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3 VP for Diversity candidates

1/13/2012: Diversity VP Charles Martinez was one of those no-search interim appointments gone permanent and bad. He had a remarkable ability to screw up UO’s diversity efforts, despite spending most of his time off campus double dipping at his second job at OSLC. Jim Bean and Russ Tomlin protected him for years, but last spring pretty much everyone who’d ever had to deal with Martinez, including his staff and the ethnic studies department, broke into open revolt. I think 60 people signed the letter. Lariviere finally announced he would do what UO Matters had been calling for for years – have an affirmative action compliant open public search for UO’s VP for Diversity. What a radical idea – this is why Martinez called me a “racist nut”. Bean and Tomlin bought Martinez off with a $153,502 no-search tenured job in the College of Education – they hid this from the FPC – and a sabbatical.

Given that the search for his replacement was chaired by Scott Coltrane and Robin Holmes, it’s not surprising to see that 2 of the 3 finalists are academic administrators with pretty standard diversity track careers. I’ll keep an open mind, but I don’t see a lot of intellectual diversity on issues or policies coming out of this process. The last candidate does look like an interesting scholar though.

The end game here is pretty simple: We hire one of these three, or Coltrane declares the search failed and then Berdahl adds Diversity to VP for Student Affairs Robin Holmes’s portfolio. Just like happened with our new CFO Jamie Moffitt. Then Holmes’ runs with it for a year and goes on the road for a third tier university president job. Sounds good to me.

Anyway, here are the candidates she and Coltrane picked:

Roger Worthington, Missouri:

PhD in Counseling Psych, 5 years as diversity administrator with $1.2 million budget. Web page here.

January 19, 2012
Public presentation
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Papé Reception Room
Candidate presentation: 4:00‐5:00 p.m.*
Question and answer: 5:00‐5:45 p.m.* 

Worthington Cover Letter
Worthington CV

According to this story, Worthington resigned (coincidentally, he says) from his diversity administrator job just after the UM faculty rejected his plan to require all students to take a diversity course:

Roger Worthington is stepping down as chief diversity officer and assistant deputy chancellor of diversity at the University of Missouri.

The announcement comes on the heels of a faculty vote that defeated a proposal to require all students to take a diversity course. Worthington said the timing is coincidental and that he made his decision before that vote. MU won’t hire a replacement, at least for the foreseeable future, spokeswoman Mary Jo Banken said.

If I resigned on principle, I’d brag about that. I’ll never understand administrators.

 Sheila O’Rourke, Berkeley. JD.

Assistant Provost for some sort of faculty diversity initiative.  O’Rourke Cover Letter, O’Rourke CV

January 23, 2012
Public presentation
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Papé Reception Room
Candidate presentation: 4:00‐5:00 p.m.*
Question and answer: 5:00‐5:45 p.m.*

Video here of a pretty low level gender pipeline talk at OSU. As might be expected for a Berkeley admin she’s been involved in lots of controversies, do a google search.

 Yvette Alex-Assensoh, Indiana:

Phd in Poli Sci, JD. Poli Sci Professor, Dean in Office of Women’s Affairs. Long and interesting publications list. Alex-Assensoh Cover Letter. Alex-Assensoh CV

January 26, 2012
Public presentation
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Papé Reception Room
Candidate presentation: 4:00‐5:00 p.m.*
Question and answer: 5:00‐5:45 p.m.*

She’s also a finalist for an AVP job at Missouri State.

One Comment

  1. Anonymous 01/13/2012

    As UO Matters well knows, intellectual diversity is not what “Diversity” is all about.

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