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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

#241

Post by rayiner »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #225
rayiner wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

When it comes to optimizing a sorting algorithm for some hardware, it probably doesn't matter. Now suppose you're making a user interface design choice. It would be good to have someone who knows how users from a different subculture would interpret it. 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 Massach…

Is there evidence that Americans of different ethnicities interpret user interface features differently?

If not, isn’t it concerning that in the year 2024 we casually assume that these sorts of differences exist? Isn’t that an example of DEI thinking accentuating the notion of differences? It seems like a new take on this: https://youtu.be/E8PBrhFN35c?si=90DSnwgHubAvJwr8

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

#242

Post by zlefgram »

neltnerb wrote: post #204
whoza wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on the academic job market recently. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the process of writing my DEI statement was a valuable learning experience. For example, I read several interesting papers about randomized controlled trials testing the effects of various classroom interventions. I also have some more clarity about the relevant philosophical questions, both due to reading others' thoughts and due to b…

Yeah, this is what I am also thinking of. It makes sense for people in a position to create a culture or hire a team to know, it's a science you probably weren't exposed to in school and knowing the real effects that are known and studied is a darn good start to implementing DEI well. Doing it based on guesswork is probably worse than useless. So that's the non-ideological part. If you actually care enough to study i…

[dead]

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

#243

Post by dang »

llm_trw wrote: post #196

>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…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40267725.

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

#244

Post by rebeccaskinner »

collingreen wrote: post #214
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I don't like the idea that anyone disagreeing with any dei suggestion should be labeled as intentionally disruptive and bad faith.

My point isn't that anyone disagreeing with a particular suggestion is arguing in bad faith, it's that there are enough bad faith arguments that it becomes effectively impossible to have a productive discussion.

> 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.

And therein lies the crux of the problem. Are 80% of the comments I see on DEI related threads actually acting in bad faith, or am I simply so exhausted by the constant stream of bad faith arguments that I lack the ability to discern between people acting in bad faith, uninformed people acting in good faith parroting bad-faith actors arguments, and people who are legitimately trying to engage. For that matter, am I an exhausted person who is simply tired of accusations of "wokeism" being thrown at me when I advocate for basic respect and decency, or am I a bad faith actor who tried to sneak an outrageous claim into a reasonable sounding post in order to undermine people who are in favor of DEI programs by making them all sound unreasonable? I may know that I'm simply exhausted, cynical, and seeing a steadily increasing amount of anti-DEI rhetoric here, but such is the state of discourse that there's no way for you to know for sure one way or another.

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

#245

Post by skissane »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #203
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…

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…

> Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it. Everything they say is carefully crafted with a veneer of respectability and plausibility. Any accusations are re-directed. There are people who are motivated and very skilled at making plausible sounding bad-faith arguments. The plausibility of course also convinces people might not intend to be making a bad faith argument, and so are authentic in their indignant responses to accusations of acting in bad faith.

How can you possibly have a good faith argument if you've already made your mind up that most or everyone who disagrees with you is arguing in bad faith? That in itself is not a good faith position.

You sound like you've basically constructed a closed system of thought for yourself, in which anyone who disagrees with you is arguing in bad faith.

I know one person here who frequently posts in disagreement to DEI initiatives is rayiner. He might be wrong, but I don't believe for a minute he is a bigot or acting in bad faith.

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

#246

Post by AdrianB1 »

over_bridge wrote: post #191
bozhark wrote: post #65

Recently wrote a corporate DEI policy. Our policy is to not regard DEI as a metric of value. It’s absurd.

A profitable company that lacks DEI is still a success A company that loses money but has plenty of DEI is a failure. DEI is not the factor that determines success or failure. It is a tool that you can use but it makes no sense as a goal or target in itself. If your customer base has some attributes that aren't reflected in the staff, maybe hiring some will help you relate. The idea that your company must match the '…

> If your customer base has some attributes that aren't reflected in the staff, maybe hiring some will help you relate.

How does it work? If you hire them in customer research or marketing teams, yes, it brings value in understanding the customer. If you just hire them across all departments, like IT or facilities management, what do you get?

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

#247

Post by llm_trw »

Reasoning wrote: post #235
llm_trw wrote: post #196

>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…

Because the Holocaust can refer to either the Nazi's genocide of Jews or all the genocides carried out by Nazi Germany. Most often it is the former. So to reframe this, if you ask people how many people died in the Jewish genocide they'll probably give you the figure of how many Jews died, yes. They aren't ignoring all of the other victims, they're giving you the statistic of what they thought you asked for. This is…

> Because the Holocaust can refer to either the Nazi's genocide of Jews or all the genocides carried out by Nazi Germany. Most often it is the former.

This is not counting all the genocides by the Nazis. This is just counting the people murdered in the extermination camps and on their way there.

If you count all the other Nazi genocides you get tens of millions, e.g. targeting of civilians during the Siege of Lenin Grad, the Dutch Famine, etc.

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

#248

Post by slenocchio »

pfdietz wrote: post #219

I'm getting the impression a lot of Americans are now not just comfortable with systemic inequality, but are gravitating toward a position that it's actually desirable. In this environment, DEI bafflegab just pushes them in that direction.

That's a mischaracterization. No one is _for_ inequality. The opposition you speak of is _for_ race/gender blind meritocracy. Anyone with a little knowledge of economics understands that groups of people cut across any dimension will always have different outcomes; Russian Americans earn more than French Americans, Japanese Americans earn more than Fillipino Americans, taller people earn more than shorter people, etc.

No one thinks inequality is desirable. The opposition you speak of think it's unavoidable. And bad public policy will have effects that make the situation worse for everyone.

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

#250

Post by dctoedt »

rayiner wrote: post #227
collingreen wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> am very interested in increasing diversity 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 membersh…

> 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.

In various threads you've repeatedly argued (paraphrasing here) that you have a different set of values — e.g., giving higher priority to the family and community, vice individual choice, than in contemporary American mass culture. You've correlated this with your Bangladeshi heritage and upbringing, and you've said (again paraphrasing) that you adamantly seek to instill the same values in your own kids.

Perhaps some teams would find your values a useful addition to their mix. For those teams, your Bangladeshi name, skin tone, etc., could be instances of what the late (Black) free-market economist Walter Williams [0] referred to as "cheap-to-observe information."[1] I can't find the piece I read years ago in which Williams said that if you were choosing up sides for a pickup basketball game at a city park, and didn't know any of the other players, you'd choose the Black guys because the odds — not a certainty by any means, but the odds — were that the Black guys had played more basketball growing up than the white guys.

A related anecdote about cheap-to-observe information and its possible correlations: Years ago at my then-law firm, I was called into the office of the chair of the recruiting committee. The chair wanted me to meet a third-year law student who was at the firm for interviews. The recruiting chair said that the law student, like me, was a former Navy "nuke" officer. We shook hands; I asked, "[chief] engineer-qualified?" He smiled and nodded. "Surface-warfare qualified?" The same. I turned to the recruiting chair and said "that's all I need to know; I'm good." I had both quals myself, so I immediately concluded — provisionally — that the student was very likely to have personal qualities (work ethic, leadership, etc.) that I knew law firms found to be valuable. (I did stick around to chat for a while longer, and I knew the student wouldn't even have been invited for an interview if he wasn't already a good candidate.) We hired the student, who turned out to be a fine lawyer.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams

[1] https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/opinion/walter-williams-our...

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