now an administrator at the University of Texas - recently made to the UT newspaper. Let us consider them one at a time. 1. “"Orwellian would mean they didn't have an opportunity to weigh in.” The word “Orwellian” does not refer to the absence of an ability to weigh in. It refers to forms of institutional repression founded on lies, and featuring outrageous invasions of individual consciousness. 2. “My only criticism of [faculty who sent the letter] is that they didn't give any alternatives.” Yes they did, and they continue to do so. Here are some of them: Don’t issue public reports whose recommendations have staggering implications for university faculty without talking to a couple of faculty first. Don’t put faculty names on the list of participants in the report’s drafting if those faculty have not in fact participated in the report. Don’t recommend enormous and expensive institutional changes founded on a concept (cultural competency) that you do not define. 3. “He defined the term as the skill to work with people from different cultures and backgrounds.” UD has encountered quite a number of definitions of cultural competency at this point. She has heard it defined as having to do with students, not faculty -- with the degree of readiness university students from diverse backgrounds have for the university classroom. She has heard it defined as having to do with professors -- with their degree of readiness to understand and educate students from diverse backgrounds. She has heard it defined not as any particular skill at all but rather as a theoretical commitment to certain principles of social justice. Vincent’s definition may be the vaguest yet -- being able to work with people who come from a variety of backgrounds. If you are asking the faculty of a university to approve millions of dollars of allocation for this, you are likely to be turned down. UD thinks it’s time for people who want enormous diversity plans at their universities to get precise or get off the pot. Perhaps she can help. One of the people who’ve commented on cultural competency notes that it began life in the medical field, and this makes perfect sense. You’re a WASP from Boston who has done nothing but go to prep school, U. Penn, and then med school in Manhattan. You are now suddenly practicing medicine in a town that has a significant Hmong population. You’re going to need a translator. You’re going to have to be a basically empathetic, curious, and tolerant person. And you’re going to have to learn some stuff about Hmong culture. You’ll never be a particularly good doctor to these people, for all of your sophisticated diagnostic skills, because their culture is really alien and will basically remain so. But over time you’ll get better with them, and they’ll get better with you. There may be some marginal utility, in this rather unusual scenario, to your attending a seminar or two on Hmong ways. There is no utility to your being dragged to Psychodrama Stage in some local auditorium and made to confess your sins and act in a skit. See, what people are trying to get at with this “Orwellian” thing is that you should pretty much leave them be. What was it Pascal said? “All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.” |