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Friday, January 14, 2022

Training

 They give a diversity training due on the first day of the semester, according to an email. When you log on there, though, it says that the training is due "any time." So which is it? Of course, the training doesn't work for me in either safari or chrome. I email them and get back a "ticket number." 

It's ambiguous whether it is required or not. The first message in late 2021 said that we were "invited" to do it. The second message had a deadline, which implied it is obligatory. I am curious to do it since I want to know whether it employs compelled speech. In other words, whether it obliges you to choose the correct answer, whatever your actual opinions are. 

I applied to a job this year at a place that has one of the worst free speech ratings, but is academically more prestigious than KU.  (I didn't get the job, but that's another story.) That institution had a training in which you had to give the "right answer." 

It occurred to me that you couldn't have a free speech training, because then you would be free to say anything you wanted. You could even say you are against free speech in certain cases. 

10 comments:

Leslie B. said...

You had to do the training as a job applicant?

Jonathan said...

No, I'm talking about a training at KU, and what I've seen of a training where I was applying.

Leslie B. said...

A woman at LSU had tenure removed because of saying f*** in the lab, but my colleague harasses me no end and I have not found an efficient way of stopping it.

Leslie B. said...

... the harassment experiences make me almost want speech codes, the heck with it, except that we see who actually gets hit with them (the LSU woman, par exemple).

Jonathan said...

LSU is ranked very low in free speech, 152 out of 154 schools.

Jonathan said...

The place I applied was 143 out of 154. Policies only protect if they are applied equitably. You could have the best policies on paper and they are meaningless if the administration punishes those it wants and turns a blind eye to things it doesn't want to see.

Leslie B. said...

I wouldn't believe those rankings, though CMC is #1, laughable. And Ole Miss #11, laughable once again. The Bates/Colby/Tulane rankings I do believe.

(Alan S. seems to have disappeared without a trace, it's odd)

Leslie B. said...

....and meanwhile, as I have again discovered, the trainings do not work on the people that need them. Yet another of my neighboring institution's colleagues turns out to have been complicit in the rape scandal (not the football one). Lovely man whom I appreciate and all but when you read his reasons for having believed the rapist and not the victim you really wonder how he managed to pass exams / get degrees / etc. -- his logic is so poor.

Leslie B. said...

...and so as you see, they drop a tenured woman for saying f***, but they protect these rapists.

Leslie B. said...

...And we did the training!

Colleague, foreign, younger than me, but not a young man:

Well. I am in fact looking for women, and I guess I can tell you since you are so old that you must know it is not you.

Leslie Bary Bary: And?

Him: Well, ideally it would be someone my age, not the students' age, and not in this department. They might be in the university, or they might be elsewhere. This is what I think. Someone my age, involved in an activity close enough to mine to more or less get it, but not so close as to be ... uh ... incestuous. Is that weird here? I am asking you because you are my mother's age.

Leslie Bary Bary: No, you sound very sound, I mean, there are good reasons to be interested in your own age group, and to want to branch out from the department.