I am a faculty member in a medium-to-large public university in the US. My university recently went full woke, like many others. This semester I was part of a search committee for a senior level administrative position. The committee members were predominantly from the unit the position was for, plus several faculty members (including myself), one student and a couple of high-level administrators. During our preliminary meeting we all had to go through a live implicit bias training on zoom. I have been involved in senior administrative search committees before, but that was years ago, and it was the first time I had to do the training. Part of the training was just routine stuff about how to not let our prejudices bias us, but then came the part where the guy who did the training asked us to say all the negative stereotypes on women, Muslims and blacks - presumably to avoid these stereotypes. As you would expect, people came up with the worst stereotypes of all three groups - keep in mind that some committee members were women and/or Muslim and/or black. It made me extremely uncomfortable because I had the feeling that if anything, it took all the implicit biases, put them out in the open and made them very explicit. During the training both me and another woman on the committee were disturbed by it and shared our feelings on the private chat... Both of us belong to several minority groups and we wondered whether "our groups" would come next. After it was over both of us told the trainer on the spot that we found the whole drill very disturbing and that we hoped they wouldn't do it again. What surprised me was that the other woman I chatted with is quite woke and I'm not, and yet we both disliked it.
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