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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

#91

Post by ethbr1 »

One thing I've found useful in parsing modern news is to remember:

A pile of extreme occurrences does not an argument make.

Because there's insane stuff happening somewhere, to someone, all the time.

With the benefit of digitized news we've enabled lazy trawls to create a pile of "Look at how extreme and crazy ____ is!" to support any viewpoint on any topic.

Anti-gun? Here's some insane gun owners. Pro-gun? Here's some horrific crimes.

That's modern opinionated news in a nutshell -- here's a pile of extreme occurrences, look at how extreme they are, so you should agree that the other side is crazy.

An actual argument involves more annoying to fudge (and admittedly, harder to compile) data like frequency, normalization against population or historical averages, geographic localization, etc.

I've found arguing from questions rather than statements helps. What's the root question? And then what data would answer that question?

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

#92

Post by dang »

twotwotwo2 wrote: post #80
HDThoreaun wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even lebron james gets the n word spray painted on his house. Class may be the main divide, but race is still an absolutely huge one that transcends class.

How?

> How can you even remotely believe that wasn't a false flag?

Please don't edit your comments to deprive replies of context. That's unfair to both repliers and readers.

Edit: It's always fine to add an edit, as I did here.

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

#93

Post by inglor_cz »

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.

I think the OP doesn't either trust the declared goals of "countering institutional prejudice" and "improving the quality of the student body", or doesn't believe that DEI actually does anything relevant in this sense.

Even for banal acne treatments, proof of safety and efficiency through several stages of trials is required before people are actually subject to it.

With DEI, we are just expected to believe that it actually works and should be applied across the country because some smart people say so.

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

#94

Post by [deleted] »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #81

In the spirit of trying to learn something from the community: while I can certainly understand the rationale and goals behind DEI programs (many of which I agree with, others not), I honestly can't understand these "DEI statements" at all. They always seemed very "1984" to me, and almost designed to engender resentment in a way that would ultimately backfire. So perhaps I'm in a like-minded echo chamber, but is ther…

[deleted]

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

#95

Post by svieira »

blackhawkC17 wrote: post #61
nojvek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Congratulations, the small-time local farmer with 10 acres, two quality high tunnels, a mid-sized tractor, and a couple of trucks and trailers is now wealthy. Assets are not necessarily liquid.

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

#96

Post by bozhark »

blackhawkC17 wrote: post #12
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…

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).

It’s by design

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

#97

Post by dang »

6312783123 wrote: post #83
Devasta wrote: post #70

[flagged]

The right wing conspiracists would talk about a "New World Order" and something they called "problem-reaction-solution", so they thought this Left authoritarian Woke movement, was designed deliberate by something (the elites?) to push society to voting right as a knee jerk reaction.. I wonder if those conspiracy theories themselves are Chinese propaganda of some kind, or maybe Russian, or are the propagandists themse…

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here—it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for—and yes, this is the case regardless of which ideology an account is for or against: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38036251 was a perfectly good comment, for example.

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

#98

Post by bawolff »

blackhawkC17 wrote: post #61
nojvek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of those situations the student wouldn't own those assets. If you go by how much money relatives have, then you end up being unfair to kids who have been disowned or if the kid has a rich uncle that has never given anyone a penny, etc.
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