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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

#281

Post by wonderwonder »

fallingknife wrote: post #278
wonderwonder wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is for me and I really dislike it. First time I've ever voted Republican. I still voted Dem on the federal level but had to think about it.

Why do you switch to D on the federal level? They seem like the main people pushing this nonsense through regulations. Because of Trump, I assume? It is pretty hard to vote for him.

I have always voted D. It was a major break for me to vote R at the state level. It took some soul searching. Now the bandaid is off I may vote R on the federal level, it really depends on the candidate. You are right though, I could not vote for Trump. I find myself enjoying divided government now. It optimally prevents new crazy legislation from becoming law and hopefully if something is important both sides will come together and get it done. May be wishful thinking though. I very much dislike both parties at the moment.

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

#282

Post by raxxorraxor »

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 is the toxic rule book of middle management. Treat your underlings differently and they fight each other instead of you. This is cynical and assumes motivation without evidence and it will not always be correct. Perhaps not even in the majority of cases.

But I believe DEI proponents often insist on the effects instead of the motivation in the first place. Bad word is a bad word, regardless of the context and such arguments...

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

#283

Post by thwayunion »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #271
thwayunion wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> top students, grants, researchers, etc.... Nobel Prizes LMAO. If you're hiring top-tier researchers there's enough cut-throat competition for revenue that DEI statements are marginal and everyone agrees no one gives a shit about Service (DEI is service). I'm sure there's an exception here or there, but even in those cases... Harvard/MIT have thousands of qualified candidates for every spot, and any of those people…

>LMAO. If you're hiring top-tier researchers there's enough cut-throat competition for revenue that DEI statements are marginal and everyone agrees no one gives a shit about Service (DEI is service). So why play the kabuki game at all if it's all so pointless. >The schools where DEI statements matter the most in hiring may or may not even have an office of sponsored research (aka not even enough grant revenue to both…

> So why play the kabuki game at all if it's all so pointless.

That's academia. I'm really, really serious.

You also submit, as a 20-something who has only ever been a student:

1. a multi-page research statement summarizing a five year research agenda,

2. a multi-page teaching statement (in some cases the candidate has literally just been a grader for one course and stretches that out for 2.5 pages),

3. three letters of reference (multiple pages, must be glowing with lots of anecdotes, preferably from senior and respected people in your field),

4. 5 page CV summarizing your first six years of work (at least one of which was just taking classes; lol), and

5. A diversity statement and/or statement of faith.

That's before your first phone interview. After the phone interview you have a 2 day on-site interview that involves an hour long talk, one-on-one interviews with dozens of people, and every meal with a different group of stakeholders. They sometimes even pick you up from the airport, drop you off at the airport, and have you sleep in a university house that you are "always on" from touch-down to take-off. No shit: I heard an anecdote about a candidate that didn't get an offer because he left the bedroom messy.

That's the process for an entry-level position that might only pay $60K.

Faculty hiring is straight up insane, and DEI/Faith statements don't even make the top 10 list of reasons why.

> We're talking about the UC schools which have been top of the world generally and the DEI stuff seems to matter quite a lot there.

Are we? The article starts with a discussion of Berkeley, but quickly generalizes to the rest of the industry. Very few of the comments here are about the UC system in particular.

By institution count, CA's public system is a teeny tiny fraction of the US's 4000+ colleges and universities.

But I get it. For a certain mark, California gets the cortisol goin'.

> ...pushing this the most aggressively, Harvard, Yale, the UC's etc.

LOL no they're not. The push is FAR stronger at no-name tuition-dependent corn row colleges in the midwest who have snow white undergrad populations and are literally existentially threatened by the coming decline in white 18 year old midwesterners.

But the Big Elite Coastal Schools are only institutions that people who lose their god damned brains over stuff like this ever want to talk about.

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

#284

Post by raxxorraxor »

shadowgovt wrote: post #17
PM_me_your_math wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fairness is not a tenant of the new cultural revolution, nor are the revolutionaries responsive to human nature, individual rights, or even capable of rational and critical thought. The end always justifies the means, with little care given to the truth or reality of whatever means is co-opted and tortured to advance their end. You must adhere to the core beliefs, which will change depending on the red fool's soup de…

TBF, fairness also wasn't a tenant of the old cultural revolution either. That's why these things keep happening. A free and civilized society has allowed the oppression, dispossession, and outright murder-without-consequence of far, far too many of its citizens to traipse along unquestioned.

On the contrary, the freest societies were most successful in doing away with oppression. No authoritarian rule came close to that. There is ample empirical evidence for that too.

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

#285

Post by xyzzyz »

jrm4 wrote: post #219
xyzzyz wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those two are literally the same thing. The “banning books” you’re talking about is literally the state curating the selection of children books in public libraries. Florida is not actually banning sales of certain books, as it would be illegal for it to do it (except in some edge cases), all it’s doing is curating the selection of books in libraries. The critics call it “banning books” to confuse audience into think…

Literally? Oh come on, stop being dense. Let's start with - today, one of these has the words "felony" attached to it. The other does not.

It is not my fault that the activists decided to call it “banning books” when the government curates selection of books in public school libraries. I wish that such confusing language has not been introduced, but here we are: people are now calling it “banning books”. It is not I who made them the same thing, it’s the activists who tried to confuse this with a different sort of government activity which is not taking place. I have no idea what “felony” you are talking about.

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

#286

Post by xyzzyz »

freejazz wrote: post #248
xyzzyz wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those two are literally the same thing. The “banning books” you’re talking about is literally the state curating the selection of children books in public libraries. Florida is not actually banning sales of certain books, as it would be illegal for it to do it (except in some edge cases), all it’s doing is curating the selection of books in libraries. The critics call it “banning books” to confuse audience into think…

This is a completely disingenuous post.

How so? Can you explain?

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

#287

Post by wonderwonder »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #244
wonderwonder wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are going to focus on whether or not his trainings use the exact terminology as mine when all he said was "similar" and just skip over " how much we helped non-white people get hired on the team"? This is outright racial discrimination and should be illegal. His complaint is even more egregious than mine.

Well yes friend, because as presented the accusations seem almost farcical, and to me seem like the result of some misunderstanding, intentional or not. I'm trying to focus on a single topic instead of looking for ways to get further incensed.

"the accusations seem almost farcical" Exactly! Yet they are the real lived experience we have to comply with in order to keep the jobs that provide the salary we use to feed our kids. That's why we are so against DEI as it stands today.

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

#288

Post by thwayunion »

haberman wrote: post #280
thwayunion wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I am a white, heterosexual male. I wrote a DEI statement that did not mention ethnicity, sexuality, or gender. I consistently got praise for my DEI statement in faculty interviews. I am fairly confident I am one of the only straight white males in this comment section who has applied to faculty positions and received job offers, across a variety of institution types. I am almost certain I am the only one in thi…

If the interest in DEI was primarily market-driven, rather than ideological, then we would expect to see a strong correlation between the selectiveness of an institution and disinterest in DEI. Institutions like Harvard that accept only 4% of applicants have no trouble keeping full enrollment year after year; people are banging down the door to get in. So if we follow your explanation, Harvard would have little motiv…

The ivy leagues are exceptional and subject to their own dynamics. I've never been at one, so I can't speak to them. (Have you been a job candidate or on the hiring committee at a top institution? If so I'm curious; if not, I don't have much interest in conjecturing about the accuracy of flame bait reporting on this topic atm to be honest.)

I do, however, know that I am pretty accurately describing how the other 4000+ colleges and universities work. Based on a sampling, yes, but I'm somewhat confident here.

To be a bit blunt: IDGAF about the top few dozen colleges and universities and I genuinely don't get why everyone else obsesses over them^1. Most of us will attend/work at the other 4K institutions. Let's focus on making those places good. (And, no, the ivy league and other elites aren't thought leaders in those orgs.)

--

[^1]: In my own life, I see a lot of the anti-DEI stuff about those institutions combing from parents of thoroughly mediocre kids who think that their special little snowflake didn't get into Harvard because of racism or whatever. To the point where I wonder if this entire genre of reporting, especially in places like the Economist, is basically just therapy for yuppie parents with over-inflated opinions of their child(ren, but usually not).

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

#289

Post by taylodl »

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…

People were saying these exact same things back in the 1980's.

It's a right-wing bogeyman and they use it to scare people because it works. Just like it did with you.

The thing is racism, at least the racism that actually matters to people's quality of life, is systemic. You're black? Higher mortgage rate for you, even if all other factors are the same. You're Asian? Then you're probably the better student, even if all other factors are the same.

The point of DEI is for you to recognize prejudices exist, we're all prejudiced in some way, and what steps are you going to take to prevent your prejudices from clouding your judgement. It's not about minorities getting preferential treatment (outside of the context of reparations which is a highly controversial topic), but making sure minorities get a fair shot. And in case you're wondering, yes, I remember "the good old days" when minorities were targeted for mass layoffs.

I'd argue if we weren't such assholes then we wouldn't have most of the problems we have in society but we just can't help ourselves, can we?

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

#290

Post by taylodl »

tablespoon wrote: post #275
cmh89 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Banning books and trying to erase people from society due to their sexual orientation is draconian. That framing is extremely misleading and tendentious. For instance: school boards making decisions about what to stock in their libraries is not "banning books," it's democracy. However, misrepresenting that as "book bans" cranks up the outrage, which is beneficial in partisan an ideological conflict. It's also frequ…

You may not have heard the news, Florida took that power away from school boards. That may be why you're getting downvoted.
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