"Silence is violence" is the most authoritarian argument possible: it forces you to voluntarily identify your side, even if you refuse to do so. There's a reason why voting is secret: because no one should be forced to suffer consequences for their ideas. Forcing people to out themselves is bad, and it's time to ostracize who does it (along with those who incite mob pressure to fire wrong-thinkers, or to ban speakers from public places)
A math professor who objects to diversity statements
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Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#12Keep this in mind next time academia produces a study advocating for this or that social change - anyone willing to publish a study giving ammo to the wrong side of the culture war could not even get hired.
This is not speculation - this has been measured by a peer-reviewed study back in 2014, before the practice was made official with diversity statements: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25036715/
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#13I'm sympathetic to diversity statements. I get why some people want them, or some departments want them from applicants. From my experience applying to PhD programs, though, writing and insisting on them is...unacademic and often downright misguided. When you write them you're confronted with essentially justifying your existence as it fits into the often nonsensical groupings of DEI initiatives. Your research is not appraised independent of your identity; instead, the obvious implication is that you will be appraised through your identity. The very of idea of well done scholarship (careful argumentation, corralling and presentation of evidence, citing sources and addressing counter-arguments) is insulted. Certain applicants are made to self-flagellate for their identity while others are incentivized to present their identity as an advantage.
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#14'Painful experiences long ago convinced Barvinok that requirements to affirm any ideal are corrosive in academia. “I grew up in the Soviet Union, where people had to affirm their fealty to ideals, and the leaders embodying those ideals, on a daily basis,” he told me. “As years went by, I observed the remarkable ease with which passionate communists turned first into passionate pro-Western liberals and then into passi…
> “the routine affirmation of one’s beliefs as a precondition of making a living constitutes compelled speech and corrupts everyone who participates in the performance.”'
Very well said and it serves as a corollary to Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
By making people affirm some belief, that affirmation itself becomes a target and ceases to reflect that belief in the real world. Even those who would normally act on that belief eventually twist it into an empty performance because they're forced to by their less scrupulous peers, just to keep their jobs.
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#15'Painful experiences long ago convinced Barvinok that requirements to affirm any ideal are corrosive in academia. “I grew up in the Soviet Union, where people had to affirm their fealty to ideals, and the leaders embodying those ideals, on a daily basis,” he told me. “As years went by, I observed the remarkable ease with which passionate communists turned first into passionate pro-Western liberals and then into passi…
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Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#16'Painful experiences long ago convinced Barvinok that requirements to affirm any ideal are corrosive in academia. “I grew up in the Soviet Union, where people had to affirm their fealty to ideals, and the leaders embodying those ideals, on a daily basis,” he told me. “As years went by, I observed the remarkable ease with which passionate communists turned first into passionate pro-Western liberals and then into passi…
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The title was changed by the person who flagged it, it wasn't posted with that title.
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#17For me the part that resonated was this: > The third trend he noticed was the changing nature of debate. More and more often, someone would claim that an argument was harming a particular demographic, often without specifying how. As he recalls it, “It was at this ‘harm’ stage that people became afraid to speak their minds.” I've experienced this with people I know, on and offline, and I'm not talking about just ultr…
Perhaps you lost a friend there, because he pushed for your opinion on a matter where you disagreed. Silence-is-violence-speak is meant to scare people to agree, and when they object, like you did, it is even more harmful.
Imagine two friends, with different opinions on a hot topic, leaving their opinions aside, not bringing it up, because they realize that it makes no difference. In the small world, in relations between people day to day, there is value in leaving politics out of interactions. This is fairly well established in the workplace, but I think it goes about social settings and friends too. If you push for someones opinion, be prepared to accept it as a legitimate opinion. Otherwise, don't ask for it.
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#18For me the part that resonated was this: > The third trend he noticed was the changing nature of debate. More and more often, someone would claim that an argument was harming a particular demographic, often without specifying how. As he recalls it, “It was at this ‘harm’ stage that people became afraid to speak their minds.” I've experienced this with people I know, on and offline, and I'm not talking about just ultr…
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Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#19For me the part that resonated was this: > The third trend he noticed was the changing nature of debate. More and more often, someone would claim that an argument was harming a particular demographic, often without specifying how. As he recalls it, “It was at this ‘harm’ stage that people became afraid to speak their minds.” I've experienced this with people I know, on and offline, and I'm not talking about just ultr…
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Supporting Israel does not neccessarily mean supporting every action by their government. You are assuming way too much about parent, from what he wrote.
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
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