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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

#361

Post by eldaisfish »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #314
eldaisfish wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the NBA, it IS genetics. You cannot increase your height through your own efforts, the limit IS genetic. Basketball is one of the few sports where genetic advantages are a major factor. The reason many black americans are so tall is some part a cruel history but an equal part genetics - you would be foolish to deny this. The location of basketball courts is incidental and i'm not certain what your point is.

There are about 130 thousand people 6' 6" or taller in the US: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585718168419c246cf6f2... Which is coincidentally the average height of NBA players (meaning almost half of them are below this height). There are a maximum of about 600 NBA players at any given time, so a little more than 300 at 6' 6" or above. Having good height genetics means you have a 0.25% chance of being an NBA…

I was wrong. The US CDC has data for height by percentile and race. Black americans are not taller than white americans - you are absolutely correct. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_11/sr11_211.pdf See figure 8.

However - and this is a major issue - the outliers aren't captured in averages. I read a book called Taboo by John Entine that went into this exact issue. The issue is that the outliers are what determine champions at the elite level and people with west african heritage have slightly more genetic advantages - notably in sports like basketball. there is also the issue of rising incomes and the breaking down of societal barriers. As more black americans have access to sports like basketball, more of their slight genetic advantages can express themselves. All this gets masked by averages.

Entine's book makes a point in passing - africans will slowly start to dominate sports like football (soccer) that were traditionally dominated by white people. The french men's and women's football teams are showing this, as are many other european football teams. Football is more about skill and places less of a premium on height but there is one role where height is important - the goalkeeper. In the french squad, all their goalies except Lloris are either black or mixed heritage.

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

#362

Post by Forgeties79 »

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 treats minorities as a special lesser class that require protection from everyone else. It's the civil rights movement in reverse.

I keep seeing this statement but I never really get an explanation as to how it makes them a "special lesser class" or it's the "civil right movement in reverse." Could you elaborate?

>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.

I would like to see the language that says this.

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

#363

Post by Forgeties79 »

tablespoon wrote: post #277
cmh89 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everyone bans books. Sorry, I should have been more clear. Desantis is banning books for political reasons that have nothing to do with the education of children. > I think there needs to be a question of merit about what is taught, no? I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Experts on children's education are not calling for these politics-based book bannings.

> Sorry, I should have been more clear. Desantis is banning books for political reasons that have nothing to do with the education of children. Sorry, no. That's just "when I do it, it's good; but when they do it, it's evil." All these book decisions are for "political reasons," and they all have everything to do with the education of children.

>All these book decisions are for "political reasons," and they all have everything to do with the education of children.

Should be easy to show us some major examples on the left then. I can't think of a single governor moving the way Abbott and DeSantis are.

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

#364

Post by Forgeties79 »

Dig1t wrote: post #197
cmh89 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everyone bans books. Sorry, I should have been more clear. Desantis is banning books for political reasons that have nothing to do with the education of children. > I think there needs to be a question of merit about what is taught, no? I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Experts on children's education are not calling for these politics-based book bannings.

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.

>Graphic depictions and descriptions of gay sex are of dubious educational value to a large portion of parents.

Where is this happening?

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

#365

Post by adamsmith143 »

thwayunion wrote: post #283
adamsmith143 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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

The idea that because there are other issues with hiring in Academia that these "Faith Statements" don't matter rings pretty hollow imo.

>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'.

I'm actually a fan of the UC's and California generally but I also think that the UC's are the gold standard for Public Education in the US and what happens there often spreads across the rest of the big State University systems.

>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.

Not sure how you can say this with such assurance, given we can see countless examples of DEI gone wild at the Ivies or Stanford or Wellesley, etc. You did your undergrad/phd at multiple Ivies and have worked at a dozen of those corn row schools and know what's happening there?

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

#366

Post by ModernMech »

nicvg wrote: post #360
ModernMech wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No student has ever expressed to me or anyone else an issue regarding pronoun usage. The whole push for pronoun usage was a student-lead effort in the first place, including cis girls. So until I hear them complain (and students love to complain), I’m going to assume they are okay with it.

They stay quiet out of politeness and not wanting to be harassed and bullied for dissenting views on this topic. But I can guarantee that at least some of your female students are scoffing at the misogynistic idea that "woman = lipstick and dress and she/her pronouns".

> They stay quiet out of politeness and not wanting to be harassed and bullied for dissenting views on this topic.

I can tell you don't work with students. They are very vocal when you do something they don't agree with, to the point where they will anonymously send you their thoughts via a burner gmail account if they actually do feel for some reason they will suffer repercussions (which they never do). If the silent dissenters have thoughts, they will go unaddressed as long as they remain silent.

But to be clear you're arguing for a hypothetical person, correct? When you say "they stay quiet out of politeness", you are talking about students you invented that you assume exist, and not actual students you know personally who voiced this particular concern to you?

> "woman = lipstick and dress and she/her pronouns"

If you're trying to imply this is something I've said here or in the classroom, neither has occurred.

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

#367

Post by shrimp_emoji »

ModernMech wrote: post #366
nicvg wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They stay quiet out of politeness and not wanting to be harassed and bullied for dissenting views on this topic. But I can guarantee that at least some of your female students are scoffing at the misogynistic idea that "woman = lipstick and dress and she/her pronouns".

> They stay quiet out of politeness and not wanting to be harassed and bullied for dissenting views on this topic. I can tell you don't work with students. They are very vocal when you do something they don't agree with, to the point where they will anonymously send you their thoughts via a burner gmail account if they actually do feel for some reason they will suffer repercussions (which they never do). If the silen…

These would be "gender-critical" (or "TERF" or British--sorry, not necessarily that last one) students.

It feels like they'd be the ones violating the non-aggression principle here. They'd be offended at the idea that acknowledging the concept of gender as distinct from sex to ease trans students' dysphoria runs against their concept of gender as alloyed to sex (which isn't a thing that causes dysphoria to them; it's just a political stance). Dysphoria is a thing that causes people to hate, and sometimes kill, themselves. Political objections don't do that, to my knowledge.

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

#368

Post by tablespoon »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #363
tablespoon wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, I should have been more clear. Desantis is banning books for political reasons that have nothing to do with the education of children. Sorry, no. That's just "when I do it, it's good; but when they do it, it's evil." All these book decisions are for "political reasons," and they all have everything to do with the education of children.

>All these book decisions are for "political reasons," and they all have everything to do with the education of children. Should be easy to show us some major examples on the left then. I can't think of a single governor moving the way Abbott and DeSantis are.

> Should be easy to show us some major examples on the left then. I can't think of a single governor moving the way Abbott and DeSantis are.

It is. How many books that are anathema to the left do you think you'd find in a school library (e.g. something skeptical about transgenderism)? If you look at library weeding criteria, you'll typically find language about removing books that are now politically incorrect (though they wouldn't use that term).

It's also a mistake to insist on exact symmetry. My understanding is the left is quite over-represented in the librarian profession as a whole, and "book ban" is misleadingly defined as overriding the choices of those public employees:

> It is important to recognize that books available in schools, whether in a school or classroom library, or as part of a curriculum, were selected by librarians and educators as part of the educational offerings to students. Book bans occur when those choices are overridden by school boards, administrators, teachers, or even politicians, on the basis of a particular book’s content (https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor...).

If a different situation were true (e.g. conservative Christians were quite over-represented in the librarian profession), I'm absolutely certain you'd see political responses from liberal government authorities.

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

#369

Post by Forgeties79 »

tablespoon wrote: post #368
Forgeties79 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All these book decisions are for "political reasons," and they all have everything to do with the education of children. Should be easy to show us some major examples on the left then. I can't think of a single governor moving the way Abbott and DeSantis are.

> Should be easy to show us some major examples on the left then. I can't think of a single governor moving the way Abbott and DeSantis are. It is. How many books that are anathema to the left do you think you'd find in a school library (e.g. something skeptical about transgenderism)? If you look at library weeding criteria, you'll typically find language about removing books that are now politically incorrect (thoug…

>If something different were true (e.g. conservative Christians were quite over-represented in the librarian profession), I'm absolutely sure you'd see political responses from liberal government authorities.

This is demonstrably not true by the fact that this is happening more against topics conservatives find distasteful or offensive (such as LGBT works), as per your own article. Look at that map and the subjects being banned.

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

#370

Post by tablespoon »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #369
tablespoon wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should be easy to show us some major examples on the left then. I can't think of a single governor moving the way Abbott and DeSantis are. It is. How many books that are anathema to the left do you think you'd find in a school library (e.g. something skeptical about transgenderism)? If you look at library weeding criteria, you'll typically find language about removing books that are now politically incorrect (thoug…

>If something different were true (e.g. conservative Christians were quite over-represented in the librarian profession), I'm absolutely sure you'd see political responses from liberal government authorities. This is demonstrably not true by the fact that this is happening more against topics conservatives find distasteful or offensive (such as LGBT works), as per your own article. Look at that map and the subjects b…

> This is conjecture.

So? Is it unreasonable? Do you really think you'd see a rousing fight from the left to defend books that discouraged or condemned gender transitions? Or would you see outrage and calls that "something must be done!" to protect kids from those ideas? Even the ACLU is backing off from defending people and ideas that offend their liberal supporters.

And the rest isn't conjecture.

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