SNEAK PEEK: Diversity Mandates for Doctors, Russia vs. USA, Limits to Free Speech
We are releasing three new conversations from Eastern Europe this week. While some topics are similar to previous videos, these discussions are by different participants in different locations. Here is a preview for our Substack followers:
Tuesday
In this one-on-one conversation, Peter engages with a med school student about the claim, “Hungary should have diversity mandates for doctors.” The student, an aspiring dentist from Germany, immediately expresses a strong opinion.
Peter challenges the student with a variety of considerations. The student sees some merit in encouraging under-represented groups to pursue medicine, but does he change his mind? The difference between “equality” and “equity” is also revealed.
Wednesday
At Rajk College in Budapest, three students consider the claim, “I would rather be ruled by the U.S. than Russia.” Students present many critiques of the U.S., rejecting corporate exploitation, arms exports, and lack of universal health coverage. The same student praising U.S. hegemony calls U.S. culture “shallow.”
While the Russian Federation is largely rejected, there are a few words of praise for Russian culture—and what would we do without Dostoevsky?
Thursday
Three students in Pécs, Hungary consider the claim, “Hungarians should have free speech.” They all agree that people should be allowed to share their opinions and beliefs. Through questioning, the students reveal that they may support some limits on free speech, including pornography and incitement to violence. One student says people should be allowed to express “bad” ideas because “we have the chance to change their minds.” How to handle extremist speech is also discussed.
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Where are the full videos? It would be nice to see them.
Quote from "Should there be diversity mandates for doctors?" "What if we went into poor neighborhoods and we gave them the best teachers and we gave them extra assistance, but we kept the requirements the same for them to get in. That's called equality. So that's very different from equity."
I disagree that the description is one of equality. Equality would be if you offered all neighborhoods an equal opportunity for good teachers and assistance. Equity is the imposed redistribution of resources in order to achieve the same outcomes. What you describe is equity. In this case the government might take the best teachers and extra assistance away from some neighborhoods in order to give them to poor neighborhoods in the name of equity. Or it might take more tax dollars away from some neighborhoods in order to fund the best teachers for other neighborhoods. In either situation, the redistribution is imposed by the government. Even so, the same outcomes will still not be achieved because other factors besides the best teachers and extra assistance cause disparate outcomes. In Black communities, the biggest factor has repeatedly been shown by President Obama and others to be the absence of a father in the household. In addition, the best academic results in Black neighborhoods consistently come from charter schools with high expectations and requirements and not from public schools no matter how much funding they receive for the teachers and assistance. Since equity consistently focuses on the wrong factors or, more commonly, on no factors at all--it's usually based totally on ideology--it consistently fails.