Posted on 06/20/2018 5:59:31 AM PDT by fredericbastiat1
Penn Law Professor Amy Wax has become a controversial figure because of her politically incorrect comments advocating in favor of bourgeois values and the WASP culture from which they stem, and in her claims that black students had generally performed at lower levels than other students in her classes in context of a conversation about the downsides of affirmative action -- comments that got her ousted from teaching the first year civil procedure class for which she had previously won an award for "teaching excellence."
Professor Wax and I touched on her beliefs regarding bourgeois values, the comments on race and academic performance that got her ousted from teaching her first-year class, the ramifications of her case, Professor Wax's criticism of affirmative action and diversity, the state of free speech on college campuses, grappling with uncomfortable truths, the anti-Western nature of the modern academy and much more.
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“The truth will set you free”. Of your job, friends reputation, etc.
Is that a term we use in America? I think we'd use "middle-class values."
Why are we adopting the lexicon of our enemy?
“the downsides of affirmative action”
Yes, this subject is verboten in academic circles. It is not to be questioned—on penalty of losing your job and perhaps your career. May God bless this brave woman for having the courage to speak the truth.
I worked in the Bell System back in the early 70s when Affirmative Action first came to the private sector thanks to an agreement between the DoJ and AT&T. While co-workers and I were discussing the future given all these new “non-quota” quota rules, one old timer opined, “No matter how you shake it, the cream will always come to the top.” We agreed, but didn’t see at the time that in order for that to come to pass, we had to stop the shaking.
The corporation decided to make the SSA program a minority EO outreach. So rather than finding the best and brightest, they brought in candidates from lesser schools. I tried for two years and gave up. The students were not prepared to do anything, would not reliably show up for work, were not interested in providing any outcome at the end of the summer. I went to HR to understand how I was supposed to write their end of summer appraisal, when they had basically done nothing all summer. My appraisals were pieces of art, carefully scripted to have any subsequent interviewer read between the lines. Hmmm…. Was that a microaggession?
As an engineering lead in a major firm I can say that with a lot of people from "name" schools you find that when the rubber hits the road they are the same as everyone else - some talented, some less so. But all of the MIT people I've worked with, all of them, were absolutely top notch. My biggest problem is keeping them challenged, not getting good work from them. Give them grunt work and they begin looking to go do something else.
More precisely, cultural, moral and ethical standards.
And plain old competency.
Questioning certain aspects of political correctness in academia is treated almost as badly as questioning the Quran in Pakistan.
Whatever one’s opinion on the respective scientific merits of human biological diversity or uniformity, it is surely beyond contention that the latter assumption, alone, is tolerated. Even if progressive-universalistic beliefs about human nature are true, they are not held because they are true, or arrived at through any process that passes the laugh test for critical scientific rationality. They are received as religious tenets, with all of the passionate intensity that characterizes essential items of faith, and to question them is not a matter of scientific inaccuracy, but of what we now call political incorrectness, and once knew as heresy.from The Dark Enlightenment
To sustain this transcendent moral posture in relation to racism is no more rational than subscription to the doctrine of original sin, of which it is, in any case, the unmistakable modern substitute. The difference, of course, is that ‘original sin’ is a traditional doctrine, subscribed to by an embattled social cohort, significantly under-represented among public intellectuals and media figures, deeply unfashionable in the dominant world culture, and widely criticized – if not derided – without any immediate assumption that the critic is advocating murder, theft, or adultery. To question the status of racism as the supreme and defining social sin, on the other hand, is to court universal condemnation from social elites, and to arouse suspicions of thought crimes that range from pro-slavery apologetics to genocide fantasies. Racism is pure or absolute evil, whose proper sphere is the infinite and the eternal, or the incendiary sinful depths of the hyper-protestant soul, rather than the mundane confines of civil interaction, social scientific realism, or efficient and proportional legality. The dissymmetry of affect, sanction, and raw social power attending old heresies and their replacements, once noticed, is a nagging indicator. A new sect reigns, and it is not even especially well hidden.
bump
The Stanford students always thought that they were better than they were.
The Cal Tech students would come to my table and just stare. Getting information out of the was difficult.
I agree MIT students were knowledgeable and communicated well.
At Berkeley it was always a matter of time before one of the students asked me why IBM sold tabulating machines to the NAZIS before WWII. Geez.
Best interview I ever had was with a Hispanic lady that had just graduated from a state school (not one of the premier schools). She came out of the LA ghetto, worked her way through college and was the first person from anywhere in her family to graduated from college. Her “never say die” attitude was unbelievable, I knew this gal was going places. I hired her and I was right. Plus she was a nice person.
You absolutely do not have to go to an elite school to be an elite pro. In fact, most of the elite pros I know went to “ordinary” schools. Heck, even the technically elite MIT guys are all brilliant but frankly none of them I work with are likely going to climb high because they lack polish in presentation. That is, they tend to have a “isn’t this cool, check out this data” presentation style that confounds managers and customers. Hard and soft skills together make the leader, and schools may teach one or the other but most don’t teach both.
I agree with you 100%. Regarding presentations, ya gotta know your audience. I learned the hard skills in school. The soft skills were learned once out and along the way. In a presentation we’re not just communicating, we’re convincing. Bottom line, we’re selling.
You are right, for tech people learning how to present in a convincing and engaging fashion is a learned skill and it's learned on your feet. If you make it a priority to get good at it, most can. Most engineers, however, don't make it a priority. I did. It's probably 80% of the secret for why I've advanced in my career faster and further than peers of similar or even better technical skill. We have tons of engineers with outstanding hard skills. Soft skill, however, are more lacking. If you have them in a tech field and you have a reasonable level of tech competence, you will stand out.
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