Yet America is also convulsed by race, with a substantial part of the population believing it to be a deeply racist society.
1/ This is a thread on America, based on my thirty years being a student and permanent resident before returning home in 2019.
I have lived longer in America than India. I have a lot of friends and family in America.
This thread is based on my close and personal observation.
Yet America is also convulsed by race, with a substantial part of the population believing it to be a deeply racist society.
In agricultural terminology, I believe America suffers from "top soil depletion".
This creates a perpetual need for migrants, leading to a positive feedback loop: top soil depletion and being open to immigrants drive each other.
Black Americans ask "Why does America reward immigrants more than she cares about us?"
Top soil depletion theory explains it: the anger that Black Americans feel of being left behind is also true among the bottom half of White Americans.
It is no accident that the highest levels of immigration in a century has been accompanied by broad societal dysfunction.
What can be done about it?
More from Sridhar Vembu
More from All
You May Also Like
"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
As a dean of a major academic institution, I could not have said this. But I will now. Requiring such statements in applications for appointments and promotions is an affront to academic freedom, and diminishes the true value of diversity, equity of inclusion by trivializing it. https://t.co/NfcI5VLODi
— Jeffrey Flier (@jflier) November 10, 2018
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
