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Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

economist.com

231–240 of 407 posts

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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you willing to apply this DEI guidelines to music and sports? Black Americans are overrepresented and Asian Americans are massively underrepresented. Do you not think there is an element of personal choice and culture involved here?

If you had metrics on race distribution in music, spread across the entire population of the US, yes I would expect that a record label fairly and evenly recruiting would have artist metrics that match. Where artist choice comes in to the picture is if a label focuses on a single genre, you're now subject to the race balance in that genre. I don't think that's a problem, but it still is ideally fair recruiting.

Is there a single Asian American in the Billboard Top 100? Do you think if you asked 100 Asian American families and 100 Black American families; would you rather have your child go to an Ivy League college or appear in the Billboard Top 100, that the answers would be relatively equal between the two groups?

It is not a problem to be solved when different cultural groups make different choices for themselves and their families. The real problem is that DEI comes about 20 years too late to do anything to help, and sometimes it is in industries that don't appeal to the cultures it is trying to attract. Properly investing in children will greatly increase the number of minorities in the pipeline for college and well-paying jobs.

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

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My issue is that almost all of the "anti-woke" laws signed by DeSantis are astoundingly vague and make it extremely easy to submit objections but costly to combat objections, leading to a regime of defacto bans on controversial material or lessons regardless of their educational or developmental value. HB 1557 with its 'vigilante' style enforcement is a great example of this.

I believe children have rights and autonomy and at appropriate ages should have access to information some parents may find objectionable. There should of course be limits and parents should have input, but the law as written is not attempting to find any reasonable balance in my opinion.

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

#233
> They say that any candidate who does not discuss gender or race must be awarded low marks. The same goes for any earnest classical liberal who “explicitly states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same’.”

What is wrong with treating everyone the same? Isn't that anti-racist by definition?

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

#234
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you that what I posted is word for word what it said. Pretty hard to misunderstand. I work at a fortune 500 company.

I work in FAANG, and they just this year added a new category to yearly performance reviews for inclusion and diversity. So now our promotions and raises are tied not only to the quality of code we write and how much we help our team's productivity, but also to how much we helped non-white people get hired on the team. I also have an inclusion training every 6 months that sounds very similar to yours.

They tell you that if you're being berated by an upset minority colleague you should "sit there in {your} shame"?

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

#236

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…

> 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 worse, you tell somebody they are a victim enough, and they begin to believe it, they even play the role of a victim. You are now starting to see a generation of young minorities that have become what they are told they are. You now have a permanent victim class.

> 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 anything they are right and you must meekly accept it and bow your head in shame.

The result in this will simply be that people avoid interactions with people who pose a risk to them. You already see for example men are very cautious of being alone with women, or teachers alone with students.

> You even have companies doing layoffs now intentionally focused on laying off non minorities.

Those who choose this policy over merit deserve the rotten companies they are creating. Ultimately you do end up with what you optimize for.

> Another issue is that Asians while less in number than most other minorities are treated as white by DEI.

White Asians are a problem for the ideology, because they are a minority that statistically does well. They have to treat them as white, otherwise the ideology falls apart.

> I worry about my kids if this keeps escalating.

You'll probably find they are already being indoctrinated. I have teacher friends working in younger education who admit on social media they purposefully neglect boys when picking students with their hands up, and similar scenarios. Statistically men before this movement were doing worse than their female counterparts, I hate to think where we are after another 10 years time.

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

#237
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t believe getting upset about something as trivial as having to write a small essay atop of the regular rigorous rigmarole associated with entering a university (as a student or faculty member). This doesn’t make sense to me; let alone being upset on behalf of others!

> something as trivial as having to write a small essay Do you think the essay itself is really why people are upset, or are you being glib? It's hard to tell.

I understand the essay represents some Very Bad Idea that they disagree with or something along those lines.

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

#238
post #210
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.

Your comment makes the assumption that its all a scam and that the people voting for him over it are not intelligent enough to form their own opinions. That's a pretty arrogant assumption. What if the people voting for him are intelligent functioning members of society, have genuine concerns about the topic at hand and feel that Desantis best represents those concerns? Just because this is not a topic of concern for you does not make it any less of one for others. Everyone votes on different issues.

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

#239
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some images from books banned in Florida schools for K - 3 students by the "don't say gay" bill (censored but not safe for work): https://www.senatoraument.com/blurred-explicit-examples/ People can make their own choice if they think this is good content for nine year olds.

I enjoy that they added censor bubbles to make the pictures seem worse than they are after having me attest to being over 18. Top-tier scare mongering.

>after having me attest to being over 18.

That is required by federal law. Same reason you have to attest to being over 18 on porn sites.

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

#240
post #233

> They say that any candidate who does not discuss gender or race must be awarded low marks. The same goes for any earnest classical liberal who “explicitly states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same’.” What is wrong with treating everyone the same? Isn't that anti-racist by definition?

> They say that any candidate who does not discuss gender or race must be awarded low marks.

For starters, explicitly not defending this. I think it's stupid. For race in particular, I've seen a lot more damage done by well-meaning but tone-deaf attempts at DEI than by people just being normal non-shitty humans.

>> The same goes for any earnest classical liberal who “explicitly states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same’.

> What is wrong with treating everyone the same? Isn't that anti-racist by definition?

No, because "backgrounds" here can also mean "academic background" or "financial background" or a million other things that aren't race or gender.

If I were at an institution with a sizable population of academically under-prepared students then I wouldn't hire a faculty member who said they have no plan for how to differentiate their instruction and support academically under-prepared students, or non-traditional (read: older working) student, etc.

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