The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - January 31, 2024


Racialized Minority or Two-Spirit Gender Fluid - Apply for a Professorship! (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_641)


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

117.75261

Word Count

700

Sentence Count

45


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The University of Waterloo is looking for two chaired Canada Research Chair professorships at one of the leading computer science departments in Canada. The call is open only to qualified individuals who self-identify as women, transgender, gender fluid, non-binary, or two-spirit.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hi everybody, this is Gad Saad. Earlier today on my XFeed, formerly Twitter, I posted a screenshot of two calls for open positions at the University of Waterloo.
00:00:21.740 Many of you may have heard that University of Waterloo has been referred to as the MIT of Canada because historically it has very strong engineering and computer science programs.
00:00:36.520 And so this is from, I'm just going to read it to you verbatim. This is from the Sheraton School of Computer Science. It's an NSERC.
00:00:47.880 NSERC is the governmental funding agency for the natural sciences. So it's an engineering, I think it's the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, if I remember my acronym.
00:01:06.860 So it's an NSERC tier one, so the highest level professorship, tier one, Canada Research Chairs in Computer Science, two positions.
00:01:17.340 The Canada Research Chair is the most prestigious chaired professorship. Basically, it's the Canadian government that is endowing the chair.
00:01:25.980 And so these are two chaired Canada Research Chair professorships at one of the leading computer science departments in Canada.
00:01:38.740 You ready?
00:01:40.880 The David R. Sheraton School of Computer Science and the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo invites applications for two tenured faculty positions.
00:01:52.180 Exceptional scholars and researchers at the rank of full professor or associate professor are sought who are eligible to apply for a tier one Canada Research Chair established by the Government of Canada to enable Canadian universities to foster research excellence.
00:02:11.480 Priority research areas include, for position one, all areas of artificial intelligence.
00:02:19.160 OK, well, that's great. By the way, many of you know that my undergrad was in mathematics and computer science, and I continued to study certainly mathematics for the rest of my educational career.
00:02:31.860 In my MBA, I did a mini thesis in operations research, which is an applied mathematics field.
00:02:37.820 And then one of my minors in my PhD was in statistics.
00:02:42.940 And so, of course, seeing job openings in these technical areas certainly speaks to my own background.
00:02:53.200 And so, OK, position one, all areas of artificial intelligence.
00:02:56.920 But, here's the important part, the call is open only to qualified individuals who self-identify as women, transgender, gender fluid, non-binary, or two-spirit.
00:03:15.760 OK, I'm going to read it again.
00:03:17.740 This is in Canada.
00:03:19.260 This is in the 21st century.
00:03:20.920 This is at one of the leading engineering and computer science schools in Canada.
00:03:26.740 This is not God's satire.
00:03:29.180 The university is openly, proudly stating that for position one in the area of artificial intelligence, the call is open only, so there is discrimination,
00:03:44.220 is only open to qualified individuals who self-identify as women, transgender, gender fluid, non-binary, or two-spirit.
00:03:59.900 Position two in all areas of computer science.
00:04:04.500 So, it could be in data structures.
00:04:06.540 It could be in formal languages.
00:04:08.920 It could be in analysis of algorithms.
00:04:10.920 There are many different areas of computer science.
00:04:15.320 The call is open only to qualified individuals who self-identify as a member of a racialized minority.
00:04:24.980 So, you could suffer from the dermatological original sin of being white, which would completely invalidate you for that position.
00:04:35.540 But, you could self-identify as being part of a racialized minority.
00:04:41.720 So, imagine in my case, it's been now several years that I didn't get a chaired professorship, which I held for 10 years,
00:04:51.860 and that by any objective metric, I should have gotten again.
00:04:56.020 But, of course, the writing is on the wall.
00:04:58.000 I'm never likely to get it again at my home university.
00:05:01.020 But, if I were to now self-identify as an indigenous person, or maybe a black person, even though I'm a Jew of color,
00:05:11.760 but if I self-identify, that wouldn't count as a racialized minority.
00:05:15.900 But, you know, the guy, the childhood war refugee.
00:05:18.860 But, if I were to self-identify as a member of a racialized minority, and if I am either someone who self-identifies as a woman,
00:05:29.640 which I do self-identify as a woman, or as transgender, or as gender fluid, or as non-binary, or as two-spirit,
00:05:40.680 then, I would be in the running for one of the top professorships in computer science in Canada.
00:05:51.500 I warned you for many years, but you scoffed.
00:05:55.860 Take care, everybody.