Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring
1–10 of 407 posts
Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring
#2I still don't understand how anyone can find such rules attractive. This is as strict as the catholic church. In the private sector it tells me that a company values show much more than their employees, which probably are treated badly and have to work in an extremely strict environment. If you have to say it...
People that honestly fall for such statements are too naive to really fill out any leadership position in my opinion, but it really seems that is their expectation after they paid that much tuition?
Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring
#3Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring
#4I still don't understand how anyone can find such rules attractive. This is as strict as the catholic church. In the private sector it tells me that a company values show much more than their employees, which probably are treated badly and have to work in an extremely strict environment. If you have to say it... People that honestly fall for such statements are too naive to really fill out any leadership position in…
academics are contracting in an already competitive situation.. expect more "soft pressure" not less, and ugly fights bursting into the public view
Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring
#5> Professor Halley believes these innovations are “forced speech and viewpoint discrimination in the First Amendment context”
That's an interesting viewpoint and I'm not sure how it squares with a university's First Amendment right to freedom of association. After all, they're at liberty to grant tenure to whomever they think is worthy of it, by their own criteria. If they think that a tenured physics professor's views on getting more people of diverse backgrounds into physics are as important as their views on plasma confinement, who has authority to tell them otherwise? How does such a requirement differ from, say, a requirement that a tenure-track professor have teaching experience (because a prof who can't pass knowledge on is worthless to the university)?
Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring
#6I still don't understand how anyone can find such rules attractive. This is as strict as the catholic church. In the private sector it tells me that a company values show much more than their employees, which probably are treated badly and have to work in an extremely strict environment. If you have to say it... People that honestly fall for such statements are too naive to really fill out any leadership position in…
Academia is such a brutal cutthroat battle for faculty positions, you have zero choice but to participate. An acquaintance was applying for faculty positions and every single position they were applying to required a DEI statement. It's only a matter of time till it starts bubbling out of academia to industry.
Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring
#7I still don't understand how anyone can find such rules attractive. This is as strict as the catholic church. In the private sector it tells me that a company values show much more than their employees, which probably are treated badly and have to work in an extremely strict environment. If you have to say it... People that honestly fall for such statements are too naive to really fill out any leadership position in…
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Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring
#8These Rules and Statements always remind me of the stories I heard from the GDR and USSR Days. To get your highschool diploma or PhD in the GDR you had to recite your commitment to Communist/Marxist ideas before a panel that often didn't care about it but everyone knew it was just easiest to go through the motions anyway.
Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring
#9This will draw people on either side of the argument on whether or not this is a constructive thing to do closer to having to define what diversity actually means in any given context. Discourse will need to crystallize around whether or not it is sufficient to define diversity in terms of a couple of specific racial and gender lines.
Put another way, two people, A and B, may have this dialogue:
A: Evidence for my contributions for DEI include
B: The do not qualify, because the parties impacted do not qualify as "diverse"
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Regardless of which side of that argument you're on, it seems to me like this is generally a good thing.
Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring
#10> Professor Halley believes these innovations are “forced speech and viewpoint discrimination in the First Amendment context” That's an interesting viewpoint and I'm not sure how it squares with a university's First Amendment right to freedom of association. After all, they're at liberty to grant tenure to whomever they think is worthy of it, by their own criteria. If they think that a tenured physics professor's vie…
>I'm not sure how it squares with a university's First Amendment right to freedom of association.
The short answer from the courts is - if you take money from the federal government, in any way, or have students who take money from the federal government, in any way, or distribute funds from the federal government, in any way, as a corporate entity you lose out on many of the rights entailed to a private citizen.