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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

#141

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

gruez wrote: post #134
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…

Thanks very much! I haven't watched this yet, but this was exactly the kind of honest discussion I was looking for that I didn't previously find, so much appreciated.

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

#142

Post by inglor_cz »

worik wrote: post #135
inglor_cz wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

DEI is prejudice squared. Individuals are stuffed into tight racial and gender boxes in a big bout of social engineering. It is better than stuffing them into boxcars and deporting them, but ultimately the logic behind those treatments is the same. You are not John Doe, you are White or Black or whatever, a Lego brick that can be replaced by another Lego brick of the same color and the bureaucratic system will be happy.

If you want to address racism, throw away the entire neo-racist stuff that now passes for enlightened and start again. "Whiteness" et al. belong to the same heap of historical refuse as "Judeobolshevism" or "degenerate art".

I can't think of a better way to deepen and perpetuate absurd divisions among people than the identity obsession and pseudo-quotas that the modern American progressive movement is pushing.

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

#143

Post by HDThoreaun »

jmyeet wrote: post #111

So DEI is an obvious political hot-potato but that the idea that the group with all the money and power are somehow being discriminated against is just silly. Why? Because none of these discussions deals with the real bias in university admissions: legacy admissions. Harvard's undergraduate class hovers around 35% who are legacies. This is the very essence of anti-diversity and entrenching generational wealth and pow…

Legacy makes a lot of sense from an admissions standpoint. Having rich/connected peers is the main point of harvard for everyone else applying. I think what people have a problem with with DEI is that it largely seems counter to their goals of maximizing prestige and career success of graduates.

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

#144

Post by rayiner »

I’m glad that MIT is standing up for an evidence based approach to all this, as they did with reinstating the SAT. Skin color differences don’t make organizations or schools better or worse: https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1296/GreenHandMar2024.p.... (Lack of diversity, of course, may be evidence of underlying race-based discrimination.) It was an idea that was developed in response to Supreme Court cases that prohibited using express racial quotas to eliminate the effects of past discrimination. So there was a need to come up with a different rationale for racial rebalancing.

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

#145

Post by mk89 »

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.

Could you please name one or two of such universities? I am a EU citizen and I literally never heard of this. I am aware that in some regions in some of our countries you might end up with a racist professor etc., but never heard you can be excluded based on name.

That's simply illegal.

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

#146

Post by eastbound »

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…

I do not find the argument that “newspapers be newspapers” excuses this, when it clearly only goes one way, and very forcefully at that.

And therefore it would be extremely interesting to find the origin of this push. Is it systemic, i.e. always present in some form due to humans’s generous nature? Is it due to more people living in cities that we have to organize in such a way (DEI-Covid-Feminism-GW or ostracization)? Is it, as the conspiracy theorists say, a small group of influential people? Is it the Russians who sponsor those groupes to divide us?

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

#147

Post by worik »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138
worik wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/PMC71…

> see the argument for setting aside seats for people who fluently speak the language. I do not based on race.

It is based on culture

It is not enough to have genes.

And since most Māori people speak English it would simply be stupid to base it on language as that language would be English not Te Reo Māori

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

#148

Post by jimbokun »

jmyeet wrote: post #111

So DEI is an obvious political hot-potato but that the idea that the group with all the money and power are somehow being discriminated against is just silly. Why? Because none of these discussions deals with the real bias in university admissions: legacy admissions. Harvard's undergraduate class hovers around 35% who are legacies. This is the very essence of anti-diversity and entrenching generational wealth and pow…

Why can’t we be against both legacy admissions and DEI admissions?

Let’s eliminate all the forms of unfair bias.

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

#149

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#150

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #128
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't do this already? Who would possibly object? Why would any student attend an institution that didn't require it? Obviously I'm not in academia, but to most outsiders this is really obvious stuff.

Obviously I'm not in academia, but to most outsiders this is really obvious stuff. That's my point. To outsiders like you and me, these things may seem obviously desirable. But academics respond to incentives. Imagine you've spent 10 years pushing some set of conclusions based on some shaky studies you did early in your career. Do you really want people to dig deep and challenge the validity of your research?

Isn't that just part of the job? If you're not wrong sometimes you're not trying hard enough. To avoid this situation you should invite others to challenge your work more quickly.
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