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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a scoring guide to "how good" a statement is, along with examples. https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...
Probably relevant as an example of the thinking, but it's worth noting that this is for evaluating applications to faculty positions, and not applicants trying to enter a PhD program.
ISIS uses them to test the piety of people under their rule, and if they refuse to utter them, they are apostates and should be executed.
More amusingly but also sadly, it’s exactly the issue brought up by Seinfeld and the AIDS ribbon. Not wearing the AIDS ribbon, even while on the AIDS walk, is heresy and the heretic should be executed.
Not utterly diversity statements, even if you live and breathe diversity, means to DEI zealots that you are a heretic and a racist. It’s horrifying and I’m hoping all this nonsense clears up before my kids go to college.
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…
This is a very thoughtful and sensible reply, but it's going to get lost in the storm and that is a shame. Personally I've always thought that a lot of these issues boil down to intentional misreading or lack of understanding of things unsaid. As an example, a whole bunch of people, for some reason, took "Black Lives Matter" to mean "Only Black Lives Matter", as if that was said or as if that was the point. In your e…
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…
The first time some people will see or touch a book is when they get to elementary school. Those people are set up to fail in life, and anybody growing up from birth in an environment with no books is disadvantaged. For generations it was literally illegal for one race of people to learn to read in the United States. This is unique in the world as well - an American innovation. That type of structural oppression actu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
That is the point, is it not? The whole reason for higher education is to study and research. The point of higher education is not to spend all your waking hours on TikTok and Fortnite. Shouldn’t the people dedicated to studying get in? I’m unsure how that’s gaming the system. It seems like the system is working as intended.
I hope more people will pick up on the danger of this slippery slope. Part of the problem though is that we seem to have a tendency towards polar vortices of worldviews that suck in various issues that aren't even necessarily strongly connected, just to make them more effective in opposing the other side in an excessively concentrated way. So there is this tendency of social activists towards conformance and centrali…
> I hope more left-leaning people will pick up on the danger of this slippery slope. They already spent the last few decades objecting to Joseph McCarthy. Denunciation of his evil, and celebration of his downfall to the "Have you no shame?" speech, was an element of modern leftist canon. If they couldn't recognize what was happening every time they mentioned his name, they never will.
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 American Mathematical Society has been grappling with this:
https://blogs.ams.org/inclusionexclusion/2020/01/31/can-math...
Pure math is very different than social studies. But, in applied math, your research will be used for something promoting one group over another. Personally, I find it manipulative to attribute my own problem-solving contributions to the politics of someone using them.
I hope more people will pick up on the danger of this slippery slope. Part of the problem though is that we seem to have a tendency towards polar vortices of worldviews that suck in various issues that aren't even necessarily strongly connected, just to make them more effective in opposing the other side in an excessively concentrated way. So there is this tendency of social activists towards conformance and centrali…
> there is this tendency of social activists towards conformance and centralization in the direction of authoritarianism
I don't think that's the case, actually. I suspect the tendency actually comes from liberalism, i.e. notion of individual freedom. If we are to give people individual freedom, then we are going to be neglectful of the power they attain as groups. This is easily observable in the economic sphere, where the rich people are getting richer under liberalism, and as you note, we are oblivious to the plight of losers.
Another problem that you note is that the conflict is treated as two sides. In my personal political philosophy, there are 4 basic (sets of) moral values:
1. Value of human being itself (this gives ideology of humanism, rejection of which can be considered to be extremist), i.e. rejecting harm to humans, accepting humans as they are, forgiveness
2. Value of individual freedom (this gives ideology of liberalism, which is inherently neither left or right, usually considered "center"), i.e. most individual rights, rights to freely socially organize, ability to act independently to society
3. Value of human equality (this gives ideology of progresivism/socialism, which is the core of the "left"), i.e. this includes democracy, the idea we should collectively all have equal rights in society, we should all have fair access to economic resources, also strong moral universalism (also in this context, this also includes DEI)
4. Value of culture and our shared past (this gives ideology of conservativism, which is the core of the "right"), i.e. we should preserve existing (social) structures and culture through institutions, we should have property ownership, and we should have authorities in place to preserve the potentially harmful changes in society
It's pretty easy to see that all these values are logically independent, people do however largely share all of them. However, each person sees the world from a slightly different perspective on each issue, moral dilemmas tend to occur where there is a disagreement.
For example, the tendency of society towards centralization and authoritarianism is just an expression of value (4). It happens more or less independently of values (2) or (3) (neither of them really values time, unlike (4)), although the proponents of (2), being by nature more permissive, oblivious to any social institutions and not defining the desired end result, tends to allow it to happen much faster (this is also called paradox of tolerance).
So while I agree when you write:
> It seems the war between camps means that anyone trying to promote a more subtle or intricate message is shunned or ignored by both sides.
I don't think there are just 2 sides, there are at least 4 big sides, see above; however, treating problems as 2-sided is often practical in terms of acquiring political power.
I do however take slight issue with:
> But the first challenge would be for the left to acknowledge the need for freedom and the right to acknowledge the need for average people to exist without fighting for scraps.
You're saying, people who value (3) need to acknowledge (2) and vice versa. I agree with this idea (that was actually why I developed the above philosophy, to understand these contradictions), but the practical reality is different than what you wish. Most of the left is more accepting of liberalism than liberals are accepting of the left (historically, at the French revolution, the liberal ideas were part of the left, while the right was only values of (4), like there should exist nobility). And in fact, the Western societies are now so heavily tilted towards values of (2) that the centrists proudly think they can ignore (3) completely. In fact, ignoring (3) by liberals is dangerous and historically led to concentration of power and fascism (which is an extreme of (4)), and that's what we observe (that's why anybody who wants power goes after (3) sooner before they go after (2) - often by falsely adopting (3) as an ideological goal, because individuals are harmless, it's the ability of groups to organize through shared value of (3) that is a dangerous antidote to concentrated power).
Most leftists can also easily see through what DEI is being promoted honestly, as being true to values of (3), and what is just an ideological BS (and whitewashing) designed to attain power. I mean, if corporations (true for many academic institutions as well) really wanted DEI, they would promote more democracy in the workplace (and transformed the corporations into cooperatives, for example). Claudine Gay affair is a nice practical example of these institutions (and their masters) showing true colors.
The title says he objects to diversity, but the article states that "it isn’t diversity to which he objects". The professor isn't consistent either. Yes, DEI is a sort of agreement between you and your current society. And yes, you will be punished (or forced out) if you don't agree to it. That doesn't mean the society is selecting conformists, who would sign anything giving them profits. It means the society wants p…
I don't know if the title has been updated in the last 15 minutes, but the title currently says "A math professor who objects to diversity statements". Not "to diversity".
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…
I'll support your theory when I hear, even one time, a DEI leader mention poor white people. I grew up in a home with a mother who was an alcoholic and drug addict, and who had a parade of abusive boyfriends. There were times we didn't have electricity or water because it was turned off. We never had a telephone in the house or a working car. I studied Math in college. Literally every single other math major I knew h…