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Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

economist.com

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Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#61

Post by catiopatio »

shadowgovt wrote: post #51
adamsmith143 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we'll find a pendulum effect where schools that lean far into DEI are going to lose out on top students, grants, researchers, etc. They'll have to readjust and swing back into pedagogy because it will be very clear that if e.g. UC Berkeley is training students in DEI and not as much focus is spent on the actual subject matter their students won't start great companies, they won't get PhD's at other top school…

That's going to be the pudding the proof would be in, indeed. It'll be interesting to see what happens if they not only continue to generate excellent students and research but excel because the diversity theories are correct.

Why would that be the outcome of explicitly de-incentivizing excellence?

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#62

Post by astrange »

wonderwonder wrote: post #30

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…

> I worry about my kids if this keeps escalating. I dislike Desantis for many reasons but ended up voting for him specifically for this reason and a couple of other cultural issues.

He's not going to do anything about it. He's going to start a few fights to get press attention, then give up on it as soon as they stop paying attention, since he's just running your state government as PR for a presidential campaign.

(You may remember he started a fight with Disney over being too woke or something and threatened to cancel their special powers over their parks, but the actual bill came out today and does approximately nothing. Although it does remove their unused rights to own an airport or a nuclear reactor.)

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#63

Post by efficax »

belval wrote: post #49
efficax wrote: post #26

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…

> 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 affluent background who hasn't done much in that sense, you might still prevail. How can you write something like that, which shows that you 100% understand that this is racism, and then f…

the key question is not your race but whether you've had involvement in issues related to dei. white people can get high dei scores. black people can get low dei scores. it's not racism?

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#64

Post by fallingknife »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #9

This 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 co…

But there is no dialogue. In this case B will just move on to the next application and send the "thanks for applying" email to A.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#65

Post by Manuel_D »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #48
wonderwonder wrote: post #30

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…

>I worry about my kids if this keeps escalating. I dislike Desantis for many reasons but ended up voting for him specifically for this reason and a couple of other cultural issues. Considering the book banning he just enacted this seems like an extremely short sighted and poorly thought out reasoning.

Banning books from public school libraries has nearly zero effect on what students are exposed to. Did you ever check out a book from the school library? I never did, the actual municipal library had a much better selection. Harry Potter was banned from plenty of libraries for witchcraft, and it's sales demonstrate how futile it was.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#66

Post by SpeedilyDamage »

wonderwonder wrote: post #30

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…

> It's the civil rights movement in reverse.

Is it?

Here's what MLK has written:

> “Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic.”

> “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.”

> “A section of the white population, perceiving Negro pressure for change, misconstrues it as a demand for privileges rather than as a desperate quest for existence. The ensuing white backlash intimidates government officials who are already too timorous.”

DEI initiatives, when executed correctly, show substantially and consistently superior outcomes for the people and organizations who implement them. You will see more, and more successful, DEI initiatives for the rest of your life, because they work. Companies who are successful will tend to be companies who execute DEI initiatives well (I can post many high quality sources if folks are interested).

It's completely fair to criticize bad implementations of DEI, and we all know there are a lot of those, but to throw the baby out with the bath water here would be a mistake, and not one corporations will make willingly. You'd have to be pretty militant and aggressive with the law in order to stop companies from pursuing a win/win like DEI.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#67

Post by psychlops »

ergonaught wrote: post #52
SilverBirch wrote: post #35

This is such a "ugh" topic. Of course it's kind of absurd to be like "Write me an essay on how Woke you are", but it's the inevitable result of pretty low quality individuals trying to solve a real problem. Academia has obviously been historically discriminatory, and due to the massive problems with the structure of US universities it still has all sorts of problems. The way to fix that is obviously to bring in senio…

I was asked to describe the diversity within my private life during a job interview last year. It was a relatively lower end position, not even vaguely academic, and neither the role nor the company have any particular applicability to "diversity".

That seems like the greatest question to get. One could spin all sorts of fantasies and talk for hours...

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#69

Post by josephcsible »

sokoloff wrote: post #21
shadowgovt wrote: post #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 vie…

This doesn't seem like forced speech at all. Having to recite the Pledge of Allegiance (as I did, or felt like I did) is forced speech. Asking a question as part of an application isn't forcing any specific speech in response. "I think many DEI initiatives are treating a symptom of a genuine problem in society and think that striving to treat every individual in a fair manner and ensuring they feel included in my lab…

That answer would get the candidate immediately rejected.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#70

Post by kyleblarson »

What are the odds Dr Martin Luther King would have been hired at Berkeley?

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

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