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MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

hn_throwaway_99
238 replies
22h49m

In the spirit of trying to learn something from the community: while I can certainly understand the rationale and goals behind DEI programs (many of which I agree with, others not), I honestly can't understand these "DEI statements" at all. They always seemed very "1984" to me, and almost designed to engender resentment in a way that would ultimately backfire. So perhaps I'm in a like-minded echo chamber, but is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument, or can you point me to one online? If so, I'd honestly love to hear it, and I mean this quite genuinely. I did some googling beforehand and found loads of "how to write a good DEI statement" articles, but literally every single one of them just took it at face value that these were a good thing to begin with (or, perhaps in their defense, that "academic jobs require it", so you better learn how to write one in any case).

gruez
46 replies
22h6m

but is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument, or can you point me to one online

There was a recent debate on this[1] and even the debater for the pro DEI statement side (that they could find) admitted that DEI statements that were just ideological pledges were wrong, and he was only in favor of statements about concrete things you did to advance the DEI agenda (eg. "I did a, b, and c in my previous position to enhance DEI in my department"). He argued that was justified because DEI (at least the principles, not necessarily the specific policies like affirmative action or whatever) were ostensibly things that the university cares about, and therefore they were fair game to ask for.

[1] https://opentodebate.org/debate/are-dei-mandates-for-univers... (it's a podcast but there's a transcript tab on the page)

Aurornis
40 replies
19h36m

I’ve heard this same argument for DEI statements every time the topic has been debated: They sidestep arguments about DEI statements and instead retreat to safer arguments about how advancing DEI is a good thing.

On one hand, I get it. Arguing for DEI in an abstract sense is much easier than arguing for specific interventions.

On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy, where the debater conflates two topics and then retreats to the safer position while hoping that the audience will accept it as an argument for the more difficult position.

DEI statements have been quite unpopular as specific interventions, as noted in the article by the way that the majority of staff disagreed with them when polled privately. However, speaking out against them publicly was viewed as a very risky move and serious career mistake, so they slowly slipped into mainstream acceptance.

It’s interesting to see how they’re now quietly being removed from processes with as little attention as possible. Nobody wants to be known as the person who campaigned against them publicly, but I suspect there are a lot of people feeling relief in this case as they’re being quietly removed from the process.

cogman10
29 replies
18h54m

Feels a little bit like making people take anti-theft pledges. I don't think anyone could reasonably expect that theft would be prevented by someone pledging not to engage in it yet it might be tricky to publicly remove because "what are you, pro-theft!?!"

Similar to DEI training in general which doesn't appear to do too much. It should be argued that "we shouldn't do these trainings" yet you also don't want to be the one saying that.

What does appear to work is a company actually hiring and promoting skilled diverse individuals and not just their buds.

beerandt
24 replies
17h42m

Imo it's very different bc the ideology pledge itself is mostly distracting from the real purpose of the dei statement (again imo), which is to provide a way to select employees based on race, etc, without it being the explicit reason.

A better comparison would be if instead of an anti-theft pledge, there were a ten-commandments plus beatitudes test/ statement, without referencing the source religion. Maybe call it a morality pledge.

It's essentially a religious test hiding behind another name and terms, and even if it doesn't explicitly discriminate based on religion, it's obviously designed so that people of certain religions do better.

And filters people not from those religions by boosting those who essentially share the same values, or can fake it.

In the same way, dei doesn't explicity select for diversity applicants, but for people who are explicitly pro-diversity-applicant.

Which doesn't sound quite as pure of you replace "diversity" with any of the approved / included groups...

'I'm not picking applicant based on them being black, but based on them having an ideology that is pro-black-applicant.'

Although sadly we've normalized it to crossing that line as well, with the last SCOTUS nominee.

jhardy54
23 replies
14h41m

diversity applicants

Friendly nudge that this isn’t a meaningful term. Once you start noticing people saying things like “our hiring pool is 60% diversity” it’s hard to unsee.

BaronVonSteuben
21 replies
14h13m

I don't agree. "Diversity" has a commonly accepted meaning which in the US at least, means everything except white men. Female or non-white are "diversity." A great example are the statements and articles from 2020 when Biden announced the most diverse ever White House Communications Team which was 100% female. Biden talked about how critical diversity was and bragged about this 100% female communications team. All the articles I read about it had things like "most diverse White House Communications Team in history" to describe it. At least from a gender perspective, I don't see how they could make it more clear that diversity == women

JSavageOne
17 replies
12h41m

Asians aren't counted as "diversity" either. This is why they're referred to as "an inconvenient minority" in the context of DEI.

justinclift
16 replies
12h26m

For that, does "asians" mean people from the middle of asia (ie middle east), or people from south east asia (ie oriental)?

Asking because the term has different meanings in say the UK (asian -> from middle east) vs Australia (asian -> from south east asia).

fsckboy
13 replies
11h41m

people from south east asia (ie oriental)

it is actually more common from the European and Middle Eastern context to call the (Turkish and Levantine and Arabian) Middle East "oriental"; in Israel, "oriental food" is hummus and felafel; the Orient Express train went to Istanbul. East Asian is the term for ... east Asians and of course the SE Asians you mentioned, and South Asian is the term for "India+Pakistan+" people. Central Asian is the "the -stans" and Mongolia and parts of Russia.

KorematsuFredt
11 replies
11h0m

Please keep India and Pakistan separate instead of using the meaningless phrase like "south asian". It is a phrase mostly pushed by Pakistani lobbyists in west because of unusually high levels of crime and other activities that have brought bad repute to their own national brand. And the "south" has more countries than India and Pakistan, each different with their own unique culture such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.

saagarjha
2 replies
10h20m

Not it's not lmao

KorematsuFredt
1 replies
1h19m

The fact that a lot of snowflakes got triggered is evidence enough that it is actually real. :)

justinclift
0 replies
1h0m

Dude, insulting people is really not on. :(

akavi
2 replies
1h29m

As an Indian-American, "South Asian" is a perfectly reasonable ethnic grouping in the United States. Collectively, that represents ~1% of the US population, too small a grouping to reasonably split out when talking about ethnicity in general terms.

All cultures are fractal. For my own ethnic heritage, for example, I could insist on splitting out:

* South Indian Dravidians from North Indian Arynans

* Kannadigas from other South Indians

* Lingayats from Vaishnavites

But that level of detail (absent special contexts where its relevant) would almost always confuse rather than clarify.

KorematsuFredt
1 replies
1h21m

South Asian is not "reasonable" it is pretty much racist. We white people could not be bothered with actually noticing the difference between Pakistan and India is the reason.

Lingayats from Vaishnavites

This tells me you are probably some kind of humanities graduate from some murican university ?

akavi
0 replies
33m

I'm Indian-American, as I stated above, and the list of subcategories are my own ethnic taxonomy.

I'm not sure what part of the Lingayat distinction bothers you. My grandparents would characterize it as "Lingayat" vs "Brahmina"; would you have preferred that framing?

HelloNurse
2 replies
8h28m

Calling "south Asia" the somewhat geographically and ethnically coherent region consisting of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan (excluding other parts of Asia that are located equally south because they are distinctly east or west) is a refreshingly objective naming.

Maybe such a region is too large and diverse to be meaningful, but there's no reason to accuse anybody of confusing parts of the old British empire or of embracing silly nationalist newspeak.

rayiner
1 replies
5h3m

In the US, “south asian” is fine. In the UK, there’s enough of each group where I think you should distinguish Indian versus Pakistani versus Bangladeshi. It’s not a group of people who want to be lumped together, same with Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese. They're also far less closely related to each other than say British people and French people.

hollerith
0 replies
3h18m

One reason this American (me) says "South Asian" is because here "Indian" also means "indigenous North American".

If hypothetically the government of India were to declare that the name in English of the country shall in the future be "Bharat" or "Hindustan", Americans would rapidly switch to the new name, and I would no longer be tempted to say "South Asian" when I mean Indian.

faizan-ali
1 replies
3h10m

This is the most ridiculous take I've seen all year. South Asia is an established geographical-cultural term that includes the two largest countries in Southern Asia - India and Pakistan.

KorematsuFredt
0 replies
1h20m

It is not "established" at all. No one calls their restaurant "South Asian", it is always Indian/Pakistani.

"South Asian" = > Racist and Hindu-phobic is the established norm.

justinclift
0 replies
5h52m

Wow, it's even more complicated than I realised. :)

recursivecaveat
1 replies
11h59m

In the US almost no-one would say "asian" for any country west of Nepal. Sometimes they say "south-asian" for India or the surrounding countries, but even that term is only sometimes extended out to pakistan.

KorematsuFredt
0 replies
11h0m

South Asia = Pakistan.

zzo38computer
1 replies
11h56m

"Diversity" has a commonly accepted meaning which in the US at least, means everything except white men.

Unfortunately this is common, because they do bad things with "diversity", even though diversity itself isn't bad. This isn't a very good defintion of what "diversity" should be, of course. There are many kind of diversity, and which are more important depends on the situation. But, regardless of it, diversity includes white men (and everyone else, too).

Visible diversity in skin colours, height, etc can be relevant for some things (e.g. movies that will have a lot of different people, or when doing research for a computer program that works on pictures of people (to do compression, colour correction for lighting conditions, etc)). Diversity in experience (even if all of them happen to be white men) can be relevant for many things (and is very helpful).

Of course, none of this should mean that you should deny application of other diversity because of their skin colours, height, gender, etc; they should not deny an application for such reasons. Having women in the White House Communications Team is not a bad thing, but that doesn't mean that having men is a bad thing!!! Having men is not a bad thing. One thing being good does not make the other one bad.

commandlinefan
0 replies
2h49m

none of this should mean that you should deny application

Is there any evidence that anybody was _ever_ doing this after about 1950 or so?

j16sdiz
0 replies
12h20m

An Asian-owned company in US can easily get 80%+ Asian. Is that "diversity"?

This depends on how you frame. It is not diverse for the company, but it could be in the larger social context. Putting the same thing in, say, San Francisco can be different from doing the same in Utah.

beerandt
0 replies
13h8m

It may not be a category (imo it is), but it's at least a hierarchy.

kstenerud
1 replies
15h11m

It does go beyond simply making a pledge, though. Applicants are required to list all the ways they've furthered the cause of this very specific issue, regardless of whether the job itself would entail or even offer opportunities to exercise such experience or not.

Like requiring an applicant for a fullstack python/js position to list in detail all of their Erlang experience, projects, talks and initiatives, and gatekeeping on that.

Now Erlang itself is great, and understanding the principles that guide it will almost certainly help you in your career (even if you never write a single line professionally). But to make this a central focus of acceptance for the job is just plain silly.

zzo38computer
0 replies
11h54m

Perhaps that is a good analogy, because I agree, and that is true whether it is Erlang or if it is DEI statements or if it is something else, even if they can be good things it is certainly no good to make this a central focus of acceptance for the jub.

tromp
0 replies
10h13m

Or like the pledges that university students have to fill out before each exam, promising not to cheat in any way. As if "you broke the pledge you signed" carries any more weight than "you cheated".

thaumasiotes
5 replies
15h9m

On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy

In a textbook, it would be called "equivocation".

where the debater conflates two topics

Yep.

I continue to be somewhat disturbed by the fact that giving a new name to a problem we've recognized for thousands of years has apparently increased awareness. Did people not realize equivocation was bad before Scott Alexander?

jlawson
2 replies
14h50m

Because it's not just equivocation. Read more of the actual original definition/usage of motte-and-bailey.

Motte-and-bailey isn't just an argumentative form, it's also a political strategy. It's people pushing/doing controversial thing A but every time they get called on it they bring up uncontroversial thing B. Or, they even retreat to thing B, but then when the pressure is off they come back out and start pushing/doing thing A again.

"Equivocation" covers a wide variety of situations, but motte-and-bailey is more specific and includes the notions of a strategy executed over time which includes action.

thaumasiotes
1 replies
13h19m

You haven't actually described any differences between the terms. (Well, you did claim one, that "motte-and-bailey is more specific", but combined with your appeal to "actual usage", that is clearly untrue.)

anankaie
0 replies
12h50m

Motte-and-Bailey speaks to equivocating about positions in argument. There are many other ways to equivocate, e.g. over the meaning of a single word, used in multiple ways in the same argument, as opposed to a retreat to an easier-to-defend position over the initial one presented/being discussed - as in the thread above.

The relationship between the two words is akin to the one between “rectangle” and “square”.

somenameforme
0 replies
12h34m

Alternatively, you're reversing the causality. As such fallacies have become borderline ubiquitous in many relevant aspects of life, greater appreciation and understanding of what's happening led to the emergence of language that's not only more figurative and visual, but also more precise. Because while all motte and bailey fallacies will be false equivocations, not all false equivocations will be motte and bailey fallacies.

Engaging in a genocidal action and then claiming it's self defense when scrutinized is a textbook motte and bailey fallacy. Claiming that people who oppose said genocide are supporters of fringe radical elements within the genocided, is a false equivocation, but not a motte and bailey fallacy. Indeed, you could make your exact argument about association fallacies, or a wide array of other fallacies for that matter - as most tend to involve false equivocation at some point.

HideousKojima
0 replies
10h51m

The original SSC article about Motte-and-Bailey used "strategic equivocation" as an alternate name, not just plain old equivocation. I.e. intentionally equivocating whenever is convenient for some political/social/whatever goal

kmeisthax
1 replies
11h24m

I suspect you could get away with speaking out publicly on this if you said something like "DEI statements aren't actually advancing DEI" first. You need to break the link between the statements and the goal first, so that you don't look like you're attacking the goal.

kbenson
0 replies
11h0m

You have a much more optimistic view of the current state of public discourse than I do.

There are plenty of organizations and people ready to tear down anything seen as against the party line for their own benefit. It's so much easier to criticize than contribute, and it only takes a few criticisms that ignore nuance and present things in a different context for critical mass to gather behind those misinterpretations.

The same things that make certain public forums resistant to this are the same things limit their growth, or that limit the spread of the message (content bubbles), so I'm not sure how to get around that without a major societal and cultural shift to how information is consumed.

gruez
1 replies
18h22m

On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy, where the debater conflates two topics and then retreats to the safer position while hoping that the audience will accept it as an argument for the more difficult position.

Motte and bailey accusations only work if the statemnts in question are being made by the same person. For the debater in the post above at least, is there any evidence he personally is engaging in this? Or anyone else? Otherwise it's a bit fallacious to lump everyone who's pro DEI as one entity.

codeflo
0 replies
17h45m

Motte and bailey accusations only work if the statemnts in question are being made by the same person.

I think it's perfectly justified in cases where debater self-identifies as part of the "bailey" community -- that is, if in other contexts the debater wouldn't oppose people arguing for the bailey position.

ugh123
1 replies
10h11m

(eg. "I did a, b, and c in my previous position to enhance DEI in my department")

What if they worked for a dept. that didn't promote these things and may have had policy against them? Why should a candidate need to please yet another committee or reviewer of their "body of work" to now include and require certain achievements in an area that isn't even understood by many and all but squashed now by the supreme court as a tool to recruit students?

dmurray
0 replies
9h56m

What if they worked for a dept. that didn't promote these things and may have had policy against them?

Then they lack experience relevant to the job, right? That's like asking "what if the applicant has no experience teaching computer science because he previously worked in the history department", except they can still make up something about feeling oppressed or fighting back against a culture they disagreed with.

This seems like the least problematic thing about mandatory DEI statements: if you value DEI, you should value candidates with some previous experience of working in the DEI industry.

spacemanspiff01
1 replies
19h21m

Would it make more sense to have a generic statement, where one could do more dei side or it could be reaching out to undergraduates.

Basically, a "aside from your teaching and research ability, what have you done to improve your campus that would make us want to hire you"

It's much more ambiguous, on what is valuable.

(I have no idea what the hiring process is like, just a random thoughts)

eru
0 replies
16h15m

The exact question doesn't even matter that much. They could just as well give you a blank page.

What's more important is how they grade and rank you and make decisions. Eg imagine they only hired you if filled that blank page with a picture of the Pope, even if there are no explicit instructions or questions asking for it.

hn_throwaway_99
0 replies
22h0m

Thanks very much! I haven't watched this yet, but this was exactly the kind of honest discussion I was looking for that I didn't previously find, so much appreciated.

rebeccaskinner
41 replies
20h54m

There's a pattern that I see come up quite often, and it's really common with any discussion about things that involve diversity and inclusion efforts. I don't know if there's a specific term for it, but it happens roughly like this:

First, someone identifies an opportunity to improve diversity, equity, or inclusion in some way. DEI statements in academia, codes of conduct in open source projects, some rules around topics or specific language on a social media site, I'm sure you can name some other examples.

Now, this new thing may be a way to address the problem, or not. The problem it's trying to address might have been well understood or not. One way or another the idea gets some momentum.

Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it. Everything they say is carefully crafted with a veneer of respectability and plausibility. Any accusations are re-directed. There are people who are motivated and very skilled at making plausible sounding bad-faith arguments. The plausibility of course also convinces people might not intend to be making a bad faith argument, and so are authentic in their indignant responses to accusations of acting in bad faith. Still, the entire point of the arguments was ultimately to disrupt efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, and to uphold inequality. In some cases these bad faith arguments can end up being a vast majority of the discussion. They make up maybe 80% (not an exact figure) of the comments in any given HN thread about anything tangentially related to DEI for example.

The people trying to make a positive change who have been at it for a while are generally exhausted with trying to deal with the torrent of bad faith arguments, quickly recognize the pattern of them, and ultimately often end up serving as fuel for further bad-faith arguments.

In the end, it becomes nearly impossible to have a productive good faith discussion about whether the original idea is good or not, or how to improve it, because nobody can disentangle legitimate contributors and arguments from the torrent of bad faith actors who are ultimately just trying to disrupt the process. Meanwhile, communities that ought to be served by the initiative are often left standing around watching their value as people or rights to participate equally being thrown around as an abstract subject of ideological argument.

Without any better options, people double down on the original idea because it was at least made in good faith.

It might sound like all of that is an argument against DEI statements- after all, I just spent several paragraphs talking about why it would be hard to have a reasonable good faith debate about it. Still, I think that in this situation they serve a couple of useful purposes. First, I think that it moves discussions around concrete improvements away from a forum where they can be undermined by bad faith arguments and toward a form where individual authors of DEI statements can focus on concrete actions. It incentivizes action over getting mired in these bad faith arguments. If one is to write specifically about how they have or will work to improve DEI, then they necessarily must move past the bad faith and concern trolling arguments and pick some specific actions. Second, I think that it acts as a useful honeypot for people who simply can't act in good faith. If you can't identify any dimension at all along which you will work to improve DEI for any group, then it's hard to see how you can further that part of the mission of an organization. Finally, while it is virtue signaling, that doesn't necessarily need to be bad.

collingreen
35 replies
20h45m

I am very interested in increasing diversity but I don't like the idea that anyone disagreeing with any dei suggestion should be labeled as intentionally disruptive and bad faith.

Calling 80% of discussion here bad faith aimed at holding particular groups down is a big claim that shouldn't be thrown around lightly in a good faith post.

rayiner
25 replies
20h28m

am very interested in increasing diversity

Why? As a non-white immigrant, I’m deeply suspicious of the notion that a team with me on it is in any way different than a team without me on it based on my skin color or ethnicity. I think that line of thinking doesn’t go anywhere good, especially for me, but for everyone else too.

As soon as you make it acceptable to say that people are different based on group membership, they will start to notice those differences and categorize them as good and bad. DEI is based on the premise that people will recognize all of those differences as good but that’s completely delusional. You are socializing people to identify other people with their group membership and they’re going to take those observations in directions you don’t expect.

rebeccaskinner
10 replies
19h38m

Why? As a non-white immigrant, I’m deeply suspicious of the notion that a team with me on it is in any way different than a team without me on it based on my skin color or ethnicity.

Perhaps, but a team that would not have hired you because of your skin color or ethnicity would also be a worse team since they would not be willing or able to hire the best candidates.

As soon as you make it acceptable to say that people are different based on group membership, they will start to notice those differences and categorize them as good and bad. DEI is based on the premise that people will recognize all of those differences as good but that’s completely delusional.

I don't think this is the right angle to look at it. Everyone has a unique combination of experiences that they bring, and what groups someone belongs to are one part of the set of experiences that make up how they experience the world. DEI programs aren't inventing this, it's just a part of the human condition that we're shaped by the unique combination of our experiences.

Focusing on specific unique aspects of individual people's backgrounds isn't the only shape DEI can take though. Done well, I think they instead look at the shape of systems and processes in place and try broadly to consider how to remove artificial barriers so that people have an equal chance to contribute.

You are socializing people to identify other people with their group membership and they’re going to take those observations in directions you don’t expect.

I think this does happen a lot. Tokenism and only being seen as a particular part of your identity are problems. I can't speak to the experience of being a non-white immigrant, but I've had other forms of this experience. It sucks to be in a job interview where you have a great skill set that matches the role and a lot of relevant experience, but it's clear that the only thing the recruiter cares about is that you could add gender diversity to a team. It sucks to be told that I'm wrong to suggest take-home exercises in interviews are a good option because women have caregiver duties and can't make time for them when I, a woman, prefer them because I feel like they offer a better opportunity for me to think deeply about a problem.

I don't think this is a reason to ignore DEI programs though, it's simply a failure case to be aware of.

jimbokun
7 replies
17h49m

I can't speak to the experience of being a non-white immigrant, but I've had other forms of this experience. It sucks to be in a job interview where you have a great skill set that matches the role and a lot of relevant experience, but it's clear that the only thing the recruiter cares about is that you could add gender diversity to a team.

But this is the dominant strain of DEI thinking today, and why it's seeing such a backlash.

The over riding DEI principle is that every profession, every organization, every role, must somehow have exactly the demographic breakdown of the society as a whole.

A moment's thought reveals why this is impractical to impossible, especially in the short to medium term. But this is how everything is evaluated through a DEI lens. Every discussion devolves just to counting how many people of each kind of group are represented in whichever topic is under discussion.

All the stuff about eliminating barriers is just the motte for this Bailey.

rebeccaskinner
3 replies
17h35m

The over riding DEI principle is that every profession, every organization, every role, must somehow have exactly the demographic breakdown of the society as a whole.

I’ve simply never seen this happen, although I’ve seen a lot of accusations of it. In a very large organization you might look at how your organizations demographics compare to industry demographics in different ways, but that’s always been at most an individual data point that elicits further investigation.

jazzyjackson
1 replies
14h46m

you've contradicted yourself, that's all the parent was saying, that comparing your demographics with national demographics is used to identify the degree to which your organization needs to institute race quotas

Dylan16807
0 replies
13h27m

that's all the parent was saying

Nuh uh. jimbokun intensified it by a huge amount with those "every" terms and saying "must" and "exactly", describing a mandate that is very stupid and ignorant of statistics in a way that rebeccaskinner's description is not very stupid and ignorant of statistics. Also,

race quotas

The post you're replying to says "further investigation", not "race quotas".

jimbokun
0 replies
14h42m

I’ve lost count of the number of articles that simply cite disproportionate demographic distributions as proof of discrimination.

Dylan16807
2 replies
14h17m

The over riding DEI principle is that every profession, every organization, every role, must somehow have exactly the demographic breakdown of the society as a whole.

No it's not. That's a dumb strawman. "The over riding DEI principle" is not some guy that doesn't understand statistical variance, and doesn't accept any reason at all for fields to differ.

But we should have a starting position of being extremely skeptical of any big group that has a significantly different breakdown, especially if it's different in the specific ways that fit common discrimination.

jimbokun
1 replies
5h12m

You start out disputing my claim…and end by reinforcing it.

Dylan16807
0 replies
1h51m

You don't see the difference between "x must be y always everywhere even in tiny groups" and "start skeptical if x isn't y in big groups"?

I don't know how much simpler I can make this. Those statements are not the same.

rayiner
1 replies
18h40m

I agree with the “eliminate artificial barriers” version of DEI. I’m a huge beneficiary of the push in the 1990s to “not see race.” But I don’t think that’s the dominant version of DEI today. I think the notion that “diverse teams are better” actually erects barriers, because it socializes people to think that the races are different.

I think the situation is different for sex diversity because men and women are different in ways that require accommodation.

rebeccaskinner
0 replies
17h44m

It seems to me like we’re probably not too far apart in our opinions- and perhaps each of us bringing a separate set of experiences is letting us come to a better and more nuanced view.

I still do personally think that at a high level diverse teams and companies do tend to be better than non-diverse ones, especially when you have many axes of diversity. I imagine that some of that is direct benefit when someone is able to pull on their experiences to directly benefit a project, and some of it is simply that teams who hire the best people without artificial barriers will both be better and tend to be more diverse.

That’s observational rather than prescriptive though. When it comes to individual teams and individual hiring decisions I’d never advocate for anything other than hiring the best available candidate. Similarly, while you can say that across the population having diversity is good, you shouldn’t assume any specific part of an individual’s background or experience should manifest in any particular way.

All that said, I do think understanding the general ways that different aspects of a persons background impacts their work experience is a necessary part of building an effective workforce. How can you remove artificial barriers without taking time to understand what those barriers are?

Although I’ve had my own negative experiences at times, my experience overall is that most DEI initiatives I’ve been involved with have not been unaware of the risks and nuance, and people involved are usually trying to do the right things. I don’t think modern DEI approaches are overall worse- just more controversial because of broader social, cultural, and political tensions.

dctoedt
10 replies
20h7m

As a non-white immigrant, I’m deeply suspicious of the notion that a team with me on it is in any way different than a team without me on it based on my skin color or ethnicity. I think that line of thinking doesn’t go anywhere good, especially for me, but for everyone else too.

In various threads you've repeatedly argued (paraphrasing here) that you have a different set of values — e.g., giving higher priority to the family and community, vice individual choice, than in contemporary American mass culture. You've correlated this with your Bangladeshi heritage and upbringing, and you've said (again paraphrasing) that you adamantly seek to instill the same values in your own kids.

Perhaps some teams would find your values a useful addition to their mix. For those teams, your Bangladeshi name, skin tone, etc., could be instances of what the late (Black) free-market economist Walter Williams [0] referred to as "cheap-to-observe information."[1] I can't find the piece I read years ago in which Williams said that if you were choosing up sides for a pickup basketball game at a city park, and didn't know any of the other players, you'd choose the Black guys because the odds — not a certainty by any means, but the odds — were that the Black guys had played more basketball growing up than the white guys.

A related anecdote about cheap-to-observe information and its possible correlations: Years ago at my then-law firm, I was called into the office of the chair of the recruiting committee. The chair wanted me to meet a third-year law student who was at the firm for interviews. The recruiting chair said that the law student, like me, was a former Navy "nuke" officer. We shook hands; I asked, "[chief] engineer-qualified?" He smiled and nodded. "Surface-warfare qualified?" The same. I turned to the recruiting chair and said "that's all I need to know; I'm good." I had both quals myself, so I immediately concluded — provisionally — that the student was very likely to have personal qualities (work ethic, leadership, etc.) that I knew law firms found to be valuable. (I did stick around to chat for a while longer, and I knew the student wouldn't even have been invited for an interview if he wasn't already a good candidate.) We hired the student, who turned out to be a fine lawyer.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams

[1] https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/opinion/walter-williams-our...

rayiner
9 replies
19h31m

You’ve accurately described the differences, but none of those things are relevant to the workplace. All the ways I’m actually different from Americans are just a source of consternation where I have to bite my tongue and remind myself that it’s their country and I have to put up with the dog in the office, etc.

As to “cheap to observe” information: you might observe that Asian and Mormon communities socialize people to work without complaining or making demands. That seems profitable in the workplace. Is that the kind of cheap to observe information you can rely on? (It’s not—it’s illegal!)

tptacek
6 replies
18h19m

It's "their" country? It's yours too. Be the dog-free workplace you want to see in the world.

rayiner
5 replies
17h21m

I don’t subscribe to that view of nationhood. It’s a constant source of discomfort (not just at the office, but visiting people’s houses or visiting my in laws) but it’s not my place to impose on the people whose ancestors built this country. I feel bad enough that I won’t let my wife have a dog, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

kortilla
3 replies
10h24m

If it’s just cultural have you thought of “getting the fuck over it” and letting your wife get a dog? You seem like a logical person, unless you specifically have an issue with them that isn’t cultural baggage, just embrace the ability to have dogs.

rayiner
2 replies
6h36m

Culture includes some of our most deep-down disgust responses. I have trouble even being at people’s houses if there’s dog hair on the couch or I can smell them. It’s coded to me as a dirty environment.

tptacek
0 replies
1h29m

Not being a dog person doesn't make you a xenophobe! Lots of Americans don't like dogs. You are one of them.

dctoedt
0 replies
7m

I agree with Thomas (see his response to your comment, "below").

Are you making a category mistake here?

akerl_
0 replies
13h59m

On behalf of the group of slightly-longer-ago immigrants to the country that you're classifying as having "built this country": I'm not sure why my ancestors coming here a while back means you can't say "I don't want a dog next to my desk at work".

If you're a person who lives here and works here, you get to participate in defining what the society and workplace look like, respectively. Having to type it out actually feels weird, because it's pretty self-evident. You're here, the things you do impact the culture.

WalterBright
1 replies
17h28m

I have to put up with the dog in the office

A company I worked for long ago decided that it was ok for employees to bring their dogs to work. This worked for a time until one of the dogs pooped in the executive's office.

That was the end of that.

My dad lived in a small town for a few years. He was friendly with the mayor, and asked him what was his biggest problem. The mayor said the town was equally divided between dog lovers and dog haters. It was simply impossible for him to please both.

Which was a relief for me.

rayiner
0 replies
15h55m

To be clear, Bangladeshis (and I think most Muslims) don’t “hate” dogs. There are dogs—my dad had them in the village and we had one when I was young. It’s a hygiene taboo. They’re viewed as unclean. They live outside—you don’t snuggle them or put your face up to them. It’s similar to their view of using toilet paper instead of washing after going to the bathroom. Or how North Americans view the Latin American practice of disposing of toilet paper in the trash bin rather than flushing it.

shrimp_emoji
2 replies
20h1m

Anyone with a brain and sense of dignity will feel like racism is bad and unfair. Experiencing negative racism is enraging and depressing. Experiencing positive racism instantly gives you impostor syndrome and a sense of dehumanization.

The only systems that aren't racist are those that strive to be colorblind (in the sense that we're colorblind to eye or hair color).

thaumasiotes
0 replies
13h32m

There sure is a lot of effort invested in changing hair color, given that we're blind to it.

naniwaduni
0 replies
19h44m

The only systems that aren't racist are those that strive to be colorblind (in the sense that we're colorblind to eye or hair color).

Eye/hair color being a distinguishing feature is mostly a white people thing in its own right...

rebeccaskinner
8 replies
20h14m

I don't like the idea that anyone disagreeing with any dei suggestion should be labeled as intentionally disruptive and bad faith.

My point isn't that anyone disagreeing with a particular suggestion is arguing in bad faith, it's that there are enough bad faith arguments that it becomes effectively impossible to have a productive discussion.

Calling 80% of discussion here bad faith aimed at holding particular groups down is a big claim that shouldn't be thrown around lightly in a good faith post.

And therein lies the crux of the problem. Are 80% of the comments I see on DEI related threads actually acting in bad faith, or am I simply so exhausted by the constant stream of bad faith arguments that I lack the ability to discern between people acting in bad faith, uninformed people acting in good faith parroting bad-faith actors arguments, and people who are legitimately trying to engage. For that matter, am I an exhausted person who is simply tired of accusations of "wokeism" being thrown at me when I advocate for basic respect and decency, or am I a bad faith actor who tried to sneak an outrageous claim into a reasonable sounding post in order to undermine people who are in favor of DEI programs by making them all sound unreasonable? I may know that I'm simply exhausted, cynical, and seeing a steadily increasing amount of anti-DEI rhetoric here, but such is the state of discourse that there's no way for you to know for sure one way or another.

jimbokun
4 replies
17h43m

Anyone still using the term "woke" in a serious discussion at this point is using a thought terminating cliche.

(I still catch myself using it sometimes, and will try to do better.)

skissane
3 replies
16h12m

Anyone still using the term "woke" in a serious discussion at this point is using a thought terminating cliche.

In December 2020, New Republic published an essay by the African-American Marxist Adolph Reed Jr (professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania), entitled "Beyond the Great Awokening: Reassessing the legacies of past black organizing" [0] in which he criticises "the Woke".

Now, you may or may not agree with his criticisms, but he is not using "a thought terminating cliche". On the contrary, he means something quite specific by it: a contemporary form of progressive politics which prioritises race over class, as opposed to Reed's own classic Marxism which prioritises class over race.

I myself tend to avoid invoking the word, because I find it derails discussions from whatever the substantive topic was, into debating what that word means and the appropriateness of using it.

But, on the other hand, I think the phenomenon which Reed labels as "Woke" is a real thing, and if we aren't to call it "Woke", what then should we call it? I get the impression that some people don't want to let people call it anything, as part of a strategy to put it beyond criticism.

[0] https://newrepublic.com/article/160305/beyond-great-awokenin...

jimbokun
2 replies
14h45m

I myself tend to avoid invoking the word, because I find it derails discussions from whatever the substantive topic was, into debating what that word means and the appropriateness of using it.

This is the point I was trying to make.

skissane
1 replies
14h40m

I agree with you that it is best avoided whenever possible.

However, I think the other points I made, that (a) some invocations of it are legitimate, and (b) it serves a useful purpose in labelling a real phenomenon, for which we don't have any widely accepted alternative label – still stand.

jimbokun
0 replies
5h14m

So avoiding using the word is a good heuristic, not an algorithm.

samastur
0 replies
19h53m

Personally I’d focus on arguments instead of motivations and skip arguing with those were it seems it will be or when it becomes unproductive.

Manuel_D
0 replies
4h6m

Are 80% of the comments I see on DEI related threads actually acting in bad faith, or am I simply so exhausted by the constant stream of bad faith arguments that I lack the ability to discern between people acting in bad faith, uninformed people acting in good faith parroting bad-faith actors arguments, and people who are legitimately trying to engage.

Or perhaps your experiences on DEI run contrary to the typical experiences of other people? You seem awfully eager to call other commenters bad faith or misinformed, but do little in the way of introspection. It reminds me of an old joke:

Someone sees on the news live coverage of a car driving the wrong way down the freeway their spouse uses to commute. Worried, they call their spouse to warn them, "honey there's a car driving down the freeway, be careful!"

"It's not one, there's hundreds of them!"

As for myself, "DEI" has been a thinly veiled dogwhistle for illegal hiring policies at 3 out of the 4 companies I've worked at for the last 10 years. Examples in include: explicitly designating segment of headcount as exclusive to certain races and genders, setting specific percentage quotas on the basis of protected class (and these quotas were well above industry-wide representation of these groups), and constructing separate hiring pipelines depending on race and gender.

However, I'm not going to accuse people who have different or opposing views on DEI as acting in bad faith. 75% of the companies I've worked at used DEI as a dogwhistle for illegal policies, but that's still a very narrow slice of the world at large. I'm not going to allege that people are being disingenuous or acting in bad faith because I recognize that people have different experiences with DEI and can arrive at vastly different opinions on the acronym while acting entirely in good faith. I suggest you do the same.

Izkata
0 replies
20h7m

when I advocate for basic respect and decency

Try using those words instead of the woke buzzwords. Everyone else is having the same reaction to "DEI"/etc that you're having to their common arguments.

skissane
0 replies
20h13m

Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it. Everything they say is carefully crafted with a veneer of respectability and plausibility. Any accusations are re-directed. There are people who are motivated and very skilled at making plausible sounding bad-faith arguments. The plausibility of course also convinces people might not intend to be making a bad faith argument, and so are authentic in their indignant responses to accusations of acting in bad faith.

How can you possibly have a good faith argument if you've already made your mind up that most or everyone who disagrees with you is arguing in bad faith? That in itself is not a good faith position.

You sound like you've basically constructed a closed system of thought for yourself, in which anyone who disagrees with you is arguing in bad faith.

I know one person here who frequently posts in disagreement to DEI initiatives is rayiner. He might be wrong, but I don't believe for a minute he is a bigot or acting in bad faith.

lupusreal
0 replies
4h52m

Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it. Everything they say is carefully crafted with a veneer of respectability and plausibility.

In other words, their arguments aren't intrinsically bigoted and you can't prove bigotry is their motivation because they have a "veneer" of respectability and plausibility, but because they oppose the thing you believe and feel they are secretly bigots.

it becomes nearly impossible to have a productive good faith discussion about whether the original idea is good or not,

Because anybody that tries to gets judged to be a cryptobigot.

Lacking concrete information on who the commenters are, maybe you should judge the arguments themselves rather than trying to "read between the lines" to divine secret motives that conveniently free you from the burden of considering other points of view.

kortilla
0 replies
9h54m

Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it.

When you assume it’s bigots who are the ones who show up with concerns, do you see how fucked up that is?

“Whenever we propose X, the bigots get wind of it and spread FUD. All of their arguments sound fine, but I know they are in bad faith because they are exhausting.”

Have you ever considered that maybe they aren’t bigots and ironically you’re the bigot here just calling everyone who disagrees with respectability and plausibility a bigot?

(P.S. I tried to not be respectable so I don’t get lumped in with “the bigots” and have my ideas rejected out of hand.)

akomtu
0 replies
19h59m

DEI is a lot like a headless religion that nobody's asked for. It's headless because instead of talking about spirit or similar high matters, it says "you are your body" and proceeds to divide people based on a few visible traits such as skin color. This quasi-religion doesn't talk about what we have in common. Instead it's fixated on superficial traits that make us different. When DEI got support among the rich and they pushed it down to the people, it obviously created resentment. Nobody likes when you're forced to say things you don't believe in and find disgusting.

I do admit that DEI has some goodwill in it, in particular the idea that our society doesn't have to be a wolf-eats-wolf "meritocracy", but I'm afraid that the goodwill has been skillfully perverted.

Aunche
0 replies
19h21m

As a moderate, I do suspect that a lot of conservatives like to concern troll, but on the other hand, the far left really seems to like to double down on defending wild takes, like the university presidents refusing to answer whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates the code of conduct of their universities, which makes this line of questioning relevant.

GIFtheory
38 replies
20h51m

My first reaction to this news was, “fine, sounds like a silly requirement.” However, being a PhD graduate from a minority background, I really have to thank my advisor for the undergraduate outreach work he did, without which there is realistically a negligible chance I would have ended up with a PhD and a great research career. I don’t know what motivated him to do this work, but from a purely pragmatic perspective, if professors know that performing such duties helps them get promoted, perhaps it’s not a bad policy, as long as inequities exist in academia. There are so many other pressures on young faculty, outreach may be something that is hard to justify spending time on unless you have to do it in some sense.

dgfitz
25 replies
19h56m

Perhaps you were simply evaluated against your noggin and not your skin?

Edit: what are the arguments against this?

OJFord
15 replies
18h2m

Edit: what are the arguments against this?

I happen not to agree with them, but leaving that aside they're often that Ok fine, it's a pipeline problem^, but the solution is to address that at every stage, not just the beginning.

(^meaning for example schoolgirls aren't sufficiently interested and encouraged into STEM so university applications are low, so admissions are low, so graduations are low, so job applications are low, so offers are low, so employer gender ratios are low)

WalterBright
14 replies
17h45m

STEM is something you gotta have some substantial internal motivation to do, such as doing it for a hobby. The kind of work I enjoy, you gotta really like it or it isn't going to work out for you.

For example, I was taking machines apart when I was 7 trying to figure out how they worked. I'd break open resistors to see what was inside - just baffling grey dust. Eventually I took bicycles apart, then engines, then whole cars. It was just foregone that I was going to engineering school.

kelipso
10 replies
15h12m

Maybe decades ago when college students based their choice of majors on feelings or whatever that might have been true. Nowadays college students are much more practical. An obvious example is the rise in CS majors in the last decade.

The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.

WalterBright
3 replies
13h32m

The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.

Pretty much all the ones I know that are good at it love it. Just like musicians and athletes.

Sure, there are those in it for the money. They're usually the tweeners.

Nowadays college students are much more practical.

I'm not so sure about that. There's a large number of math avoiders in college, and when they graduate discover their degree is worth a minimum wage job.

saagarjha
1 replies
10h15m

That's because those don't pay you money. I know plenty of excellent engineers who couldn't care less about computer science.

WalterBright
0 replies
21m

I'm an engineer, and I'm not much into the academic side of computer science. But I enjoy engineering very much.

mtlguitarist
0 replies
8h52m

Okay but the difference is that being a mediocre athlete or musician means that you're unemployed, whereas you can be a totally mediocre programmer and make well into the 6 figures. My friends who are professional musicians know far more about their craft than even the most motivated engineers I've worked with, and they make less money than the worst paid engineers I've met. I've casually played guitar for almost 20 years and been programming less than half that time ane I can't even think about going pro without a massive dedicated effort.

bitcharmer
2 replies
5h40m

The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.

You clearly don't have much exposure to the stem bubble. Overwhelming majority are passionate geeks.

kelipso
1 replies
5h19m

Ha ha ha. I have a CS PhD and am friends with grad students in many other STEM fields. There are just as many who are "passionate", or whatever geeky losers who waste their life obsessing over minutiae want to be called, as there are people who are working on their degree for the sake of practicality. I would say the latter are in fact generally more successful.

WalterBright
0 replies
19m

losers who waste their life obsessing over minutiae want to be called

Enjoying your work is not the same thing as obsessing over irrelevant minutia.

refurb
1 replies
7h42m

As a STEM student who actually did a STEM job (basic science research) you have to love it to make a career out of it.

The pay isn’t fantastic and your career is basically doing the same thing (with more skill over time) for 30 years. With most of your work a failure.

Even people who liked it often bailed.

Programming is a bit different. You can make a lot of money, have varied jobs and just grin and bear it for the money.

kelipso
0 replies
5h15m

Have to agree the lower salary means you have to love it to spend years doing it. I moved to CS because of that mainly.

jasonm23
0 replies
14h15m

To go into a subject, with no foundation, no motivation and no interest. How is this a set up for success?

I mean, sure, people can go into any subject, but... if they're to succeed?

semi-extrinsic
1 replies
12h49m

As a society we have purposely shaped the way we do STEM so that it can be carried out by an army of employees trained to do relatively simple tasks. It is much better for a company to hire 15 people to do one thing, than to hire one brilliant person to do the same.

The extra cost is just passed on to the consumer, and you gain predictability and managerial prestige.

As an example, Amazon had twice as many people working just on Alexa as there are employees total at JPL. And JPL designs, engineers, builds and operates dozens of groundbreaking spacecraft, including several space telescopes, Mars rovers, and the Voyager programme. JPL needs people with substantial internal motivation, Amazon et al. do not.

WalterBright
0 replies
17m

As a society we have purposely shaped the way we do STEM so that it can be carried out by an army of employees trained to do relatively simple tasks.

I see no purposeful force "shaping" this.

It is much better for a company to hire 15 people to do one thing, than to hire one brilliant person to do the same.

They would hire the one brilliant person if they could. The trouble is finding them.

Also, brilliant is not the same thing as enjoying the work.

dangerlibrary
0 replies
13h57m

I get very little joy from programming. I never program outside of work - I hike, climb, work on my house, raise my kids. But it pays the bills and I can do it, so I've put in the time to learn enough to be worth paying a salary.

When I was a kid I wanted to be a paleontologist. Then I wanted to be a smoke jumper. Now I'm a staff engineer.

Not everyone gets to do what they love. Some of us are just following the money.

noobermin
3 replies
18h55m

This comment does not make sense in reply to this question...where did they say anything about evaluation, the point they made is the difference it made is their advisor doing outreach.

dgfitz
2 replies
15h49m

I made the mental leap of “the advisor reached out because they saw the potential” which I assumed… was assumed.

kelipso
0 replies
15h18m

No it's not on an individual basis, outreach work means something more like the professor talked to a group of students about their work and what they can do to join their lab for a phd. There are lots and lots of undergrads who don't know a thing about graduate school.

lazide
2 replies
19h0m

they very well might have been evaluated based entirely on their abilities alone.

A toxic element of DEI is that now they have to always wonder (as does everyone else) if it was done because of their skin color/gender/race, regardless of what their mentor says. Because it very well may be true as well.

thewanderer1983
1 replies
14h36m

Just like the justice system. People should be assumed innocent until proven guilty. DEI and more broadly CRT are toxic because minorities, like all humans have faults and these ideas promote minorities to assume discrimination instead of faults. Therefore not helping these individuals improve their faults. This also promotes division and hatred in society. Overall net negative.

achenet
0 replies
2h51m

to be fair, I don't think yelling at someone for their flaws is very effective at fixing them.

My reasoning can be summed up as "look at prison recidivism vs Skinner's work on positive reinforcement".

avs733
1 replies
17h31m

perhaps he wasn't. clearly we are at an impasse

Maybe put some value and engage with someone's articulation of their personal experience as opposed to simply dismissing it because it does not comport with your world view.

dgfitz
0 replies
15h46m

What did I dismiss?

By all accounts they sounds quite successful as well as appreciative of their undergraduate advisor.

Engage in their experience? See above. Should I have snuck in there somewhere “nice job kind gentle person, you succeeded” or something?

What world view is that?

jimbokun
5 replies
18h10m

How was the outreach aimed at you different than the outreach aimed at any other students?

nsagent
4 replies
16h7m

It's not about treating students differently. Rather it's about where you spend your limited resources for outreach.

For example, during my PhD I did outreach in both elementary and middle schools where teachers said there were skills gaps they needed help with. The demographics in some of those schools happened to be such that 80-90% of the students were black and brown.

EnigmaFlare
2 replies
13h45m

That's not really DEI. That's just targeting schools with skills gaps, and it might have turned out to be mostly white. To be DEI, they'd have to be chosen because of ethnicity, gender, etc.

nsagent
1 replies
5h2m

DEI is applied broadly, for example here's a list of demographics targeted for DEI from one of Biden's executive orders [1]:

  The initiative will advance opportunity for communities that have historically faced employment discrimination and professional barriers, including: people of color; women; first-generation professionals and immigrants; individuals with disabilities; LGBTQ+ individuals; Americans who live in rural areas; older Americans who face age discrimination when seeking employment; parents and caregivers who face employment barriers; people of faith who require religious accommodations at work; individuals who were formerly incarcerated; and veterans and military spouses.
[1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

scarmig
0 replies
59m

Unsurprisingly, "poor people" are not targeted for help.

jimbokun
0 replies
14h41m

I think if more DEI efforts were expressed as programs like this, there would be a lot less backlash.

eli_gottlieb
1 replies
14h58m

I once helped my advisor write a grant application and he put in some great outreach stuff in the DEI section of the app. What turns me cynical about DEI statements/sections is that after we won the grant, there was no money for that inclusion programming and nobody ever checked whether we'd really done it.

lazide
0 replies
5h31m

And that is the ‘performative’ part.

It’s similar to making everyone sort their recycling, and then just throwing it all in the same landfill when it actually gets to the dump.

Why not actually recycle?

And/or if we’re not going to actually recycle, why make everyone go through such a complicated song and dance and spend so much time on something that ends up not mattering?

Wait, this is a lot more applicable of an analogy than I was expecting.

Gimpei
1 replies
16h15m

I think this is a good point. I wonder how useful diversity statements are for accomplishing this task. It just seems like cheap talk to me. More useful would be to reward people in tenure review for outreach to minorities.

I’m from a minority, just not one that is recognized as such in the convoluted system that is racial politics in the US (I am of Iraqi descent). But if I were in the shoes of someone who should be benefiting from DEI policies, I’d be pissed off with how it’s shaken out. Seems like a whole lot of empty, performative symbolism with negligible actual change. Things like DEI statements read like box ticking to me, allowing administrators to say they’ve “tried” without doing anything. Same goes for sensitivity trainings, and flashy renaming of, for example, master to main. The singular focus on symbolism has not done anyone any favors apart from a few semiotics professors, although I wonder if they’ve been chastened by how little their favored policies have accomplished.

jack_riminton
0 replies
11h52m

Such is the nature of bureaucracies, whatever is easy to measure will become the measure

pradn
0 replies
20h31m

It's also a way to compel action across all professors, not just professors from historically-underrepresented groups, who would likely be bearing the brunt of the work.

gotoeleven
0 replies
16h0m

Not to be flippant but the saying "when you're robbing peter to pay paul, you can always count on the support of paul" comes to mind. Maybe you really are a super qualified researcher that is doing great work, but all I see as the result of this DEI stuff is sinecures and make work jobs and generally lower standards across the board. (e.g. the former harvard president, or the current press secretary)

I dont think anyone would have a problem with DEI if it was about identifying unrecognized talent and making sure it got the proper attention. Thats not what it is right now.

blueboo
17 replies
22h17m

This is the premise:

There are outstanding systemic inequities at every level of American society. The threat these represent to our long term survival and prosperity are such that we are keen to at least acknowledge and mark our and our prospective collaborators’ efforts to improve the status quo.

Maybe you don’t accept that. Maybe it’s asking for a virtue signal in service of performative posturing. Maybe this requirement had adverse effects (evidently it has.)

But there is a through-line of coherent logic, and the total failure here may be cause for alarm.

jack_h
6 replies
19h3m

There are outstanding systemic inequities at every level of American society.

I think this needs to be backed up with evidence rather than merely asserted. I've been reading through a number of books by Thomas Sowell lately and he presents enough statistical evidence to explain disparities without any hint of racism, sexism, etc. Regardless of if you agree with him or not, the mere fact that alternate theories exist that explain why society looks as it does today should be enough to question the foundational problem that DEI claims to address.

Take as an example the gender pay gap which is presented as women earning 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. While statistically true in aggregate, DEI tends to treat this axiomatically as a sign of sexism. If you dig into the statistics the vast majority of this difference is due to the fact that many women voluntarily take time off of their career to raise children.

tomnipotent
5 replies
18h0m

many women voluntarily take time off of their career to raise children

Expect there is evidence to suggest that women that earn a higher income are less likely to leave the workforce, which is further influenced by access to affordable childcare and dual incomes.

The point is that when you control for these factors, a woman with the same title and responsibilities as a man will earn less for the same work.

whatthesmack
2 replies
17h19m

The point is that when you control for these factors, a woman with the same title and responsibilities as a man will earn less for the same work.

That can't possibly be true, because in a market economy, the more-expensive workers (men) would be laid off and replaced by less-expensive, equally-capable "same title and responsibilities" workers (women). This doesn't seem to be the case on a grand scale, which means it's more deep/complex than the "men get paid more than women" headline we're all used to seeing.

tomnipotent
1 replies
12h48m

Are you arguing that society operates from a position of optimal market theory, and that cultural norms, prejudices, and biases play no role in salary or pay rates for anyone It's not particularly hard to find examples of disparity or exploitation.

Manuel_D
0 replies
2h30m

Disparity and exploitation are not the same thing as ignoring an obvious way to reduce labor costs. Why would companies be smart enough to outsource labor overseas, but somehow lack the know-how to simply hire women and save 23% of labor costs? Because the "women make 77 cents on the dollar" meme is just looking at raw incomes, and not adjusting for type of job and experience.

tomnipotent
0 replies
13h7m

The irony of posting an article that proves my point, you really got me there.

ryandrake
3 replies
21h43m

Your statement (which I happen to agree with) supports DEI policies but not the specific practice of requiring a written DEI statement, which is the important distinction OP made.

I think you can be for DEI as a concept and as a corporate or school policy, but against the performative act of writing it out as some kind of weird "pledge of allegiance" in a job application.

blueboo
2 replies
21h29m

Well, the “acknowledge and mark” phrase gets at the statement—That if the org thought objective X was authentic existential goal, it behooves them to understand how an applicant understands and would configure into that plan. (I have no claim about its efficacy. The highly-structured nature of the statement is a head-scratcher. I’m here watching the fallout with everyone else.)

I hasten to restate that is my understanding of the premise, in the spirit of collectively untangling the causal chain here. This is incendiary stuff on HN!

shkkmo
1 replies
21h10m

it behooves them to understand how an applicant understands and would configure into that plan.

I (and a lot of us I think) follow you up to this point, but then you lose us here.

How does a written statement, the expected content of which is clearly known, give any understanding of the individual's position? This type of approach to education seems to me that it actively harms the ability to sway people's opinions.

I have this issue with a lot of discussions of DEI, there are a lot of arguments that support the DEI goal and a dearth of arguments that support the methods being used to achieve that goal.

dgfitz
0 replies
19h45m

How does a written statement, the expected content of which is clearly known, give any understanding of the individual's position?

ChatGPT, please write me a DEI statement for this job interview.

rayiner
1 replies
21h7m

I understand you’re trying to strong man this. But I think we need to interrogate the premise here. How does “inequity” represent a “threat” to our “long term survival and prosperity?” What is the specific causal mechanism by which we expect that to happen?

It seems facially implausible to me, given that America became prosperous when these inequalities were much worse. Why do we accept this premise as a given?

eastbound
1 replies
22h6m

This is an ideological statement which brings no fact, no new perspective, is not substantial and does not refute the opponent’s argument (which is that unfair DEI creates resentment that you later pay).

As per Dang’s guidelines above (specifically for this thread), this should not have been allowed on HN.

Now I wonder: Why is it here?

dang
0 replies
20h48m

Now I wonder: Why is it here?

The internet gods bestowed two* of these on us today. The other one is Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40267639. I posted an answer there to someone who asked more or less the same question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40267862. The principles are the same, so if you're willing to read it mutatis mutandis and maybe take a look at some of the other posts I linked to, you should find what you're looking for.

(* no, it's not a trend—just random fluctuation)

wiseowise
0 replies
20h54m

The threat these represent to our long term survival and prosperity are such that we are keen to at least acknowledge and mark our and our prospective collaborators’ efforts to improve the status quo

As someone who is pro DEI and participated in DEI related activities and brainstorms during hiring: I very much doubt that.

naasking
0 replies
21h9m

The threat these represent to our long term survival and prosperity are such that we are keen to at least acknowledge and mark our and our prospective collaborators’ efforts to improve the status quo.

I'm very skeptical that there is any threat to our survival here, or that DEI is any kind of response capable of resolving it. DEI is about "justice", a set of ethical principles, not about some utilitarian calculation about social survival or prosperity.

heresie-dabord
9 replies
21h31m

is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument

When Richard Dawkins spoke at UC Berkeley in 2008, he argued that "raising awareness" about feminism by changing how we speak and think has changed society for the better. (In the same discussion, he seeks to do the same for children's freedom from their parents' religion.) There is no doubt that Western society has changed how it treats and speaks about women.

That said, Dawkins has in more recent years found himself opposing identity politics as they seek to change language usage and perceptions of gender.

naasking
8 replies
21h14m

That said, Dawkins has in more recent years found himself opposing identity politics as they seek to change language usage and perceptions of gender.

Correction: Dawkins doesn't care one whit about gender, and he has literally said so. He only cares when people cross into talking about sex, make incorrect claims about the nature of sex (spectrums and such), conflate sex with gender, and make unscientific claims about being able to change one's sex. Basically, when they enter his wheelhouse and start making a confusing mess of things.

Dylan16807
6 replies
13h58m

What claims is he making specifically?

the nature of sex (spectrums and such)

Sex shows itself to be a spectrum pretty often.

unscientific claims about being able to change one's sex

Phenotype or genotype?

They don't always match even without any medical intervention, and a change in hormones can drastically change phenotype.

Dylan16807
4 replies
1h57m

A huge fraction of humans don't have gametes. That definition only works for describing a species, not individuals. That doesn't need debating, he's off in his own corner talking about a completely different metric.

naasking
3 replies
1h50m

He addresses that in one of the links.

Dylan16807
2 replies
1h26m

Now you're cursing me to read entire twitter threads?

This isn't in fact my hobby horse so without more specifics I'll just treat him as talking past people and move on.

Looking at the video in the second link, it looks like he only spent three minutes talking about trans people and I don't see any explanation there about how you're supposed to apply his universal biological definition to individual people.

naasking
1 replies
56m

It's in the second paragraph of one of the links I posted:

"It happens to be embryologically DETERMINED by chromosomes in mammals and (in the opposite direction) birds, by temperature in some reptiles, by social factors in some fish."

Dylan16807
0 replies
48m

Most of the time!

Sometimes you don't get gametes. At that point, you either need to exclude those people from your classification system because it's ill-suited for this task, or you need to make your classification system significantly more complicated because there's a lot of edge cases.

heresie-dabord
0 replies
16h52m

Thanks, I'm happy to be corrected.

making a confusing mess of things.

Which seems to be the prevailing state of discourse about the matter of DEI. If I may add a reflection, maybe it was just relatively easier sociologically to recognise the injustices and inequalities that feminism decried.

KorematsuFredt
9 replies
11h2m

A lot of things have "said purpose" and the "real purpose" because of which such absolutely kafkaesque things survive in organizations.

The said purpose of-course is to make sure that the candidate is "committed to diversity". We can argue all day on whether a statement is in any way good measure of it. It really isn't. I have helped people write such statements and we have always written it with cynicism and great contempt for the people who might actually read it.

But the "real reason" which such concept found a great foothold in modern American universities is that it kind of acts as top kill to get rid of potential people who might actually ask questions critical of various ideological positions that the university's internal bodies might have. You either want a radical zealot or at least someone who is willing to play along for his own career-maxing goals. What you don't want is someone who can call the emperor naked. Diversity statements are excellent way to achieve this as I have seen people write one line diversity statements such as 'I don't have one as I do not think diversity is important'. Such person IMO is more intellectually honest and would be a good addition to faculty position but will not be hired.

You are right that there is tons of resentment around the DEI BS that people have to go through. Tech companies have esoteric training problems with terms like "allyship" and "bystander effect" and all that which basically smells rotten to lot of engineers but they cynically complete those trainings any ways.

nindalf
3 replies
5h0m

The pinned comment at the top of this thread requests that "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive". Bravo to you for providing exactly that.

Too much of the discourse around this insists that these statements are useless and counterproductive. But as you've explained, they do pretty well in staffing the leadership of these orgs with people who believe in this philosophy by weeding out people who disagree or won't go along for career progression.

mistermann
1 replies
4h26m

The pinned comment at the top of this thread requests that "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive". Bravo to you for providing exactly that.

Consider the fine grained details of the logic involved in combining "more" with "exactly(!) that".

The above commenter framed the situation as the DEI folks being necessarily strategically dishonest and malicious, as opposed to being True Believers (more technically: Naive Realists), like most people are, though with different fantasy worlds, due to the consumption of different training material combined with the same flawed interpreter.

KorematsuFredt
0 replies
44m

The above commenter framed the situation as the DEI folks being necessarily strategically dishonest and malicious.

I think the question of whether DEI folks are dishonest is entirely irrelevant (but important). You have to put yourself in the shoes of some diversity officer and think of what you will do to feel important, save your job and get promotion.

You will obviously have to come up with idea like "diversity statements", "diversity OKR" for your engineering managers. Most engineering managers are busy building products, they might think it is stupid but still would play along since the cost of compliance is very low.

When someone stands up to this, diversity officials get the villains that further help them justify their role and existence. "Look this person is creating unsafe work environment, he needs to go". All this results into an organizations which loses its ability to question DEI initiatives even more.

It is not my claim that DEI folks are all vile, they get into a conference room and make these grand plans. It is just that the moment you create positions like "DEI officials" the incentives are aligned to set the ball rolling.

lazide
0 replies
4h55m

I don’t think that is what the poster was saying. If it was, they wouldn’t have used ‘kafkaesque’.

From what I can tell, they are saying the purpose of the statements is to weed out people who will be openly honest about concerns or be willing to debate pros and cons of a controversial position held by leadership.

They could still privately disagree or not go along, they’d just have to be able to do so while keeping up appearances.

Which in my experience academically and with big-corp is very accurate. There are plenty of folks who will spout DEI party lines all day long while only hiring Asian women, or Indian men, or white women, or white men, etc. as long as no one makes a stink about it in a way they’ll get in trouble.

Notably, those folks have also finely honed their ability to nuke anyone from orbit that attempts to get them in trouble for what they are definitely doing.

From an organizational perspective, it’s actually a very valuable skill - because to make this work, they have to placate stakeholders while also getting some key metric that the organization needs ‘done’ well enough to offset their other shenanigans.

And in any sufficiently large organization, it’s essentially impossible to do that by actually doing all the things you’re supposed to be doing to the level you’re supposed to be doing them.

Which is why large organizations (and frankly societies) tend to be kafkaesque - they have too many conflicting interests and power bases that all have potentially legitimate reasons for applicability, but are irreconcilable-in-fact/impractical when ‘the rubber meets the road’.

throwaway44773
1 replies
4h56m

It's telling that dei in latin means gods and I always found it weird that people rarely point this out.

KorematsuFredt
0 replies
40m

Well, at one point the academia did think about it and then tried using IED instead but then they thought it might blow up in their face :)

tharne
1 replies
2h51m

A lot of things have "said purpose" and the "real purpose" because of which such absolutely kafkaesque things survive in organizations.

I remember sitting in conference room once and between meetings we started discussing the MBA degree and how you often needed one to move up at big companies. I mused that I didn't understand why this was so important since an MBA program didn't teach you much that you couldn't learn on the job or by reading a few books.

A colleague of mine, who'd recently gotten his MBA, started laughing out loud. He said, "You're missing the whole point. Nobody cares about the course content or what you learn. The value of the MBA is that it's proof you can spend a lot of time and effort completing bullshit assignments on time without too much heel-dragging or back talk. It tells the world you'll keep your head down and not cause too much trouble for the organization".

otabdeveloper4
0 replies
1h30m

proof you can spend a lot of time and effort completing bullshit assignments on time without too much heel-dragging or back talk.

You don't need an MBA for that, a highschool GPA would be enough proof.

lamontcg
0 replies
3h15m

You are right that there is tons of resentment around the DEI BS that people have to go through. Tech companies have esoteric training problems with terms like "allyship" and "bystander effect" and all that which basically smells rotten to lot of engineers but they cynically complete those trainings any ways.

I think this is probably a feature not a bug. Companies are all about having programs whose sole purpose is to limit liability and to (for lack of a better term) quite cynically virtue signal. And if that causes the programs to be hated and later dismantled, all the better -- because it was never about actually achieving DEI but about appearing to support it. All of the corporate DEI training that I've been through were considered "cringeworthy" by literally everyone in the company. And this was in a very left-leaning company, but it was run by mostly a pile of middle aged white guys at the top.

whoza
6 replies
22h23m

I was on the academic job market recently. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the process of writing my DEI statement was a valuable learning experience. For example, I read several interesting papers about randomized controlled trials testing the effects of various classroom interventions. I also have some more clarity about the relevant philosophical questions, both due to reading others' thoughts and due to being forced to articulate my own thoughts.

For those reasons, my feelings toward DEI statements are more positive now than they were before. Still, on balance, I think I'm inclined to favor removing DEI statements from faculty applications.

neltnerb
5 replies
20h52m

Yeah, this is what I am also thinking of. It makes sense for people in a position to create a culture or hire a team to know, it's a science you probably weren't exposed to in school and knowing the real effects that are known and studied is a darn good start to implementing DEI well. Doing it based on guesswork is probably worse than useless. So that's the non-ideological part.

If you actually care enough to study it and propose hiring processes that encourage it then that's an actual worthwhile education process. It can be little stuff... like I hide names on resumes and obscure gender to avoid that very well known bias. It's not perfect, but it's actually a net win all around to do that kind of thing, and you wouldn't know how big a deal it is and how much benefit it is for your team without reading. It's a complicated topic, and I think many of the concepts applied earnestly but scientifically testing them is a good idea. To be ideological.

This requirement wouldn't stop that, necessarily, but it means that such learning occurs after hiring rather than before. And after hiring there's a lot less incentive, and a lot to do.

SV_BubbleTime
3 replies
19h44m

it's a science you probably weren't exposed to in school

Interesting take, why do you think it is you likely weren’t expose to DEI in school?

While I’m thinking about it, didn’t we just used to call it “affirmative action”?

fsckboy
1 replies
17h23m

didn’t we just used to call it “affirmative action”?

no. in short, affirmative action represented an attempt at "equality of opportunity" in the belief that some extra pushes would remediate "the problem"

"equity" refers to forcing particular outcomes, using various measure that operate as "quotas" including the lowering of standards like entrance exam scores.

Affirmative action did not result in enough doctors meeting various criteria, so we must need to force the results we want by whatever means necessary; since we believe all people are equal, anything short of that must be the result of a pernicious mechanism

SV_BubbleTime
0 replies
13h3m

"equity" refers to forcing particular outcomes,

Oh, ok. Well we used to have a different word for that.

eecc
0 replies
18h26m

I guess: maths, physics, engineering, anything that’s not Sociology or Economics?

ForHackernews
6 replies
20h22m

I'm not a big fan of mandatory DEI statements, but if I were trying to make a positive case for them, it might go something like this:

We're a big university that is trying to serve the general public, reach students across all demographics, and produce research that is broadly applicable, not narrowly relevant to one segment of the population. We need to hire academic staff who can leverage their own personal, intellectual and cultural background to help us become a "bigger tent", but also put themselves in the shoes of others unlike themselves in the course of their teaching and research.

To that end, part of our hiring criteria are based around evaluating your ability and willingness to help us fulfil that part of our academic mission. Please provide a statement explaining how you have demonstrated this in your career to date and how you'd continue to do so at the University of Utopia.

jimbokun
2 replies
17h58m

We're a big university that is trying to serve the general public, reach students across all demographics, and produce research that is broadly applicable, not narrowly relevant to one segment of the population.

A problem I've seen with this is the assumption that subjects like Physics or Chemistry or Mathematics are not broadly applicable, if it was a discovery or research by a white man.

We need to hire academic staff who can leverage their own personal, intellectual and cultural background to help us become a "bigger tent", but also put themselves in the shoes of others unlike themselves in the course of their teaching and research.

This last part is just wrong.

You should not assume on your own what the experience of minorities unlike yourself must be like, and then treat them according to whatever you imagined in your mind.

You need to talk to people, of whatever back ground, and find out how they, as individuals, would like to be treated, what their needs are, what they are experiencing, etc.

kenjackson
1 replies
12h59m

A problem I've seen with this is the assumption that subjects like Physics or Chemistry or Mathematics are not broadly applicable, if it was a discovery or research by a white man.

The science doesn’t know race. But determining which area to research can bias toward the benefit of certain groups.

jimbokun
0 replies
5h10m

Theoretically, yes.

But I see this more often assumed than demonstrated.

eli_gottlieb
1 replies
14h50m

We need to hire academic staff who can leverage their own personal, intellectual and cultural background to help us become a "bigger tent",

I think there are contradictory imperatives here. You ultimately can't become a bigger tent across demographics while also shrinking your tent in terms of admissions selectivity. At some point, if people really mean it about serving a larger public, you just have to make yourselves into a less selective institution.

ForHackernews
0 replies
6h24m

You ultimately can't become a bigger tent across demographics while also shrinking your tent in terms of admissions selectivity.

Whether or not this is strictly true in a mathematical sense, assuming a static applicant pool (a faulty but common assumption), the fact that this is such a knee-jerk response even from commenters here on HN is really depressing.

Are we so conditioned to think of disadvantaged groups as inferior that the idea of expanding access to members of historically under-represented groups appears to you to be definitionally at odds with being a selective institution?

alpinisme
0 replies
20h0m

Yes this is definitely a part of it. And another part is the usual underlying question about how well the candidate understands and is prepared for the specific job they are entering. Different universities have different kinds of diversity challenges: some have a lot of working students who aren’t in the traditional student age range, some have a disproportionately large number of deaf students due to the presence of a good program there, some have large numbers of students for whom English is a second language, etc. Each of these requires different skill sets and interests on the part of the teacher. And a DEI statement can be a way to show/evaluate how seriously the candidate is considering the actual on-the-ground demographics of the institution and the challenges it poses, as well as how the institution is trying the change demographics (whether for reasons of market demands or principle).

rr808
5 replies
15h46m

I dont like the DEI industry, but affirmative action is good. Slavery ended 150 years ago and its disgraceful that so many African-Americans still live zero wealth, poor jobs, with second rate schools and healthcare. Many/most corporate jobs really dont require a lot of unique skills, its good that employers have a preference to hire under represented minorities, hopefully it'll help improve society for all of us.

goodfellah
1 replies
14h45m

The issue is that there are many who suffer from generational poverty and are not “diverse”. The DEI benefits should go to all of disadvantaged people regardless of skin color. And there are many wealthy African Americans. Why are they getting the benefits of DEI vs the generationally low income white kid?

EnigmaFlare
0 replies
13h28m

Not in America, but I was talking to some managers for a childcare service here and they were explaining why they try to favor brown people. One put it as "for want of a better measure". It's kind of strange since that's sort of what all racism is, isn't it? An easy shortcut for evaluating people without having to go to the trouble of investigating each individual.

kortilla
0 replies
10h48m

Tons of people had it shitty much more recently who aren’t black.

Means testing already covers all of the “zero wealth, poor jobs, and second rate schools and healthcare”. Being a minority has jack shit to do with that.

Any of the disadvantages the minorities have should be tested for directly and those should be targeted. That way all disadvantaged populations benefit and we’re not giving unfair advantages to the minority who grew up wealthy.

EricE
0 replies
1h42m

Ah, the old argument that to end racism we must embrace noble bigotry. How about ignoring immutable characteristics, period, and picking solely on merit? I love other commenters mentioning removing personal characteristics such as name, gender and race from resumes - spot on.

Eavolution
0 replies
9h56m

I'll preface this with I'm not american, and I'm from a country that historically doesn't have a problem with racism against the minorities these policies affect.

These policies always seem a bit ridiculous to me. I've done nothing to discriminate against these people, so why am I being treated worse because of the actions of people I had nothing to do with? Affirmative action policies are discriminative, just not to the group they're targeted at helping. Why can't there just be equality and leave it at that?

My personal opinion is you can't discriminate based on information you don't have, so universities/employers etc shouldn't get information on a candidates race/gender/whatever that's not relevant, because that way they can't have discriminated using it

neltnerb
5 replies
21h6m

There are a handful of contexts where it makes more sense, like for a HR person potentially, without trying to bring ideology into it that's the place it makes sense since that's the place where you can actually implement the concepts.

There are contexts where it is mandatory but makes no sense, like NSF Fellowship Applications where they're asking someone who is just finishing an undergraduate degree and is proposing a research project that ends in a PhD -- who has effectively no influence on hiring or even culture really, and is supposed to focus on the technical aspects and personal aspects of who they are. There are things you can fit in there, but let's say the mandatory question is worded so confusingly that it is hard to even guess what to write about. What, you're going to hire people to assist you in your research under DEI principles when you have no control over the budget? It's just confusing for someone in that position.

Staff hiring? That kind of makes more sense honestly, trying to be non-ideological here. Those people can actually hire people and create a culture that is either DEI positive or not, whatever you believe about whether they should.

avs733
4 replies
17h29m

There are a handful of contexts where it makes more sense, like for a HR person potentially

In academia, faculty functionally ARE HR people - with significant power

lupire
2 replies
16h51m

What does that mean?

I work in industry.

Is my my tech lead an HR person? My manager? My VP? My Board? My majority shareholders? If not, why is a faculty professor an HR person?

freeone3000
0 replies
16h15m

Faculty select teaching assistants and the research staff for their labs, effectively unilaterally. They have the power to hire and fire. They choose topics of research, and can instruct their mentees to stop a line of inquiry. This is similar in scope and power to a combined project-manager, research-manager and person-manager. They also are the decider to grant later-stage credentialing, so throw in a bit of training instructor too…

djbusby
0 replies
16h21m

Professor has more choice/control of team than your VP|Mananger|Lead

Professor is like CEO of 8 person company (or independent division). All your other examples are cogs in huge machine.

neltnerb
0 replies
16h4m

Sorry, I meant to explicitly include faculty as people who create teams and are responsible for a good work culture. I agree with you, they are HR people in practice.

jiggawatts
5 replies
18h38m

seemed very "1984" to me

In Australia, there was a recent introduction of "Acknowledgement of Country" at both the federal and state government level. Universities and other large institutions are also "doing their part". For example, in video call meetings with more than 'n' people, a manager will read out a statement for a minute at the start of the call acknowledging the "traditional custodians of the land upon which a meeting or event is to take place". In other words, the Aboriginals that white men largely wiped out over 200 years ago. See, e.g.: https://www.indigenous.unsw.edu.au/strategy/culture-and-coun...

So now, the descendants of those white men feel guilty and have to make a little speech before each meeting. It's the most dystopian bullshit I've ever had to personally participate in, ever.

This leads to some truly bizarre moments, like a recent meeting where half of the people were Indian subcontractors physically overseas, everyone else was a first-generation immigrant to Australia, and we had to acknowledge the traditional custodianship of the area by a tribe that was completely wiped out and no longer exists, not even descendants that might appreciate the gesture.

Similarly, in another meeting an "aboriginal elder" was chosen to speak because of their native heritage. That would be nice, except that this person was pasty white, blonde haired, blue eyed, and had freckles. Literally a white person making other white people feel guilty for something their common ancestors did!

The whole thing is an absurd farce played for political points, with no substance of any kind behind it. Actual aboriginals are no better off if in some city office a bunch of people in suits verbally self-flaggilate for sins committed hundreds of years ago by people that they might not even be descendants of. (Half the population is either a first or second generation immigrant!)

I wish there was some term that is the equivalent of "realpolitik", but for race relations, so that I can more succinctly express my disdain for this type of divorced-from-reality behaviour.

kanbara
1 replies
14h31m

it’s great that you as a person of european descent can be annoyed that people in the office have to make statements about traditional ownership of the land. You know how aboriginal australians live, and yet you think that changing attitudes towards the past—and reason why certain groups are disadvantaged—doesn’t help?

it’s not a “sin” — it was genocide over land that did not belong to the Crown. it’s a good thing that immigrants also have to acknowledge australian culture and heritage, as well.

as far as the white-looking aboriginal is concerned, we’re just not gonna open that door.

alpaca128
0 replies
10h36m

If reading a mandatory statement is ever changing attitudes then it's not in the direction you want. Doing this serves no real purpose, and I bet if you asked any of the affected people they'd prefer more than forced empty words.

zzo38computer
0 replies
11h34m

They are valid points; they do bad things with "diversity". I have seen such acknowledgements in Canada too sometimes, although I don't know if it is as bad as you describe there, because I do not know the details.

Better would be to actually avoid damaging the indigenous people and avoid damaging the land. What was done in the past is done, but you could avoid doing it again.

Saying stuff (especially stuff that doesn't even have proper good points and doesn't even help anything) is not a substitute for actually doing actually good things.

snapetom
0 replies
16h0m

Land acknowledgement statements are creeping into the US these days. I could be wrong, but they've been in Canada for a while.

There's been a bit more push back here. There's a lawsuit where a University of Washington compsci professor is suing the school for retaliation because he mocked the policy. He pointed out there is no evidence that the Salish people made use of University of Washington lands, so the whole thing is a farce.

Tollen
0 replies
13h4m

I frequent a lot of Australian architecture and design firm websites. 99% of them all have this disclaimer on their site before you can see any content.

Is this by force or is it en vogue to do this in certain industries?

ckemere
4 replies
15h53m

Applications for faculty positions typically comprise a CV, copies of 2-5 significant papers you’ve written, 3 letters of recommendation, a research statement, and a teaching statement. As I understand it, the DEI statement is supposed to go along with the last two.

Much of what is said about DEI statements can also be said about the teaching statement. At R1 universities like MIT, people are hired for tenure track positions based on their past (and future) research, and many teaching statements can be recitations of current hot topics (“flipped classrooms” “active learning” etc). But good ones (with evidence in letters of rec and CV) indicate that the candidate really has practiced what they propose to do in the future. To be clear, at MIT I’m sure a stellar teaching statement won’t get someone hired, but a patently false or over the top “I don’t care” one might give people pause.

As I understand, DEI statements are the same. If someone wrote “my philosophy is that we should perpetuate the structures of power and mediocrity created by focusing on wealthy pedigreed individuals rather than ability and potential found by looking in unusual places” that would raise eyebrows. Conversely, if they instead said “I TA’d for an international computational neuroscience summer school that gave opportunity to impoverished students from Africa and Asia”, people might think “That’s cool!”

But I think that most academics who are motivated by equity are not interesting in reading a ChatGPT DEI statement.

I do think that the conversation around this is really unfortunate. I find little philosophical difference between what people are looking for with DEI statements and what goes into college applications from HS students, but I hear fewer people advocating for getting rid of those essays.

ckemere
2 replies
15h42m

I think that’s consistent with the example that I gave. I suspect someone who said “I plan to give all multiple choice exams in order to simplify grading.” in their teaching statement would likely get a poor rating?

(The 76% refers to applications to an “Advancing diversity” grant program, so it seems a bit duplicitous to suggest it represents happens in faculty hiring?)

pas
1 replies
11h11m

hm, standardized test are better for diversity, no?

atq2119
0 replies
6h24m

They are, but that's not the motivation given in the example.

lazide
3 replies
22h26m

It’s just being conspicuous that they’re doing the performatively ‘right thing’, something academia is quite familiar with.

That way they can point to their statement anytime grant writers/sponsors need to show their respective stakeholders that they’re ’good folks’.

Don’t worry, regardless they’ll still treat their grad students as terribly as the law allows (and a bit worse).

lupire
2 replies
16h49m

Did you know that prospective faculty also have to write a statement about their research, teaching, and service when they apply for a job? Is that also conspicuously performatively doing the right thing in those job responsibilities?

lazide
0 replies
5h14m

Do they have to actually follow through and deliver concretely on those things? With some expected concrete impact?

If so, then I wouldn’t consider them performative at least.

freeone3000
0 replies
16h12m

(Maybe conspicuously doing what is perceived as the right thing is how people get hired…)

avs733
3 replies
17h33m

but is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument

hi! that would include me, and I would ask you to think about the following question at the moment: You are wondering if a widely utilized, and VOCALLY critiqued practice is supported by anyone...then why would it be continued to be practiced. Generally what I have found is there are two sides to this - one of which is just trying to do their job and one of which is trying to shout over those arguments.

I say that because when I talk with people like yourself who are asking sincerely, they kind of go 'oh'. I think you nailed the 'how to write a good DEI statement' articles are saying simply - this is required, here is how to do it. Looking more broadly, articles like that exist for most pieces of the academic hiring process simply because the process feels opaque and is steeped in traditions that are not well communicated. You can find them for things like the academic cover letter, the difference between resumes and CVs, research statements, teaching philosophies (which have nothing to do with philosophy), etc. The people actually involved in the DEI statement process not to talk about it, in part because they don't want to get screamed at by uninformed people and in part because they are busy.

Speaking personally, as an academic, DEI statements or some equivalent are as are many things - incredibly effective when used well and just taking up space when not. DEI statements are not, or at least not supposed to be, 'WHY IS DIVERSITY GOOD'. They aren't supposed to be that simply because anyone can write that and its useless for evaluation. We don't want some 1984 article of faith because its unhelpful to the actual goals of increasing equitable opportunities, which is still a big problem. What DEI statements are meant to be is more along the lines of 'here is how I practice inclusion' which isn't all that far removed from 'here is how I'm not actively an asshole'. That might trigger the same response from others of 'why' - but I (and others) think that's short sighted. The goal is to understand how you go about your work in a way that increase rather than restricts the opportunities of people of different identities. Academia has strong and tall power structures in classrooms, labs, etc. Making active efforts to hire people who are not going to use those power structures to reinforce a long history of racism and sexism is (from my perspective) the only way we can make history history. Someone who can identify why only using classroom examples about baseball or american football is an educational problem, and not do it, is beneficial to the overall enterprise because it (in increasing classroom equity) ensures equal opportunity and that we identify the best students - rather than the biggest sports fans. Bigger picture, they show not just things about DEI but about a much broader range of skills around engaging with people that are critical to effectiveness in all the roles a faculty member plays. We already fight that most graduate labs look very homogeneous. The problem isn't that they do, the problem is that those norms reduce opportunities for everyone.

To add some color, I'll give actual examples from DEI statements/conversations that help me do the job of hiring better:

* One candidate wrote in theirs about how title IX was unconstitituional and is unfair to men by giving spots to women who are bad at math. Great, you can have that opinion, but our school is going to flag you as a liability risk because we are legally compelled to comply with title IX

* Talked about their experience in a truly punishing lab environment as a person of color and how important that was to their success and 'tough love' as their mentoring style. Again, think what you want but we care and are evaluated in part by our completion rate for phd students - we also care about their well being and success and experience tells us this wouldn't.

* Last one got asked in an interview about initiatives to 'diversify' the participant pools in medical research to do more representative science. They saw it as a non issue, and then brought up several tropes about Black people in particular - including trouble being on time, holding still, following instructions and how that could negatively impact their research. Again, sure agree to disagree between them and me, but NIH cares and if you blow off NIH requirements you aren't going to get grants and aren't going to get tenure.

If you want to see how it works in practice, here are the rubrics I developed for my department to evaluate DEI statements (which are totally blinded as are all application materials): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3agby1zv572km6bjuiymd/Teachin...

zeroonetwothree
0 replies
16h0m

I’m going to be honest, those examples don’t really make me feel that DEI is serving a valid purpose. If those are the best cases then I will say good riddance. Uniformity of opinion should not be a goal of academia.

noobermin
0 replies
16h29m

Why do you think choices in hiring are the only way to ameliorate current conditions?

TMWNN
0 replies
11h34m

They saw it as a non issue, and then brought up several tropes about Black people in particular - including trouble being on time, holding still, following instructions and how that could negatively impact their research.

In 2020 the Smithsonian—The Smithsonian—said that individualism, the nuclear family, the scientific method, working hard, and planning for the future are aspects of "white culture". Years later I still can't believe it. <https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/artic...>

medellin
2 replies
10h10m

I’m still looking for the single person who was offended by the use of master as the default git branch name. I never found them but everyone got to pretend like they were making a difference for a little bit.

These statements are the exact same thing to me.

aleph_minus_one
1 replies
6h53m

I never found them but everyone got to pretend like they were making a difference for a little bit.

Keyword: virtue signalling

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling

(in Germany, it is common to use a much more derogatory term for a related concept: "[der] Tugendterror" [virtue terror]).

lettergram
2 replies
19h35m

My wife enjoys going to these struggle sessions on DEI for academics (she has a PhD in neuroscience). She’s of the opinion she hasn’t been oppressed and in fact has regularly given opportunity because of her sex, so when lecturers try to reason with her or she has to write these letters they don’t know how to respond. I’ve attended a few where they try to convince her she’s repressed and the entire room just starts arguing she is. Weirdest discussion to witness, especially when the real repressed folks are probably the janitors and security. Many never even had the opportunity to go to school

smeej
1 replies
18h11m

There's also this weird mentality of, "If I was oppressed because of quality X, everyone else who has quality X was also oppressed because of it." When did it become OK to assume everyone would have the same experience just because they have some specific quality in common?

j45
2 replies
17h33m

I think it would help to know what you think a coherent DEI statement would be.

DEI statements as you're hinting can be quite performative and full of pagentry and then things slowly drift back to how they were all along.

DEI as a field is new, and I find they are not given as much slack as non-DEI people figuring out something new and getting slack for taking risks and improving messaging.

I can try to find a few links that helped me understand more. One thing was the difference between DEI and EDI.

It seems EDI (equity, diversity, inclusion) in that order might be an updated revision that can help.

lupire
0 replies
16h47m

There are a boatload of bad programmers. Does that make programming bad?

hn_throwaway_99
0 replies
16h35m

DEI as a field is new, and I find they are not given as much slack as non-DEI people figuring out something new and getting slack for taking risks and improving messaging.

I don't think I agree with this. The only reason I think people have such an issue with DEI is that in has permeated much of their academic and professional life (in certain professions). To be honest, if you look back years ago you'd be just as likely to see people complain about the management fad of the day, but the difference with DEI is many people were/are genuinely afraid to speak against it for fear of the negative impact on their careers and lives. "non-DEI people" in new fields are "given more slack" because people just don't care if what these non-DEI folks are doing doesn't affect others' day-to-day lives.

One thing was the difference between DEI and EDI. It seems EDI (equity, diversity, inclusion) in that order might be an updated revision that can help.

To be honest, the "E" in DEI is always the framing I had the most problems with, because in practice I've often seen it arguing for equality of outcome, vs. equality of opportunity, and this is something I fundamentally disagree with. Yes, I know what equity perhaps is intended to mean, but in practice I've seen examples where if the outcome distribution doesn't exactly match the population at large then some people conclude the process is somehow unfair and needs to be changed. This is not hypothetical, e.g. consider the kerfuffle when ElectronConf was canceled years ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868.

gedy
2 replies
22h23m

I don't know if it's just DEI, or other types of politics, but there seems to be a recent trend towards "you must say you agree with us, otherwise you are ostracized".

My personal opinion/observation is that as corporate and academic has trended towards less direct confrontation/arguments, this has resulted in a lot more passive aggressive behavior such as statements like these, some debatable "codes of conduct", etc.

I mean no harm when I say that it has always felt like a more "feminine" way of fighting and arguing vs "masculine" like physical or verbal arguing. Perhaps it's a result of more women in the workforce and leadership.

metabagel
0 replies
17h20m

Our understanding of what constitutes harassment or a hostile work environment has evolved over time. Likewise, there is growing acceptance that systematic racism exists in the U.S.

The original sin of this country was slavery. We continue to try to find ways to ameliorate the long term harm which it did to our national culture. DEI is one of those attempts. And likewise, there is a desire to treat all people as individuals with equal opportunity. For the most part, this country has not lived up to that ideal.

lupire
0 replies
16h39m

I'm not getting into what's "masculine" or "feminine" because I believe that's contextually constructed nonsense, but I will say that some people use "nonviolent communication" tropes in a metaphorically violent way. I've also seen it used well to improve relationships and outcomes.

ethbr1
2 replies
22h27m

I'll take a shot at a strongperson argument...

DEI statements are important because they show individual awareness of historical inequities and current biases that form modern society.

In an organization that wishes to promote more equitable outcomes for society and its employees, ensuring that existing/prospective employees are aware of biases that might color their own judgement is useful in counterbalancing them.

As a consequence, a DEI statement at the time of hiring or promotion is useful in encouraging self-reflection and promoting DEI.

... that said, from a personal perspective (and with apologies to anyone working in HR), they seem like the typical "moderately good idea that's run through the HR cost center grist mill and comes out as the most unimaginative, milquetoast check box possible" implementation.

rayiner
1 replies
21h15m

DEI statements are important because they show individual awareness of historical inequities and current biases that form modern society.

Even assuming that’s true, what is the rationale for plucking that issue out of the various ones facing society and demanding that professors express concern about it? Forcing people to characterize something as a priority is itself quite an ideological imposition.

lupire
0 replies
16h32m

Because employers want employees to have the skills and knowledge to work on problems the employers care about.

AtlasBarfed
2 replies
21h8m

When we have all the infrastructure for an even more oppressive and intrusive total information awareness regime, DEIs are so far from 1984. DEIs are just dumb paperwork and formal procedure on top of the usual facade of hiring and promotion rigamarole

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
20h43m

Ya, I would put DEI up there with leetcode interview questions: not very good filters, but filters nonetheless that you have to navigate.

jppittma
1 replies
15h50m

I don't know if or not this is "coherent," but my experience has been that the type of person to oppose something like this is more often than not the type of person we were trying to filter out anyway. There may be some false negatives of course, but in terms of keeping the klan from high positions in your institution, this sort of thing seems to work.

hn_throwaway_99
0 replies
15h33m

There may be some false negatives of course, but in terms of keeping the klan from high positions in your institution, this sort of thing seems to work.

You've highlighted exactly the problem so many people have with these DEI statements in the first place. If people have some (IMO valid) disagreements about what DEI has become, they're basically bucketed in with "the klan". So instead, people just shut up and tell reviewers what they know they want to hear, and this ideological litmus test becomes the norm.

DharmaPolice
1 replies
22h26m

Not really the same thing but I worked for an organisation which had as a policy that every single team meeting had to have diversity & equality as a recurring item for discussion. 95% of the time this just meant the meeting lead saying "So...diversity - anyone got anything to say?" and then we moved onto the next item after a short silence. But every once in a while someone would raise something that might not have otherwise been brought up. It's a very crude instrument but it probably did get people to think a little more in that direction and maybe led to a little more awareness overall. The other standing item was health and safety which had a similar outcome.

SV_BubbleTime
0 replies
19h41m

It likely wasn’t General Motors you worked at… but every GM meeting must start with a safety tip - or some DEI claim.

In the engineering meetings I can tell you which one happens. And in the executive meetings that certain people can’t wait to spend 5-10 min of probably $20,000 worth of a dozen executives time with their feelings on the matter.

I fondly remember a heated discussion about chainsaw safety techniques.

squokko
0 replies
10h38m

There was a very simple reason for them: to hire more non-Asian minority faculty. Just as with SAT scores, if you evaluate candidates numerically, Asian faculty will take ~50% of the spots and Black faculty will take ~1% of the spots. But if you add a job requirement of "has helped do DEI woo for Black students" then it's a lot easier to justify hiring the Black candidate.

ruszki
0 replies
11h56m

It’s easier to defend than you think. It’s enough to show that there was no proof of that they didn’t work at the time of introduction, and there was indication that it maybe worked. I definitely don’t have the knowledge to prove or disprove it. If there is no evidence now about its efficacy, it should be removed. Unfortunately, I’ve seen 0 discussions which mentioned any hard evidence. Even in this case, it was removed because of feelings according to the link.

cm2187
0 replies
6h22m

But what if you disagree with the underlying political ideology of DEI, ie the mandating equality of outcome over equality of opportunity? That's apparently a political opinion you are not allowed to hold if you are going through those application processes (and I have seen the same in the promotion process of large corporations). Is that acceptable? Do I also need to be a registered democrat to apply? I think it is morally bankrupt and reminiscent of the hollywood blacklist days.

briantakita
0 replies
13h52m

I can see a DEI program as promoting the social values of an institution. A position that I once had was this. If all ethnic groups have a bell curve of intelligence. All things being equal, the ethnic groups would have similar distributions of academic qualifications.

So if a particular ethnic group is disadvantaged in a quantifiable way. Then applying a factor to who is accepted into the academic programs. Would bring in people at the upper ends of the bell curve across the different ethnic/racial groups.

In other words, all things being equal across quantifiable ethnic/racial opportunity. This would bring in the top tier candidates across all ethnicities/racial groups. And if all ethnicities/racial groups are equal in intelligence. Then it would bring in the top tier candidates across *all* ethnicities/racial groups.

MisterBastahrd
0 replies
21h21m

Remember the phrase "HR is not your friend?"

HR is also a hilariously complex set of rules and bullshit that isn't that easy to manage in large organizations. Separating out DEI specifically from HR allows companies and organizations the ability to have employees ensure that the obligations of companies regarding their legal obligation towards discrimination laws are met without interfering with core HR functions. Companies haven't been adopting DEI out of the goodness of their hearts. There's a direct financial advantage when you can prove to a court that you have provided direction on issues regarding diversity. It's just a collection of CYA, and their DEI statements are an extension of that.

LaurensBER
45 replies
1d9h

Although the intentions behind DEI are good such a top down approach doesn't seem to get the desired results (i.e optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify).

Unfortunately the name (and perhaps ideas?) are now tainted and I hope this doesn't impact the bottom up approaches (i.e support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings, and in general just being chill and accepting about people) which probably should have been the focus from the start.

JumpCrisscross
21 replies
22h42m

support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings

If that support is available to those who need it irrespective of race, sex, et cetera, sure.

Targeting underserved populations is one thing. Restricting access based on protected characteristics is illegal under any commonsense interpretation of the law.

worik
11 replies
22h9m

Restricting access based on protected characteristics

What about when you turn that on its head?

"Promoting access based on ..."

If you assume a finite set of places to access then the approaches are equivalent, but for the the emphasis

I think it matters (I am unsure DEI is the solution) that people can access professional services supplied by professionals from a similar cultural background to themselves

In Aotearoa we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school for exactly this reason, and it seems to have been both hugely successful and extremely triggering.

JumpCrisscross
9 replies
22h4m

we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school

I see the argument for setting aside seats for people who fluently speak the language. I do not based on race. ”Black patients hav[ing] better interactions, on average, with physicians of their own race” is a problem, but segregating medical care on the basis of race isn’t the solution [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7174451/

worik
7 replies
21h54m

see the argument for setting aside seats for people who fluently speak the language. I do not based on race.

It is based on culture

It is not enough to have genes.

And since most Māori people speak English it would simply be stupid to base it on language as that language would be English not Te Reo Māori

resolutebat
3 replies
21h28m

Aside: calling the Māori language "Te Reo Māori" in English is unhelpful performative posturing. Yes, that's what the language is called in Māori, but we don't call Chinese "Zhongwen" or 中文.

worik
2 replies
19h42m

Untrue

It is what it's called, here, in NZ English

resolutebat
1 replies
12h55m

I know, but it's still unhelpful performative posturing. There would be zero risk of confusion if it was called simply "Māori" or "the Māori language" instead, the way we do with every other language in the world.

squigz
0 replies
8h40m

it's still unhelpful performative posturing

Why exactly is it "unhelpful"? You say there's no risk of simply saying Maori - what is the risk in calling it what it's called?

JumpCrisscross
2 replies
21h52m

It is based on culture

If one can define culture without relying on biological heredity, sure again. It would be better, however, to address the underlying issue: lack of cross-cultural knowledge that causes the reduced outcomes. (And why Māori students aren't getting into those programmes in a race-neutral process.)

darkhorse222
1 replies
20h52m

I feel that deconstructing the entire culture of race is not really a practical suggestion for solving the issue. This outcome is not uncommon when you ask those against DEI how they would solve it. Often they recommend systematic solutions that they would in the end also be against because those solutions would surely use race as a targeting mechanism.

JumpCrisscross
0 replies
19h47m

deconstructing the entire culture of race is not really a practical suggestion for solving the issue

Sure. But normalising discrimination based on race entrenches it.

tzs
0 replies
16h34m

I remember seeing a similar study that took place at a busy walk in clinic in an area with a very diverse population. People would come in and get treated by whichever of the doctors on duty that day was available.

The researchers found that when successful treatment would require the patient to follow the doctors instructions after leaving, such as getting a prescription filled, taken the full course of medication, doing or refraining from certain exercises, etc., the patient was more likely to actually do those things the more the doctor was like them in things like race, gender, and ethnicity.

lazide
0 replies
21h28m

If everyone is well fed and feeling secure, it feels good to be generous.

When folks are hungry and/or insecure, it feels like taking from their and their children’s mouths and giving to their competition.

And there are essentially fractal levels of division possible.

And so the wheel turns.

lazide
4 replies
22h5m

‘Positive discrimination’ - aka excluding someone based on these attributes - is always required to make the numbers look good when slots/resources are limited - either in applicants of a given attribute or in overall resources.

So someone who would have gotten a slot based on - say - pure technical performance - won’t if these criteria are taken into account.

It’s fundamental and ‘working as intended’.

JumpCrisscross
3 replies
22h3m

If you find your school has a racial distribution different from the population, targeting means making an extra effort to go to those communities. Increasing the number of applications from them. The actual filtering of the applications, however, should be neutral.

lazide
2 replies
18h57m

If there are a fixed number of slots, actually filtering without considering those criteria and yet ending up with a ‘good’ set of numbers based on those criteria is actually impossible.

Regardless of any additional outreach being performed.

It’s basic analysis.

JumpCrisscross
1 replies
17h40m

actually filtering without considering those criteria and yet ending up with a ‘good’ set of numbers based on those criteria is actually impossible

If there is an underlying difference in quality, yes. If it’s people from one group not getting applications in, no. There are a lot of smart people gate kept from opportunities due to trivial things like application fees.

lazide
0 replies
17h2m

And what application fees are you talking about exactly?

Because if that is the issue, that sounds pretty cheap and easy to fix.

jltsiren
2 replies
20h28m

There is no such thing as a fully inclusive community. A community is defined as much by the people it excludes as the people it includes. If you try to ensure that everyone is welcome, someone else will make the decisions who to exclude. Typically by making things too uncomfortable for some groups.

If you genuinely want to target underserved populations, you must be prepared to exclude those who are not in the target audience.

kristopolous
0 replies
9h30m

It's about casting a net as wide as possible because for the one Srinivasa Ramanujan we know about, there's countless others who never got the right circumstances.

JumpCrisscross
0 replies
19h49m

no such thing as a fully inclusive community

We have agreed as a society on a set of protected classes. Not being allowed to discriminate based on race or sex doesn’t mean not being able to discriminate at all.

jimbokun
0 replies
17h31m

Targeting underserved populations will necessarily disproportionately benefit African Americans because of the history of extreme oppression responsible for them being underserved. And I think that's a good thing.

I agree this can be accomplished without explicitly targeting race of other protected characteristics.

inglor_cz
8 replies
22h26m

I am almost certain that by 2100, the current worship of skin-deep diversity will be relegated to the cabinet of ancient curiosities, along with lobotomy, bell-bottom jeans and haruspicy [0], and people will worship something equally weird, but momentarily fashionable.

Diversity is not really a value. If it were, it would have been recognized as such millennia ago, because already the Egyptians and the Babylonians knew what mixed societies looked like. It is not as if American diversity is a new phenomenon, never seen before. Rome or Alexandria in 1 AD was very diverse, and so was India when Buddha was still a young and naive prince.

Real human values, virtues and vices don't change that much across centuries. You can still discern courage, truthfulness, sloth or compassion in stories written three thousand years ago and half a world away. Diversity as a pseudovalue is a modern fad of American origin, partly conjured into being by ancient American racial problems.

Even many American allies (Japan, Taiwan, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Argentina, Israel etc.) don't bother to even pretend to worship at that DEI-emblazoned altar, so dear to the good professors of Berkeley. Countries with more distant political systems like the Arab sheikhdoms or China probably don't even understand what the word is supposed to mean.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex

worik
6 replies
22h6m

I am unsure about most of those countries but Japan and Israel have a reputation for being extremely racist

Prejudice of any form is unhelpful. Racism is particularly nasty

inglor_cz
4 replies
22h0m

DEI is prejudice squared. Individuals are stuffed into tight racial and gender boxes in a big bout of social engineering. It is better than stuffing them into boxcars and deporting them, but ultimately the logic behind those treatments is the same. You are not John Doe, you are White or Black or whatever, a Lego brick that can be replaced by another Lego brick of the same color and the bureaucratic system will be happy.

If you want to address racism, throw away the entire neo-racist stuff that now passes for enlightened and start again. "Whiteness" et al. belong to the same heap of historical refuse as "Judeobolshevism" or "degenerate art".

I can't think of a better way to deepen and perpetuate absurd divisions among people than the identity obsession and pseudo-quotas that the modern American progressive movement is pushing.

squigz
2 replies
10h19m

I can't think of a better way to deepen and perpetuate absurd divisions among people than the identity obsession and pseudo-quotas that the modern American progressive movement is pushing.

I can: going back to ignoring the division that was already being perpetuated.

inglor_cz
1 replies
6h57m

There is no going back to the 50s or 60s, American demography has changed profoundly since then and culture, too.

There is, though, some space to swing the pendulum too far in the other direction, where white male is the universally undesirable employee/student, and East Asian male meets the same fate because he is "white-adjacent".

squigz
0 replies
6h25m

I wish I had the time and energy to unpack this. I hope someone else does.

shrimp_emoji
0 replies
19h36m

Thank you. In the immortal words of Aenea, "choose again".

AdrianB1
0 replies
20h20m

I think Japan is not racist, but xenofobe (they dislike and avoid other cultures, not races) and Israel is very non-racist as they are are united by the religion regardless the race. Also racism is not particularly worse than other similar forms of prejudice - if you look at the German concentration camps, race was one of the factors but not the top.

resolutebat
0 replies
21h25m

Rest assured, woke politics in the form of support for/opposition to immigration of people with the wrong skin color is a major issue in all Scandinavian countries.

nsajko
6 replies
1d9h

Were the intentions behind colonialism good, too, in your opinion?

concordDance
4 replies
1d9h

Probably depends on the colonialist. I expect many were in it for money at the expense of the colonised population, but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians".

leosanchez
1 replies
1d6h

but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians".

Do you have any examples for this ?

kanapala
1 replies
1d9h

Other thought “And clean our cities of the crooked nose vermin” so it’s all good?

defrost
0 replies
1d8h

In practice both paths were bad in varying ways, it's just that one was paved with a disregard for others, the second paved with good intentions.

eg: Daisy Bates oozed good intentions

https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bates-daisy-may-83

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bates_(author)

and strongly put the case that:

     "As to the half-castes, however early they may be taken and trained, with very few exceptions, the only good half-caste is a dead one."
and a number of other firm opinions that spawned a regime of hugging "the good ones" to death while abusing the "in betweens".

But yeah, good intentions.

bozhark
3 replies
22h56m

By using DEI as a metric you end up doing the complete opposite of “optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify…”

worik
1 replies
22h8m

By using DEI as a metric you end up doing the complete opposite of “optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify…”

That is a puzzling statement. Why is it true?

AnimalMuppet
0 replies
21h25m

Let's say you're trying to hire programmers. DEI could mean going to historically black colleges and women's colleges, and encouraging people there to apply for jobs at your company. This gets you more diverse applicants, from which you pick the best available, because your goal is to hire good programmers.

But what DEI actually means in practice is someone in HR keeping statistics on how many non-white-male programmers you have, and scolding you because you haven't hired enough non-white-males. That kind of DEI leads to non-optimal use of everyone's talent, because you hire non-optimal people for the job openings you have.

lazyasciiart
0 replies
21h30m

No, the complete opposite of that is when you only allow white men to do things - not when you attempt to give everyone the opportunity and don’t have a good way to choose the optimal one amongst them. And that opposite setup is, I’m sure you know, exactly how things worked in most of the west until relatively recently. The overwhelming impression is that because the current setup is closer to overall optimum and further from an optimum for white men, people see it as a net loss.

willis936
0 replies
21h11m

I had a dinner with someone directly affected by MIT's recent slashing of DEI. At one point they mentioned that they made sure a venue had chairless locations and shuttles with lifts for baby strollers. Someone else at the dinner said "for disabled people too, right?" The person who worked at MIT organizing events reacted like they had never once considered disability access. The term "inclusion" should not be co-opted to mean "exclusion".

langsoul-com
0 replies
1d9h

"The path to hell is paved with good intentions"

crooked-v
0 replies
1d9h

I think the more important question is: are the intentions to get actual results, or just to sidetrack anything that would take actual effort with 'but we have DEI statements'?

ssijak
36 replies
1d9h

Clicked through some links in the article. Really mind boggling material. How did such garbage end up in top universities is really weird.

leosanchez
18 replies
1d9h

I don't understand how this crap got into America of all countries

anonylizard
9 replies
1d9h

Certain people, discovered how easy it is, to change entire institutions, by applying targeted pressure towards individual managers of those institutions.

No manager dares to refuse these initiatives because they'll be instantly named by the activist, with the help of journalist friends, and ensure they lose their job.

Hence by going one at a time, a small group of activists can change far larger organisations.

Of course, every action has a reaction. Enough resentment has built up, that made anti-woke a legitimate position to take in the public eye, with no longer much risk of losing the job. This makes all the previous tactics lose their power.

Also, the 'anti-woke' crowd is learning these tactics too. From congressional grilling of university presidents, to gamers explicitly documenting the DEI consultancy involvements, its all targeting and absolutely destroying individuals to cause a chilling effect on the populace at large.

leosanchez
7 replies
1d6h

No manager dares to refuse these initiatives because they'll be instantly named by the activist, with the help of journalist friends, and ensure they lose their job.

Doesn't this feel very authoritarian ? Just replace manager with citizen and you have USSR.

lazide
5 replies
22h18m

Authoritarianism would be if it was top down.

This is more a leftist version of McCarthyism. Aka intellectual purity testing and purges.

marcosdumay
2 replies
20h57m

Authoritarianism would be if it was top down.

If a minority can impose their will into institutions, destroying the life of anybody that opposes them, you need a quite messed-up conception of power structures to place that minority "down".

lazide
0 replies
18h41m

When said minority are just as likely to be peers or subordinates within the power structure, I don’t see how it could be ‘from the top’. Do you?

hotdogscout
0 replies
19h56m

Because you can't put the power to influence behavior on a straight line.

Each clique has it's own power structure.

Charisma, rule of law, pity, revenge, resentment, morality, resources, it's all a part of it.

hallway_monitor
1 replies
21h31m

I don't know why you're getting down voted for this. It's a very precise description of what has been happening the last decade. Conform and declare your support or be ruined, even if you have valid criticisms and disagreements with the doctrine.

lazide
0 replies
18h45m

I would assume it’s precisely because it’s a precise and accurate description. Given the current climate.

eastbound
0 replies
21h33m

Do you think every participant to Mao’s cultural revolution was consenting?

No. People do whatever they can throughout history, and end up having to participate to larger changes. The only remedy we’ve found was Humanism, l’esprit critique, education for everyone, and raising awareness and allergy to all authoritarian acts, but see, in the last 50 years, I’ve seen younger people who aren’t even aware who Diderot is, let alone had enough literacy to read or write those books fluently if they spent the time, even in $130k jobs. Then we flooded each country with about 12% people who haven’t had those Humanism tenants taughts at school.

I’ll from using a stronger metaphor because it will sound cheesy, but by losing the teachings of logic, rhetoric and history, our civilization is not able to hold the pillars of democracy anymore.

geraldwhen
0 replies
21h14m

I’ve been here. “We can’t hire any more white men” is probably an illegal stance, but what do I gain from fighting that? Nothing, and I suspect I’d be fired.

I’m a tadpole in a huge lake. I have no influence over these likely illegal hiring decisions. And unless I’m just incredibly unlucky, these same conversations are happening everywhere at big companies.

YZF
2 replies
22h20m

American society is a bit messed up going back to slavery (and maybe the treatment of the indigenous people). That part (America of all countries) is not a surprise. It's also not new, random e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

Maybe this also has to do with the general idea that it's not up to a government to do things, it's up to individuals, which to me is how Americans think. I would think that dealing with inequalities in society, ensuring everyone has equal opportunity and has their basic needs provided for (health, education etc.) would be the function of a government. If the government isn't addressing that then you have a vacuum. To me it's obvious that e.g. hiring policies or university acceptance criteria are not the right place to fix society but rather issues should be addressed upstream from those. By the government. But having government do things seem to be something Americans dislike.

lazyeye
1 replies
11h56m

Just as a side point, approx 3-4% of slaves ended up in North America. Most went to the Carribbean and South America (Brazil mainly). Nobody ever seems to want to talk about those countries though for some reason. Nor do they seem particularly interested in the slave trade that exists now in many countries in one form or another. My guess is its because these other examples are not politically useful.

TMWNN
0 replies
11h10m

Just as a side point, approx 3-4% of slaves ended up in North America. Most went to the Carribbean and South America (Brazil mainly). Nobody ever seems to want to talk about those countries though for some reason.

The average SJW/Redditor/DEI advocate sincerely believes that slavery has existed in only one country in the world's history: In the United States, involving Africans. The etymology of the word "slav"? Brazil? Haiti? Guadeloupe? North Africans enslaving Europeans? Vikings taking thralls? Feudalism? Never heard of 'em.

primax
1 replies
20h36m

America is the most likely country for this to happen to, due to the unresolved issues surrounding slavery and the abandonment of reconstruction after the civil war. This is compounded when viewed through the USAs founding mythology.

Other countries have done worse, but they haven't done so as hypocritically as the United States.

cooper_ganglia
0 replies
3h4m

unresolved issues surrounding slavery

country was founded 248 years ago

the "issue" stopped happening 159 years ago

I don't think an issue that lasted for barely 1/3 of our country's history and hasn't been legal for the entirety of this century, last century, or much of the century before that is the problem. I think people's addiction to being full-time victims is the issue, because if you're always a victim, you never have to be responsbile for anything in your life, you can always blame your imagined "oppressor". People do this, teach their children that they are also victims regardless of their actions, and maintain a long line of familial victimhood. DEI is a direct symptom of that.

fullshark
0 replies
22h54m

Cause few are brave enough to stick their neck out and stand up to it. Those who do are called nasty names and are forced to withstand a ideological purity trial that carries some potential of being fired.

There is a lot risk for a minor reward, especially if you don't actually care about the institution you are defending.

Izkata
0 replies
19h5m

It was too outrageous to be believed until it was too late.

Remember the term "SJW" (social justice warrior) from around a decade ago? That was wokeism and DEI before it got its current branding. The people who saw this coming were dismissed as crazy.

6312783123
0 replies
1d9h

Supposedly it's decades long work by the Chinese Communist Party that started in the 1960s and led up to where we are now. I wonder if the Soviet Union was also involved?

Here's an article, from what appears to be a reliable source: https://www.hoover.org/research/beijings-woke-propaganda-war...

"The effects of this brainwashing are shown in the American Left’s adoption of the CCP’s key concepts and nomenclature."

"Today’s common use of the word “progressive” by the radical Left traces its intellectual origin straight to the Marxist-Leninist “dialectical” categorization of people into reactionaries and progressives. It is not from the modern legacy of the American Progressive Movement represented by William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M. La Follette, and Henry A. Wallace."

"The primary method of Mao’s brainwashing in Yenan was “consciousness raising,” which has become since the 1960s the main strategy of the American Left, especially the radical American feminist movement."

"This was the first time I heard that phrase, which, over the years, moved out of China and on to the streets and fashions of America in the 1960s."

By the way I'm getting a lot of upvotes, and downvotes too for this post. So it's a mixed reaction from the readers of this site.

bmitc
7 replies
22h32m

People might be surprised how dumb top universities can be. When everyone is biased to thinking they're the best, it pretty easily creates tunnel vision.

ethbr1
6 replies
22h24m

Tenure is also a blessing and a curse.

It ensures academic freedom.

But it also ensures someone has limited checks on their bullshit, until they retire.

throw-the-towel
3 replies
20h32m

Isn't mortality supposed to be check-and-balance on the bullshit in science?

userbinator
2 replies
19h31m

Did you really mean mortality as in "exercising the 2nd Amendment", or morality?

mhuffman
1 replies
19h16m

I think they meant mortality as in the old guard that have power and use it to protect their point of view die off and are replaced with a new guard that does the same.

ethbr1
0 replies
5h25m

Definitely mortality.

For those unfamiliar with how org structures work in academia/tenure... (at least, assume this is still true)

Once attaining tenure, your promotion track focuses on faculty leadership positions.

These positions are selected by a combination of administration & faculty. It varies institute to institute, but strong candidates usually have backing from both.

These positions are almost always held by tenured faculty, as non-tenure is looked down upon for historical/political reasons.

Note: You only need to please 2 types of stakeholders: administration & faculty.

Ergo, the path to promotion becomes:

   - Make tenure
   - Politick with faculty colleagues
   - Politick with administration
   - Wait for someone to die
This leads to a weird bent where your bosses (faculty) are selected for their ability to navigate political winds and say the thing that most people agree with, moreso than being disagreeably brilliant.

seanmcdirmid
0 replies
20h21m

This came more from administrators in universities and funding agencies than the professors themselves, who are mostly dragged along for the ride, or go through whatever motions it takes to get promoted or obtain an administrator position. Tenure would actually work more against administrative abuse than for it.

mhuffman
0 replies
19h18m

It ensures academic freedom.

Perhaps it used to, however a tenured professor can easily be "cancelled" today if their academic research or writing strays too far from home base. Frankly, I am not sure it ever did. It seems like it might have always been used more as a threat (by retraction) than anything else.

LaurensBER
7 replies
1d9h

If you see yourself (or your group) as a victim it's easy to rationalize rather extreme measures to "fix" the world.

The intentions behind a lot of these things are good but the sensitivity of the subject has made it hard(er) to have a healthy discussion about these issues.

germinator
3 replies
22h47m

I don't think that's a good explanation. The vast majority of people behind such initiatives don't come from underprivileged or victimized backgrounds.

It's more about this idea of being an advocate for the downtrodden - a good person fighting the racists on behalf of those without a voice. And because you're fighting the good fight, it's of course OK to make the oppressors uncomfortable or to bully them into submission.

Depending on your priors, this is either messed up, or it's messed up not to act and accept the status quo. Pick your poison, I guess.

whythre
0 replies
22h21m

I mean, that sword cuts both ways. If you just decide that the other side of the aisle is comprised of monsters, why stop at making them uncomfortable or bullying them? Why not persecute them further? And why would they not do the same to you, if given the opportunity? It all just seems so vicious and wrong headed. We conceived of tolerance in order to allow for discourse and the above perspective seems so stupid regressive.

warkdarrior
0 replies
22h21m

The anti-racist's burden, so to speak

jorvi
0 replies
20h52m

C.S. Lewis wrote it sharper than I ever could:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

drewcoo
2 replies
1d9h

But we're not talking about protected classes. They did not take "extreme measures."

We're talking about large institutions adopting policies to shield themselves from potential lawsuits from protected classes.

eastbound
0 replies
21h44m

They do censor research on the opposite of their viewpoint, though. Which further reinforces their impression that they are right. We’re back to 1590 in terms of civilizational evolution.

TrackerFF
0 replies
1h28m

Decades of institutional discrimination.

I'm a white upper middle-class dude, and there used to be a time where it was only guys like me that got into prestigious schools, and had a chance at landing influential jobs - while others would either get silently rejected, scolded for trying, or simply laughed out of the office.

So while the intentions for DEI were good, the reality might be that they've regressed back to initial problem. Should some people be rejected, simply because they're overrepresented? And must your workers write/sign a statement that basically says "I, [name], hereby agree that discrimination is good if it is for the greater good."

j-krieger
33 replies
1d9h

The American focus on race is a bit insane to outsiders. Putting such a big focus on race in university applications is just weird. Even worse, having top universities openly discriminate against people based on their race or heritage with affirmative action or similar policies, all in the name of equality, is unbelievable to Europeans like me. What the hell is wrong with the US if a person has a worse chance to be accepted into uni just because they happen to be born Asian? How is no one in DEI committees seeing the utter hypocrisy here?

I firmly believe that the US is your best chance when you look for a country with equality and acceptance regarding race, religion, and culture. A lot of my US friends experienced a dire wake-up call when visiting and finding their belief that Europe is more accepting and less conservative than the US to be dead wrong.

blackhawkC17
22 replies
1d9h

Race is a distraction from the ultimate divide: class. IMO, every policy that wants to promote equality should revolve solely around class.

In every place on earth, richer upper-class people are more advantaged than those from the lower classes. Every social policy should focus on lessening that gap (I recognize that the gap can't be closed entirely).

sobriquet9
7 replies
22h53m

every policy that wants to promote equality should revolve solely around class.

That was the case in USSR. There were university admission quotas for workers, peasants, etc. In practice, they resulted in discrimination agains Jewish applicants.

To fulfill the class quotas, the examiners had to fail a disproportionate number of some of the strongest applicants. A whole set of "Jewish problems", colloquially known as " coffins", was developed. At MIT, Tanya Khovanova has written on this subject.

Avicebron
5 replies
22h29m

Not sure exactly how this relates, but you're still saying with people being failed that the class representation was more equitable? Not sure what them being jewish has anything to do with it?

jimbokun
3 replies
21h48m

A brutal truth is that wealthy, upper class people have resources for training their kids that legitimately better prepare them for academic success than poorer kids.

The rich, smart kids in this example were Jews.

sobriquet9
2 replies
21h38m

In USSR, nobody was rich.

skissane
1 replies
15h26m

In USSR, nobody was rich.

Despite Soviet propaganda to the contrary, social class continued to exist in the USSR.

At the top of the class hierarchy, were senior party officials and their families.

Next rung down were university-educated professionals (doctors, engineers, scientists, etc)

Then came skilled factory workers, etc

Unskilled labourers were near the bottom of the Soviet class hierarchy

sobriquet9
0 replies
1h51m

Those distinctions are irrelevant. Education was free in USSR. Access to math circles and specialized math schools was also free. It was not necessary to hire a tutor or pay for advanced classes to get admitted, unless we’re talking about the Conservatory or MGIMO.

Source: I was born and received education in USSR, so can tell Soviet propaganda from reality.

sobriquet9
0 replies
21h37m

Class based admission meant discrimination against Jews.

Gibbon1
0 replies
21h37m

Friend of mine's boyfriend was born in the USSR and was Jewish. To get into college he had to pass a mathematics test that anyone who learned math in high school wouldn't be able to pass. He got in. Then his dad applied for a visa to move to Israel and they kicked him out.

Guy hates communists, leftists, f*scists, Putin, and anything like DEI. Basically anyone that seems to have a habit of doing to people what the communists did to him.

I think it's a good point to be really suspicious of systems that categorize people into convenient boxes based on things that have no control over. That then determines what happens to them.

nojvek
7 replies
1d2h

100% ^.

But then it ends up being tied to race since black folks are on average coming from a less wealthier class than white people.

And class is hard to judge objectively. If you go by income tax, many wealthy people show very little income since they live on their family wealth. E.g a house fully paid off and only earning meager income from a side business, while their stocks they inherited are climbing millions in valuation.

The rich are really good at hiding they are rich.

blackhawkC17
5 replies
23h10m

And class is hard to judge objectively.

Very simple, actually. $1 million+ in annual income or $10 million+ in assets is an objective starting point, all the way to mega billionaires like Musk and Bloomberg.

svieira
3 replies
22h37m

Congratulations, the small-time local farmer with 10 acres, two quality high tunnels, a mid-sized tractor, and a couple of trucks and trailers is now wealthy. Assets are not necessarily liquid.

blackhawkC17
1 replies
22h11m

Edge cases do not negate the whole point. For example, I'm pretty sure you can find a billionaire who's very cash-poor, i.e., wealth is locked up in the value of a private company. Does not change the fact that anyone with $1 billion+ of net worth is ultra-rich.

Whatever the edge case may be, anyone with $1 million+ annual income and $10 million+ in assets is undeniably upper-class, including your hypothetical farmer. Note that I never claimed their assets should be taken...just stating an objective definition for upper class.

Detrytus
0 replies
7h23m

For example, I'm pretty sure you can find a billionaire who's very cash-poor, i.e., wealth is locked up in the value of a private company

Donald Trump comes to mind, struggling to pay $464M bond set by New York judge.

michaelmrose
0 replies
17h52m

10 acres of farmland is worth around $30,000 its also 200 meters by 200 meters they probably don't need much of a tractor and can probably do with one truck for what amounts to a hobby nobody could live on.

The USDA says a small family farm averages around 231 acres or about $693,000 in land. Even adding the equipment its a long way from 10M in assets and that isn't even accounting for the elephant in the room DEBT.

Any sole proprietorship which is net positive to the tune of 10M is in fact by any reasonable measure wealthy.

bawolff
0 replies
22h35m

Most of those situations the student wouldn't own those assets. If you go by how much money relatives have, then you end up being unfair to kids who have been disowned or if the kid has a rich uncle that has never given anyone a penny, etc.

michaelt
0 replies
22h54m

> But then it ends up being tied to race since black folks are on average coming from a less wealthier class than white people.

Yes, addressing class inequality will also help to address racial inequality.

Seems like a strength, not a weakness.

HDThoreaun
4 replies
1d1h

Even lebron james gets the n word spray painted on his house. Class may be the main divide, but race is still an absolutely huge one that transcends class.

twotwotwo2
2 replies
22h50m

How?

dang
0 replies
22h40m

How can you even remotely believe that wasn't a false flag?

Please don't edit your comments to deprive replies of context. That's unfair to both repliers and readers.

Edit: It's always fine to add an edit, as I did here.

acdha
0 replies
22h46m

What evidence is there that it’s not what it seems? Its not like there’s a shortage of people who’d try something like that in this country.

dudeinjapan
0 replies
22h44m

Nit: it was spray-painted on his gate, not his house (mansion).

bozhark
0 replies
22h37m

It’s by design

pelorat
7 replies
1d9h

I'm European too and I can assure you that non-white people are discriminated at the admission stage to top European universities. Not via race, but via name. It's well known that universities and landlords reject people because they have a Muslim sounding name.

We have DEI in Europe too, but here it's increasingly codified into law.

j-krieger
3 replies
1d7h

I can guarantee you this is not the case, at least at the uni where I‘m doing my PhD. There is no name in the admission system, it‘s done automatically by grades or tests most of the time.

kolinko
0 replies
21h0m

+1 - University of Warsaw and other universities I know - admission is automatic based on grades only

bpodgursky
0 replies
22h57m

I don't see how you could possibly hire graduate students into a lab without knowing their research and publishing history (impossible to anonymize).

Ekaros
0 replies
1d5h

Same, and even in the ones that have interview. I would guess outside very bad language skills it might even give boost...

mk89
0 replies
21h55m

Could you please name one or two of such universities? I am a EU citizen and I literally never heard of this. I am aware that in some regions in some of our countries you might end up with a racist professor etc., but never heard you can be excluded based on name.

That's simply illegal.

mik1998
0 replies
19h8m

In Poland, admission to public universities is only based on your standardized test score. People grading standardized tests don't know your name or anything beyond a number, so discrimination is simply impossible.

mbroncano
0 replies
23h1m

Any reference or link to those policies? I have never seen such a thing.

tinyhouse
1 replies
21h48m

Yes, the US is obsessed over race. That's because Americans are traumatized. I agree it's not a good thing. However, diversity in university admission is a good thing. There are many different ways to have diversity. Diversity is not easy to achieve and since it's sensitive topic it's often not done right.

j-krieger
0 replies
33m

Diversity in university admissions is a good thing. But US universities guarantee equality of outcome. This is wrong, it should be merit based. If you argue that there is a clear ethnicity correlated class divide, you can achieve more fair diversity by giving more chances to student's from poor backgrounds, instead of focusing on their ethnicity.

ajsnigrutin
29 replies
19h32m

I never understood the american obsession with race (well, and sexuality).

I live in a small EU country on the edge of the balkans... what the hell should I write if I wanted to get hired? I'm white... everyone here is white... but just by living here, I might have a more "diverse" worldview (compared to a white american is massachussets, with enouh knowledge and money to attend MIT) than someone of a different race (also living in massachussets, with enough money and kowledge to attend MIT). But as to "what i've done", I can only put "saw two black people this year, both were tourists, saw a couple of buses of chinese tourists, or maybe japanese, I don't know".

Engineering schools should keep to engineering, killer robots won't care about your race, no matter if you're the one building them or the one making the weapons to fight against them.

eapressoandcats
14 replies
18h58m

The American obsession with race is deeply rooted in historically having a large, enslaved underclass that was kept down using racial justifications and against which there is still measurable bias across all areas of life (hiring, police stops, criminal sentencing, etc.)

It’s not unique to America but it is a major differentiator from other countries.

A key thing to note is that many homogeneous countries are extremely racist but don’t notice it because it doesn’t hugely impact day to day life. A mot-so-malicious example of this is that when my brother went to Korea to teach English, the parents wanted him (a white man) instead of the Asian American who was born in America and also going to the same Ivy League school. Obviously there are much less fun examples of racism but that one was… interesting. In the US that level of open racial preference would have been considered socially unacceptable, especially among the upper middle class college set.

ajsnigrutin
5 replies
18h4m

Didn't you guys do the same to every other immigrant? Italian? Irish? Even us, slavs?

And isn't affirmative action a form of open racial preference? In my country, there's no way a race would play any benefit in eg. college acceptance... tbf., colleges don't even see the candidates until they're accepted (with few exceptions).

jimbokun
3 replies
17h41m

Every immigrant was treated poorly initially, but nothing compares to the special hell inflicted on African slaves brought to this country. With the possible exception of the Native Americans.

ajsnigrutin
2 replies
17h34m

Sure, but you don't look at that, but look at race.

For example, would affirmative action policies give priority to a white irish man/woman, a descendant of the poorly-treated irish people ~100years ago, or to a black person whose (grand)parents immigrated to USA after the slavery was abolished?

jimbokun
0 replies
14h47m

I think favorable treatment for direct descendants of slaves is a much more defensible position, than favorable treatment based on “race”, which is difficult to even define.

eapressoandcats
0 replies
15h56m

Yeah I think there are plausible arguments that affirmative action is not the right way to solve the problem. Mostly I’m trying to explain the dynamic that causes affirmative action to exist.

eapressoandcats
0 replies
15h59m

This is done to every immigrant group, but generally most immigrant waves assimilate and are treated more or less equally. Through all those waves Black people were consistently and persistently treated badly, with things like official segregation, anti miscegenation laws, voting restrictions, redlining, and other unofficial policies and extra-judicial public murders.

Not sure what country you’re in but the fact of a permanent visible racial/ethnic underclass that has only recently won the right to vote among other things creates that dynamic.

keepamovin
3 replies
17h23m

The American obsession with race is deeply rooted in … [history of slavery]

I think that’s part of it. But Europeans invented (or at least widely commercialized ) this instance of slavery, and they aren’t fretting about it. I think America’s fiery vivisection of its own morality Probably comes more out of Its role as “world saving hero police” in WWII.

The ‘suddenly thrust upon them heroism’ caused them, in the subsequent decades, to then intensively examine all the ways they were, perhaps, not living up to it.

And also, I think there’s a more fundamental thing that by being in a role of “world police” you necessarily have to use violence, but whenever you use violence, there’s always inevitably guilt and shame attached to that somewhere in the psyche, or the collective subconscious.

So… while much of the violence may have been done under the idea of righteousness, I don’t think the American people can easily escape the guilt that comes with that and I think that’s one of the reasons they kind of have such Tumultuous self reflection, about how good they really are or not.

Pretty complex national psyche.

eapressoandcats
2 replies
15h45m

Yes Europeans invented slavery, but the deadliest war as a percentage of the population in American history was the American Civil War. This lead to a period of violent segregation and repression even after the Union won. In many places Black people had effectively fewer rights than naturalized and second generation immigrants and until at least 1964.

I agree that there is other complexity for the US psyche but slavery and segregation is huge.

zaroth
1 replies
15h6m

Europeans did not in fact invent slavery.

eapressoandcats
0 replies
14h49m

I was responding to this person’s more precise comment with shorthand. But yes, specifically Europeans invented transporting Africans from Sub-Saharan Africa to plantations in the Americas to do labor intensive harvesting of sugar, tobacco, and cotton.

His point was that Americans didn’t uniquely invent that institution, not that there was no slavery outside of Europe.

Seattle3503
1 replies
18h10m

A key thing to note is that many homogeneous countries are extremely racist but don’t notice it because it doesn’t hugely impact day to day life

It is 10 years old, but WaPo created a map of how people responded to a question about someone of another race being their neighbor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...

to add to what you said, racism probably doesn't impact anyone they know either. In that sense maybe it isn't a "problem" in homogeneous countries, but it does seem like a powder-key just waiting for the fuse to be lit. Particularly in an increasingly global world.

frickinLasers
0 replies
15h21m

Wow, this is an illuminating map. Restores a bit of faith in Western values.

NemoNobody
1 replies
18h23m

The US has required an "immigrant class" since before and after slavery ended. People forget that we didn't like the Germans, Irish, Italians, Polish, etc

At one point in the South there were jobs only Irish were hired to do bc they were very dangerous and slaves were too valuable to expend on that labor.

Immigrants are necessary for our economy and have been since the beginning. This isn't a great truth but it's the truth.

eapressoandcats
0 replies
15h42m

Yes but Black people in the US have been historically treated _worse_ than immigrants, which is entirely unnecessary and leads to a lot of efforts to fix the results of previous subjugation.

transcriptase
9 replies
19h6m

Which sort of goes hand in hand with the idea of white privilege. If I grow up dirt poor, with uneducated parents, in a rural dirt poor region where there wasn’t anyone except other white people in a 100 mile radius for me to be favoured over, apparently I’ve still benefited from some sort of systemic or inherent bias in favour of myself on the basis of race. Which apparently needs to be corrected and puts me at a disadvantage when applying to certain schools or jobs.

axoltl
7 replies
18h52m

The term "white privilege" is a bit of a misnomer. What it's mean to convey is the fact that a white person is much less likely to get passed over for something than a person of color. It doesn't mean an actual privilege, more the lack of a hardship.

That doesn't mean one didn't experience hardship, just that it's unlikely to have been due to the color of your skin.

llm_trw
4 replies
18h42m

Which may have been true in 1970s, today I get told in emails to pass over White and Asian candidates because we need more diversity. The sheer hubris of putting racism in writing makes me feel like I'm in a topsy turvy 1950s.

noisy_boy
1 replies
13h54m

It is true in 2024 also, just that you have to choose a location different from US; go to Southeast Asia to see it in action everyday, where everyone is extra nice to white people - sales people are extra polite, people laugh extra hard at everything white people say, the lady at the counter pays first attention to white people among the group of folks waiting and so on. I have heard white people say "I loved the experience, everyone was so nice"... Of course it was, of course they were.

To be fair, there are flip sides to this too e.g white folks are more likely to be overcharged, more likely to be subject of scams etc but that's just the other side of the same coin.

llm_trw
0 replies
12h44m

So in South East Asia they are nice to minorities? That's nice.

jimbokun
1 replies
17h38m

Yeah, it's especially confusing trying to understand how it's the Asians fault, too.

ajsnigrutin
0 replies
17h30m

Yep, on one hand, concetration camps in US for japanese people not that long ago, and now discriminated against when applying for college...

transcriptase
1 replies
18h14m

And so the cosmic scales apparently require that this person be discriminated against, not on the basis of anything they’ve done, or have had done for them, but because of the colour of their skin and what wasn’t done to them. Regardless of all other hardships and lack of opportunity they may have experienced their whole life.

I still don’t follow the logic, if you’re claiming there is some to be followed.

Dylan16807
0 replies
13h39m

And so the cosmic scales apparently require that this person be discriminated against [...] because of the colour of their skin and what wasn’t done to them.

The scale was already tipped because of race. Is it unfair to try to tip it back? Is there no way at all to reasonably apply pressure?

Even if your answer is that it's unfair, it should be easy for you to understand why some people try.

And if any attempt to adjust the scale counts as "discrimination", then "discrimination" is not necessarily a dirty word.

not on the basis of anything they’ve done, or have had done for them, [...] Regardless of all other hardships and lack of opportunity they may have experienced their whole life.

Well, if you had a way to measure that, it would help a lot. But if you don't have a way to measure it, I feel like disregarding it is probably reasonable.

"Don't try to fix problem X, because for some people problem X compensates for problem Y" is a pretty bad reason not to try to fix X. (With problem X being racism and problem Y being the other discrimination this white poor person faced.)

jimbokun
0 replies
17h39m

To steel man the "white privilege" argument, would be to say a black person growing up equally poor as you, would still be at a disadvantage to you in terms of how they would be treated.

(And yes, that's ironic if you are then discriminated against specifically due to the assumption you are inherently privileged.)

SpaceManNabs
2 replies
18h52m

killer robots won't care about your race

that is not necessarily true... while i agree with most of your sentiment, this statement is specifically why I believe everyone is racist, and nobody knows how racist they are if they only live in a homogeneous place. "this" being not understanding that being race-blind also being blind to correcting disparate treatment.

Regardless, DEI went off too far in the track of identity politics instead of correcting all forms of socioeconomic disparity so wtv. I am not surprised that you could not see the best argument in all the noise and the chaos.

ajsnigrutin
1 replies
18h1m

But wouldn't race-blindness treat everyone the same?

For eg. college acceptance, in my country, there is no was to prefer any kind of race, because colleges don't even see the candidates before they're accepted (with some few exceptions), and things like american "affirmative action" would be seen as directly racist.

SpaceManNabs
0 replies
6h1m

that would require assuming everyone is race blind. That isnt the case and we should stop pretending it is.

And people still find ways to infer race.

jimbob45
0 replies
14h55m

It’s not American - just leftists. It’s not race either - only blacks. It’s racial favoritism parading as racial equality.

Germans hate being associated with a Nazi movement they never stood for even though it was their country. I don’t want to be associated with this racial superiority either even though it is, in fact, my country.

2OEH8eoCRo0
24 replies
22h10m

DEI is a strange issue in that nearly everybody agrees that it's a good target to aim for yet any action taken to get there is discrimination.

I frankly see it as a cheap shortcut that some very privileged people want to take to try to wash away the sins of our racist past, not to help people, but to make ourselves feel better- or attempt to.

zarathustreal
20 replies
21h34m

I think the modern-day conflation of the philosophical notion of diversity with “diversity of skin color” / “racial diversity” is actually harmful. When we speak of diversity today we often imply a sort of supposed-deserved reparations toward the “minorities.” Obviously there are so many incorrect aspects of these assumptions, but many people in power, perhaps all, have accumulated guilt that needs an outlet.

Diversity, the platonic form, is about diversity of thought, opinion, and experience. It is about improving our ability as a group to solve the problems we face by introducing alternative perspectives and viewpoints. It has nothing to do with race or gender necessarily but demand for diversity greatly outweighs the supply and as with all measured things, measuring the number of “diverse” hires has ceased to be a meaningful metric. Granted, it never was a meaningful metric as such, but it has become actively harmful in modern day.

rayiner
19 replies
20h57m

think the modern-day conflation of the philosophical notion of diversity with “diversity of skin color” / “racial diversity” is actually harmful.

I absolutely agree with this. To use myself as an example: as a Bangladeshi who grew up in the American south, I bring a super diverse viewpoint to a group of say white new englanders.

But why does that matter in a professional setting? I’d love to hear someone precisely articulate how they think I’d behave differently from a white new englander in the same position, and why that “diversity” would make the team “stronger.”

AnthonyMouse
15 replies
20h28m

When it comes to optimizing a sorting algorithm for some hardware, it probably doesn't matter. Now suppose you're making a user interface design choice. It would be good to have someone who knows how users from a different subculture would interpret it.

But things like that often have more to do with culture/geography than race. Someone from Mississippi will have a much different perspective than someone from Massachusetts, even if they're the same race. And a larger difference in perspective than two people who grew up across the street from each other, even if they're different races. But that doesn't show up in the group photo for the brochure.

rayiner
14 replies
20h17m

Is there evidence that Americans of different ethnicities interpret user interface features differently?

If not, isn’t it concerning that in the year 2024 we casually assume that these sorts of differences exist? Isn’t that an example of DEI thinking accentuating the notion of differences? It seems like a new take on this: https://youtu.be/E8PBrhFN35c?si=90DSnwgHubAvJwr8

AnthonyMouse
10 replies
20h2m

Cultural differences exist. For example, colors have different meanings in different cultures:

https://blog.grio.com/2020/06/uxui-design-across-cultures-us...

Ethnicity is then being used as a proxy for culture, even though it's a bad one, because it's a visible one.

It's basically starting from the premise that cultural diversity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. Whereas traditional racism is more like starting from the premise that cultural homogeneity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. It's applying the same fallacy to the opposite premise, which is an error regardless of which premise is correct.

SV_BubbleTime
9 replies
19h26m

UI colors can be racist?

This is ideological tea-leaf reading.

AnthonyMouse
7 replies
19h7m

UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures.

Suppose you don't care anything for all of this political noise and you just want to make money. Do you want to use the same colors on your website in the countries where red implies danger as the ones where red implies prosperity and vitality? If it will be the same for everyone, might knowing how some large subset of the viewers will interpret it change what you choose?

CyberDildonics
5 replies
16h21m

There is no evidence for what you are saying.

kanbara
4 replies
14h25m

red has pretty strong connotations in some east asian cultures.

just like how 13 is taboo, 4 and 7 can be taboo. these things do matter sometimes. respect matters.

CyberDildonics
3 replies
14h21m

Show me software that's bright red due and doesn't use 4 and 7 due to 'culture'.

Dylan16807
2 replies
14h7m

That's a big goalpost move from the original claim that meanings can be different.

CyberDildonics
1 replies
6h3m

No it isn't. They said UIs are different in different cultures because "red implies prosperity and vitality" so prove it.

Show me some examples and evidence. Anyone can make claims based off of cliches, but when it comes time to back it up with real world examples everyone either goes silent or gets upset and makes the same claim more aggressively.

Chinese historical art has a use of red due to cinnabar being believed to be healthy and that persists in a few areas like red envelopes, but 'red means prosperity in some cultures' doesn't mean their computer interfaces are different. Their stop lights are the same too.

https://soft4europe-france.com/documentation2018/11-40/EN/do...

Dylan16807
0 replies
1h34m

The actual claim was "UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures."

I don't know about that prosperity thing, but I can give you an example that happens a lot. Some groups use red to mean stopped and green to mean moving, while others use red to mean danger and moving, and green to mean safe and stopped. This isn't directly country-related but I believe there's significant variation based on location.

Oh, wait, while searching to double check that I found an example of exactly what you asked for. CJK stock market displays tend to use red for increases, while the West uses red for decreases.

cyberax
0 replies
12h48m

UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures.

Really? Can you provide actual examples?

JFYI, I speak Russian, Ukrainian, German, and Mandarin Chinese. I've used native-written apps in all these languages, and I have not seen any significant variations in the UI color selections.

I guess Mandarin Chinese is probably the best example because the red color is seen as more "festive", so it's more common in various app icons.

Der_Einzige
0 replies
15h48m

If you use black for “bad” or destructive operations and white for “good” or creative operations, you’re perpetuating literal anti-blackness.

kanbara
1 replies
14h24m

japanese ui is often more dense and information rich. there are left to right and right to left cultures. tonnes of difference between cultures and understand of the world.

skissane
0 replies
8h56m

Does hiring someone whose native script is “right-to-left” make a difference to the product though?

On the one hand, there are people who deeply understand the technical intricacies of Unicode BiDi yet can’t actually read Arabic or Hebrew

On the other hand, if the business doesn’t view Arabic markets (or Israel) as viable to pursue, it doesn’t matter how much you are aware of those languages, it is irrelevant to the product

And what about backend developer roles, where UI concerns like BiDi are largely a non-issue?

int_19h
0 replies
12h18m

The canonical example is hand gestures and their use in UI elements such as mouse cursors.

More broadly speaking, exposure to different languages can often make you aware of issues that are not familiar to someone who only knows English, such as e.g.: existence of grammatical gender; pluralization that has to deal with more cases than just one/many (e.g. different forms for 2/3/...); the fact that placeholders in a format string may need to be reordered in different locales; drastically different length of text in different languages; the fact that notions such as upper/lowercase are not universal; sequences of letters that are treated as single characters in some languages; etc. Now of course all this applies to non-native speakers as well, but for more "exotic" languages out there it's usually their native speakers who provide such experience.

TheCleric
2 replies
17h46m

Because most people in technology have end users. Quite often those end users come from many different backgrounds. Having more people in the room who can think in terms of a larger subset of the user base will always produce a better product.

I work in the post secondary education sector. I am the only person on my team who doesn’t have a college degree. I often have to help them see our software through that lense so that we don’t make assumptions that all of our users are college educated or even know what their post-high school options are.

rayiner
1 replies
6h33m

The fact that you’re casually comparing differences between users of different races to the different between people with different education levels is remarkable. You think that race is so meaningful?

TheCleric
0 replies
48m

I think your background and experience is meaningful. And, like it or not, people of different races frequently have differing backgrounds and experiences.

quandrum
0 replies
20h46m

I think DEI as implemented is worse than this. It’s a calculated, prepared defense against the possibility of future bigoted behavior.

Corporate America (which increasingly includes universities whose primary business is endowment investment) don’t just want to wash away our past, they want to ensure they can keep operating business as usual.

DEI is insurance. Yeah the bad thing may happen but we paid for it before hand so we are insulated against further repercussions.

oefrha
0 replies
15h33m

nearly everybody agrees that it's a good target to aim for

You mean nearly everybody agrees in your circle, because you can easily find strong opposition if you bother to look. And that’s after making saying the opposite out loud a career-ending offense in lots of places, kinda hard to not agree with it if you want to remain employable.

AdrianB1
0 replies
20h44m

DEI exists in countries with no racist past. Does it make it aby better? Also DEI exists in places that were historically very diverse, like the Balkans (a mix of ethnic, culture and religions) and it did not help, actually, because it is highlighting the differences that we worked for hundreds of years to integrate. Fortunately there was no significant impact around here as people were wise enough.

sensanaty
17 replies
16h44m

The western idea of DEI has always puzzled me ever since I first came across it (or at least the D portion of DEI, which in my mind is the most important one).

I'm a Serb by blood and grew up in and have lived in Indonesia for the majority of my life, and I went to an international school with kids from quite literally every single corner of the earth, many of them being some exotic mix of various ethnicities.

Despite that, many of us are actually amazingly similar in many ways - We have a very distinct int'l kid accent that we all share, we grew up with extremely similar experiences, listening to the same music, being exposed to all the same things. Despite the superficial differences, I actually wouldn't call us a very diverse group at all when you really look at us. Some years later when I was studying, I met an int'l girl from the Bahamas and I was amazed at how similar her and my life were in many ways, despite being a literal ocean apart in completely different islands/nations. I had infinitely more in common with her than any other Serb I've ever met, yet alone the Dutch people I've met in my move to the Netherlands.

When I moved to NL, I instantly noticed that my friends and I were very different to the people there. Yet if some HR person would interview me, a white-skinned guy, and then my best friend, a black-skinned guy who has African/Japanese ancestry, I'd definitely be placed in the same "bucket" as the white Dutchies around me and my friend with the black Dutchies, despite him and I actually having identical experiences and mindsets and not really having anything in common with the Dutchies. This is, of course, understandable as an initial reaction, but my problem is that all the DEI shenanigans never get past that initial surface-level nonsense. I will probably never be labelled as anything other than "generic white guy" or perhaps at a stretch sometimes, the "eastern european guy".

I guess what I'm trying to get at in this strange ramble is that ultimately DEI should be focused on diversity of thought, and not just superficial characteristics, yet it never works out that way. Often the exact opposite, in fact, where viewpoints that don't match the superficial characteristics are often swatted away since those situations are harder to navigate than the cookie-cutter approach.

underlipton
4 replies
16h0m

You actually explained the need for DEI.

>Yet if some HR person would interview me, a white-skinned guy, and then my best friend, a black-skinned guy who has African/Japanese ancestry, I'd definitely be placed in the same "bucket" as the white Dutchies around me and my friend with the black Dutchies, despite him and I actually having identical experiences and mindsets and not really having anything in common with the Dutchies.

If they're putting you two in different buckets, how likely is it that it's to do something with one bucket and something else with the other? I imagine that, on average, the white-people-who-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other bucket is going to fare better than the black-people-who-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other bucket.

DEI is meant to counteract that. It's concerned with the initial surface-level nonsense because the initial surface-level nonsense, driven by socioeconomic and political structures and implicit bias, is what keeps HR et al. from being able to reach deeper and make conscientious calls vis a vis diversity of thought.

afro88
3 replies
12h30m

Why not measure on diversity of thought then?

_heimdall
1 replies
7h25m

Because measuring diversity of thought is much more difficult, and thought isn't a legally protected class.

commandlinefan
0 replies
12m

thought isn't a legally protected

So the law justifies the law?

underlipton
0 replies
4h13m

That's the goal. But you can't get there, under our current system and circumstances, without some DEI-like anti-filter. It's not either-or; "Measure diversity of thought," is step #2, after, "Counteract the social gravity of tribalism in its myriad forms."

jacklbk
3 replies
14h0m

As an Asian, the DEI idea and how it was executed puzzled me as well.

Apple's first VP of diversity said [1]:

“Diversity is the human experience. I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.”

“there can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.”

She had to resigned [2] for saying so. That really confused me, isn't what she said... true?

[1]: https://qz.com/1097425/apples-first-ever-vp-of-diversity-and... [2]: https://nypost.com/2017/11/17/apples-diversity-chief-lasts-j...

mordae
1 replies
11h50m

From my personal experience as a central European male, they would be missing women and their outputs would have predictable and easily rectified mistakes. Unless their customer base is 90% male and they are OK with that.

And it's exactly that the experience shapes us. In the West, gender roles are still very pronounced, shaping our experiences in certain ways. Males are taught to go for wins, females for maintainability for one.

nikkwong
0 replies
10h53m

I don't think it's implied that she's making the claim that this group is going to be perfectly representative of their target demographic. She's simply saying that there is heterogeneity in a group that is ostensibly homogenous through a DEI lens.

Gender roles are just as pronounced in the East; me being in China as I write this. Maybe this says a little bit more about our biology and a little bit less about structural bias.

ImHereToVote
0 replies
8h49m

I think the goals of a sufficiently complex and large system is what the results are.

throwaway22032
1 replies
16h20m

I identify very strongly with what you've written here.

A guy who studied at Eton and a guy who grew up in a rural village in Uganda couldn't be any more different regardless of whether they can both tick a Black African box on an application form.

The same is obviously true of a guy from a poor part of Glasgow vs. a guy who studied at Eton, regardless of whether both could tick a White British box.

It's so far from any reasonable sense of truth that I feel like I'm in some sort of bad acid trip whenever the topic comes up. To me, the act of trying to categorise people in this way is in and of itself horribly racist.

MaxHoppersGhost
0 replies
14h11m

This occurs at business school in a big way. They hit diversity quotas with super rich kids from Mexico City who are probably direct descendants of the conquistadors who pillaged the people these diversity quotas are supposed to benefit.

hackerlight
1 replies
8h54m

I guess what I'm trying to get at in this strange ramble is that ultimately DEI should be focused on diversity of thought, and not just superficial characteristics, yet it never works out that way.

I think you're missing the point of DEI. The advertised purpose of DEI is to counteract racism. It's easy to be sympathetic to that objective if you look at recent history. For example, watch a movie made in the US as recently as the year 1990, and you'll see a stark under-representation of anyone Black. It's hard to chalk that up to different education levels, because it's not like acting requires formal education. Let's face it, it was racism. And this racism pervaded every industry, having inter-generational effects that compounded over time. The idea of DEI therefore is to act as an opposing force.

My main problem with DEI is it's corrosive to the social fabric. To constantly remind people of ethnicity is not a good idea. It should not be front of mind all the time. A shared civic identity should be front and center. There's also an anti-egalitarian anti-individual aspect to DEI thinking that I dislike. And the third thing that puts me off about DEI is the people who run these programs seem to be over-represented by ideological extremists and racists. Black supremacism type ideas are tolerated in these circles when they should be resolutely discarded as ethnonationalist nonsense. It is hard to fully support it until they purge themselves of such personalities.

Amezarak
0 replies
50m

In 1990, 12% of the population was Black. [1] In California, they were 6-8% of the population. Today those numbers aren't very different. And in fact, Americans have consistently overestimated the percentage of Black people in the US, in part due to media representations. [2]

None of this means that Hollywood is/was not racist, but the problem of media representation is different from how it is usually presented. For example, Black actors have difficulty being cast as villains, because there's a longstanding fear in Hollywood about how that would look. [3]

[1] https://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1991-02.pdf

[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/4435/public-overestimates-us-bl...

[3] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/kumail-n...

raincole
0 replies
8h1m

It's "DEI by photography". You need to see DEI when you look at a photo of a group of employees.

lukan
0 replies
11h38m

"This is, of course, understandable as an initial reaction, but my problem is that all the DEI shenanigans never get past that initial surface-level nonsense"

It is literally all only about the surface-level - the surface of the body, the skin color. Defining diversity by this single trait is the opposite of diversity in my opinion, which your story shows quite well.

bsimpson
0 replies
13h12m

There's a hegemony that controls vocally-progressive places like San Francisco, big tech companies, and universities.

People who espouse DEI also tend to espouse slogans like "psychological safety" and "bring your whole self to work." Unfortunately, those slogans are as thinly constructed as the Diversity example you called out: it's code for privileging particular groups of people who look trendy in recruitment materials and PR. If I actually brought my whole self to work, I'd be fired.

Ironically, people who are critical of such policies don't feel psychologically safe. They don't want to be prejudged to be assholes, who then don't get invited to parties or get managed out at work. So, people in predominantly progressive spaces don't say out loud that the emperor has no clothes.

When DEI was first introduced, its champions insisted Diversity would be broadly constructed - that it was about enhancing creativity and identifying blind spots. Instead, it too often really means "we want a token {black, gay, etc} {person, club, etc} because it's fashionable." Bring a totally different perspective and life experience but superficially look like the majority? "Sorry, that's not Diverse enough."

If these spaces actually welcomed diverse ideas (and skepticism in the scientific method sense), perhaps we could learn from the good parts of diversity and build a society that works better for everybody. Instead we get Affirmative Action dressed up in newer clothes and whispers to trustworthy friends "can I tell you what I really think?"

WesolyKubeczek
0 replies
9h17m

It's amazing how shallow is the "Americanized" DEI perspective when you look at your country of origin and its neighbors. Former Yugoslavia is, comparatively, not very large, but it contains a whole lot of very diverse groups, sometimes so that the "melting pot" occasionally starts throwing angry sparks around. But to them, you're all just... "white". And thus your life experience must be also "white" and "privileged", right? Right?

Sometimes I really want to take all those privileged campus kids and their little twitter accounts and throw them into a Total Perspective Vortex.

ethbr1
17 replies
22h41m

One thing I've found useful in parsing modern news is to remember:

A pile of extreme occurrences does not an argument make.

Because there's insane stuff happening somewhere, to someone, all the time.

With the benefit of digitized news we've enabled lazy trawls to create a pile of "Look at how extreme and crazy ____ is!" to support any viewpoint on any topic.

Anti-gun? Here's some insane gun owners. Pro-gun? Here's some horrific crimes.

That's modern opinionated news in a nutshell -- here's a pile of extreme occurrences, look at how extreme they are, so you should agree that the other side is crazy.

An actual argument involves more annoying to fudge (and admittedly, harder to compile) data like frequency, normalization against population or historical averages, geographic localization, etc.

I've found arguing from questions rather than statements helps. What's the root question? And then what data would answer that question?

zdragnar
8 replies
22h19m

It isn't just modern news, people tend to be intellectually lazy on any topic they are emotionally invested in.

Just look at the fallout from Harvard professor Roland Fryer publishing a study (after hiring a second set of grad students to review the data because he was himself surprised by the results).

People didn't react logically, with proportionate arguments, reasoning or counter data. They reacted emotionally, forcing him to get police protection, suffering calls for his resignation, and worse.

resolutebat
7 replies
21h34m

Context for others who missed this particular storm in a teacup: https://freespeechunion.org/harvard-professor-needed-armed-p...

On the question of non-lethal uses of force, the study found “sometimes quite large” racial differences in police use of force, even after accounting for “a large set of controls designed to account for important contextual and behavioural factors at the time of the police-civilian interaction”.

In stark contrast to non-lethal uses of force, however, the study observed that when it came to the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – there were no racial differences “in either the raw data or when accounting for controls”. According to one case study of the Houston police department, black people were actually 23.5% less likely to be shot by police, relative to white people, in an interaction.

nucleardog
4 replies
12h23m

Any media coverage that isn’t from a niche right wing news site yelling about the woke kids?

clarionbell
0 replies
11h19m

So it's not true?

rendall
0 replies
18h6m

Fry's treatment was a travesty on multiple levels.

hn_throwaway_99
0 replies
12h36m

Wow, I hadn't heard this before l, and it made me pretty furious:

An important scholarly intervention within a particular field of academic research, you might say. But Prof Fryer has now revealed that at the time the research was conducted, Harvard colleagues familiar with the results urged him not to publish his findings, telling him that he’d ruin his career.

This whole article is sad and disgusting, especially because, as a result of this research, Prof Fryer was proposing some actual interventions to reduce biased applications of non-lethal use-of-force, but because the data didn't fit the prevailing narrative, it was attacked. Just gross.

AnthonyMouse
3 replies
19h21m

An actual argument involves more annoying to fudge (and admittedly, harder to compile) data like frequency, normalization against population or historical averages, geographic localization, etc.

We've seen that even these aren't that hard to fudge. Selection bias, p-hacking, mobbing researchers who publish politically unpopular results as a deterrent, etc.

What you need is basically the opposite of that. Replication of controversial results in preregistered studies by independent researchers trusted to be honest by both sides of the controversy. Refuting results you don't believe to be true using evidence rather than silencing the original authors. A culture of good science.

How to get that is a different question.

ethbr1
2 replies
13h28m

There's gradations of good.

I'd argue that we're at bad now, and specifically worse than even 20 years ago, itself worse than 20 years before that.

The pillaging of journalism funding, by Google and Facebook for ad revenue, substituted with "I dunno, the Internet will figure something out" isn't one of our better moments as a culture.

AnthonyMouse
1 replies
10h14m

Everybody is always quick to blame the internet for everything, but I think we can actually pin this one on housing scarcity.

Journalism was funded by advertising because ad space was rare and journalistic outlets got a big chunk of it. Then the internet made ad space common -- it's on every web page full of lolcats -- and it was this reality rather than anything specific done by Facebook or Google that took the ad money.

But the internet also made it so you don't need a printing press to publish. That should have brought the cost down to what would still be sustainable after the drop in ad revenue. Until you have to make rent, because housing costs are out of control.

This is the same thing destroying our communities. You and some neighbors want to get a community lodge for local events? Forget about it, the cost is prohibitive. Stay home and don't even know your neighbors' names. And then where do you learn who to trust? The Internet?

ethbr1
0 replies
6h12m

I lay it at Google and Facebook's feet by the property of 'To whom the wealth is redistributed, also inherits the responsibility.'

They've raked in a huge percentage of the ad spend that moved digital (from print).

And they've done what with it?

They fundamentally don't want to be in the business of journalism, because it's a terrible business. So they don't create content, which now means no one does.

(And that's not even getting started on the recommendation algorithm choices they've made that have incentivized low quality content. See: YouTube)

eastbound
2 replies
21h55m

I do not find the argument that “newspapers be newspapers” excuses this, when it clearly only goes one way, and very forcefully at that.

And therefore it would be extremely interesting to find the origin of this push. Is it systemic, i.e. always present in some form due to humans’s generous nature? Is it due to more people living in cities that we have to organize in such a way (DEI-Covid-Feminism-GW or ostracization)? Is it, as the conspiracy theorists say, a small group of influential people? Is it the Russians who sponsor those groupes to divide us?

ethbr1
1 replies
20h51m

It doesn't go only one way though.

I can count 6+ instances on both the Fox News and MSNBC front pages right now.

SV_BubbleTime
0 replies
19h21m

How many Fox-like outlets are there compared to the number of MSNBC-like?

I don’t think these things are equal even on the surface. I don’t know how people aren’t asking themselves all the time “Am I even sure I believe in the things I think I do?”

arp242
0 replies
22h7m

In [1] there's:

> Like other recent live-action remakes—such as The Little Mermaid and the upcoming Snow White—some users accused the studio of "going woke" by modernizing the original story.

> They'll make the hunter an evil White man, Bambi's mom will be a message about incel rage and Bambi will also be black," wrote @NintendoFan729.

That's this Tweet: https://twitter.com/NintendoFan729/status/170756134256606837... – 5 likes, 641 views. From some random anonymous account with 322 followers and an average of about 5 tweets per day.

Yet here it is, cited in a major magazine, as evidence of ... something or the other.

[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/disney-modernized-bambi-remake-spar...

rahimnathwani
16 replies
22h53m

How would academics react to mandates requiring them to declare their support for:

- Ensuring open access to research

- Committing to long-term, foundational research

- Prioritizing high-quality teaching and mentorship

- Embracing diverse viewpoints

- Questioning established academic orthodoxy

- Focusing research on public rather than personal gain

- Openly sharing data and methodologies

- Upholding research neutrality and objectivity against external influences

dkjaudyeqooe
7 replies
22h18m

They don't do this already? Who would possibly object? Why would any student attend an institution that didn't require it?

Obviously I'm not in academia, but to most outsiders this is really obvious stuff.

mintplant
3 replies
18h54m

We do. I literally just had to submit a statement to this effect to the NSF. The GP is spouting uninformed opinions and then patting themselves on the back for being an "outsider".

rahimnathwani
2 replies
15h4m

  The GP is spouting uninformed opinions and then patting themselves on the back for being an "outsider".
Why so hostile?

BTW I have nothing to gain from 'spouting uninformed opinions'.

My opinion is mostly based on my own interactions with certain academics, and others I've had the opportunity to directly observe.

Perhaps the patterns I've seen are not universal. But that doesn't mean that they are not common or, as you seem to suggest, do not exist at all.

mintplant
1 replies
11h57m

Why so hostile?

This sort of thread pops up again and again on HN. It's frustrating to read comment after comment of people being confidently wrong about your vocation.

rahimnathwani
0 replies
4h14m

I have an MBA, and spent years as a Product Manager.

There is much snark on HN about MBAs and PMs being useless. I read those comments with curiosity to understand what I might learn.

Those commenters' experience is not universal, but neither is my own. Some of the comments might be based on virtually no evidence, but that's probably not the majority.

rahimnathwani
2 replies
22h11m

  Obviously I'm not in academia, but to most outsiders this is really obvious stuff.
That's my point. To outsiders like you and me, these things may seem obviously desirable.

But academics respond to incentives. Imagine you've spent 10 years pushing some set of conclusions based on some shaky studies you did early in your career. Do you really want people to dig deep and challenge the validity of your research?

dkjaudyeqooe
1 replies
21h53m

Isn't that just part of the job? If you're not wrong sometimes you're not trying hard enough. To avoid this situation you should invite others to challenge your work more quickly.

warkdarrior
0 replies
18h36m

The academic job is primarily about getting funding for further work. If ten years of work were proven wrong, the academic may worry that funding agencies may stop funding them. "You've been doing the wrong work for a decade!"

So while the academic may not mind being proven wrong in their hypotheses/results/conclusions, they may stress about not being able to get more funding.

AdrianB1
2 replies
20h28m

- Embracing diverse viewpoints

If you read this as having some academics embracing Flat Earth viewpoints, it is obvious this will not happen. The devil is in the details, what does "Embracing diverse viewpoints" even mean? Science usually drives to unique conclusions, not diverse interpretations. How many correct and diverse viewpoints exist about E=m*c^2 ?

rahimnathwani
1 replies
19h32m

  what does "Embracing diverse viewpoints" even mean
I could have phrased this better. What I meant was: being open minded to being proven wrong.

There are many academics who will not entertain any viewpoint that's contrary to their own belief and agenda. They will happily share papers that support their preconceived notions, and be hostile towards anyone who questions whether these papers have merit.

AdrianB1
0 replies
7h54m

OK, with that definition not only it make sense, but close minded academics are not worth to be academics.

snek_case
0 replies
22h16m

Committing to long-term, foundational research

Here I would respond that academics are prone to looking down on applied research, but it's also incredibly important. Think of new programming languages, new types of chips that will enable future computational workloads. New ways of using or optimizing existing technology... Or even empirical research to validate the effectiveness of current industrial practices (something people often don't do, or don't do rigorously enough).

Not all research needs to be "foundational". Not all applied research needs to happen in industry. Many academics would actually benefit from climbing down from their ivory tower more often.

As it is, a huge percentage of research happening in academic CS circles would probably call itself "foundational" but is actually very much divorced from reality and useless. Just people trying to increase their citation count with an incremental extension to some widely-accepted idea.

pyuser583
0 replies
20h17m

Does "external influences" include the American Communist Party? How about the Chinese Communist Party?

lazide
0 replies
22h23m

If everything is a priority/mandate than nothing is.

jltsiren
0 replies
21h2m

Most of those have been around for decades. Some of them are legal requirements, at least in some contexts. Some are required by research funders and similar organizations. Some must be included in a teaching statement, which became a popular requirement a decade or two before DEI statements. And all contribute to the administrative bloat everyone likes to complain about.

itronitron
0 replies
22h25m

A declaration of support for those line items would be more impactful if it came from the university administration.

blackhawkC17
16 replies
1d9h

DEI statements are culty. I see it no different than a religious fundamentalist college asking faculty to sign an oath of allegiance. At least in such a case, you can always know beforehand the BS you'll put up with, unlike secular universities that are adopting DEI statements.

MrSkelter
14 replies
1d8h

There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is.

A pledge to God?

The mishandling of DEI doesn’t invalidate the need to fix broken systems which fail to select the best people instead of those who score highest in easily gamed and inherently biased metrics.

simonsarris
4 replies
1d2h

easily gamed and inherently biased metrics

IQ tests are not easily gamed and suggesting otherwise is mostly lying. They might be too easy, or have too low a ceiling (SAT), or might have some mild response to coaching. But a very stupid person cannot come out the other side with the very high score, and a very smart person should be able to figure them out sufficiently that they prove their utility.

6312783123
2 replies
1d1h

I think the authoritarian Woke subtype are against meritocracy as a concept. https://postmeritocracy.org/

By the way, the author of the Post-Meritocracy Manifesto is known as "Bantik" on 1990s Usenet, there is high quality evidence on the Web that that's correct, some of it has been removed from Google. That just shows the background behind some of the most prominent people in DEI programs, at least in open-source.

https://archive.ph/P258A https://archive.ph/NsPmk https://archive.ph/EkJzO https://web.archive.org/web/20180717044421/http://s35819.gri... Bantik writes, in 2000: https://everything2.com/title/How+to+Be+a+Charismatic+Cult+L... - "How to Be a Charismatic Cult Leader"

skellington
1 replies
22h31m

You can go pretty deep if you try to discover the fundamental belief systems or reasoning behind the 'core' DEI people. A lot of people just casually agree that "being fair" and "not being racist" is good. And it certainly is. And like many movements that involve propaganda/control/power, the key to enlisting large support is to hide the real motivations and goals within a cozy shell of easily consumable "moral" niceties.

Ironically, the methods that the DEI types use are not even hidden. There are numerous books and "scholarly" articles that discuss their methods in detail and also their true purpose.

At it's root DEI is one of the byproducts of Critical Race Theory which is derived from Critical Theory which is (arguably) the root of Marxism and a bunch of other -isms. You can think of Critical Theory as the most abstract form of that particular tree of political theory and Marxism applies it to class inequality and CRT applies it to race/gender inequality. This is a simplification, but it's good enough for now.

The CRT leader types are without a doubt anti-meritocracy, anti-science, anti-civilization, anti-family, etc.. They have said so directly and emphatically in books, papers, talks, etc..

smolder
0 replies
8h54m

I don't think your post here is substantive. You are only vaguely complaining about an ill-defined group of people, as is customary in political speech.

If you wanted to discredit "numerous books" you should have named at least one. Do you have an example?

cauch
0 replies
22h1m

I don't think the person you are answering to is referring to IQ tests.

Do you often have proper IQ tests when navigating in the academic sector? I personally never have one.

On top of that, I'm not sure IQ tests themselves are really relevant to select people in the academic sector. They already have demonstrated they master their subject with their grades, so we already know they are smart enough, and it is not because someone score higher in an IQ test that this person will be more valuable for the academic sector, where collaboration and mentoring are as valuable as the holywood cliché of the genius solving all the problems. IQ does not tell much about laziness or motivation or willingness to follow the good scientific process, ...

Also, at this level, you are selecting people amongst a set of candidates that are all already very very close in IQ, to the point that choosing on IQ alone is not making scientific sense: if the IQ questions would have been randomly different, or if they would have passed the test a different day, the scores would have been slightly different and the selection would have been different. The scores would not have been totally different, of course, but slightly different, and because the candidates are all very close, it would have changed the winner.

For having been part of it, the selection process in the academic sector is very very very difficult and is very very prone to unconscious bias. When you have 5 very good candidates and you need to pick one, how do you decide? At the end, it is very often "on feeling": "for this person, I feel they will be a good match". It's a fair way of choosing, because choosing someone that you "don't feel it" over someone that you "feel it" is just very counter-intuitive. But it means that between two persons, it is often the one that "looks superficially the best for the job" that gets it, which is easily affected by unconscious bias (for example, you will "feel it" more easily with someone of your own culture), or can easily be gamed (for example, to progress, you need to build a professional network and manage your reputation, and some very good candidates are just not interested to play these silly games).

MissTake
2 replies
1d8h

The article actually doesn’t say any such thing. It simply assumes that a Chinese propaganda machine is focused only on “wokeism”. Dog forbid that they should seek to use propaganda to attack both sides - which is far more effective at spreading division.

6312783123
1 replies
1d5h

Here's a book about it: David M. Jones, The Strategy of Maoism in the West - Rage and the Radical Left:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strategy-Maoism-West-Rage-Radical/d...

https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/bafykbzacedx5ta6zzpq2ix4km2x5sf...

"This notwithstanding, the passionate fervour that informs contemporary anti-racist rhetoric, and that of environmental groups such as Extinction Rebellion, and the LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other) movements that share its goals and feed off its righteous indignation, constitutes a calculated iconoclastic assault on the West’s history and culture."

"Culture war was, after all, one of the People’s Republic’s earliest exports to the West. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has, for years, explicitly viewed it as its ‘magic weapon’. Why, then, this book asks, did a twentieth-century Chinese revolutionary ideology become so adaptable and spectacularly successful in the West?"

By the way, I've been censored multiple times on this site, for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party and it's connections with the woke movement, by the way. It's awful.

My submission is now the top Google result for "beijing woke" and "woke propaganda war" right now, and the HN censorship is plainly visible for everyone to see worldwide.

It's the 7th result for the term "woke propaganda", by the way.

13:08 UTC: To any potential Chinese Communist Party trolls, the more you try to censor me, the more I'm going to be posting about you. Same for russian trolls. Your propaganda is destroying the lives of innocent people here in the West.

MissTake
0 replies
1d4h

The massive amount of ignorance in your reply is quite galling.

It’s awfully apparent that you subscribe to a political extreme right wing view if you feel that Climate and LGBTQ issues are extremism.

Climate concern and LGBTQ pride were barely even a thing during Mao’s time, yet to listen to you you’d think the Chairman himself created and pushed those onto the public stage.

Meanwhile the MCPC is not the same thing as the CCP, despite your apparent belief to think they are.

And give us a break with this “poor me, I’ve been censored on this site” mentality.

Everyone here is free to say what they want. It’s up to the collective here to decide (by and large) if such messages are deemed worthwhile or not. If they’re not then they’ll get flagged and downvoted.

inglor_cz
0 replies
22h40m

I think the OP doesn't either trust the declared goals of "countering institutional prejudice" and "improving the quality of the student body", or doesn't believe that DEI actually does anything relevant in this sense.

Even for banal acne treatments, proof of safety and efficiency through several stages of trials is required before people are actually subject to it.

With DEI, we are just expected to believe that it actually works and should be applied across the country because some smart people say so.

gameman144
0 replies
21h31m

There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is.

In the eyes of the advocates for each, I actually don't know that there is.

Religious pledges likely are intended to say "we want faculty who will teach and represent the values this school holds and that students expect out of this institution", which feels pretty much exactly like the rationale for DEI pledges.

bozhark
0 replies
22h43m

What other metric is so valuable then?

blackhawkC17
0 replies
1d8h

There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done.

This is the Trojan Horse, just like the fundamentalists coming to spread peace and love in society of course.

Fortunately, people are judged by outcome and action, not stated intention, and we can see DEI has failed in this regard.

Kamq
0 replies
22h56m

There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is.

There is, but there's definitely some similarities too. Specifically that if you happen to believe in these things, advancement of their goals is one of the most important things you can do, which causes a big temptation to misappropriate institutional power to further the cause.

Regarding the pledges specifically, both require employees to take personal positions to advance at work, which I think is the part blackhawkC17 finds "culty".

MisterBastahrd
0 replies
19h44m

If students uttered a DEI statement every morning in their homeroom classes over the Pledge of Allegiance to a flag, we'd all be in a much better place culturally.

pfdietz
15 replies
20h36m

I'm getting the impression a lot of Americans are now not just comfortable with systemic inequality, but are gravitating toward a position that it's actually desirable. In this environment, DEI bafflegab just pushes them in that direction.

slenocchio
13 replies
20h7m

That's a mischaracterization. No one is _for_ inequality. The opposition you speak of is _for_ race/gender blind meritocracy. Anyone with a little knowledge of economics understands that groups of people cut across any dimension will always have different outcomes; Russian Americans earn more than French Americans, Japanese Americans earn more than Fillipino Americans, taller people earn more than shorter people, etc.

No one thinks inequality is desirable. The opposition you speak of think it's unavoidable. And bad public policy will have effects that make the situation worse for everyone.

pfdietz
8 replies
19h56m

No one is _for_ inequality.

I suggest that's an extraordinarily naive statement.

slenocchio
6 replies
17h49m

Can you send me writing or video of any serious thinker advocating for this? The OP is a common straw-man characterization of the position I described.

pfdietz
5 replies
17h45m

serious thinker

No True Scotsman detected.

slenocchio
2 replies
17h43m

Ok how about any thinker.

zeroonetwothree
0 replies
15h43m

It seems like this just assumes the conclusion?

“ As an imprecise working definition (not for all times and places but for the United States today), “far right” is used here to mean political forces that (a) regard human inequality as natural, ”

slenocchio
1 replies
17h30m

I read the article you sent, it doesn't prove your point.

pfdietz
0 replies
4h52m

It's interesting how "no one is for inequality" is taken as a statement that doesn't require proof (my original statement was about my impression, not a clear statement that was the case.)

I suggest that categorical statement that, universally, everyone is against inequality, needs some justification. Historically it's certainly not true AT ALL.

CoastalCoder
0 replies
18h50m

I assumed it was hyperbole on the GP's part.

throwaway22032
3 replies
16h30m

Hi - as a counterpoint, I think that inequality is desirable.

In a world with limited resources I think it makes sense to allocate more resources towards people who perform acts for society which require rare skill sets, talent, etc. That might mean more money, it might mean land, it might mean status, or anything else really.

The idea being that those rewards both serve as motivation and also help those people to focus on the good work that they are doing.

You can apply this to basically anything - I think that a more beautiful person, all else being equal, should recieve favourable treatment over an ugly one.

The main downside of such an approach seems to be that, to put it simply, losers get less than winners and to some people that seems unfair. But it's only unfair if the rewards allocated aren't proportional to merit.

I don't really consider this to be controversial to be honest - I think someone who is twice as good as me as a programmer, or contributes twice as much value to the business, or hell, is twice as good at football as me - should receive at least twice as much. That's unequal, but it's also sane and right.

zeroonetwothree
2 replies
15h41m

I think that you are arguing against equity not equality. Usually the latter means “equality of opportunity”. At least that’s typically the difference in most debates.

throwaway22032
1 replies
15h21m

I don't consider there to be a difference.

A society in which the children of successful people are prioritised over the children of unsuccessful people is almost certain to lead to better outcomes for exactly the same reasons.

I came from an underprivileged background myself, if I were investing money with an aim to generating a return, I'd far sooner give it to a banker's son than someone from the estate I grew up on. I was the exception, not the rule, and the older I get the more I figure I must just be some sort of genetic freak, since the overwhelming opinion seems to be that our fate is predestined, nowadays.

zero-sharp
0 replies
13h52m

Family wealth is probably an indicator for future success. I don't know the numbers, but I would expect family wealth to correlate positively with the earnings of the children. So if you want a return on investment, it makes sense to bet on the wealthy.

But I thought we were talking merit and opportunity? No, being a banker's son doesn't predestine you to being more skillful. You should already have enough counterexamples to demonstrate that fact.

Your comment is borderline bewildering. It's like corruption and nepotism don't exist.

jmyeet
13 replies
22h24m

So DEI is an obvious political hot-potato but that the idea that the group with all the money and power are somehow being discriminated against is just silly.

Why? Because none of these discussions deals with the real bias in university admissions: legacy admissions. Harvard's undergraduate class hovers around 35% who are legacies. This is the very essence of anti-diversity and entrenching generational wealth and power. It should be front and center in any college DEI discussions.

The problem is it doesn't end there. Having a Harvard undergraduate degree opens up so many doors for graduate school, residencies for doctors, academia, etc.

So before you get worked up on the topic of DEI (on either side), please give a thought to legacy admissions.

yarg
6 replies
22h15m

Intelligence is largely hereditary (people's intelligence is generally unlikely to be significantly higher or lower than that of their parents).

So if the parents were high quality academic students, there's a far higher than average likelihood that the same will be true of their children.

(The same is true for athleticism, and no-one would be surprised or think it was unreasonable that LeBron's son was offered scholarships just for who his father is.)

jmyeet
3 replies
21h1m

An inbuilt assumption of what you say is that you believe in meritocracy, specifically that the powerful and wealthy are that way at least part by merit. The flipside of this assumption is that poverty is a personal moral failure.

Personally i reject both of these assertions. So much of wealth can be attributed to imperialism, war, slavery, segregation, instituational discrimination and so on.

But let's assume what you say is true: if the wealthy are that way out of merit and they have more ability, intelligence or whatever, why do they need an davantage in college admissions at all? Wouldn't their own merit shine through?

Wealth already gives a host of advantages: opportunities, tutoring, access to people and not having to, say, work jobs to just survive. On top of all those advantages, why do they also need systemic bias in admissions?

The system is unfair by design because it needs to be for those who benefit from it.

jorvi
1 replies
20h38m

An inbuilt assumption of what you say is that you believe in meritocracy, specifically that the powerful and wealthy are that way at least part by merit.

That is not what a meritocracy is. Meritocracy means our brightest and most capable lead us, instead of democracy where it is basically whoever can play the political game the best.

hallway_monitor
0 replies
18h44m

Bret Weinstein suggested this on his podcast - that we select leaders because they would do the best job - and we DON'T let them self-select. They're called to serve similar to jury duty. I don't recall how the selection would be done, which seems like the harder part.

yarg
0 replies
18h55m

When did I ever say that the children of wealthy alumni should be prioritised?

I'm not assuming that the wealthy are there by merit, I'm assuming that the competent are.

And yes, universities will admit the idiot sons of the rich, just because of a donation - but that's an entirely different conversation to one regarding the prioritisation of the children of alumni who already proved themselves to be useful.

jimbokun
1 replies
21h52m

That’s not the point. In addition to any inherent advantages for children of graduates from elite universities, there is an explicit bias in their favor for admissions decisions.

yarg
0 replies
21h27m

Yes, an explicit bias in favour of students more likely to be useful to the university.

jimbokun
3 replies
21h54m

Why can’t we be against both legacy admissions and DEI admissions?

Let’s eliminate all the forms of unfair bias.

ilc
2 replies
21h24m

There is always a hint.

Let's say I am an Eagle Scout. I want to write about something I did as an Eagle.

Well, guess, what. I've told you a metric F-ton about myself.

warkdarrior
0 replies
18h25m

The only solution is to ban participation in any organizations of any sort before one attends college.

jimbokun
0 replies
18h14m

What makes that unfair? Being an Eagle Scout can convey information about your talents and character.

It's explicitly favoring people over immutable characteristics like race or what university your parents attended that is unfair.

HDThoreaun
1 replies
21h59m

Legacy makes a lot of sense from an admissions standpoint. Having rich/connected peers is the main point of harvard for everyone else applying. I think what people have a problem with with DEI is that it largely seems counter to their goals of maximizing prestige and career success of graduates.

johnneville
0 replies
19h38m

i would guess that the biggest incentive for legacy admissions is related to maximizing donations from the alumni parents but i'm just speculating

zarathustreal
3 replies
21h13m

The notion that any of us could ever *be equal* has always annoyed me at how obviously absurd it is but I’m glad to see this has been written about before. It’s like we’ve already descended into 1984 territory and we’re all spouting about “equality” because it’s the “right thing to do” even though we all know it’s not physically possible. Equal opportunities are not enough, or so it would be said, because history! Well.. the historical period I care about!

And then we all act shocked when someone turns to violence to force people to grapple with reality

shadowgovt
2 replies
21h2m

The Declaration declares people were "created equal," and even that phrase has historical context to answer "in what sense?"

Nobody is born with divine right of kings. That's the point. Other senses of equality come later and with good reason.

zarathustreal
1 replies
15h58m

I disagree that “other senses of equality” come with “good reason.” In fact, I find it to be an insidious corruption of the meaning of the word to further the agenda of those in power. That’s exactly how evil works. Wolves in sheep’s clothing. “Standing for equality” while owning more wealth than 98% of the population.

shadowgovt
0 replies
15h15m

There have been, more or less, two major modifications to the Constitution. We are now on version 3, depending on how you slice it.

There have also been modifications to our understanding of freedoms. The old comprehension of freedoms the government should safeguard evolved to freedom of speech (and expression), freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

It's okay for people to decide there are more equalities relevant than the simple protection against divine birthright mandates. Especially since we've had hundreds of years to witness the consequences of believing that kind of equality is all that matters.

“Standing for equality” while owning more wealth than 98% of the population.

I'm afraid I'd have to know who you are thinking of as wolves in sheep's clothing to know what you mean here.

wiseowise
1 replies
20h50m

Jesus Christ. What a dark story.

bpiche
0 replies
14h3m

Typical Vonnegut. I sincerely mean this, may he rest in peace. The man was haunted.

hallway_monitor
1 replies
18h52m

TL;DR - a dystopia where anyone with an "advantage" is "handicapped" to make everyone "equal". Advantages such as intelligence and beauty must not be used to let anyone get ahead.

It was adapted into a short film - 2081 - and it's very very good. It's free on this site: https://www.teaching2081.org/watch-the-film#form

bpiche
0 replies
14h4m

It was also adapted into a (terrible) full length feature film with Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee). If you like Vonnegut, you might like it.

dgfitz
0 replies
19h31m

To quote the link, and by golly does it seem germane to the topic at hand:

In the year 2081, the Constitution dictates that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, earpiece radios for the intelligent that broadcast loud noises meant to disrupt thoughts, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic. George and Hazel Bergeron have a 14-year old son named Harrison. He takes after his father, who is highly intelligent and physically strong. The government removes Harrison from his home. His parents are barely aware because of Hazel's low intelligence and George's mandated handicaps. George and Hazel watch a ballet on TV. Some dancers are weighed down to counteract their gracefulness and masked to hide their attractiveness. George's thoughts are continually interrupted by the different noises emitted by his handicap radio. Hazel urges George to lie down and rest his "handicap bag", 47 pounds (21 kg) of weights locked around his neck. She suggests taking a few of the weights out of the bag, but George resists because it is against the law. On TV, a reporter struggles to read a bulletin and hands it to the ballerina wearing the most grotesque mask and heaviest weights. She begins reading in her natural, beautiful voice before switching to a more unpleasant one. Harrison's escape from prison is announced, and a full-body photograph of him is shown. He is seven feet (2.1 m) tall and burdened by three hundred pounds (140 kg) of handicaps. George recognizes his son for a moment, before having the thought eliminated by his radio. Harrison storms the TV studio in an attempt to overthrow the government. He declares himself Emperor and rips off both his own handicaps and those of a ballerina, whom he chooses as his Empress. Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, enters the studio and kills Harrison and the Empress with two shotgun blasts. She threatens the musicians at gunpoint to put on their handicaps again. The TV goes dark. George, who left to get a beer and has returned, asks Hazel why she is crying, to which she replies that something sad happened on television that she cannot remember.

llm_trw
9 replies
21h0m

DEI statements are important because they show individual awareness of historical inequities and current biases that form modern society.

Only the currently approved ones.

The perfect example: holocaust denial. Ask anyone in the US how many people died in the holocaust. The answer is 6 million and they are all Jews.

The real number is 14 million with 8 million Slavs, 6 million Jews and 2 million misc of gays, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, the work shy, etc..

The double think is so strong that you can have two people from the same village, in the same camp, dead on the same day and have one be a victim of the holocaust, and the other not just because one was a Jew and the other a Communist.

pyuser583
3 replies
20h20m

I was taught in high school that it was 6 million Jews.

Standard American public high school. Teacher was left-wing. We read Diary of Anne Frank, Night by Elie Weisel, Number the Stars, etc.

No holocaust denial going on.

Yes, the Soviets were excluded. So were the Prussians, who were the victims of both Nazi and Soviet genocides.

Nobody calls this holocaust denial.

llm_trw
1 replies
20h6m

Yes, the Soviets were excluded.

>The double think is so strong that you can have two people from the same village, in the same camp, dead on the same day and have one be a victim of the holocaust, and the other not just because one was a Jew and the other a Communist.

Or to put it another way. If Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were both captured by time traveling Nazis and sent to Treblinka Marx would count towards the holocaust and Engels would not in the Wests version of holocaust denial.

hackerlight
0 replies
8h15m

Are you just now learning that words have definitions? Do you know what a definition is? The Holocaust is defined, a priori, as the Nazi genocide of Jews, whether in gas chambers or in killing fields. It's a word with a definition. The Nazi killing of communists for being communist is a politicide, not a genocide. The Nazi killing of gypsies is also genocide, similar to the Holocaust, but it definitionally isn't the Holocaust.

Reasoning
1 replies
20h20m

Because the Holocaust can refer to either the Nazi's genocide of Jews or all the genocides carried out by Nazi Germany. Most often it is the former.

So to reframe this, if you ask people how many people died in the Jewish genocide they'll probably give you the figure of how many Jews died, yes. They aren't ignoring all of the other victims, they're giving you the statistic of what they thought you asked for.

This is no different than separating out the genocide of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire and the genocide of Greeks by the same regime.

llm_trw
0 replies
20h8m

Because the Holocaust can refer to either the Nazi's genocide of Jews or all the genocides carried out by Nazi Germany. Most often it is the former.

This is not counting all the genocides by the Nazis. This is just counting the people murdered in the extermination camps and on their way there.

If you count all the other Nazi genocides you get tens of millions, e.g. targeting of civilians during the Siege of Lenin Grad, the Dutch Famine, etc.

vladgur
0 replies
20h22m

Wait so your definition of Holocaust denier is not the person that denies that 6 million Jews were systematically killed by the Nazi Germany machine, but the person who believes in the Holocaust of the Jews, but does not include other atrocities perpetrated by Nazis on the European population?

Can you clarify?

And in your opinion, did these DEI statements ever have Jews in mind?

macintux
0 replies
20h24m

Germany and Russia both committed daunting atrocities during the war, killed millions of people, but it's unsurprising that people associate "Holocaust" with 6 million Jewish dead, because the Jewish genocide is where the label originated.

xyst
8 replies
18h36m

What the hell is a “DEI” statement anyways? The site is a bit light on what this means, only a bunch of satirical and sarcastic posts. Almost feels like it was generated by LLM.

Is it something like this?

“I helped a group of first generation, low income students apply to college and obtain $50,000 in grants”

Not sure what’s wrong with this…

juunpp
4 replies
16h0m

It's an ideological statement that is part of a sociopolitical program in the US that seeks to indoctrinate young adults that are just entering the workforce or higher education. You are supposed to be ashamed of being a white, straight man and filter all moral judgement through the lens of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., to the point where individual work, qualities and achievements takes a second place, if any place at all. It is an ideology that seeks equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity, a cultural Marxism that admits no dissent. Ask Google Gemini to make pictures of the Founding Fathers or Nazi soldiers and you will understand.

kristopolous
3 replies
11h46m

have any citations or specific examples?

kristopolous
0 replies
7h52m

what? an implementation of an ai? no not really. Those things are hard, take millions of dollars to train ... it doesn't really show, say Marx's M-C-M' equation, r = s/(c + v) or any of the other theories in his text or anything else in that comment. I don't see how say https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3 relates to a place "with no dissent".

That's just a bunch of trigger-words and scapegoats pasted together.

jballer
1 replies
18h1m

No, it’s a profession of ideological commitment. What you suggest would get a low to middling score.

Here’s a rubric that’s representative of others I’ve seen: https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/Rubric...

Note how saying you’ll “treat everyone the same” will get you penalized. How doing the things they want isn’t enough to demonstrate your commitment to their cause.

They want true believers, but will settle for people who are willing to let others control what they say and do.

charlieyu1
0 replies
1h52m

As an Asian, this is really scary, and reminds me of Communist times where people are often asked to write "self reflections".

philwelch
0 replies
10h43m

During the red scare, there was a movement to try and force professors to sign loyalty oaths stating that they weren’t communist. Imagine that this went one step further: rather than signing a loyalty pledge, they required professors to compose their own loyalty statements. And that they would be judged on the ideological correctness of their statement. For instance, it wouldn’t be enough to pledge not to be communist; they would also had to pledge to be actively anti-communist. This didn’t happen during the red scare, but if you s/communist/racist, it is happening now.

thaumasiotes
6 replies
15h5m

Land acknowledgement statements are creeping into the US these days.

What are the odds they make it to Israel?

eli_gottlieb
2 replies
14h54m

You want us to acknowledge whether we're on the traditional tribal lands of Dan, Binyamin, Menasseh, Yehudah, etc?

thaumasiotes
0 replies
13h22m

Binyamin

This one is really interesting. I note that you don't list the counterpart at all, but here's a selection from Weavers, Scribes, and Kings:

In Syria in the early second millennium BCE, Amorite-speaking people grew up knowing if they belonged to the Banu-Yamina ("sons of the right" or "sons of the south") or the Banu-Sim'al ("sons of the left" or "sons of the north").

Benjamin is the only name I know of to memorialize an ethnic conflict that was apparently won long, long ago, so long ago that most people with an active interest in the time period have no idea it existed.

As far as your question goes, just the form of your answer is pretty good at reinforcing the point of my question.

Natsu
0 replies
14h7m

They'd probably want to go back to the Canaanites.

thaumasiotes
1 replies
7h23m

You think it's off topic? What would be an example of a reason land acknowledgments are a bad idea in Israel that wouldn't also make them a bad idea somewhere else?

dang
0 replies
1h49m

We already had one flamewar going about Israel.

I know it's annoying when these things get declared offtopic because of course they're connected by a sequence of associations—and you're right, it doesn't take that long of a sequence—but if you think about it from the overall topic of the thread, hopefully it makes more sense.

pygar
6 replies
19h15m

Most applicants for a desirable position are likely to come from the majority group of your region. So for a minority candidate to be selected they would not only have to be equal to the others - but better. That seems unfair to me. What does that mean over the long term regarding how you hire?

That said, discussions about DEI tend to ignore that thing we are never meant to talk about: social class. Social class and money overrides everything.

samatman
5 replies
18h35m

Applicants for a desirable position are likely to come from the majority group of your region. So for a minority candidate to be selected they would not only have to be equal to the others - but better.

Your second sentence here doesn't actually follow from the first.

pygar
4 replies
14h41m

If you have 5 equally good candidates, 4 men and 1 woman that woman has a 1/5 chance of being selected. The others also have a 1/5 chance as individuals but the candidate selected has a 4/5 likelihood of being male.

If you want to hire more women what do you do exactly?

gameman144
2 replies
12h59m

In this scenario, you should expect to have a representation of around 1 woman per 4 men, if the rate of qualified candidates is 1 woman per 4 men. If you want to hire more than that ratio, you have to be doing some discarding of otherwise qualified candidates on the basis only of being men.

pygar
1 replies
12h43m

Sure. But even if you want to hire at about 1 women per 4 men you would need to actively do so. I.E. create a hiring policy in which she would be selected instead of one of the other equally qualified men.

gameman144
0 replies
10h12m

Not at all! Passively choosing from the equally-qualified-candidate distribution across the board will yield representation that's right in line with that distribution.

There may be some groups that are entirely men and some that are entirely women, but the aggregate result will approach the true population of qualified candidates.

samatman
0 replies
4h26m

Yes, it's true that if you want to hire some group of people above their percent rate in your applicant pool, you're going to have to put your thumb on the scale for that group of people.

But this has the opposite effect from what you were just claiming. It means you hire worse candidates merely on the basis of their immutable characteristics.

Or, equivalently, you discriminate against other candidates on the basis of their immutable characteristics. Which is illegal in the US.

hilux
6 replies
18h17m

Note that this ban appears to be only for faculty hiring.

Most MIT employees are staff. I don't know if MIT requires DEI statements from staff hires, but I know other universities do, e.g. UC Berkeley, where I used to work. And yet, (as one example of many) check out the 7/7 white faces in leadership at executive.berkeley.edu/our-team

jballer
5 replies
18h13m

You really took a turn there by calling attention to their skin color. The interesting thing here isn’t that they look the same, but that they think the same.

hilux
4 replies
17h54m

The interesting thing here isn’t that they look the same ...

Only a white person could come up with that. Is it supposed to be coincidence that they're all white? Couldn't find any qualified non-white people among their team or external applicants?

And I'm not sure what "took a turn" means.

What I'm saying is that despite the DEI statements, UC Berkeley typically prefers to hire and promote white. That leadership team, which used to be 9/9 white, is just an obvious example. (Note that they do have plenty of non-white underlings, none of whom were good enough to be promoted, I guess.)

All the DEI nonsense is just virtue signaling. That's what makes it especially aggravating. It promotes doublethink and Newspeak without actually doing a thing for "diversity."

jballer
2 replies
17h32m

“Taking a turn” means I think I understand where you’re going, but then you take your point someplace else.

I agree with most of what you’re saying. The casual racial stereotyping is where you lose me.

hilux
1 replies
3h21m

The casual racial stereotyping is where you lose me.

Nothing "casual" about it. Very deliberate. White people completely unwilling to see blatant racism (e.g. in hiring) when it stares them in the face.

jballer
0 replies
1h50m

You are a parody of your own point and you don’t even see it. Truly remarkable.

jballer
0 replies
17h37m

Only a white person could come up with that.

lol

rayiner
5 replies
21h57m

I’m glad that MIT is standing up for an evidence based approach to all this, as they did with reinstating the SAT. Skin color differences don’t make organizations or schools better or worse: https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1296/GreenHandMar2024.p.... (Lack of diversity, of course, may be evidence of underlying race-based discrimination.) It was an idea that was developed in response to Supreme Court cases that prohibited using express racial quotas to eliminate the effects of past discrimination. So there was a need to come up with a different rationale for racial rebalancing.

eapressoandcats
3 replies
18h47m

The SAT thing was wild. I have no idea why people thought making the admissions criteria more opaque and fudge-able would help prevent bias and racism.

I saw the same thing at a company I worked at where they found at that Black people were getting lower performance ratings and there were people in the Diversity interest group advocating getting rid of numeric ratings so, you know, instead of knowing there was bias we would… not know? Like maybe it was a management psy-op or something but that was insane.

algorias
1 replies
17h41m

instead of knowing there was bias

Why do you automatically assume this? Might be related to why people wanted to hide these numbers.

eapressoandcats
0 replies
16h6m

I was surprised because the person suggesting it wanted to get rid of it even though it helped his case. His argument was literally that it would help Black employees advance to get rid of the numbers. I would have expected management to want to hide the numbers.

underlipton
0 replies
15h47m

This feels like the "defund/abolish the police" issue again. "Please retire this particular testing regime which seems to game-able via wealth and which further entrenches existing disparities," gets turned into and mischaracterized as, "Get rid of numeric ratings," because it's easier to argue against AND allows for an even more incumbent-advantageous solution to be implemented if it happens to be toppled.

If we went with the actual recommendation (e.g., to complete the analogy sandwich, "dismantle the current institution and establish a new one with a fundamentally different structure which allows for security/investigation functions to be carried out without the baggage of the previous institution"), something might actually change for the better, and we can't have that.

_heimdall
0 replies
7h20m

Its all well and good that MIT is now coming to it's senses, but they'd have earned much more of my respect if they had stood on evidence based approaches from the beginning.

Its easy to follow the crowd when popular opinion swings in a crazy direction. Its even easier to see the writing on the wall and be one of the first to swing back, claiming some kind of honor or bravery in doing so.

Its a win-win. Up front you don't get blasted for being racist because you don't fall in line, and on the back end you're held up as a hero when you respond to what everyone has already realized but few have adjusted to yet.

steve_taylor
4 replies
17h41m

It's quite telling that the MIT president was too scared to announce this despite only 1 in 20 faculty supporting DEI statements.

kristopolous
2 replies
11h30m

Quoting: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mit-scraps-diversity-state...

The decision was made by MIT president Sally Kornbluth, with support from the school’s provost and six academic deans, a spokesperson told National Review on Sunday afternoon.

“My goals are to tap into the full scope of human talent, to bring the very best to MIT, and to make sure they thrive once here,” Kornbluth said in a statement provided to NR. “We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”

TMWNN
1 replies
11h14m

steve_taylor's point is that had National Review not asked for a comment, MIT would never have formally announced this at all.

kristopolous
0 replies
10h17m

Do they generally put out announcements on Sunday afternoon? They made sure to be accessible for this. That's probably already an exception. Campuses are usually a M-F 9-5 kind of place.

So I think that's pure speculation. There wasn't that much time, they're usually closed on the weekend and there's no expectation for them to swiftly contact the media for every single change in policy.

karaterobot
0 replies
15h20m

Just want to note that, currently, this is the highest comment in the thread which makes any direct references to the article we're all nominally discussing, and it's about 100 comments down. Have an extra upvote.

crooked-v
4 replies
1d9h

So what are the actual statements being banned? The article gives zero useful details.

Leynos
1 replies
1d9h

Seconded.

Futhermore, the counterexample cited, teaching adult literacy, seems like a good way of furthering equity and inclusion to me. This sounded like the author contradicting themselves.

returningfory2
0 replies
22h54m

The author agrees with you. The point is that teaching adult literacy is out of scope for DEI statements. You can't mention it in a DEI statement.

geor9e
0 replies
1d1h

The specific way you phrased that question makes me suspect you misinterpreted this as a banning of speech. Not at all. They're removing a class of required question from application forms. “The MIT administration has advised the departments that were requiring DEI statements to stop requiring them and to stop using this kind of information. This has just recently been disclosed to the faculty, but a general announcement to the students is not planned.”

Or are you asking what a DEI statement is in academia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusi...

000ooo000
0 replies
1d5h

Unless I'm misunderstanding your question, the very start of the article seems to cover it:

DEI statements are affirmations made when you’re applying for college admission, university jobs, or even science-society grants, recounting to the authorities your philosophy of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” your history of DEI activities, and how you will implement DEI initiatives if you get the admission/job/grant.
bozhark
4 replies
23h0m

Recently wrote a corporate DEI policy. Our policy is to not regard DEI as a metric of value. It’s absurd.

over_bridge
1 replies
21h3m

A profitable company that lacks DEI is still a success

A company that loses money but has plenty of DEI is a failure.

DEI is not the factor that determines success or failure.

It is a tool that you can use but it makes no sense as a goal or target in itself. If your customer base has some attributes that aren't reflected in the staff, maybe hiring some will help you relate. The idea that your company must match the 'diversity' of the general public (in one country) is all backward.

AdrianB1
0 replies
20h13m

If your customer base has some attributes that aren't reflected in the staff, maybe hiring some will help you relate.

How does it work? If you hire them in customer research or marketing teams, yes, it brings value in understanding the customer. If you just hire them across all departments, like IT or facilities management, what do you get?

nolongerthere
0 replies
22h23m

Our policy is to not regard DEI as a metric of value

can you expand on what this means practically and how it differs from others?

DontchaKnowit
0 replies
22h31m

We need you at every fortune 500 company.

Our company for a while would recap promotions every quarter and breakdown promation rates by race... it was awakward and antithetical to what they were trying to accompish. Had a weird undertone of calling out races for underachieving lmao

"Blacks are being promoted 20% less than whites. We are getting better but can do even more to promote the interests of blacks at the company"

davidgerard
3 replies
20h7m

This looks very badly sourced.

dang
2 replies
17h22m

I agree. I'm assuming that https://unherd.com/newsroom/mit-becomes-first-elite-universi... is true because otherwise they'd be fabricating quotes and that seems unlikely, although the site does have an ideological slant.

It's a little surprising that more publications haven't reported on it yet though.

davidgerard
1 replies
9h9m

I am assuming that there is vastly less to this than this particular cluster of publications, and too many of the commenters here, are getting themselves worked up about.

dang
0 replies
1h48m

I'm not sure if you're questioning whether the story was true or whether it was important or whether it was offtopic for HN.

If it was untrue, then we will have made a bad moderation call and should have waited. However, today has brought more 3rd party reports on the story, albeit still from ideologically slanted publications (e.g. https://nypost.com/2024/05/06/us-news/mit-bans-controversial...), so I think the odds of it being true are getting a bit higher.

If you mean it wasn't important, that's a matter of preference. There's no story on the front page that everyone thinks is important. It's enough if enough do.

If you mean it was offtopic for HN, I've addressed that in a bunch of other places.

everybodyknows
0 replies
16h30m

Wondering why there's no leaked copy of the email -- or was it promulgated by phone calls and announcements in the regular meetings?

acheong08
2 replies
19h44m

Beyond the culture war, I find DEI uncomfortable. I’m not the most articulate and don’t keep up with modern trends. Ask me about computers or tell me to code, but writing about social subjects when I barely leave my room and even then only to exercise feels like a nightmare. I’ve been asked to optionally write something similar during university applications in the past but along with ethnicity and other private information, N/A is the best I can think of.

uejfiweun
0 replies
17h42m

I'm with you on this one. I take pride in being out of tune with pop culture, I much prefer to focus on my real-life relationships, tech, personal projects, etc. This DEI stuff seems to change so rapidly that I often have no clue whether something I said was OK or not OK in the eyes of the overlords. It's caused me quite a bit of anxiety, especially during the peak of it in June 2020.

tumetab1
0 replies
8h41m

Same and I keep up with some of subjects but the whole DEI feels like a minefield where any thing voiced can be used against you.

Example: you notice that corporate culture is a bit aggressive on the feedback which causes some negatives effects. Someone says that everyone should do some training to give more neutral feedback but I notice that also gives room to less articulated people voice less concerns as they fear they could be badly perceived.

Still, everyone around pretends that are no tradeoffs, just positive effects. I have no idea how to properly give that feedback to the organization as it will be probably be seen as odd/weird or even talking down HR work.

photochemsyn
1 replies
20h45m

When recruiting students into science/technology-centric paths (which is what MIT is looking for), it's important to accept that the required mix of interest in the subject and a strong work ethic is just not all that common. It's also difficult to predict which students are going to have those characteristics based solely on high school grades, SAT scores, etc.

Thus excluding anyone from the pool of applicants on the basis of things like gender, ethnicity, etc. means you end up with fewer students going into challenging math and science programs, which is really not a good outcome in terms of remaining competitive with China and other booming technological sectors. For example, Caltech used to be all-male until c.1970 and is now about 45% female at the undergraduate level - but the curriculum is still as rigorous as ever.

P.S. STEAM is better than STEM; the arts these days have many tie-ins with technology and STEM students with no experience of any of the arts are missing out on many economic and personal growth opportunities.

YurgenJurgensen
0 replies
18h49m

We already have a word for "STEAM": "Academia". Unless you don't consider, say, History an art or a science, in which case, why do you hate historians so much that you'd make up an acronym that basically means "not you specifically"?

0xWTF
1 replies
22h52m

Pretty sure I didn't get a Stanford job in part because I didn't submit a DEI statement. It was optional, but clearly sort of like breathing is optional. I actually wrote one, had it reviewed, rewrote. As someone in federal government who made the mistake of being born white and male, but has worked their whole life on these issues (among many others) and made what I think are very defensibly equitable hiring and selection decisions that reflect the US in gender, race, and creed, the whole thing felt very ... icky.

cooper_ganglia
0 replies
2h39m

The problem is making the mistake of being born white and male! The best thing I've learned from all of this is that it's literally free to identify as whatever you'd like, whenever you'd like, so if opportunities are being taken from you on the basis of race or gender, you should take advantage of that. No one can deny that you identify as that thing, since identifying as something is the literal exact same thing as being that thing. That's how I became a non-binary black lesbian woman!

Like when they opened up the "Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing" for non-binary and trans people... So men showed up and claimed to be non-binary to get access to something that was available to any other person except them. We need to continue seeing stuff like this until we fully choke out the idea of admittance based on anything other than "Is this person the best for the role?".

https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-...

zzo38computer
0 replies
12h6m

I agree with then that it is better to not require DEI (due to the reasons they mention there (they are compelled speech and are irrelevant to what you are applying for, and that there are other contributions that are independent from DEI, as explained there), and others), but that does not necessarily mean that DEI should be banned; it only means that they should not be required, and that DEI statements alone are not a suitable criteria for admission. What is a suitable criteria is your competence at your work, if you have done it good.

Wikipedia says "Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are organizational frameworks which seek to promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination on the basis of identity or disability." This is not inherently a bad thing, although bad things can be (and are) done with it (like bad things can be (and are) done with many things), such as the required DEI statements over everything else.

Just because someone wrote a DEI statement does not necessarily mean that they are not qualified (or good at science or whatever it is they are applying for) nor does it necessary mean that they are qualified, and the same is true if they did not make a DEI statement.

One article (apparently by the same author) mentions that the Canadian government denied Patanjali Kambhampati (a physical chemist who seems quite accomplished, and works on quantum dots, has published 132 papers, and has an h index of 37) grants because he refuses to write the kind of woke diversity statement that the Canadian grant authorities demand. It also says, "What's even worse than diversity statements, is evaluating them as the first step in the grant-giving process". Of course, a better evaluation should be by the scientific merit, not by diversity statements.

zephrx1111
0 replies
14h0m

My point: DEI is the result, not the mean. If you do “DEI”, you will result in something un-DEI. We you do things right, DEI will show itself eventually. You can't by controlling the thermometer to control the temperature.

yareal
0 replies
23h1m

I value DEI as a critical part of addressing systemic injustice and building a strong, multifaceted organization.

However, these statement requirements look like absolute trash. The sort of thing that is wholly performative. Frankly, it's good they are being dropped in my view.

An intervention is only as good as the work needed to intervene. Saying, "spend ten minutes writing up a statement that no one will ever read and then discard" does zero actual lifting towards enabling inclusion.

wumeow
0 replies
22h59m

Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend.

underlipton
0 replies
16h8m

It seems like it's every day that I see signs that institutions are preparing for and aligning themselves with a prospective Trump presidency. Recent purges of media are another big one, especially of ones featuring marginalized groups, though thoughtful and challenging stories in general are targets - inclusive, ironically-though-quite-creatively, of something like Helldivers 2. You might not think that that example counts, but I do. It fits what is fast becoming the zeitgeist, one of monoliths flexing their ability to act with impunity, individuals left with nothing more than futile, quiet acts of resistance (which don't ultimately do much resisting). The guy at the top is doing it, after all, so for those at the top of their particular interest (market, field, etc.): why not? Who's going to stop you?

Our democracy might be and remain intact, but our democratic values - particularly those of valuing forthright thought; of speaking up and across instead of down; and of not hiding our faults behind smug strength or stone walls of silence, but instead exposing them so that they may be cleansed and sutured - do seem to be in jeopardy. This is an example of choosing easy over rigorous, and that's sad, especially for MIT.

We have ample evidence of how this happens in societies descending into radical nationalism, if not fascism. So, now I'm just wondering if we're the "learn from the past"-types or the "doomed to repeat it"-types. (Just as much as I'd like to know the answer to that, I'd love to hear from someone who understands what I'm trying to say here, even if they disagree.)

throwaway5959
0 replies
19h49m

Well now that that’s sorted, maybe we can start fixing real problems with higher Ed.

theoldlove
0 replies
20h21m

Not a lot of actual details in the piece. Anyone have links to academic job ads before and after this alleged change in policy?

tejtm
0 replies
13h19m

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statments (DEI)

For those previously blissfully ignorant; such as me.

surume
0 replies
12h33m

Yes, but just like Stanford, you probably can't say the word "American" without getting summoned to a disciplinary hearing and asking your landlord to have you evicted ah la San Francisco's way of doing things...

smashah
0 replies
20h19m

Great, hopefully they also end affirmative action for zionists. That is the biggest yet least spoken about DEI initiative in the whole tech scene.

qujine
0 replies
15h21m

I have posted quite a bit about them (see collection here), and object to them because they are not only compelled speech and are often completely irrelevant to what you’re applying for, but also ignore the fact that there are many ways to make contributions to society beyond enacting DEI. (For example, what about a college applicant who has taught illiterate adults to read?)

That is DEI. The writer is either confused or gaslighting for their own agenda.

prepend
0 replies
18h53m

ChatGPT is fantastic for writing DEI statements.

londons_explore
0 replies
19h46m

And will we, in about 50 years after emails get released, find a sizable donation from Elon Musk a few days before this announcement?

lazyeye
0 replies
19h39m

This is fantastic news. Requiring faculty staff to write what is essentially a short ideological treatise to be considered for employment is more in line with something I'd expect in Mao's China.

dang
0 replies
23h17m

All: Please don't use HN for ideological battle. There are too many low-quality/predictable comments here. We want curious conversation, not sharp recitals.

I know it's hard when the topic is itself an ideological battle, but that's a good time to review the site guidelines, including this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

bitwize
0 replies
1d8h

DEI policies are useful only inasmuch as they mask, rather than expose, the inequities of the system. Once people start taking it seriously and understanding the exploitative nature of capitalism, DEI gets dropped like a hot potato.

bastawhiz
0 replies
16h13m

Ignoring the pros and cons of these statements, I would bet money that the biggest (or perhaps "real") reason they're being axed is that nobody is reading them. It's one thing to all agree that something sounds great on paper, until you're forced to sit down and read page after page after page of drivel the authors didn't want to have to write while trying to say the things that you probably want to hear.

arduanika
0 replies
18h49m

The hubbub began to subside slowly as Major – de Coverley paused in the doorway with a frown of puzzled disapproval, as though viewing something bizarre. He started forward in a straight line, and the wall of officers before him parted like the Red Sea. Glancing neither left nor right, he strode indomitably up to the steam counter and, in a clear, full-bodied voice that was gruff with age and resonant with ancient eminence and authority, said:

‘Gimme eat.’

Instead of eat, Corporal Snark gave Major – de Coverley a loyalty oath to sign. Major – de Coverley swept it away with mighty displeasure the moment he recognized what it was, his good eye flaring up blindingly with fiery disdain and his enormous old corrugated face darkening in mountainous wrath.

‘Gimme eat, I said,’ he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled ominously through the silent tent like claps of distant thunder.

Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble. He glanced toward Milo pleadingly for guidance. For several terrible seconds there was not a sound. Then Milo nodded.

‘Give him eat,’ he said.

Corporal Snark began giving Major – de Coverley eat. Major – de Coverley turned from the counter with his tray full and came to a stop. His eyes fell on the groups of other officers gazing at him in mute appeal, and, with righteous belligerence, he roared:

‘Give everybody eat!’

‘Give everybody eat!’ Milo echoed with joyful relief, and the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade came to an end.

(From Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Longer passage here: https://mathematicalcrap.com/2022/08/14/the-great-loyalty-oa... )

WesolyKubeczek
0 replies
9h24m

Again, Vaclav Havel's "Power of the Powerless" somehow comes to mind.

Waterluvian
0 replies
19h13m

I’m a bit oppositionally defiant, so something like this, while I wholly believe in the core sentiment (of diversity, not the affirmations), would engender immediate resistance from me.

ThinkBeat
0 replies
19h24m

You cannot base science on political declarations /qualifications instead of merit, if you wish for advancements in the fields.

This is all the administrative class at universitets and government, declaring their raison d'etre and accumulated authority.

They cant really understand science or do much about it, so you cannot base power on that, so they must work hard to construct a vehicle that is untouchable my sciences, that will be feared. Then you can cement your authority on the new construct and keep adding to it, to accumulate more importance and power.

Quicky this vehicle will overtake science in relative importance for various institutions because this is about "justice and doing what is right and decent". Science is mundane and boring.

DebtDeflation
0 replies
20h0m

My approach whenever DEI comes up now is to not express a position or opinion supporting or opposing DEI itself but to simply cite statute and recent case law.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Section 703):

"It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer -

    (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or

    (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
Duvall v. Novant Health, Inc.

"To be clear, employers may, if they so choose, utilize D&I-type programs. What they cannot do is take adverse employment actions against employees based on their race or gender to implement such a program."

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which applied specifically to higher educational institutions, gives a very good indication as to how SCOTUS is likely to rule when a case involving private employment inevitably lands on its docket in the near future. Taking race into account when making employment decisions will be prohibited. Full stop. That includes setting race based targets/quotas, tying bonuses to their achievement, and establishing set aside jobs. What will likely be permissible will be efforts to expand candidate pools and training initiatives that focus on eliminating biases.