Thursday, November 29, 2018

Let's Play "Identify The Racist"

Our universities are full of flaming liberals.  Liberals in administration, liberals as professors, liberals as students.  You can't swing a dead cat at a California university and not hit a liberal.  And liberals are the least racist people around--just ask them, they'll tell you.

This professor, though, thinks our students are racists, and his (lack of) logic probably won't surprise you:
A University of California, Berkeley professor suggested scrapping end-of-semester student evaluations for hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions after claiming that the grades and evaluations are biased against female instructors and people of color.

“Over the next few weeks, students will get the chance to evaluate their professors and TAs. They’re going to get it wrong,” UC Berkeley history professor Brian DeLaytweeted on Sunday. “They’ll be harder on women and people of color than on white men. Tenured white male faculty, in particular, should help their students understand this.”
Of all the reasons to get rid of student evaluations, this is one of the least reasonable.
The study, first published in January of 2016, addressed the effectiveness of student evaluations of teaching (SETs). DeLay asserted in his tweet that the study revealed a bias toward gender and grade expectations, such as how quickly an assignment is graded and returned with feedback, rather than a review of the professor’s educational effectiveness.

“Instructor race is also associated with SET…” DeLay said in a follow-up tweet, referencing the study’s finding that minority professors tend to receive, on average, “significantly lower” scores than their white, male counterparts. He goes on to mention the study’s claim that “age, charisma, and physical attractiveness” also factor into evaluations.
Apparently minority teachers are uglier, "slothier", and slower to return graded work--if you're to take this professor's comments at face value.  He asserts there's "implicit bias" at work.  It's interesting how he extrapolated that from the data.

If one of the most liberal groups in the country, that being California university students (Berkeley, anyone?), can't get the racism thing right, I don't know how anyone can expect a poor old white guy like me to get it right.

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