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A math professor who objects to diversity statements

theatlantic.com

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Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#51

Post by AnthonyMouse »

janalsncm wrote: post #38

It seems a bit silly to ask academics to enhance DEI initiatives. These are initiatives created by administrators to solve issues that administrators have caused. I also don’t like the surface level diversity metrics that schools target: reported race and gender. Of course these are historically important, but they’re also proxies for class which is a far more important type of diversity in my opinion. I see educatio…

> Targeting class diversity naturally gets you racial diversity anyways.

Not only that, the opposite doesn't. There are fewer black kids than white kids who grew up in affluent / middle class families, but not so few that you couldn't fill every diversity slot at an elite university with them.

Which defeats the proper purpose of the program. You're supposed to be giving opportunities to people who didn't have them and bringing different perspectives into the student body, not further advantaging the most privileged subset of the people who can check the important box on the form who grew up in the same neighborhood as the other elite students.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#53

Post by danielvf »

fsckboy wrote: post #36
beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #13

I'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…

I am familiar with diversity statements by institutions, but what would a diversity statement from an applicant consist of, what would be expected? for example, declared alignment with the institution? or statements about one's own "diversity"? just trying to get a grasp.

Here's a scoring guide to "how good" a statement is, along with examples.

https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#54

Post by PakG1 »

christiangenco wrote: post #8

For two excellent books on the topic of how the woke ideology corrodes societies (academia in particular) check out "What's Our Problem?" by Tim Urban and "The Coddling of the American Mind" by by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.

Interestingly enough, Jonathan Haidt is a proper full professor, unlike Tim Urban and Greg Lukianoff. I'm curious how he navigates the university culture.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#55

Post by mattlondon »

Dalewyn wrote: post #43
asylteltine wrote: post #34

Good for him. DEI statements are insane zealotry.

We need to call "diversity" for what it really is: Discrimination. You must consider an individual's race, gender, sexual preference, and other immutable factors in contexts that have absolutely no bearing upon the bigger matter at hand. That is racist and sexist, that is discrimination of the purest order. And before someone accuses me of "white supremacy" or "patriarchy" or other buzzword nonsense: I'm Japanese-Ame…

Where I work the DEI training (mandatory, of course) has gone full-on bonkers. I am genuinely struggling to accept it is real and not some sort of massive joke or it was all some crazy fever-dream

The thrust of the training is that now treating people "equally" or "fairly" is now racist. If you treat people fairly or equally you are liable for HR punishments. The training then goes on to list various accusations for each major racial group (so and so are lazy, so and so are dirty, so and so are dishonest) and that you must now specifically go out of your way to think "oh yes, this person's race is considered to be sexually promiscuous! I must make sure I adjust my behaviour to address this." when you go into a planning meeting or performance review or something totally unrelated (and of course with that thought in your mind you cannot then unthink it). You cannot just treat everyone in the same professional manner, you must now think about and consider all of the racial stereotypes that apply to each person in everything that you do and adjust your behaviour to provide "equity" (not "equality"! That is now a dirty word!)

I simply could not believe it. This training was training me about racial stereotypes. It is teaching me new ways to stereotype people based on their race. Genuinely many of the things it was telling me were new to me and left me wondering "is this what people really think about foo? I had no idea! I am so naive!" before I caught myself.

Am I taking crazy pills? WTF is going on?!

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#56

Post by selimthegrim »

genman wrote: post #40
shermantanktop wrote: post #27

This is a well established pattern: someone who grew up in the Soviet Union and had traumatic experiences with ideological conformity now reacts to something happening in the US with a ferocity of feeling that ends up comparing that thing to pogroms, forced collectivization and ideological purges. Is it warranted? Depends what they are saying, and their points should stand on their own. But they are larded with Cassa…

It was a norm in Soviet Union that to advance academically you had to produce work that somehow endorsed communism. It was very good if you were able to put some citations of Lenin or Marx into your completely unrelated work at minimum or better to produce complete body of work that somehow academically promoted communism even when you worked as mathematician. Of course many people understood that it is all bullshit…

Is this where all that stuff about Marx anticipating calculus came from?

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#57

Post by bglazer »

zephrx1111 wrote: post #28

Diversity is based on the belief that some group‘s behavior patterns are fitting better with the environment, even temporarily and locally. But DEI is denying this difference, expecting any behavioral pattern should deserve the same result. They can’t even reach a logic consistency.

No, you’re wrong. Belief in “diversity” is the belief that many different groups/identities can contribute, and that none are strictly “best”. DEI is an effort to include more groups in institutions, in order to benefit from the mixing of ideas that results.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#58

Post by spenczar5 »

shermantanktop wrote: post #27

This is a well established pattern: someone who grew up in the Soviet Union and had traumatic experiences with ideological conformity now reacts to something happening in the US with a ferocity of feeling that ends up comparing that thing to pogroms, forced collectivization and ideological purges. Is it warranted? Depends what they are saying, and their points should stand on their own. But they are larded with Cassa…

That pattern is not in evidence here. He seems very level about the whole thing, and much different than your caricature:

“ At the same time, the stakes were never nearly as dire as those in the society he’d left. As he put it, “Unlike in the Soviet Union and today’s Russia, it appeared that no one was sent to a labor camp, prison, or psychiatric ward. Another big difference with the Soviet practices was that to have the support of a few colleagues was often enough to stem the tide.””

He explicitly says he is concerned that it is sloppy, damaging thinking, but does not claim an analogy to the Gulag.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#59

Post by bakugo »

mynameisnoone wrote: post #31
zephrx1111 wrote: post #28

Diversity is based on the belief that some group‘s behavior patterns are fitting better with the environment, even temporarily and locally. But DEI is denying this difference, expecting any behavioral pattern should deserve the same result. They can’t even reach a logic consistency.

I still don't know what "diversity" means. The modern use seems to mean that a person is inherently more valuable if they have less common appearance attributes, regardless of their character or the soundness of their beliefs. The problem with inverting bias discrimination is it tends to promote identity-based entitlement rather than accomplishment-based pride. Identity-based entitlement is a universally unhealthy ou…

To understand what "diversity" truly means in a modern context, simply ask yourself this question: have you ever heard anyone claim that the NBA is not diverse enough?

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#60

Post by sombragris »

genman wrote: post #7

> Earlier this year, he resigned his three-decade membership in the American Mathematical Society in a letter citing the group’s failure to oppose the growing number of job openings for mathematics faculty that require applicants to draft and submit a statement on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. It was a common theme in Soviet Union that to advance academically you had to produce work that somehow endorsed…

On a completely opposite ideological side, back in times of Alfredo Stroessner's dictatorship in Paraguay (clearly fascistic, and I don't use that word lightly), any public officer making any public statement whatsoever necessarily had to include in such statement some kind of praise to the dictator, no matter the ocassion.

Commencement speech of the public university? Stroessner had to be praised.

Dedication of a school somewhere in the countryside? Stroessner had to be praised.

You were a general and were giving a talk to the troops? You had to include some praises of Stroessner.

This was mandatory and closely checked to test your alignment to the regime. You failed to do so? You were guaranteed to lose your position and maybe begin to be watched by the secret police and informants.

So I can very well relate to Barvinok's fears and experience.

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