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A math professor who objects to diversity statements
141–150 of 328 posts
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#142I 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…
Well, 'slippery slope' is a logical fallacy. The issue here, more precisely, is that without something to push against the US is inculcating ideas into the next generation of leaders that make ex-Soviets think "wait a second, this looks like home!". It isn't a slope, this is literally rebuilding the dangerous parts of authoritarian bureaucracy - people who can't think and are then given unearned and easily abusable p…
Slippery slope is only a fallacy if you assume a certain form of certainty or determinism. Otherwise it is just an older term referring to Bayesian updating of priors.
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a university professor, I can assure you that, in fact, “received food stamps growing up” and “first generation college student” are both identities that are specifically listed in DEI programs I am familiar with, for example special NIH fellowships for PhD sty to promote a diverse academia. I’m sorry that you were misinformed.
You are the one that is misinformed. Here is the DEI dashboard for my university. Please point out where “received food stamps growing up” and “first generation college student” are mentioned? Because, very obviously, they only care about ethnicity and gender. https://www.usmd.edu/IRIS/Dashboard/Diversity-and-Inclusion/...
This is specifically what I had in mind: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-20-0...
Keep in mind that administrative programs like DEI offices are often unsupported virtue signaling. What matters is government and private funding, and there are absolutely opportunities in both arenas for support for “heterosexual white males” who come from unusual backgrounds.
In your case, I’d suggest NSF graduate fellowships and the Simon’s foundation.
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> 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 li…
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Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#145I 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…
While I largely agree with what you said, about > 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…
> Most of the left is more accepting of liberalism than liberals are accepting of the left
This isn't true, it is legal to be a communist in capitalist countries but many communist countries made it illegal and imprisoned anyone who argued for capitalism. Liberalism wins when people get to vote and decide, people hate when their liberties gets taken away so you need to become authoritarian to push further than for example Scandinavia.
And even USA is a counter example, it is full of social programs and the state controls 40% of the GDP so the private sector is just 60%, meaning it is already a compromise between the ideologies. Liberalism is very accepting of different ideals and how they can fit together, it is when you remove it that you get to a bad spot.
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we seem to have a tendency towards polar vortices of worldviews First past the poll voting with primaries encourages (forces) politicians to go to the extremes. Ranked choice voting can reduce extremism. It’s also cheaper for tax payers as it eliminates expensive and wildly discriminatory/disenfranchising runoff elections.
Many Americans already don't understand progressive tax as a concept. How can we realistically expect them to understand ranked choice voting?
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Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#147I 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…
> we seem to have a tendency towards polar vortices of worldviews First past the poll voting with primaries encourages (forces) politicians to go to the extremes. Ranked choice voting can reduce extremism. It’s also cheaper for tax payers as it eliminates expensive and wildly discriminatory/disenfranchising runoff elections.
You can go much further and adopt more direct democratic approaches, for example, referendums, which focus more on actual issues than on which individual gets the power. This can also reduce extremism, as it requires (and causes) a wider debate (and thus mutual understanding) in society.
There is a historic reason why US and UK suffer from this problem the most, because they were built primarily on liberalism and not democracy. (Although to be fair, many US states has actually have quite a bit of direct democracy as a remainder from progressive era at the beginning at 20th century, and we would probably find that in issues that are put to referendums, people tend to vote much less by the partisan divides.)
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalism is also incompatible with meritocracy, otherwise how to explain that the children of rich people will have better education and socialization than the rest of the population? Do they have more merit simply because of the womb they came from? Are they better than an equally capable person born in an underprivileged neighborhood?
You're attacking a strawman. The person you're replying to didn't claim that rich people's children are more meritorious simply by birth. If we assume good faith (which we should), the other poster would similarly be opposed to nepotism which grants unfair advantages.
I'm not countering the poster's idea, I'm just pointing out that capitalism is also incompatible with meritocracy for the reasons that I mentioned.
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#149Here'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?
Not research, but Jelani Nelson at Berkeley ran programmes in Ethiopia to expose schoolchildren to programming. (In case it needs to be said, Jelani is a top-shelf theoretical computer scientist.)
Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'm a white male from a very similar background. The thing that separates us from black and hispanic colleagues is that the white guys that are hiring automatically trust us 10x more than a black or hispanic candidate, regardless of where we came from, where we went to school, or how much money we had growing up. You might see a lot of diversity in PhD programs, but as soon as you step into a high paying professional…
> the white guys that are hiring automatically trust us 10x more than a black or hispanic candidate
Doesn't help when you get filtered out from attending college. Poor white men is the least represented group at colleges among all race/class/gender combinations, it isn't a privilege.