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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

#81

Post by coliveira »

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…

People born in Soviet Union are very good at detecting propaganda, because they learned to recognize what the system did to them. Americans have never learned this important skill. As someone born in a foreign country (not USSR though), I have a very well developed sense of when the government is lying to me. In my opinion, Americans are extremely easy to deceive.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#82

Post by hetman »

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…

The mistake here seems to be the somewhat naïve suggestion that the Soviet Union only took its path because the wrong people happened to find their way into leadership, rather than recognising that attempts at coërced ideological purity always seem to follow the same path historically no matter how well intentioned the ideology might have been.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#83

Post by khzw8yyy »

moose_man wrote: post #47
thaumasiotes wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Even if one is required to say ‘I passionately believe that water would certainly wet us, as fire would certainly burn,’” he wrote in his resignation letter, “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.” An echo of how Rudyard Kipling was recently stripped out of Roald Dahl's Matilda because th…

The Russians really love their Kipling. Not sure why he is so popular in Russia.

I can think of a few reasons.

- Russians like poetry that actually rhymes

- "The Jungle Book" and "Riki Tiki Tavi" were very popular

- The controversial pieces like "The White Man's Burden" weren't translated until after Kipling's death

Also, "The White Man's Burden" is viewed with a bit of distance. Few in America remember the context in which it was written, and that context is as important as the text of the poem if not more so. It was an argument for America subjugating the Philippines. Mark Twain wrote a poem to counter imperialism and that argument. Later Americans managed to both defeat the Philippines and cancel both poets :)

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#85

Post by koolba »

crackercrews wrote: post #73
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 an…

> Targeting class diversity naturally gets you racial diversity anyways. Not always true. Look at the SHSAT. If you looked at the poor kids and took the top scores, it would be mostly Asians. The same thing applies for admissions to the Ivies. If they set aside 25% of their incoming class to be from the bottom 25% of the income distribution they'd fill most of those slots with Asians.

> Not always true. Look at the SHSAT. If you looked at the poor kids and took the top scores, it would be mostly Asians.

But they’re simply gaming the admission systems by studying rather than spending all their waking hours on TikTok and Fortnite.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#86

Post by defrost »

tjpnz wrote: post #78
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…

We got told to accept a less promising candidate for an internship program based on their "racial diversity". It was discovered later on that their wealthy father knew the CEO from when they both went to Harvard. Our DEI program had just given an opportunity to a child of a privileged background, apparently based on the color of their skin, and this was something we were meant to be proud of and totally wasn't nepoti…

> their wealthy father knew the CEO from when they both went to Harvard.

Sounds like bog standard nepotism remained intact regardless of efforts to bypass it.

You can at least be certain that had it not been for DEI there would have been some other pressure exterted to much the same end.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#87

Post by chasd00 »

EA-3167 wrote: post #6

For 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…

I’ve been in that situation. In my experiences the person is looking for a fight and won’t back down until they find one. Even if you came out in support of Hamas it probably wouldn’t have been enough and they still would have gone off a rant. Some people are just filled with hate and can’t stand it when someone try’s to avoid being their target.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#88

Post by isotypic »

bawolff wrote: post #67
danielvf wrote: post #52

Here's a scoring guide from a US university for DEI statements. To me it's much more informative to go to primary sources for what is selected for, rather than only reading about them second hand. https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...

Thanks,i agree its best to look at it directly. But i do wonder what lines like "Clearly formulates new ideas for advancing equity and inclusion at Berkeley and within their field, through their research,..." mean What does it mean for a math professor to advance diversity through their research? Like i could maybe get it for the arts or even some social sciences, but what does that look like for math?

The full quote is "Clearly formulates new ideas for advancing equity and inclusion at Berkeley and within their field, through their research, teaching, and/or service." The last two are naturally more relevant for fields where advancing DEI through the research itself isn't as feasible. The examples given in the rubric are all of teaching/service categories, as well.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#89

Post by throwaway288112 »

Look, if you don't want an echo chamber on this topic, maybe consider the point of diversity statements.

I can't put it better than Stephen Jay Gould: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."

Consider that a diversity statement is a way to evaluate if the applicant has even given a moment's thought to the fact that Gould raised, by seeking to cultivate talent among folks otherwise shut out of the top tier of academia.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#90

Post by jballer »

mattlondon wrote: post #55
Dalewyn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are not taking crazy pills. This comment perfectly tracks my thoughts upon confronting similar a couple years ago. The toughest part was that I didn’t know the words to name or describe it.

I’ll +1 someone else’s recommendation of Tim Urban’s book “What’s Our Problem” - he dove into this rabbit hole and explained what he found, and it’s super approachable.

For a deeper dive, Bill Ackman very publicly sharing his own reckoning with this realization[1] and credits Christopher Rufo’s book “America’s Cultural Revolution” for helping him make sense of it[2].

[1] https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1742441534627184760

[2] https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1742687058915938532

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