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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

#321

Post by goatlover »

bArray wrote: post #236
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…

> 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 th…

And if you're a minority group like Asians, Hispanics or African immigrants, you get called terms like white-adjacent or internalizing racism when upholding values of hard work and discipline to get ahead, because those are somehow values of a "white supremacist" society.

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

#322

Post by goatlover »

thwayunion wrote: post #202
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…

> 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…

WASP? You mean they don't have enough Catholics or Germanic students? You mean to tell me Harvard/MIT can't recruit foreigners? I see MIT's first year student survey shows Asian American as the highest group at 40%. Internationals are 11%.

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

#323

Post by goatlover »

shadowgovt wrote: post #199
adamsmith143 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You no longer hire the best candidate on the merits but rather the one with a sufficiently high DEI score.

Isn't "ability to work with people of a diverse background" also one of the merits in a very, very diverse society?

Why can't that just be "ability to work with people" full stop, regardless of their background? If society is very, very diverse, then surely we all have to work, live and grow up with different people anyway.

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

#324

Post by goatlover »

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.

Both can be true examples of authoritarianism.

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

#325

Post by rhino369 »

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

A major tech company forces DEI statements on RFPs for outside vendors. They wanted stars by the names of the diverse people on the proposed team.

This stuff have been in the private sector for years now.

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

#326

Post by taylodl »

wonderwonder wrote: post #297
taylodl wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Everybody should read Mein Kempf just so you can understand how populism works. As for Creationism? It absolutely should be taught in science class to help students distinguish between what is science and what is pseudoscience. You may as well make sure they understand what a scientific theory is while you're at it. I'd throw in the Satanic Bible too as it actually defines what humanism is…

Honestly most kids would benefit from just having a yearly class on debt and budgeting. It's a core skill for being a successful adult and 90% of us don't do it. I know it's a different topic but I've always been amazed that it's not a core or the core skill taught in school.

100% wholeheartedly agree!

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

#327

Post by taylodl »

wonderwonder wrote: post #291
taylodl wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

"It's a right-wing bogeyman and they use it to scare people because it works. Just like it did with you." Your right, I'm an idiot unable to think for myself. Me and everyone else that believes this. People who believe as you do are the only intelligent ones able to think for themselves. Everything I have experienced related to DEI is not real and part of the massive collective hallucination experienced by anyone tha…

Who told you to sit in your shame? Honestly you sound like a prick. Acknowledging your prejudices isn’t shameful, denying you have prejudices, well, that says a lot about you - and none of it is good. All I can hope is maybe some day you’ll grow up.

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

#328

Post by shadowgovt »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #284
shadowgovt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand how that is contrary to my statement.

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

#329

Post by ModernMech »

thwayunion wrote: post #288
haberman wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Have you been a job candidate or on the hiring committee at a top institution?

I have been both, and I would say your take is basically accurate, but it’s actually more fundamental than what you describe.

Diversity statements are needed because teaching a diverse classroom is part of the job today. Applicants must demonstrate that they’ve grappled with the issues that arise while teaching. Applicants who can’t articulate a salient position on real issues they will face on the job are rejected for being unqualified, not because they don’t adhere to some Marxist political agenda pushed by radical DEI administrators.

I agree with what you wrote in your other post, that a lot of the discourse here is from people who have neither read nor written a DEI statement. It makes the discourse frustrating, because it means people are getting worked up over what they imagine the process looks like - which is usually a caricature of the sort you see being portrayed in other comments. The dearth of actual experience on this topic means that these 800 comment threads that crop up here are low quality echo chambers.

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

#330

Post by knewter »

cmh89 wrote: post #265
Dig1t wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>I see this stuff at work and online and am angry about it. Well yeah, that's the whole point of their information machine. >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. Who is now? The right only has the culture war to talk about. Tucker is on nightly raging about identity politics and w…

Have you considered that your understanding of left wing politics is what the left wing media told you?

Dude you're arguing with said he saw it happening at work and it concerned him. You pretended like that didn't happen. Why won't you acknowledge your fellow man's agency?

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