Anyone that would have accused my dear deceased friend Gerry of being a DEI hire should have been disabused after talking with him for five minutes. Sadly, though, people will believe a narrative over reality every time.
I think in a future letter I will write what I would now tell my students since their essays can now be done by AI.
The largest problem I have with "meritocratic" admissions and hiring is that even if it's "the best we have" (it isn't), it uses a summative tool for predictive purposes. The NFL and NBA are far ahead of the academy when it comes to charting potential based on past performance, and they still have more than their share of disasters and surprises. (And in MLB, Mike Piazza went from a courtesy pick to the Hall of Fame.)
As for the purpose of the university, I don't believe it is separable from needs of the society within which it exists.
Yeah, I think much more effective means of assessing merit are possible, and may in fact have been used in the old days. I think I could have someone take two hours to write an essay and I could tell by reading it how qualified that person is for collegiate work.
I agree that universities are not separable from the need of society, but I think that the greatest service of a university to society is to provide it with unbiased, disinterested, and objective knowledge. Conflating scholarship with activism undermines that goal.
Hmm, let's see, I think the provision of knowledge and the selection of students/faculty are separate lanes. I would agree that the provision of the sort of knowledge, skills, and capacities that makes democracy actual (best book title of the last year, "Democracy May Not Exist But We'll Miss it When It's Gone") is the most important, and that's never been more apparent than now that the tribune of the poorly educated has undertaken jihad against all forms of knowledge. I also think that diversifying the student body and the faculty is essential to the democratic project because groups shut out or seriously underrepresented have no reason to buy in to a process that is structured to leave them out. I hope the MS experiment can be replicated, but it is only a small chip in the edifice of K-12 inequality now being made worse again by vouchers.
I do wish I'd saved my summary of a couple of articles from about a decade ago that detailed the differences in per-student spending in elite and comprehensive colleges -- no surprise that the success rates are disparate, and so with the difference between being an asst prof at a 2/2 school with an excellent library, a research budget, and sabbaticals or being an asst prof at you know where.
Of course, when we follow the money we see that society itself, as expressed in its spending, has little interest in knowledge, only payoff. Even the authors of Abundance (a very mediocre book) didn't have the guts to actually embrace research projects that fail as worth spending money on, but only the project that took a long time to pay off as a fat-loss revolution. Others have done some very good work on his these priorities harm the production of knowledge.
As I say, I am all for diversity when it serves academic excllence, which it generally does. However, the pursuit of social justice can and has been pursued in ways that are detrimental to the main purpose of the university. A friend of mine who taught at Houston Community College said that a few years back some faculty were advocating for the abolition of failing grades. The reason was that their students often came from backgrounds that had insufficiently prepared them for college work, and that the institution should not saddle them with further disgrace and humiliation by failing them.
But failing work that is not even marginal is a duty, a duty to the students, and a duty to the integrity of the school. A failing mark notifies the student that they have failed to achieve at even a minimal level of competence, and that they urgently need to address something, either their preparation or their behavior or their circumstances and that these need to be dealt with. It is like a doctor's report that you are out of shape and need a proper diet and exercise. We could emphasize that a failing grade is not a moral judgement any more than a doctor's diagnosis. The desire to make things better for the underprivileged is admirable, but not by lying to them about their inadequacies or pretending that standards do not matter.
An interesting and compelling piece (silly ending, but . ..) from one of my favorite writers, John McWhorter-- https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/opinion/ai-dei-arts-academics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.aFA.MPbY.6UWPFufezFq9&smid=url-share
Anyone that would have accused my dear deceased friend Gerry of being a DEI hire should have been disabused after talking with him for five minutes. Sadly, though, people will believe a narrative over reality every time.
I think in a future letter I will write what I would now tell my students since their essays can now be done by AI.
As the publisher, please let me strongly urge you to write that Letter, Dr Parsons!
Working on it now.
The largest problem I have with "meritocratic" admissions and hiring is that even if it's "the best we have" (it isn't), it uses a summative tool for predictive purposes. The NFL and NBA are far ahead of the academy when it comes to charting potential based on past performance, and they still have more than their share of disasters and surprises. (And in MLB, Mike Piazza went from a courtesy pick to the Hall of Fame.)
As for the purpose of the university, I don't believe it is separable from needs of the society within which it exists.
Yeah, I think much more effective means of assessing merit are possible, and may in fact have been used in the old days. I think I could have someone take two hours to write an essay and I could tell by reading it how qualified that person is for collegiate work.
I agree that universities are not separable from the need of society, but I think that the greatest service of a university to society is to provide it with unbiased, disinterested, and objective knowledge. Conflating scholarship with activism undermines that goal.
Hmm, let's see, I think the provision of knowledge and the selection of students/faculty are separate lanes. I would agree that the provision of the sort of knowledge, skills, and capacities that makes democracy actual (best book title of the last year, "Democracy May Not Exist But We'll Miss it When It's Gone") is the most important, and that's never been more apparent than now that the tribune of the poorly educated has undertaken jihad against all forms of knowledge. I also think that diversifying the student body and the faculty is essential to the democratic project because groups shut out or seriously underrepresented have no reason to buy in to a process that is structured to leave them out. I hope the MS experiment can be replicated, but it is only a small chip in the edifice of K-12 inequality now being made worse again by vouchers.
I do wish I'd saved my summary of a couple of articles from about a decade ago that detailed the differences in per-student spending in elite and comprehensive colleges -- no surprise that the success rates are disparate, and so with the difference between being an asst prof at a 2/2 school with an excellent library, a research budget, and sabbaticals or being an asst prof at you know where.
Of course, when we follow the money we see that society itself, as expressed in its spending, has little interest in knowledge, only payoff. Even the authors of Abundance (a very mediocre book) didn't have the guts to actually embrace research projects that fail as worth spending money on, but only the project that took a long time to pay off as a fat-loss revolution. Others have done some very good work on his these priorities harm the production of knowledge.
Also, shut down the B-schools and the J-schools.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
As I say, I am all for diversity when it serves academic excllence, which it generally does. However, the pursuit of social justice can and has been pursued in ways that are detrimental to the main purpose of the university. A friend of mine who taught at Houston Community College said that a few years back some faculty were advocating for the abolition of failing grades. The reason was that their students often came from backgrounds that had insufficiently prepared them for college work, and that the institution should not saddle them with further disgrace and humiliation by failing them.
But failing work that is not even marginal is a duty, a duty to the students, and a duty to the integrity of the school. A failing mark notifies the student that they have failed to achieve at even a minimal level of competence, and that they urgently need to address something, either their preparation or their behavior or their circumstances and that these need to be dealt with. It is like a doctor's report that you are out of shape and need a proper diet and exercise. We could emphasize that a failing grade is not a moral judgement any more than a doctor's diagnosis. The desire to make things better for the underprivileged is admirable, but not by lying to them about their inadequacies or pretending that standards do not matter.