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Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

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Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#231
The irony of “anti racism” is that its core goal of racial preferences is one championed mainly by white elite administrators.

Let’s be clear: most minorities oppose explicit racial preferences, including Black people: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/05/08/america...

In a recent example, the California ballot measure that would have legalized racial preferences in the state failed overwhelmingly, including in every majority Hispanic county in the state.

But explicit racial preferences are at the core of anti racism as Kendi formulates it:

> The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

Why does this hold so much appeal? Because the audience of Kendi’s book isn’t minorities, it’s white people. And white people who dominate university faculties and professional organizations love this because it empowers them.

For one thing, it empowers them to use race as a club against other white people.

For another, it gives them tremendous power to shape minority culture. They have the power to select the brown people who will “represent” their whole group. Want a Muslim American professor, but don’t like what Islam has to say about women or homosexuality? Easily handled. The white faculty in charge can just pick a Muslim who agrees with white people about those things instead of other Muslims. And for good measure they can be made to sign a diversity statement. No wonder it’s the dream for Elizabeth Warren types.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#232
post #173

Free Speech for Me--But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other (1992) [1] is a good read on how we got to a point where our ability to communicate across ideologies appears to be broken in many ways. For example, in 1963 Yale disinvited George Wallace, who was popular in the deep south, as a speaker. As a result, observers were deprived of a chance to hear opposing speakers' argu…

Quoted post unavailable.

> one groups aims are to destroy open and civil discourse

So you beat them to it?

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#233
post #173

Free Speech for Me--But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other (1992) [1] is a good read on how we got to a point where our ability to communicate across ideologies appears to be broken in many ways. For example, in 1963 Yale disinvited George Wallace, who was popular in the deep south, as a speaker. As a result, observers were deprived of a chance to hear opposing speakers' argu…

[flagged]

That's not what I wrote. I said he was already a popular figure whose views should be publicly refuted. The fact that he later became a presidential contender isn't Yale's fault, but rather the unfortunate result of a lack of willingness to let the bad ideas see themselves out the door.

> "Haters in the end bury themselves if you let them talk" - Jonathan Rauch

https://youtu.be/E0T9XSG73kY?t=3083

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#235
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the SPSP requirement went a step further, dropping "diversity" in favor of "anti-racism," a term frequently associated with Boston University's Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist and other works. Among the book's passages is a widely shared one highlighted by Haidt: "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discriminati…

That's ... not how this works. This is not a zero-sum thing. (Even if there are parts of the problem where the actual conflicts are zero-sum, ie. there's a limit of how many first-year students can fit into classes, etc.) Discriminating against already well off groups to help chronically not well-off groups (affirmative action) is of course discrimination but the consequence is very unlikely to cause the well-off gro…

Saying that it’s okay to discriminate against poor Whites, Jews, and Asians because some are rich is entirely racist:

You’re viewing people as defined by their race, not their individual attributes and histories.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#236

"Now that many university presidents have agreed to implement many of the demands, I believe that the conflict between truth and social justice is likely to become unmanageable." Can someone ELI5 what is this conflict between truth and social justice Haidt refers to?

One way to look at it: this is like requiring all Maths research to be applied mathematics, because we demand to get the social benefits right now and it is your job to find it. I don't know if they actually verify what you wrote in your declaration and how.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#237
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's not what I wrote. I said he was already a popular figure whose views should be publicly refuted. The fact that he later became a presidential contender isn't Yale's fault, but rather the unfortunate result of a lack of willingness to let the bad ideas see themselves out the door. > "Haters in the end bury themselves if you let them talk" - Jonathan Rauch https://youtu.be/E0T9XSG73kY?t=3083

He was challenged by most, but not all, newspapers. It clearly didn't work as we're still dealing with the same BS 60 years later.

But sure, the real problem is Psychologists trying to adress systematic racism in their field. That's worth resigning about. Because they're trying to hide the truth, but also we should let them speak, in our academic Psychological publications, because it's obvious nonsense.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#238
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> When one group wants to eliminate open society and civility, how is possible to have an open and civil debate with them? Roger Baldwin, founder of the now gone-astray ACLU, said this [1], > Host: "What possible reason is there for giving civil liberties to people who will use those civil liberties in order to destroy the civil liberties of all the rest?" > Roger: "That's a classic argument you know, that's what the…

There is no nuance in this debate. Roger made those statements in 1982. The only access to broad public announcement was via TV, controlled by private companies for the most part.

Today platforms have the same choices about what to air or not. Free Speech is also about not forcing people to say things they do not want, it is also about not forcing platforms to broadcast lies.

These are not the same thing.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#239

Entirely independent of the primary theme of this discussion, I found this statement from Haidt to be quite grating: > "The telos of a knife is to cut, the telos of medicine is to heal, and the telos of a university is truth." Since when is "truth" a verb?

I would have preferred and opted for "to teach" instead, or probably the more emphatic yet more problematic "to teach the truth" but the sentence structure seems sound to me grammatically speaking.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#240
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals." Diversity is fine. But every single piece of research has to be related to diversity? Is it not possible to do research on anything else that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with identity issues? This is not a statement about promoting diversity,…

It's not so much off-topic research. The research output of much of social psychology tends to hurt the cause of DEI. They want to stop that.

> It's not so much off-topic research. The research output of much of social psychology tends to hurt the cause of DEI. They want to stop that.

This might be the most potentially fascinating comment in the thread. In what way is the research of much of social psychology hurting DEI?

As far as I know, based on my limited understanding of the field, there's not a lot of research that's performed/approved/funded in that field where people know that the research could yield some "politically incorrect" data or conclusions.

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