So, part of my job is to work with this sort of thing and, meh? Both sides have a few fair points?<p>I think the thing is; there's always a lot of play in these words and people perhaps frequently get too uptight when it comes to a current definition etc.<p>I'd say my only issue would be "anti-racist" (I'm black fwiw). I don't think that much belongs in a mission statement for roughly the same reason I don't much respect air-quotes "Atheism" -- being <i>against</i> a thing, or "not" a thing is just far weaker than being for something. While I actually <i>do</i> personally believe that racism is at least a plausible candidate for our worst problem right now, I still don't like it in a statement like this. It would be like if, instead of "spreading knowledge" there was a bit about "fighting ignorance." Mission statements aren't the place.<p>But I think e.g. "social justice" and "diversity" are terms that are loose enough to be appropriate, even if they carry certain connotations today. It's hard to not think that, again, taking these words at face value -- that "social justice" and "diversity" aren't well within the mission of a college/university.<p>Get these people in a room and hash it out.
> However, we also believe that this outcome was likely accidental, and that it stemmed from the fact that the College of Science and Mathematics only has one representative on the committee despite being the second largest college on campus.<p>This is a very optimistic take, and surely the signers must know this. Is this move to allow for face-saving?
This is an excellent point from the comments, from one of the signatories:<p>> <i>If you as a public university had no power against racism beyond the nobility of your intentions, your mission statement wouldn't matter a damn anyway. The public university's power against racism is the inherently anti-racist power of genuine knowledge.</i><p>And I think it actually refutes some of the more simplistic comments by other signatories about e.g. a desire to keep politics out of science or whether a university's goal should be truth or social justice. Such a phrasing implicitly claims that social justice (however one defines it) is a separable goal from truth. It reminds me a little of the "non-overlapping magisteria" non-solution to conflicting claims from science and religion, that either science determines truth and religion determines, I dunno, vibes, or alternatively that religion has real truth and science is limited to some subset of reality - it solves the problem by refusing to take either one or the other seriously.<p>The claims of politics and social justice are claims within the domain of truth, just as the claims of science are. Either climate change is happening and merits a response, or it isn't. Either diversity brings conflict or it doesn't. Either the implicit association test is good science or it isn't. Either social Darwinism is good science or it isn't.<p>The goal of the university should be to seek the truth because it helps humanity. This is why the research university publishes its research and the teaching university opens its doors to the public, after all. There are enough places (as we tech folks know!) where you can pursue the truth about many things for private gain.<p>Those of us who are on the side of "science" and "truth" must say that when the pursuit of truth has brought us somewhere, we need to do something with that conclusion. It might take us a long while and to false places on the way (as with social Darwinism), but once we've landed on the shores we sought, we need to build something there. And those of us who adhere to the cause of "social justice" as widely understood (and I certainly count myself as one) must believe that the claims it makes about the world we live in are in fact true, and that the pursuit of truth will keep us focused on what actually benefits the people or causes we support, and we need to not cede ground to the idea that our pursuit of truth is somehow a different thing from the ordinary pursuit of truth.
What’s the point of having people outside the university sign the letter? Seems like another veiled attempt to litigate by mob action.<p>This is an internal organizational discussion and should remain that way. This is just inflaming the situation with no clear strategy to sensible resolution.
This reminds me of the article "Catechism Class at British Universities" about similar policies in the UK, and that title neatly sums up how, while this conflict is being presented as about politics, it is really about religion.<p>People in earlier eras wouldn't have all been surprised by the requirement for all teaching and research to happen within a particular moral framework, whose tenets were not drawn from rational study or considered open to debate, but simply held as self-evidently correct. They wouldn't be surprised about lecturers or students having to attend prayers or recite scripture.<p>And all societies undergo periodic revivalism, where there is a constriction of what is considered ethically acceptable behaviour, enforced through a mixture of social ostracism and state and institutional coercion. The fact that the current revivalist movement is a secular religion instead of a spiritual one is a minor difference. Otherwise, it's little different from equivalent Victorian campaigns against immoral behaviour. It just feels unusual because we've been through such a long period of liberalisation and religious decline and perhaps fooled ourselves into thinking it was a permanent state of affairs.
> This is most evident in the Vision Statement which discusses diversity, equity, expansive notions of excellence, wellness, an ethic of care, plural identities, climate justice, environmental justice, and racial justice, and then states that "We hold ourselves and each other accountable to ensure these values drive all decision-making in research, pedagogical innovations, resource allocation, and the development of policies and practices."<p>Heaven forfend that “excellence” and “wellness” and various sorts of justice should be primary drivers of various sorts of decisionmaking.
><i>We are a public urban university</i> _dedicated_ <i>to teaching, learning, and research</i> _rooted_ <i>in equity, environmental sustainability, social and racial justice, innovation, and expansive notions of excellence.</i><p>Swap these words above and your mission statement is not standing on its head.<p>This type of control over words and the nuanced replacement of priority is NewSpeak. Anyone dismissing the importance of this subtlety is either a proponent of the concept or ignorant of the far reaching consequences. Neither is acceptable.