Beyond Bias

The United States economy relies on the productivity, entrepreneurship, and creativity of its people. To maintain its scientific and engineering leadership amid increasing economic and educational globalization, the United States must aggressively pursue the innovative capacity of all its people—women and men. However, women face barriers to success in every field of science and engineering; obstacles that deprive the country of an important source of talent. Without a transformation of academic institutions to tackle such barriers, the future vitality of the U.S. research base and economy are in jeopardy. Beyond Bias and Barriers explains that eliminating gender bias in academia requires immediate overarching reform, including decisive action by university administrators, professional societies, federal funding agencies and foundations, government agencies, and Congress. If implemented and coordinated across public, private, and government sectors, the recommended actions will help to improve workplace environments for all employees while strengthening the foundations of America's competitiveness.

Understanding and working toward eliminating bias is an admirable goal for anyone, but especially for leaders. Leaders make decisions that change lives. They decide who is hired, promoted, or dismissed. They decide where to invest funds, when to bet on new ideas, and what the future of their organizations will be. Because of this, bias is a leadership liability.

Beyond Bias offers the first scholarly study of contemporary right-wing documentary film and video. Drawing from contemporary work in political theory and psychoanalytic theory, the book identifies what author Scott Krzych describes as the hysterical discourse prolific in conservative documentary in particular, and right-wing media more generally. In its hysterical mode, conservative media emphasizes form over content, relies on the spectacle of debate to avoid substantive dialogue, mimics the aesthetic devices of its opponents, reduces complex political issues to moral dichotomies, and relies on excessive displays of opinion to produce so much mediated "noise" as to drown out alternative perspectives or viewpoints. Though often derided for its reliance on nonsense or hyperbole, conservative media marshals incoherence as its prized aesthetic and rhetorical weapon, a means to bolster the political status quo precisely by confusing those audiences who come into its orbit. As a work of documentary studies, Beyond Bias also places conservative non-fiction films in conversation with their more conventional counterparts, drawing insight from the manner by which conservative media hystericizes such issues as the archive, observational methods, directorial participation, and the often moral imperatives by which documentary filmmakers attempt to offer insight into their subjects.

""Bias" is a term that circulates frequently in the contemporary landscape of political media, a term intended to diagnose a failure when media outlets fail to maintain journalistic objectivity. Beyond Bias interrogates what would seem, at first glance, to be cases of utterly biased examples of political media-contemporary conservative documentary films. However, rather than dismiss such examples of political representation as exemplars of ideological nonsense, reactionary propaganda, etc., Beyond Bias locates in such examples of conservative media a mode of discourse central to contemporary democratic debate in the US. Specifically, this book identifies conservative media as a mode of hysterical discourse. As the book makes clear, hysterical political discourse occurs when debate is simulated as a means to avoid a more substantive exchange; when appeals to compromise function as a screen to blur the distinctions between opposing sides or viewpoints; as recourse to any and all opinions or "alternative facts" conducive to conservatism's ideological priorities, no matter how divorced from reality; through the reduction of complex issues into moral binaries; through the depoliticizing emphasis on form over content; and, ultimately, as a sustained means to "police" the political with excess nonsense and noise that drowns out any alternative voices. Drawing from psychoanalytic theories of hysteria (Jacques Lacan, Juliet Mitchell, Teresa Brennan, Christopher Bollas, and others) and Jacques Rancière's aesthetic politics, and likewise by placing conservative documentaries in the context of many concerns central to Documentary Studies (participation, observation, representation, the archive, etc.), Beyond Bias views conservative documentary, and conservative media and politics more generally, not as the biased excesses of the contemporary political landscape but rather as texts central to understanding the implicit, though sometimes affectively traumatic, antagonisms inevitable in democracy and constitutive of democratic debate"--

Is your professional network as diverse as the workforce and community around you? If not, you could be missing important opportunities for your career. This book will help you remove the artificial barriers that may be keeping you from your next mentor, star hire, or big customer.

Despite extensive and costly diversity initiatives, little progress has been made in recent years in ending workplace gender inequality. Beyond Bias presents a compelling explanation of the reasons for this failure. Current diversity initiatives focus primarily on “teaching” people to be less biased and more inclusive. But this is the wrong focus. As Beyond Bias make clear, workplace gender inequality is a systemic problem caused largely by the (unintended) discriminatory operation of personnel systems, policies, and practices. Beyond Bias presents the four-prong PATH program for directly attacking this structural discrimination—and with it, individuals’ discriminatory conduct: Prioritize Elimination of Exclusionary Behavior Adopt Bias-free Methods of Decision-Making Treat Inequality in the Home as a Workplace Problem Halt Unequal Performance Evaluations and Leadership Development Opportunities In the authors’ characteristically clear and engaging style, Beyond Bias lays out a comprehensive set of actions that organizations can take to ensure women no longer encounter gendered obstacles to their career advancement and find their workplaces engaging, supportive places where they—and everyone—can thrive. Advance Praise for Beyond Bias: “Beyond Bias offers a curated introduction to the literature on workplace gender bias, and many concrete steps organizations can take to interrupt bias by providing more structure in their business systems.” --Joan C. Williams, Author of Bias Interrupted: Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good, Harvard Business Review Press, 2021 “Beyond Bias’s actionable best practices equip leaders with the tools to create an equitable and more productive workplace that allows everyone to thrive. The “must read” for every leader who is serious about positioning their organization for success in the 21st century!” --David G. Smith, PhD, Johns Hopkins University & W. Brad Johnson, PhD, U.S. Naval Academy, authors of Good Guys and Athena Rising “Finally, a book that tackles workplace gender inequality at the root of the problem. Grounded in solid research, this book is a must for leaders determined to improve business results by fostering deeper engagement from both men and women.” --Carol Frohlinger, President, Negotiating Women, Inc. “Beyond Bias is a timely, powerful, and compelling book. In it, Kramer and Harris provide a clear and do-able PATH to create a business climate where people feel trusted and appreciated; one where DE&I is more than hope—it becomes a reality.” --Andi Simon, Ph.D. Corporate Anthropologist and CEO Simon Associates Management Consultants “Here it is! We’ve long been in pursuit of creating a bias-free workplace—what is needed to unlock so much potential and profit for our businesses. Yet so many companies have put in place huge efforts that have failed. Through their PATH program, Andie and Al show us how big goals are met through small wins. Focus on the seemingly small practices they outline that compound over time, and you and your organization will reach the goal we all seek.” --Lee Caraher, CEO, Double Forte, Author of Millennials & Management and The Boomerang Principle, and host of Everything Speaks

First Published in 1993. This title sets out to spark debate and learn from the urban bias theory. The author suggests that recent political economy research suggests that it is time to redefine the problem of urban bias. Viewed as a collective engagement with the urban bias theory, this volume presents the new research along with the responses of Bates and Lipton. These studies do not add up to an alternative theory of why the state behaves the way it does towards the countryside. They do, however, point to the factors that need careful attention in future research. These papers can be seen as building blocks for the construction of an alternative theory of 'the state and agriculture'.

Understanding and working toward eliminating bias is an admirable goal for anyone, but especially for leaders. Leaders make decisions that change lives. They decide who is hired, promoted, or dismissed. They decide where to invest funds, when to bet on new ideas, and what the future of their organizations will be. Because of this, bias is a leadership liability.