Improving MIT’s written commitment to freedom of expression

I will definitely admit that I don't have much visibility outside of academia on DEI issues. I have visibility in my department, in my college and university, other departments at other universities, but not really the private sector.

I could definitely see a case where the private sector is now cargo-culting DEI efforts that originated in universities. Or that the DEI office is exporting their work, because that's their raison d'être. I could imagine this effort is misguided in some ways, if just for the reason that compared to employees, students are so much younger and less developed emotionally. Often they grow out of some of their worst behaviors by the time we graduate them. If you think about it, some of my students are as young as 16, most are 17-18-19. They are away from home for the first time in their lives, they are drinking, engaging in risky behavior, and they are at an age where they are susceptible of falling victim to diseases of the mind. As I said in another post, many of them are still developing a sense of what it means to treat others with respect and dignity.

Also I would say in the private sector, it's probably not right to require a DEI statement a condition of employment, for the reason that community service probably isn't a requirement of the job. In academia, because of the condition that community service is a job requirement, so it's more appropriate to talk about during the interview process.

One more important difference between academia and corporate America is that most DEI efforts in academia are completely optional for individual faculty, especially if they have tenure. The DEI rubric from Berkeley is a great example of this: here the DEI office is presenting a rubric that everyone is taking as hiring gospel and Berkeley, but when it comes to the actual hiring, this "rubric" is just a suggestion. Departments have the final say over who they hire, and hiring decisions are made democratically in most departments. Individual faculty make up the hiring committee, and the chair of the committee (a colleague, not your boss) can set their hiring practices that the committee find agreeable. Rather than the authoritarian model you find in corporate America, the academic model is more egalitarian. If you don't want to engage in any of this stuff, you really don't have to. There's the matter of getting past the DEI aspect of the application, but as I said this shouldn't be a problem for any faculty who actually has a concrete track record of service.

> Under the name of DEI, I have been subject to all sort of indoctrination claiming that I am inherently racist, that I am unconsciously believing that women suck at math and I need to do something to fix this problem, etc.

I think this is very unfortunate, but even if you believe you are free from a bias that women are bad at math, are you claiming that you are free from all biases? I think that would be quite a stretch. DEI efforts aren't supposed to convince you that you are racist, and they aren't supposed to claim that you suffer from specific biases, but they are supposed to make you aware that biases do exist in all people, and that we can counteract them by being aware of them.

So even if you aren't biased against women in math (great!), you still may have other subtle biases that you should be aware of. Biases are particularly important when you are in a direct position of power over the future other people, and therefore it's doubly important for professors to be aware of them. For rank and file employees, maybe the impact of biases is muted, which is another way I would say DEI efforts don't translate well from academia into corporate America.

> Companies have explicit DEI goals, and I have seen at least one VP committing to meet with two "minoritized" employees per quarter in order to meet his bar for support for DEI.

I would say this is a good example of where DEI in corporate America and academia diverge. In academia, we don't have a concept like this because DEI issues are ambient in our work. Having 1-on-1 time with minorities to meet some quota is quite misguided, and I can definitely see how overzealous DEI efforts can lead to such policies.

> The bullshit level around women in tech is particularly ridiculous. Everybody believes that "science" proves that there is a bias against hiring women

One of the thing you hear often about hiring women in tech is "We'd love to hire more women but we don't have enough applicants in the pipeline. Tell the schools to graduate more qualified women applicants, and we'll hire more women." Okay, well that's what we're doing. We're trying to increase the number of women applicant to tech roles, and I think what we're doing is working. Whether or not there's a bias against hiring women, there's definitely a gender imbalance in my CS classroom, to the tune of 90% men, 10% women. Through our DEI efforts, we have increased enrollment of women in our courses, and their outcomes are better than they've ever been. In fact, there were a number of tensions that existed before, and we've worked to alleviate them. Now, when these practices are exported and taken out of an academic context, I could definitely see that it could lead to unfortunate situations where things can be made worse. But that doesn't change the fact that student outcomes across both genders are up, enrollment of women in our program is up, and there are more women than ever who are graduating from our CS program and applying to tech roles.

> One way to handle this situation is to offer incoming professors a pamphlet describing various situations likely to happen and suggestions on how to deal with them.

This would be a helpful resource, but I still don't think it's unreasonable to ask applicants how they actually dealt with these issues in the past. And for senior applicants, they should have more than enough to talk about regarding their service and outreach efforts.

Also, to be clear, there's a big question mark around the best way to deal with various situations. It's very hard to distill things down to a pamphlet because the best practices here are still in flux and being researched. There is plenty of room for innovation in teaching methods.

> You seem to be under the impression that DEI is just a way to learn to deal with difficult situations.

Well, I've also seen the results in my department. We can see it from students who tell us they appreciate the efforts we are making. We can see it in student outcomes of certain demographics that are better than they were from before we started these efforts. Enrollments from underrepresented groups are up.

> (I appreciate you taking the time for this discussion.)

Heh thanks, you may be the only one. My karma certainly took a hit :P

Thanks heavens, no.

I totally agree that you don't want to hire people for instructor roles who regard teaching as an afterthought or a nuisance. That's always been a "given" (even though obviously not always adhered to, in practice). And yes, in general you want to avoid the mostly mono- and bisyllabic types, and hire people who answer important questions with more than a single sentence fragment.

But to be clear: the practice of mandating diversity statements (with highly refined, and in places, what can only be described as ideologically charged evaluation criteria) is completely orthogonal to the simple matter of needing to hire teachers who actually can teach and want to to.

> with highly refined, and in places, what can only be described as ideologically charged evaluation criteria

I will keep reiterating the point, but this again overstates the role the document released by the Berkeley DEIB office plays in the faculty hiring process. At all levels, individual departments and the college dean have full discretion on what searches are conducted and how applications are evaluated. Individual faculty members are free to fully disregard any and all DEI concerns when voting on a faculty hire.

Yes DEI statements are required in the application. No the DEIB office at Berekely doesn't have control over how that statement is evaluated. They have some thoughts, but they are just those -- impotent thoughts of the DEIB office to which you are ascribing far more weight than they deserve.

We do in fact ask them to write a teaching statement, and they focus on pedagogy there. But we want them to address issues of diversity specifically (I think I made it clear in my other posts why), because we found if we don't, then they won't address the topic at all. If we ask a question during the interview like "How do you handle a situation where a student reports sexual harassment to you?", we don't want it to be the first time in their life a candidate has ever even considered the question. Requiring an DEI essay is a way of elevating the profile of a job requirement during the interview process; if a candidate has to spend some time writing a DEI statement before a phone screen, it makes focuses their thoughts and makes in-person discussions much more productive.

> Your DEI office is working hard to convince the world that all whites are racists, which leads to pearls like this one which just came out today

The article you link is quite a pearl, but you have to admit this is probably one of the more extreme positions, and I would say it doesn't really represent what we're talking about here (the Berkeley rubric). This is a post by a blue-haired sociologist about DEI efforts in corporate America, which doesn't really reflect hiring practices in academic departments (except maybe the Sociology department). I know that academia has a reputation as being a bastion of leftism, but it might surprise a lot of people to know that there is a degree of political beliefs across the university, and that not all departments are as left leaning as e.g. the Sociology department.

> DEI is now associated with "the world is racist", "everybody is a white supremacist", "white fragility", and all this stuff. The message that your DEI office sends is pretty clear.

At the same time messages sent by DEI offices are misread and misrepresented. Look no further than the Berkeley rubric in question. It clearly presents itself as a suggestion, a template, non-exhaustive, not ironclad, open for interpretation, available to be used (or not) by any departments. Despite this very clear and unambiguous language, some people interpreted it as "You don’t get a job without demonstrating tangible contributions to DEI in the past." No, that's just not what is happening in reality. We have hired plenty of new faculty who have very weak DEI statements. It's very rare for new faculty to have much of a track record of tangible DEI contributions. But they get hired anyway, because as I said, the perception of this document does not match reality.

Nonetheless, what you get is a bunch of people who have never read a single DEI statement in their life, have never been a part of a faculty search, have never applied to a faculty position, all talking about and repeating how awful and corrupted the process is by DEI statements. All the while no one can point to a practice of this DEI rubric being used in the way they fear.

So when you say that academic DEI offices are convicting the world that "all whites are racists" or "everybody is a white supremacist", I have to take a step back and pause. These are some pretty extreme, absolutist statements, so I have to ask are these hyperbole? Or do you have examples of academic DEI offices trying to convince the world that "all white are racist". Because I've seen a lot of communications from academics DEI offices, and it's not something they are likely to say. I know people in those offices and I'm sure they would disagree with the statement "everybody is a white supremacist". It's worth pointing out that the Berkeley rubric doesn't mention the words "racist", "racism", "white", or "supremacy" at all.

I will say that there's a lot of nuance in these issues. It's quite easy to go from a nuanced, qualified, well-reasoned, sourced statement to incendiary hyperbole by removing a few well-placed words. Often times you can take an outrageous statement that is taken as "everybody is a white supremacist", and trace its provenance back to something that is much more reasonable in context, that doesn't even closely resemble where it ended up (ever play whisper down the lane?)

> I wish you to be able to retain control over the choice of your colleagues forever.

We will. The economics work out that way.

Do you really know this to be true, though? Faculty and admin are always organizing and speaking at workshops on these topics, they're always holding seminars for one another about best practices and new ideas. They've most certainly had pointed discussions in faculty meetings about these issues and how to handle them. And they've been doing these things well before "DEI" became a thing.

Also, unstated in your comment is the presumption that dedicated reflection and intentional effort can't improve one's empathy and decency. That a baseline, instinctual level is enough, even though you admit earlier you believe it's a given that instructors need to have above-average empathy. Okay well if that's true, how does one develop above-average empathy? How does one demonstrate above-average empathy?

> all the other positive signals candidates are supposed to generate to avoid coming under suspicion of being either deficient in their capacities for treating other people decently (or worse, perhaps secretly harboring bigoted attitudes).

I think this is an important point you make here. Because we agree that the job of professor requires above-average empathy. I believe that anyone can improve their empathy through practice and intentionality. I also believe that although everyone considers themself to be empathetic and decent, everyone also has the capacity to make mistakes. I believe intentional practice and reflection are the best way to use these mistakes to maximize one's empathetic ability.

In that light, a DEI statement should be seen as an opportunity for an applicant to demonstrate their practice of developing an above-average empathy. Then the statement is not about identifying deficient capacities or bigoted attitudes. Rather, it's about identifying candidates who have recognized that empathy is a skill that can be honed like any other, and who have developed and implemented an explicit practice for honing their own empathy.

> I know you're going to hate this term, but there's really no other term to use: virtuous awareness of the importance of these issues?

I have no feelings about this term.

> There really is something about the some of expectations in the UC rubric that is just ... weird, very weird

I will say again that the Berkeley rubric is the product of the Berkeley DEIB office, which is probably staffed by people who are very far from your position in the political spectrum. Most of what they say may seem quite weird to you. So the entire document has to be viewed through this lens, with the clear understanding that hiring committees, who I will state again are the ones with the power to derail your candidacy (not the DEI office), don't understand or agree with everything written in this document.

As far as the criterion you highlighted, it is a perfectly decent position for someone to have. The reason why it's seen as "wrong" by the DEIB office at Berkeley is because from experience we as a profession have found it leads to instructors with attitudes like "I don't care that Timmy has a learning disability, he has to take the test for the same 45 minutes as the other students!"

The idea isn't really to factor an individual's background into all of your interactions with them at all times, that would be exhausting. Instead, the idea is to recognize that someone's background can profoundly impact the way they experience your classroom, and sometimes that manifests itself in ways where you as an instructor have the opportunity to make conditions materially better. Sometimes these changes are very small and subtle, but can have a huge impact on students. The difficulty isn't making the change, it's in recognizing the need for one in the first place (this is really where the empathy skill is put to work).

Another way you can think about it is, it's less about particular students and individuals, and really more about the fact that there isn't one single archetypical student X that you can design a course around. Instead, there are different kinds of students -- X, Y, and Z -- and they all have competing and sometimes conflicting demands.

Let me give you some examples:

- Some instructors have a no laptops during class rule. But some students have trouble taking notes on paper due to any number of issues. A policy of treating everyone the same would lead to these students doing poorly in the class. Taking into account their needs can result in a policy that can be crafted to work for everyone.

- Most of my students are teenagers, but others are working parents. One of these parent-students had a sick child, and couldn't afford a sitter so that they could come to class. Some instructors would say this parent-student gets a zero and has to make up the work, because that's the policy for all students. On the other hand, I've already factored this reality into my course design, and the parent-student was able to take care of their child and also didn't miss a single minute of class. Experienced instructors do this as a matter of course and will be able to write about it in a DEI statement without a problem. Novice instructors don't even recognize the issue until it comes at them mid semester, where ad hoc changes to course policies can be problematic.

- I used to require some pretty involved software installation for one of my courses. Everyone has a laptop, so what's the big deal? Well, then I learned just how tenuous "having a laptop" can be. While some students had a brand new, state-of-the-art 16" Macbook Pro, others were using a 5 year-old family laptop shared between 4 siblings, and didn't have permission to install the required course material. Thus I adjusted my requirements here so that the software could be used from a browser, and required no installation at all.

> Otherwise, you are clearly lacking in empathy, and completely incapable of understanding the fact that other people have different backgrounds and different perspectives than your own.

Right, so if you say that you will "treat everyone the same", you have to square that with the "fact that other people have different backgrounds and different perspectives than your own." What follows from different backgrounds and perspectives is different needs and expectations. That's why "treat everyone the same" is problematic -- because it's hard to do that and also admit that you can fulfil all student needs and meet every expectation.

Finally I will say that I believe what the Berkeley DEIB office is really doing here with this particular criterion is cutting to the chase: "treat everyone the same" is one of those banal meaningless platitudes you will find in statements that are written as an afterthought. It's not often you will read a phrase that amounts to "treat everyone the same", and then what follows is a detailed, nuanced, well-reasoned discussion as to why this policy works in practice. Such a statement would be welcomed, although I think if you came to interview you may be challenged on your point of view.

Rather, it's typically just one platitude in a string of platitudes, which amount to a vague and ultimately meaningless DEI statement.

> And any class you teach will be "14 weeks of chaos and confusion", waiting to happen

Heh, I will say my students certainly are perpetually confused.