221–230 of 807 posts
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People might be surprised how dumb top universities can be. When everyone is biased to thinking they're the best, it pretty easily creates tunnel vision.
Tenure is also a blessing and a curse. It ensures academic freedom. But it also ensures someone has limited checks on their bullshit, until they retire.
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…
My first reaction to this news was, “fine, sounds like a silly requirement.” However, being a PhD graduate from a minority background, I really have to thank my advisor for the undergraduate outreach work he did, without which there is realistically a negligible chance I would have ended up with a PhD and a great research career. I don’t know what motivated him to do this work, but from a purely pragmatic perspective…
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…
How would academics react to mandates requiring them to declare their support for: - Ensuring open access to research - Committing to long-term, foundational research - Prioritizing high-quality teaching and mentorship - Embracing diverse viewpoints - Questioning established academic orthodoxy - Focusing research on public rather than personal gain - Openly sharing data and methodologies - Upholding research neutrali…
If you read this as having some academics embracing Flat Earth viewpoints, it is obvious this will not happen. The devil is in the details, what does "Embracing diverse viewpoints" even mean? Science usually drives to unique conclusions, not diverse interpretations. How many correct and diverse viewpoints exist about E=m*c^2 ?
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I think the modern-day conflation of the philosophical notion of diversity with “diversity of skin color” / “racial diversity” is actually harmful. When we speak of diversity today we often imply a sort of supposed-deserved reparations toward the “minorities.” Obviously there are so many incorrect aspects of these assumptions, but many people in power, perhaps all, have accumulated guilt that needs an outlet. Diversi…
> think the modern-day conflation of the philosophical notion of diversity with “diversity of skin color” / “racial diversity” is actually harmful. I absolutely agree with this. To use myself as an example: as a Bangladeshi who grew up in the American south, I bring a super diverse viewpoint to a group of say white new englanders. But why does that matter in a professional setting? I’d love to hear someone precisely…
But things like that often have more to do with culture/geography than race. Someone from Mississippi will have a much different perspective than someone from Massachusetts, even if they're the same race. And a larger difference in perspective than two people who grew up across the street from each other, even if they're different races. But that doesn't show up in the group photo for the brochure.
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.
If you genuinely want to target underserved populations, you must be prepared to exclude those who are not in the target audience.
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There's a pattern that I see come up quite often, and it's really common with any discussion about things that involve diversity and inclusion efforts. I don't know if there's a specific term for it, but it happens roughly like this: First, someone identifies an opportunity to improve diversity, equity, or inclusion in some way. DEI statements in academia, codes of conduct in open source projects, some rules around t…
I am very interested in increasing diversity but I don't like the idea that anyone disagreeing with any dei suggestion should be labeled as intentionally disruptive and bad faith. Calling 80% of discussion here bad faith aimed at holding particular groups down is a big claim that shouldn't be thrown around lightly in a good faith post.
Why? As a non-white immigrant, I’m deeply suspicious of the notion that a team with me on it is in any way different than a team without me on it based on my skin color or ethnicity. I think that line of thinking doesn’t go anywhere good, especially for me, but for everyone else too.
As soon as you make it acceptable to say that people are different based on group membership, they will start to notice those differences and categorize them as good and bad. DEI is based on the premise that people will recognize all of those differences as good but that’s completely delusional. You are socializing people to identify other people with their group membership and they’re going to take those observations in directions you don’t expect.
Clicked through some links in the article. Really mind boggling material. How did such garbage end up in top universities is really weird.
>DEI statements are important because they show individual awareness of historical inequities and current biases that form modern society. Only the currently approved ones. The perfect example: holocaust denial. Ask anyone in the US how many people died in the holocaust. The answer is 6 million and they are all Jews. The real number is 14 million with 8 million Slavs, 6 million Jews and 2 million misc of gays, Gypsie…
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…
We're a big university that is trying to serve the general public, reach students across all demographics, and produce research that is broadly applicable, not narrowly relevant to one segment of the population. We need to hire academic staff who can leverage their own personal, intellectual and cultural background to help us become a "bigger tent", but also put themselves in the shoes of others unlike themselves in the course of their teaching and research.
To that end, part of our hiring criteria are based around evaluating your ability and willingness to help us fulfil that part of our academic mission. Please provide a statement explaining how you have demonstrated this in your career to date and how you'd continue to do so at the University of Utopia.