I teach college and I have a counter point: as long as this is a word salad of ill-defined terms, then we can exploit it to our advantage. For example. I crack down hard on cheating & academic dishonesty - and when I have to fill out my self-evaluation and get to the box about DEI(etc) I list the efforts I use to enforce equitable assess…
I teach college and I have a counter point: as long as this is a word salad of ill-defined terms, then we can exploit it to our advantage. For example. I crack down hard on cheating & academic dishonesty - and when I have to fill out my self-evaluation and get to the box about DEI(etc) I list the efforts I use to enforce equitable assessments (along with my support for student accommodations for disabilities). Once I was questioned about it and I dig up a paper about in inequity of cheating (i.e. privileged groups have access to more resources to cheat).
Additionally, I find academia's tendency to use Latin & Greek plurals pretentious and off-putting so I do not use them in class - especially GE classes! When a colleague call me out on that in front of the division, I told him that it was my effort to decolonize Higher Ed and free us from the vestiges of an antiquated aristocratic system.
We can ambiguity to our advantage by justifying what we do using similar rhetoric as they do. If my compatriots and I further water down the meaning of these empty words then eventually anyone can claim to be advocates of Equity and Inclusion. After all, as long as White Supremacist groups' doors are open to all they are inclusive.
This is true of all the civil rights/human rights laws too. The majority reads them as if they are only "for" minority/"oppressed" groups, but they are written for all groups. More "majority" group members should file complaints that their race, ethnicity, religion, sex, etc. are being infringed upon. (Although I had a professor too that told me that "white American" could not be my self-identified ethnicity though she couldn't defend her reasoning, so they do try to just ignore you/change the rules again if you do bring it up. But it's worth wasting their time and effort.)
I teach college and I have a counter point: as long as this is a word salad of ill-defined terms, then we can exploit it to our advantage. For example. I crack down hard on cheating & academic dishonesty - and when I have to fill out my self-evaluation and get to the box about DEI(etc) I list the efforts I use to enforce equitable assessments (along with my support for student accommodations for disabilities). Once I was questioned about it and I dig up a paper about in inequity of cheating (i.e. privileged groups have access to more resources to cheat).
Additionally, I find academia's tendency to use Latin & Greek plurals pretentious and off-putting so I do not use them in class - especially GE classes! When a colleague call me out on that in front of the division, I told him that it was my effort to decolonize Higher Ed and free us from the vestiges of an antiquated aristocratic system.
We can ambiguity to our advantage by justifying what we do using similar rhetoric as they do. If my compatriots and I further water down the meaning of these empty words then eventually anyone can claim to be advocates of Equity and Inclusion. After all, as long as White Supremacist groups' doors are open to all they are inclusive.
This is true of all the civil rights/human rights laws too. The majority reads them as if they are only "for" minority/"oppressed" groups, but they are written for all groups. More "majority" group members should file complaints that their race, ethnicity, religion, sex, etc. are being infringed upon. (Although I had a professor too that told me that "white American" could not be my self-identified ethnicity though she couldn't defend her reasoning, so they do try to just ignore you/change the rules again if you do bring it up. But it's worth wasting their time and effort.)