LA’s new cello professor
NewsThe University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music has awarded Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music to Seth Parker Woods. He writes:
This honor comes as a total surprise when I got the call, but I love my school, department and colleagues and so excited to see where we continue going and the changes we make for the future. I first met the late Bobby Mann (founding violinist of the Juilliard Quartet and long time Juilliard faculty member) many moons ago when I was a high school student and was forever in awe of his musicianship and the way he could pull musical lines out of budding musicians. Thank you to Dean King and the USC Provost for this honor. Onward!
Surely a wonderful cellist and future pédagogue. Congratulations !!
An interesting aside – progressives strongly believe and insist on otherwise unpopular Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Affirmative Action policies to give an advantage to underrepresented minorities in hiring and school admissions, yet when a hire is called a DEI hire, they protest. Obviously, if applied, some hires will have different outcomes due to someone’s skin color, no?
It’s not “giving an advantage”. It’s leveling the playing field.
Statistics aren’t your friend in this argument.
You have NO idea what you are writing about here. Seth is not a new hire at USC. And what does a DEI hire even mean? Anyone who is not white??
People get upset about the term ‘DEI Hire’ because it is used as a stand in for “they we’re only hired for their race and aren’t qualified” when there is no evidence for either of those statements being true. It gives the impression that the person making that comment is assuming, based on the color of their skin, that there is no way they could be qualified. The idea is for DEI to be part of the hiring process amongst everything else.
The necessity of DEI is a conversation that goes well beyond the limits of an article comment section but please consider reading about the subject with an open mind and empathy.
I have read many books on the subject, from Ibram X Kendi to Thomas Sowell and lots in between. DEI is an unofficial quota system designed to prevent free associations between entities for the sake of a societal prerogative. It makes a claim that when two candidates are equal, it’s OK to take race into consideration. The problem is that candidates are unlikely to be equal in any situation requiring a lot of human capital. DEI inspires a lot of backlash because it’s seen as unfair. It famously discriminates against Asian Americans in college admissions. Look at the University of California system, the numbers of Asians exploded once AA was defeated in a statewide ballot.
I know very well what the claims are and how they’re explained. What’s more interesting to me are the externalities of such policies. For example, it’s obvious that DEI largely helps Black elites, who are already doing well, instead of poor Black kids who cannot go to better schools because teachers’ unions are against school choice. Lastly, the most depressing is the assumption that DEI is the way to flight racism. Opposition is to a policy which works poorly in reality is fine, regardless of the policy’s stated aims.
While you labelled it an “aside”, you brought race into this thread by implying that this was a DEI appointment, whether meaning to or not.
Implicitly you cast doubt on the legitimacy of this award to Dr Parker Woods, something which only those within the faculty would be in a position to judge.
If DEI gets brought up every time a person of non-white ethnicity has any form of success, how can we ever transition into a true meritocracy in which a person’s background is rightly or no importance?
As long as DEI is de rigueur in education, the presumption of less competence but more racially preferred is the natural conclusion. Too bad, really: pro sports and construction fields seem just fine with DEI nonsense.
Dr. Parker Woods has already been cello and chamber music professoring at USC for a number of years. This Robert Mann Chair honor is an additional accolade.
Sounds like he has been promoted to tenure (Assistant to Associate or Full Professor) and that this position is endowed through the Robert Mann chair.