Here we go again with the distracting statements that deflect attention away from the topic at hand.
1. No one is bashing "diversity" itself. No one has said that minorities or whoever should be kept out of universities. Please don't make insinuations like that.
2. The topic is a perceived over-emphasis on administrator hires, including too many people focused on "diversity and inclusion" to the point where much more than just "computer science" has been cut. The cut courses included master�s degrees in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, plus courses in French, German, Spanish, and English literature. People have made what appear to be legitimate criticisms of this practice (which, again, I think is nonsensical).
3. This topic gets to the heart of gifted education. Most of the lost offerings listed above would be attractive to students who are "gifted in languages/humanities."
I never said 1. so that you're just pulling that out of your head.
As for 2. I was questioning what majors the students themselves are choosing???? Are there enough students choosing majors in languages/sciences for these faculty to remain in the staff? I didn't see that mentioned anywhere. Also, how many students are getting diversity degrees? Maybe for some weird reason at UC there is a larger than normal number of students getting a degree related to diversity. I really don't find that strange that a University would have one department that is significantly larger than another (this happens quite often, actually).
3. Sure, gifted children could be interested in those degrees but why would they need to go specifically to UC? There are many universities out there that still provide degrees in foreign languages/hard sciences and while UC might be cutting back in those areas other universities could be strengthening their programs.
I'm not arguing that a certain degree of politics is played at the university level. I'm an academic and I know for sure that there's a lot that goes one (and, yes, when it comes to hirings especially). But I also know that what reaches the press is not always what it seems so I'm not just going to be up in arms about these diversity hirings without knowing more about the UC system.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting fed up with the increasingly poor standards of debate on this forum lately. We used to stick to the point and not throw ideology around as a way of silencing critics (and this tactic, when attempted, never worked before here).
If anyone thinks that the positions listed in the OP are more important than the cancelled courses, by all means, make your points. Use data or other objective measures --- that would be great. But please don't squelch discussion by making false accusations or introducing misleading statements that distract from the actual topic.
I don't always come here that often and as of late less and less as life has caught up with me. In the past I normally found myself agreeing with much of what you say. However, this is just horribly insulting. In my post I gave a specific example of a my alma matter who had done something similar to UC and their reasons behind it. I wasn't just trying to distract from what was actually being discussed here. If anything YOUR post made some fairly broad assumptions and tried to ignore the point I made by covering it in a guise of "false accusations".
