41–50 of 407 posts
DEI statements are just one factor in the hiring process for faculty. Generally they'll get scored by the hiring committee on some numeric scale (like everything else in the application). A low DEI score might not tank your application if you're in a field where everyone else has a low DEI score, or if you are absolutely outstanding in your field but have middling DEI because you're a white, male scientist from an af…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you ever fought a war on symbolism before? Do you believe in free speech, personal liberty, and hard work? New epistemologies have taken root and from them, derived new values. Stamping out new ideas is a very very difficult task after they've reached enough people. The new guard sees the old rules as constraining as you find the new rules. Most revolutions happen in people's minds decades before social relation…
Do people share these values? They are implemented by authority. And some new values are old mistakes that are repeated ad nauseum. Kissing the scepter doesn't mean you love the scepter. Rejection is a strong possibility. Most ideas do die (dei?).
Deciding the because one must be forced to believe universalizes into other's being forced to believe is an empathy gap. If you wish to understand how how these ideas take root, don't fall into the "enemy is strong and weak" trap. Deciding that oneself believes because principles but others believe because they are forced to or are told to is a good way to fight the wrong fight.
You cannot simply wield and old value against a new symbolic universe. You either have to derive it in the new universe or create an even newer symbolic universe which probably can't happen yet because the problems with the new symbolic universe have to be realized within itself, not within the old universe.
Take free speech as an example. The DEI universe was created as a response to the symbolic universe free speech was forged in. In order to value free speech again, a post-DEI symbolic universe has to be developed as a response to the internal contradictions of the DEI universe - not the contradictions external to it. Trying to maintain a steady state symbolic universe is itself a contradiction - it's simply not possible. Evolve or die.
This is the sort of thing that confounds me. It proports to be anti racist but it's the opposite, it treats minorities as a special lesser class that require protection from everyone else. It's the civil rights movement in reverse. It's already started bleeding into the workspace with mandatory training and verbiage that essentially says anything you do in your interactions with a minority if they accuse you of anyth…
Yep. There’s likely going to be a huge blowback to all of this and the supporters will write it off as the country being full of racists. At this point I no longer care. This is draconian stuff.
This is the sort of thing that confounds me. It proports to be anti racist but it's the opposite, it treats minorities as a special lesser class that require protection from everyone else. It's the civil rights movement in reverse. It's already started bleeding into the workspace with mandatory training and verbiage that essentially says anything you do in your interactions with a minority if they accuse you of anyth…
These 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.
Reminds me of having to stand in a circle with all my classmates while one of us had the privilege of holding the national flag. We then in unison had to recite a pledge to that flag, the nation and god. just thinking about having to say the pledge of allegiance gives me chills.
It’s a pointless, anodyne and unobjectionable pledge that prescribes nothing.
It’s stupid, but not remotely comparable to DEI statements, or commitment to much more specific political ideals.
I 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No doubt, but I'm unaware of which right would fall under the category "Can't have DEI statements." If anything, government money tends to include more diversity entanglements, not fewer.
> I'm unaware of which right would fall under the category "Can't have DEI statements." The first amendment, as originally noted. This is most relevant at public universities, which effectively are the government.
Sounds like one for the courts.
This is the sort of thing that confounds me. It proports to be anti racist but it's the opposite, it treats minorities as a special lesser class that require protection from everyone else. It's the civil rights movement in reverse. It's already started bleeding into the workspace with mandatory training and verbiage that essentially says anything you do in your interactions with a minority if they accuse you of anyth…
Considering the book banning he just enacted this seems like an extremely short sighted and poorly thought out reasoning.
DEI statements are just one factor in the hiring process for faculty. Generally they'll get scored by the hiring committee on some numeric scale (like everything else in the application). A low DEI score might not tank your application if you're in a field where everyone else has a low DEI score, or if you are absolutely outstanding in your field but have middling DEI because you're a white, male scientist from an af…
How can you write something like that, which shows that you 100% understand that this is racism, and then finish with:
> The fuss about it is overblown.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No doubt, but I'm unaware of which right would fall under the category "Can't have DEI statements." If anything, government money tends to include more diversity entanglements, not fewer.
Hard for Europeans and some Americans to comprehend this but the US Constitution restricts the government not the other way. The Bill of Rights is meant to protect natural human rights from government systems. US funded academics are bound by it so I suspect these schools would loose in court. And I work for a government research lab and this nonsense is foreign to me.