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MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

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Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#61

Post by blackhawkC17 »

nojvek wrote: post #51
blackhawkC17 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race is a distraction from the ultimate divide: class . IMO, every policy that wants to promote equality should revolve solely around class. In every place on earth, richer upper-class people are more advantaged than those from the lower classes. Every social policy should focus on lessening that gap (I recognize that the gap can't be closed entirely).

100% ^. But then it ends up being tied to race since black folks are on average coming from a less wealthier class than white people. And class is hard to judge objectively. If you go by income tax, many wealthy people show very little income since they live on their family wealth. E.g a house fully paid off and only earning meager income from a side business, while their stocks they inherited are climbing millions i…

> And class is hard to judge objectively.

Very simple, actually. $1 million+ in annual income or $10 million+ in assets is an objective starting point, all the way to mega billionaires like Musk and Bloomberg.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#63

Post by yareal »

I value DEI as a critical part of addressing systemic injustice and building a strong, multifaceted organization.

However, these statement requirements look like absolute trash. The sort of thing that is wholly performative. Frankly, it's good they are being dropped in my view.

An intervention is only as good as the work needed to intervene. Saying, "spend ten minutes writing up a statement that no one will ever read and then discard" does zero actual lifting towards enabling inclusion.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#64

Post by mbroncano »

pelorat wrote: post #22
selfmodruntime wrote: post #8

The American focus on race is a bit insane to outsiders. Putting such a big focus on race in university applications is just weird. Even worse, having top universities openly discriminate against people based on their race or heritage with affirmative action or similar policies, all in the name of equality, is unbelievable to Europeans like me. What the hell is wrong with the US if a person has a worse chance to be a…

I'm European too and I can assure you that non-white people are discriminated at the admission stage to top European universities. Not via race, but via name. It's well known that universities and landlords reject people because they have a Muslim sounding name. We have DEI in Europe too, but here it's increasingly codified into law.

Any reference or link to those policies? I have never seen such a thing.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#67

Post by bpodgursky »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #29
pelorat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm European too and I can assure you that non-white people are discriminated at the admission stage to top European universities. Not via race, but via name. It's well known that universities and landlords reject people because they have a Muslim sounding name. We have DEI in Europe too, but here it's increasingly codified into law.

I can guarantee you this is not the case, at least at the uni where I‘m doing my PhD. There is no name in the admission system, it‘s done automatically by grades or tests most of the time.

I don't see how you could possibly hire graduate students into a lab without knowing their research and publishing history (impossible to anonymize).

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#68

Post by bozhark »

LaurensBER wrote: post #5

Although the intentions behind DEI are good such a top down approach doesn't seem to get the desired results (i.e optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify). Unfortunately the name (and perhaps ideas?) are now tainted and I hope this doesn't impact the bottom up approaches (i.e support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings, and in general just being chill and ac…

By using DEI as a metric you end up doing the complete opposite of “optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify…”

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#69

Post by Kamq »

MrSkelter wrote: post #25
blackhawkC17 wrote: post #11

DEI statements are culty. I see it no different than a religious fundamentalist college asking faculty to sign an oath of allegiance. At least in such a case, you can always know beforehand the BS you'll put up with, unlike secular universities that are adopting DEI statements.

There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is. A pledge to God? The mishandling of DEI doesn’t invalidate the need to fix broken systems which fail to select the best people instead of those who score highest in easily gamed and inherently biased metrics.

> There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is.

There is, but there's definitely some similarities too. Specifically that if you happen to believe in these things, advancement of their goals is one of the most important things you can do, which causes a big temptation to misappropriate institutional power to further the cause.

Regarding the pledges specifically, both require employees to take personal positions to advance at work, which I think is the part blackhawkC17 finds "culty".

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