In 1984-1985 when E.J. Josey was president of ALA he stated in his presidential address: "Librarians therefore need to integrate their goals with the goals of greatest importance of the American people, e.g., the preservation of basic democratic liberties, the enlargement of equal opportunity for women and minorities, and the continuance of earlier national planning to raise the level of the educational and economic wellbeing of greater numbers of the population."
Following up on Josey the ALA Office for Library Personnel Resources whose adv. committee I chaired
developed minority recruitment efforts that provided data for the SPECTRUM scholarship program (now over 25 years old). Today I am perplexed how a field that has truly been committed to enlargement of opportunity has let itself feel as if we had done nothing.
That's 40 years ago. I think librarians have supported these goals consistently for decades. I do not know why in recent years we have acted as if we have not.
The film was funny (tho I agree with you that the Jesse Smollet recreation was clunky). I think about how much more scholarship money we could have had if not given it to these speakers and trainers.
A few years ago a campus DEI office alerted us to the fact they had paid for the services of a trainer and any dept could have the trainings. I looked to see the cost to the university, and it was over 1/ million. I had just requested $1500 to recruit at a conference of one of the ethnic caucuses and told we didn't have money for that.
Thank you Kathleen. As always, your comments re: the history of the profession and the literature are really valuable. I agree -- the current CritLib literature makes it sound like the profession was blind to all these issues and that nothing has been accomplished when that's clearly not the case.
Yes! I would say government, in general, has been pretty aggressive in efforts to recruit more diverse staffing. The goals at diversity weren’t always met because of pipeline issues & the smaller salaries of government workers were often not attractive to people trying to build generational wealth.
I liked the film but felt it often pulled its punches, as in the Smollet case, the ridiculousness, the resources,wasted on nonsense that could be used to help people, the cynical grift of it all were barely or only lightly touched on.
However I did like that the film didn’t indulge in its own dehumanization. It ends up being more good natured and it extends more grace than what has been extended to most conservative people and Republicans.
When one thinks about how eagerly we usual use satirize sanctimonious grifters the film is pretty lightweight. Still for all that, I liked it and think it’s an important film.
The problem is that postmodernism claims that all our values are due to politics (instead of the other way around).
This gross violation of the charity principle - that people generally mean what they say and have reasons for it - ends with the postmodernist (like the Marxist or the Freudian psychoanalyst) - effortlessly "discovering" the "real reason" and "true meaning" of everything anyone says is "really" capitalism or racism ir the desire to kill your mother.
The result is not a real "discovery" of our "real motivations" but life in a fantasy world which is increasingly disconnected from the real one.
I went to see this film.
In 1984-1985 when E.J. Josey was president of ALA he stated in his presidential address: "Librarians therefore need to integrate their goals with the goals of greatest importance of the American people, e.g., the preservation of basic democratic liberties, the enlargement of equal opportunity for women and minorities, and the continuance of earlier national planning to raise the level of the educational and economic wellbeing of greater numbers of the population."
Following up on Josey the ALA Office for Library Personnel Resources whose adv. committee I chaired
developed minority recruitment efforts that provided data for the SPECTRUM scholarship program (now over 25 years old). Today I am perplexed how a field that has truly been committed to enlargement of opportunity has let itself feel as if we had done nothing.
That's 40 years ago. I think librarians have supported these goals consistently for decades. I do not know why in recent years we have acted as if we have not.
The film was funny (tho I agree with you that the Jesse Smollet recreation was clunky). I think about how much more scholarship money we could have had if not given it to these speakers and trainers.
A few years ago a campus DEI office alerted us to the fact they had paid for the services of a trainer and any dept could have the trainings. I looked to see the cost to the university, and it was over 1/ million. I had just requested $1500 to recruit at a conference of one of the ethnic caucuses and told we didn't have money for that.
Thanks for the review.
Thank you Kathleen. As always, your comments re: the history of the profession and the literature are really valuable. I agree -- the current CritLib literature makes it sound like the profession was blind to all these issues and that nothing has been accomplished when that's clearly not the case.
Yes! I would say government, in general, has been pretty aggressive in efforts to recruit more diverse staffing. The goals at diversity weren’t always met because of pipeline issues & the smaller salaries of government workers were often not attractive to people trying to build generational wealth.
I liked the film but felt it often pulled its punches, as in the Smollet case, the ridiculousness, the resources,wasted on nonsense that could be used to help people, the cynical grift of it all were barely or only lightly touched on.
However I did like that the film didn’t indulge in its own dehumanization. It ends up being more good natured and it extends more grace than what has been extended to most conservative people and Republicans.
When one thinks about how eagerly we usual use satirize sanctimonious grifters the film is pretty lightweight. Still for all that, I liked it and think it’s an important film.
The problem is that postmodernism claims that all our values are due to politics (instead of the other way around).
This gross violation of the charity principle - that people generally mean what they say and have reasons for it - ends with the postmodernist (like the Marxist or the Freudian psychoanalyst) - effortlessly "discovering" the "real reason" and "true meaning" of everything anyone says is "really" capitalism or racism ir the desire to kill your mother.
The result is not a real "discovery" of our "real motivations" but life in a fantasy world which is increasingly disconnected from the real one.
If the subject were "Am I anti-Christian" Walsh would be one of the woke idiots mistaking the demand for evidence with bigotry.