Linking Research Funding to “Robust” DEI Promotion Poses Serious Risk to Research Quality and Academic Freedom, Over 200 Professors and Lecturers Tell Government
Almost 200 professors and lecturers have written to the Government criticising DEI plans to link research funding to “robustly” promoting diversity, saying they are a serious risk to research quality and academic freedom. The Times has the story.
Senior academics are demanding that Ministers ditch a new diversity-related funding plan which they warn poses a “serious risk” to high-quality research at Britain’s leading universities.
Almost 200 professors and lecturers, including a Nobel laureate and seven fellows of the Royal Society, have written to the Government demanding a rethink of plans to link research funding to diversity and inclusion on campus.
The group claims the new system will undermine academic freedom and create an “unproductive university bureaucracy” at a time when higher education budgets are already stretched.
Under the proposed changes universities will have to show how they are “robustly” promoting diversity and inclusion in order to obtain up to £2 billion of taxpayer funding for research.
In particular, they will have to report the percentage of black, Asian and mixed-race academics eligible for funding and provide evidence of the “percentage of promotion success per under-represented groups”.
Other criteria for funding include “documented evidence” that leadership of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives is “appropriately recognised”, and monitoring and assessing the “effectiveness of policies and initiatives to address underrepresentation and inequalities”.
But in their letter the academics say Research England, which is drawing up the plans, has provided no “coherent justification” for changing the current system which awards 85% of funding based on assessment of the output and impact of university work.
“These proposals pose serious risks to research integrity and quality, to academic freedom and to institutional autonomy and diversity,” they write.
“They will also lead to an unwanted increase in unproductive university bureaucracy at the expense of practical support for staff.
“At a time of great economic difficulty for higher education, tying the hands of institutions in ways which will constrain innovation is unhelpful. Research England has not consulted meaningfully with the academic community and its decision making has been far from transparent.”
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Excellent reason to stop funding research with taxpayer’s money.
Other reasons: how do “we” as a collective via the State know which research to fund; how do the elected representatives and/or bureaucrats know what to fund and what therefore decides them to fund research A rather than research B?
The article does illustrate the answers – “researchers” tune into the political/ideological “hot button” of the moment and gear their research accordingly. Studying “The mating habits of swans on the upper reaches of the Thames”, becomes “The effect of climate change on the mating habits of swans on the upper reaches of the Thames”. Or, “Research will by carried out by our diverse team drawn from men and women of different cultures and backgrounds to ensure opportunities in research are available to minorities”.
The problem here is that capital and other resources are misallocated to serving politics and ideology and therefore not available for use elsewhere which might be more beneficial and valuable.
Stop Government funding of research.
Stop government funding of almost everything.
”Academic freedom” LMFAO. Is there any? Anyway, I expect the further limiting of it with this proposal is a feature, not a bug.
How much of this activity is genuine open minded research and how much of it is evidence and conclusion manufacturing to suit the commercial or political agenda of the sponsors?
“In particular, they will have to report the percentage of black, Asian and mixed-race academics eligible for funding and provide evidence of the “percentage of promotion success per under-represented groups”.
Imagine requiring the British Olympic team to adopt this pseudo-scientific nonsense. If the obvious outcome in a sporting context is a drop in performance standards, the same will be true in academia (and every other domain).
Or the football leagues! 🙂
All it does is lower the quality of the end product!
Robust is a strange word to use they seem to like it. I think because it suggests a defensive posture that goes under the radar. The word really makes no sense in the realm of ethics. It is a stupid word but they love it. Obviously there is no DEI at the cutting edge and nor could there ever be because it would immediately destroy the cutting edge.