A colleague emailed me notice of an article published 11/1 in the Columbus Dispatch, titled "OSU wants more female scientists." The first part of the article reads:
A new Ohio State University program that aims to help female professors advance in the sciences would lead to discrimination and quotas, the president of a scholars' group says."What will prevent Ohio State officials from hiring members of the preferred groups who are less qualified than other applicants because of cronyism?" said George W. Dent Jr., president of the Ohio Association of Scholars.
"If you have a quota to fill, you might as well get some political mileage out of the appointment."
But OSU officials say the program is not about quotas and is more about retaining the women the school employs in STEM disciplines: science, technology, engineering and math.
"We're not a bunch of rabid women, but when we lose half the women we hire, that's bad business," said Joan M. Herbers, an OSU evolutionary zoologist who oversees the program.
I'm trying to track down the program the article is referring to, but in the meantime, a Zuska-level shoe puking on both George Dent for being such an idiot accusing cronyism in the case of women's hiring (when of course there is no cronyism already in hiring, and underqualified men never get hired) and the Columbus Dispatch with leading with such biased "news."
Hat tip and critique care of my colleagues who I'm not naming unless they give their permission...
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It's OSU's new NSF-ADVANCE project grant:
http://www.osu.edu/news/newsitem2147
STEM FSP beat me to it. Case Western had an NSF ADVANCE grant in 2003.
Obviously George W. Dent Jr. is far from a scholar. puke puke puke. And why the hell would the PI (Joan Herbers) say "we're not a bunch of rabid women" if she were talking to reporters knowing her words would be transmitted in an effort to RECRUIT women! FAIL!!!111!!!! And I'm sad that she thinks it's "bad business"... it's wrong, that's what it is - it's discrimination, it's sexism. Losing faculty women is not business.
I just loooove that Dent doesn't have anyyy problems with hiring women, even on a federal-grant-program-geared-toward-increasing-women, just as long as it doesn't discriminate against males. yeah, ok. But here's where Dent gets the prize... (do we have a teddy bear award for the Dents of the world?)... Dent was quoted "the U.S. Supreme Court has held that racial and gender diversity can be considered in admissions and employment at a state university if diversity has been shown to serve the school's legitimate academic purposes."
Maybe Dent needs to see this http://www.osu.edu/diversity/ and this http://oaa.osu.edu/irp/student_diversity/student_diversity.php
And this (which shows 53% female undergrads and grads in 2006 in biology dept; 70% undergrads are white, 42% grad students are white) http://oaa.osu.edu/irp/student_diversity/bio.pdf
In stark contrast to this (whic shows 15% and 23% undergrad and grad eng students; 80% undergrads are white, 39% grad students white)
http://oaa.osu.edu/irp/student_diversity/eng.pdf
Would it be "bad business" to lose everyone but the non-white males? Maybe it's in the best interest of the university to keep diversity... ya know, for business sake.
I can't wait to read Zuska's comment or post.