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Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

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

#221

Post by kelseyfrog »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #186
kelseyfrog wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might help to speak of the specific alternatives created as a response to DEI. Would you care to share?

I believe the set of beliefs associated most often with DEI are weakest with no opposition at all. I believe a lot of it is reactionary. This is why it needs huge media events where people can be outraged. But as far as ideas goes that would be general humanism like color blindness, freedom of speech and expression, freedom of association, guilty until proven innocent, equality instead of equity (although a balance h…

Sorry, but I think we're talking past each other.

My claim is that the values you mentioned(free speech &c.) are derivatives of enlightenment thought whose epistemological basis is objective reality. This appears tautologically true for true-believers within objective reality.

The DEI values are derived from an internal contradiction within objective reality which is something like, "How can X,Y,and Z bad things exist when people can [supposedly] embody ?" That's the contradiction I'm referring to within the symbolic universe of objective reality. This contradiction creates cognitive dissonance that is typically either resolved through individual failings (individualism being another value) or in the case of the avant-garde, substituting the whole or parts of objective reality with an alternative one ie: the subjective one.

The big hurdle here seems to be understanding objective reality as itself a totalizing and reified instantiation of a particular symbolic universe. It's something that's difficult to explain through text, but a glancing shot might be to examine the contradiction at the horizon of objective reality, namely that the displacement of a subjective reality by objective reality's totalizing nature precludes the values that objective reality contains, specifically "the individual's freedom to choose one's reality." In a universe where individuals are free to choose anything, not being able to choose subjective reality feels like the universe singing a version of Meatloaf's ballad on repeat[1].

I can't help but point out that the values you've mentioned (to me) aren't a response to DEI, but what DEI is responding to. The way I know this is that they predate DEI. Values that are a response to DEI cannot predate DEI.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27d_Do_Anything_for_Love_(Bu...

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

#222

Post by djkivi »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #16
onepointsixC wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's only a matter of time till it starts bubbling out of academia to industry Hard disagree. This is the type of thing only colleges do, it’s the equivalent of an essay and also displays how different academia is from the professional world. No one cares about publications in industry, and people buy into this stuff much less sincerely than in academia

Not in industry?

Once neglected, DEI initiatives now present at all Fortune 100 companies: https://www.hrdive.com/news/2022-fortune-companies-dei/62765...

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

#223

Post by remarkEon »

enragedcacti wrote: post #213
remarkEon wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read the law in question here[1]. Parents must have a venue to object to instructional content, and porn in school libraries is already illegal under a prior law about giving porn to minors. What is unclear about this? [1] https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1467/BillText/er/...

Classic DeSantis bait-and-switch, the actual text says: > b. Any material used in a classroom, made available in a school library, or included on a reading list contains content that is pornographic or prohibited under s. 847.012, is not suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented, or is inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used. The first clause…

Okay, but that's a different argument than "these teachers will go to jail now", which is what some people are pretending is happening but isn't. Is your argument now that parents should not have a forum to influence what is taught in the classroom? Or is your issue that they'll make decisions you don't agree with?

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

#224

Post by Dig1t »

cmh89 wrote: post #210
Dig1t wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge number of parents object though, which is why Desantis has so much support. Graphic depictions and descriptions of gay sex are of dubious educational value to a large portion of parents.

I'm sure they do, just like they were outraged by critical race theory being taught in elementary school. I'm not arguing that Desantis is a bad politician. He understands how to create a boogeyman and then get people outraged over it better than any politician alive.

For me, it was the opposite. I see this stuff at work and online and am angry about it. I look out at the political landscape and see that all the left is supporting this racist garbage, and I see the right is more concerned with oil pipelines and lowering taxes. Desantis is the only one who sticks out that is doing anything about this.

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

#225

Post by jrm4 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #208
jrm4 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is painfully wrong. There is absolutely everything wrong with THE STATE banning books from public schools. The state's job is to set up and maintain a structure by which localities etc. can more-or-less self govern their methodology of education and handle things like content, and e.g. fire your hypothetical school person who's glorifying Nazism. And the actual state should only be getting involved in deeply ext…

You are describing a theory of governance that has no bearing on the reality of today’s America. Over 20th century, it has been clearly and definitively established that not only the state, but also federal government have every right to interfere in the local schools. In fact, any legal authority of local schools to self govern stems directly from the state’s authority. This is unlike, for example, the states’ right…

Apologies, but when someone presumes to tell me what I believe and is painfully wrong, there's really no point in continuing. Good luck elsewhere.

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

#226

Post by wonderwonder »

cmh89 wrote: post #207
wonderwonder wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty confident you could swap out the name 'Florida' with any of the 50 states and your statement would be true. Why is it an exception if it's true in Florida?

Because there is more to quality of life than the economy. My point is that you can vote on outrage on non-issues because the state caters to your needs while leaving thousands of others behind.

Again this applies to every state. What my kids are taught in school is not a non issue for me, it's pretty much the issue. I will always vote for things that put my kids first even if that regretfully negativity affects others. I won't ever feel bad about that. Everyone will always have different priorities and core issues and that's fine. That's the beauty of democracy, everyone gets to consider their priorities and cast a single vote. No one's opinion is worth more or less than anyone else's.

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

#227

Post by eastbayjake »

hgielatan wrote: post #132
Manuel_D wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of your links are either paywalled studies, or lead to 404 pages, except for the first one. > The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. Right, so any diversity of ethnicity - including Asians - was associated with this "diversity boost". > They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity, And again,…

[flagged]

Friendly amendment: your McKinsey link is broken, but a quick google of the phrase brings back this full URL: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...

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

#228

Post by [deleted] »

efficax wrote: post #63
belval wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

[deleted]

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

#229

Post by abbiebe89 »

defen wrote: post #196
abbiebe89 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

You're really focused on the "science" aspect of this (in other words, science shows that DEI is really good for company outcomes). If science showed that DEI were bad for company outcomes, would you oppose it?

[flagged]

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

#230

Post by jl2718 »

interactivecode wrote: post #19
dtx1 wrote: post #8

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.

There's some irony here. The flag and the pledge start off as symbols of obedience to established power, and then become symbols of revolt against shifts in power, but it seems to me that the obedience programming always wins.

Right now in the US, there are parallel "flag-waving" and "flag-burning" revolutions. There's no question that the flag-burners are winning the biggest shifts in established power, but the flag-wavers are predominantly the rank-and-file enforcers of the flag-burner policies.

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