But what has he done?

The Cal State system has announced the selection of a new Chancellor to oversee the 23 campuses. He's been serving as President of CSU Fresno for several years, and if the campus is being run well then one can reasonably suspect that he'll do a decent enough job running the system. So far so good.

The announcement, however, says very little about his professional accomplishments and skills.  They're mentioned, of course. But far more attention goes to his ethnicity (Mexican-American), parentage (single mother), grand-parentage (immigrant grandfather), class background (first-generation college student), and place of origin (California's central valley). So what? Millions of people share these characteristics, and some of them would be great at running a university system while others would be terrible. Is he any good? We don't know.

At this point somebody could say that I'm treating him as a token, presuming that he must be lacking qualifications if they talk about identity, but that's not what I'm presuming. I think it's entirely possible that the CSU press release is doing him a grave disservice. (The CSU is well-known for doing people grave disservices on a daily basis.) Of course, it's also possible that he's an untalented and unaccomplished mediocrity, but that would simply make him utterly typical of CSU administrators. The CSU's untalented and unaccomplished mediocrities come in all sexes, genders, races, colors, etc. I've met pale and male administrators who couldn't manage their way out of a paperbag if handed a scissors and a map. I'm not presuming anything except that he probably reflects the CSU's administrators, and that the CSU PR office is serving him as poorly as the CSU serves everyone else.

And I still want to know what he's actually accomplished. Because, you know, he's just been promoted. It would be nice to know if the new boss is any good.