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

251–260 of 807 posts

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

#251

Post by Izkata »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #244
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.

> 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 grou…

> when I advocate for basic respect and decency

Try using those words instead of the woke buzzwords. Everyone else is having the same reaction to "DEI"/etc that you're having to their common arguments.

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

#252

Post by llm_trw »

pyuser583 wrote: post #237
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…

I was taught in high school that it was 6 million Jews. Standard American public high school. Teacher was left-wing. We read Diary of Anne Frank, Night by Elie Weisel, Number the Stars, etc. No holocaust denial going on. Yes, the Soviets were excluded. So were the Prussians, who were the victims of both Nazi and Soviet genocides. Nobody calls this holocaust denial.

>Yes, the Soviets were excluded.

>>The double think is so strong that you can have two people from the same village, in the same camp, dead on the same day and have one be a victim of the holocaust, and the other not just because one was a Jew and the other a Communist.

Or to put it another way. If Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were both captured by time traveling Nazis and sent to Treblinka Marx would count towards the holocaust and Engels would not in the Wests version of holocaust denial.

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

#253

Post by concordDance »

leosanchez wrote: post #32
concordDance wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably depends on the colonialist. I expect many were in it for money at the expense of the colonised population, but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians".

> but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians". Do you have any examples for this ?

This poem captures some of the spirit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden

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

#254

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rayiner wrote: post #241
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cultural differences exist. For example, colors have different meanings in different cultures:

https://blog.grio.com/2020/06/uxui-design-across-cultures-us...

Ethnicity is then being used as a proxy for culture, even though it's a bad one, because it's a visible one.

It's basically starting from the premise that cultural diversity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. Whereas traditional racism is more like starting from the premise that cultural homogeneity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. It's applying the same fallacy to the opposite premise, which is an error regardless of which premise is correct.

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

#255

Post by nwoli »

andy99 wrote: post #228
ssijak wrote: post #3

Clicked through some links in the article. Really mind boggling material. How did such garbage end up in top universities is really weird.

[flagged]

Cowardice selected for by ejecting the non cowards through filters that makes them not hired at these places

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

#256

Post by shrimp_emoji »

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…

Anyone with a brain and sense of dignity will feel like racism is bad and unfair. Experiencing negative racism is enraging and depressing. Experiencing positive racism instantly gives you impostor syndrome and a sense of dehumanization.

The only systems that aren't racist are those that strive to be colorblind (in the sense that we're colorblind to eye or hair color).

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

#257

Post by DebtDeflation »

My approach whenever DEI comes up now is to not express a position or opinion supporting or opposing DEI itself but to simply cite statute and recent case law.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Section 703):

>"It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer -

    (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or

    (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
Duvall v. Novant Health, Inc.

>"To be clear, employers may, if they so choose, utilize D&I-type programs. What they cannot do is take adverse employment actions against employees based on their race or gender to implement such a program."

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which applied specifically to higher educational institutions, gives a very good indication as to how SCOTUS is likely to rule when a case involving private employment inevitably lands on its docket in the near future. Taking race into account when making employment decisions will be prohibited. Full stop. That includes setting race based targets/quotas, tying bonuses to their achievement, and establishing set aside jobs. What will likely be permissible will be efforts to expand candidate pools and training initiatives that focus on eliminating biases.

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

#258

Post by alpinisme »

ForHackernews wrote: post #230
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…

I'm not a big fan of mandatory DEI statements, but if I were trying to make a positive case for them, it might go something like this: 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, intel…

Yes this is definitely a part of it. And another part is the usual underlying question about how well the candidate understands and is prepared for the specific job they are entering. Different universities have different kinds of diversity challenges: some have a lot of working students who aren’t in the traditional student age range, some have a disproportionately large number of deaf students due to the presence of a good program there, some have large numbers of students for whom English is a second language, etc. Each of these requires different skill sets and interests on the part of the teacher. And a DEI statement can be a way to show/evaluate how seriously the candidate is considering the actual on-the-ground demographics of the institution and the challenges it poses, as well as how the institution is trying the change demographics (whether for reasons of market demands or principle).

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

#259

Post by skissane »

gverrilla wrote: post #231
porknubbins wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

> There is no such a thing as cultural Marxism. That's a conspiracy theory the nazis first created.

There is such a thing as "cultural Marxism", and it is not a conspiracy theory invented by the Nazis or anyone else.

Consider for example the 1981 book by academic Richard Weiner, "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" [0] – it discusses "cultural Marxism" as a real thing, in a positive light, and it is a real academic book, not some conspiracy theory hoax. Or similarly consider Dennis L. Dworkin's 1997 book "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies" [1] – not some conspiratorial tome, it was published by Duke University Press. Or American philosopher Frederic Jameson's 2007 book "Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism" [2] – also published by Duke University Press, and not a conspiratorial work either

Cultural Marxism is a real movement in post-war Marxism and academia. To what extent it influenced movements such as BLM is a question about which reasonable people can disagree. But its existence is not a conspiracy theory.

No doubt some of the more extreme claims uninformed people have made about it do venture into the realms of conspiracy theory. But it would be wrong to assume that everyone who makes a claim like "cultural Marxism influenced BLM" is using the phrase "cultural Marxism" in such a sense. You'd have to investigate what they actually mean by it.

[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=4G0XAAAAIAAJ

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=dY1Cgg8NV64C

[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=pY69yJnmEAYC

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

#260

Post by akomtu »

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…

DEI is a lot like a headless religion that nobody's asked for. It's headless because instead of talking about spirit or similar high matters, it says "you are your body" and proceeds to divide people based on a few visible traits such as skin color. This quasi-religion doesn't talk about what we have in common. Instead it's fixated on superficial traits that make us different. When DEI got support among the rich and they pushed it down to the people, it obviously created resentment. Nobody likes when you're forced to say things you don't believe in and find disgusting.

I do admit that DEI has some goodwill in it, in particular the idea that our society doesn't have to be a wolf-eats-wolf "meritocracy", but I'm afraid that the goodwill has been skillfully perverted.

Post reply on HN