Quota babe...

Heather Mac Donald on the new President of Harvard...

....[Drew Gilpin] Faust runs one of the most powerful incubators of feminist complaint and nonsensical academic theory in the country. You can count on the Radcliffe Institute’s fellows and invited lecturers to proclaim the “constructed” nature of knowledge, gender, and race, and to decry endemic American sexism and racism. Typical guest speakers include left-wing journalists Susan Faludi and Barbara Ehrenreich. At Radcliffe, Faludi argued that 9/11 had triggered yet another “backlash against feminism,” while Ehrenreich lectured on “Weird Science: Challenging Sexist Ideology Since the 1970s.” It is received truth among Radcliffe Institute lecturers that obstacles throughout American society block women’s progress. Radcliffe speaker Rebecca Walker, for example, has created the “I Spy Sexism” initiative, which asks young women between the ages of 15 and 30 to keep logs of the “sexism, racism, and homophobia” that they see as they walk down the street or go to a movie.

With typical feminist hypocrisy, Faust has managed to wield massive power even as she rues female powerlessness. She headed the Task Force on Women Faculty, created after the firestorm over Summers’s recklessly honest speculations about women in science, that strengthened the feminist hold on faculty hiring and promotions. The Task Force won a $50 million commitment to increase faculty “diversity efforts” at Harvard, notwithstanding that for decades the university has tied itself in knots trying to increase female and black faculty representation. Faust’s Task Force also muscled into existence a remarkable new bureaucratic sinecure: the Senior Vice Provost for Diversity and Faculty Development. This new official sits with the president, the provost, and the deans of faculties, in order to push “diversity” quotas in every corner of the university’s academic operations...

This stuff is not just a bad idea, it is evil. (I won't tell you why; if you have to ask you probably just can't "get" it.)

"...Walker, for example, has created the “I Spy Sexism” initiative, which asks young women between the ages of 15 and 30 to keep logs of the “sexism, racism, and homophobia” that they see as they walk down the street or go to a movie."

I propose, for young women, the "I Spy Nihilism" initiative. I encourage them to keep logs of Postmodernism, Socialism, and the Culture of Death that they might see as they walk down the street or go to church.

I'd guess that the only hope for our universities is for this stuff gets so bad that it sparks a true revolution. So possibly this catastrophic appointment is a positive sign...

Also, that stuff about bureaucratic sinecures and 50-million buck "task forces should remind us that "feminism" is very much about political pork and patronage. Every battle has the same outcome: Women's lives are not much improved, but there are new jobs and perks for the "professional feminists." It's the same for racism and all the other isms. I remember Peter Drucker writing about his university (this was maybe in the 80's?). He said the number of programs to help minority students had grown from one to 50, yet somehow the number of minority students and their grades had stayed about the same...