Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

whyevolutionistrue.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 807 posts

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

#131

Post by worik »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90
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…

> support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings If that support is available to those who need it irrespective of race, sex, et cetera , sure. Targeting underserved populations is one thing. Restricting access based on protected characteristics is illegal under any commonsense interpretation of the law.

> Restricting access based on protected characteristics

What about when you turn that on its head?

"Promoting access based on ..."

If you assume a finite set of places to access then the approaches are equivalent, but for the the emphasis

I think it matters (I am unsure DEI is the solution) that people can access professional services supplied by professionals from a similar cultural background to themselves

In Aotearoa we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school for exactly this reason, and it seems to have been both hugely successful and extremely triggering.

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

#132

Post by worik »

bozhark wrote: post #68
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…”

> 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…”

That is a puzzling statement. Why is it true?

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

#133

Post by arp242 »

ethbr1 wrote: post #91

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 so…

In [1] there's:

> Like other recent live-action remakes—such as The Little Mermaid and the upcoming Snow White—some users accused the studio of "going woke" by modernizing the original story.

> They'll make the hunter an evil White man, Bambi's mom will be a message about incel rage and Bambi will also be black," wrote @NintendoFan729.

That's this Tweet: https://twitter.com/NintendoFan729/status/170756134256606837... – 5 likes, 641 views. From some random anonymous account with 322 followers and an average of about 5 tweets per day.

Yet here it is, cited in a major magazine, as evidence of ... something or the other.

[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/disney-modernized-bambi-remake-spar...

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

#134

Post by gruez »

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…

>but is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument, or can you point me to one online

There was a recent debate on this[1] and even the debater for the pro DEI statement side (that they could find) admitted that DEI statements that were just ideological pledges were wrong, and he was only in favor of statements about concrete things you did to advance the DEI agenda (eg. "I did a, b, and c in my previous position to enhance DEI in my department"). He argued that was justified because DEI (at least the principles, not necessarily the specific policies like affirmative action or whatever) were ostensibly things that the university cares about, and therefore they were fair game to ask for.

[1] https://opentodebate.org/debate/are-dei-mandates-for-univers... (it's a podcast but there's a transcript tab on the page)

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

#135

Post by worik »

inglor_cz wrote: post #108
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…

I am almost certain that by 2100, the current worship of skin-deep diversity will be relegated to the cabinet of ancient curiosities, along with lobotomy, bell-bottom jeans and haruspicy [0], and people will worship something equally weird, but momentarily fashionable. Diversity is not really a value. If it were, it would have been recognized as such millennia ago, because already the Egyptians and the Babylonians kn…

I am unsure about most of those countries but Japan and Israel have a reputation for being extremely racist

Prejudice of any form is unhelpful. Racism is particularly nasty

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

#136

Post by eastbound »

blueboo wrote: post #124
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…

This is the premise: There are outstanding systemic inequities at every level of American society. The threat these represent to our long term survival and prosperity are such that we are keen to at least acknowledge and mark our and our prospective collaborators’ efforts to improve the status quo. Maybe you don’t accept that. Maybe it’s asking for a virtue signal in service of performative posturing. Maybe this requ…

This is an ideological statement which brings no fact, no new perspective, is not substantial and does not refute the opponent’s argument (which is that unfair DEI creates resentment that you later pay).

As per Dang’s guidelines above (specifically for this thread), this should not have been allowed on HN.

Now I wonder: Why is it here?

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

#137

Post by lazide »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90
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…

> support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings If that support is available to those who need it irrespective of race, sex, et cetera , sure. Targeting underserved populations is one thing. Restricting access based on protected characteristics is illegal under any commonsense interpretation of the law.

‘Positive discrimination’ - aka excluding someone based on these attributes - is always required to make the numbers look good when slots/resources are limited - either in applicants of a given attribute or in overall resources.

So someone who would have gotten a slot based on - say - pure technical performance - won’t if these criteria are taken into account.

It’s fundamental and ‘working as intended’.

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

#138

Post by JumpCrisscross »

worik wrote: post #131
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings If that support is available to those who need it irrespective of race, sex, et cetera , sure. Targeting underserved populations is one thing. Restricting access based on protected characteristics is illegal under any commonsense interpretation of the law.

> Restricting access based on protected characteristics What about when you turn that on its head? "Promoting access based on ..." If you assume a finite set of places to access then the approaches are equivalent, but for the the emphasis I think it matters (I am unsure DEI is the solution) that people can access professional services supplied by professionals from a similar cultural background to themselves In Aotea…

> we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school

I see the argument for setting aside seats for people who fluently speak the language. I do not based on race. ”Black patients hav[ing] better interactions, on average, with physicians of their own race” is a problem, but segregating medical care on the basis of race isn’t the solution [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7174451/

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

#139

Post by JumpCrisscross »

lazide wrote: post #137
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings If that support is available to those who need it irrespective of race, sex, et cetera , sure. Targeting underserved populations is one thing. Restricting access based on protected characteristics is illegal under any commonsense interpretation of the law.

‘Positive discrimination’ - aka excluding someone based on these attributes - is always required to make the numbers look good when slots/resources are limited - either in applicants of a given attribute or in overall resources. So someone who would have gotten a slot based on - say - pure technical performance - won’t if these criteria are taken into account. It’s fundamental and ‘working as intended’.

If you find your school has a racial distribution different from the population, targeting means making an extra effort to go to those communities. Increasing the number of applications from them. The actual filtering of the applications, however, should be neutral.

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

#140

Post by cauch »

simonsarris wrote: post #52
MrSkelter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> easily gamed and inherently biased metrics IQ tests are not easily gamed and suggesting otherwise is mostly lying. They might be too easy, or have too low a ceiling (SAT), or might have some mild response to coaching. But a very stupid person cannot come out the other side with the very high score, and a very smart person should be able to figure them out sufficiently that they prove their utility.

I don't think the person you are answering to is referring to IQ tests.

Do you often have proper IQ tests when navigating in the academic sector? I personally never have one.

On top of that, I'm not sure IQ tests themselves are really relevant to select people in the academic sector. They already have demonstrated they master their subject with their grades, so we already know they are smart enough, and it is not because someone score higher in an IQ test that this person will be more valuable for the academic sector, where collaboration and mentoring are as valuable as the holywood cliché of the genius solving all the problems. IQ does not tell much about laziness or motivation or willingness to follow the good scientific process, ...

Also, at this level, you are selecting people amongst a set of candidates that are all already very very close in IQ, to the point that choosing on IQ alone is not making scientific sense: if the IQ questions would have been randomly different, or if they would have passed the test a different day, the scores would have been slightly different and the selection would have been different. The scores would not have been totally different, of course, but slightly different, and because the candidates are all very close, it would have changed the winner.

For having been part of it, the selection process in the academic sector is very very very difficult and is very very prone to unconscious bias. When you have 5 very good candidates and you need to pick one, how do you decide? At the end, it is very often "on feeling": "for this person, I feel they will be a good match". It's a fair way of choosing, because choosing someone that you "don't feel it" over someone that you "feel it" is just very counter-intuitive. But it means that between two persons, it is often the one that "looks superficially the best for the job" that gets it, which is easily affected by unconscious bias (for example, you will "feel it" more easily with someone of your own culture), or can easily be gamed (for example, to progress, you need to build a professional network and manage your reputation, and some very good candidates are just not interested to play these silly games).

Post reply on HN