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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

#311

Post by eapressoandcats »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #287

I never understood the american obsession with race (well, and sexuality). I live in a small EU country on the edge of the balkans... what the hell should I write if I wanted to get hired? I'm white... everyone here is white... but just by living here, I might have a more "diverse" worldview (compared to a white american is massachussets, with enouh knowledge and money to attend MIT) than someone of a different race…

The American obsession with race is deeply rooted in historically having a large, enslaved underclass that was kept down using racial justifications and against which there is still measurable bias across all areas of life (hiring, police stops, criminal sentencing, etc.)

It’s not unique to America but it is a major differentiator from other countries.

A key thing to note is that many homogeneous countries are extremely racist but don’t notice it because it doesn’t hugely impact day to day life. A mot-so-malicious example of this is that when my brother went to Korea to teach English, the parents wanted him (a white man) instead of the Asian American who was born in America and also going to the same Ivy League school. Obviously there are much less fun examples of racism but that one was… interesting. In the US that level of open racial preference would have been considered socially unacceptable, especially among the upper middle class college set.

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

#312

Post by Goldstein1984 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #287

I never understood the american obsession with race (well, and sexuality). I live in a small EU country on the edge of the balkans... what the hell should I write if I wanted to get hired? I'm white... everyone here is white... but just by living here, I might have a more "diverse" worldview (compared to a white american is massachussets, with enouh knowledge and money to attend MIT) than someone of a different race…

[flagged]

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

#313

Post by lazide »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #139
lazide wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘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.

If there are a fixed number of slots, actually filtering without considering those criteria and yet ending up with a ‘good’ set of numbers based on those criteria is actually impossible.

Regardless of any additional outreach being performed.

It’s basic analysis.

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

#315

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #283
gruez wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I’ve heard this same argument for DEI statements every time the topic has been debated: They sidestep arguments about DEI statements and instead retreat to safer arguments about how advancing DEI is a good thing. On one hand, I get it. Arguing for DEI in an abstract sense is much easier than arguing for specific interventions. On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy, where the de…

[deleted]

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

#316

Post by yarg »

jmyeet wrote: post #195
yarg wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligence is largely hereditary (people's intelligence is generally unlikely to be significantly higher or lower than that of their parents). So if the parents were high quality academic students, there's a far higher than average likelihood that the same will be true of their children. (The same is true for athleticism, and no-one would be surprised or think it was unreasonable that LeBron's son was offered schol…

An inbuilt assumption of what you say is that you believe in meritocracy, specifically that the powerful and wealthy are that way at least part by merit. The flipside of this assumption is that poverty is a personal moral failure. Personally i reject both of these assertions. So much of wealth can be attributed to imperialism, war, slavery, segregation, instituational discrimination and so on. But let's assume what y…

When did I ever say that the children of wealthy alumni should be prioritised?

I'm not assuming that the wealthy are there by merit, I'm assuming that the competent are.

And yes, universities will admit the idiot sons of the rich, just because of a donation - but that's an entirely different conversation to one regarding the prioritisation of the children of alumni who already proved themselves to be useful.

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

#317

Post by noobermin »

dgfitz wrote: post #262
GIFtheory wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Perhaps you were simply evaluated against your noggin and not your skin? Edit: what are the arguments against this?

This comment does not make sense in reply to this question...where did they say anything about evaluation, the point they made is the difference it made is their advisor doing outreach.

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

#318

Post by cogman10 »

Aurornis wrote: post #283
gruez wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I’ve heard this same argument for DEI statements every time the topic has been debated: They sidestep arguments about DEI statements and instead retreat to safer arguments about how advancing DEI is a good thing. On one hand, I get it. Arguing for DEI in an abstract sense is much easier than arguing for specific interventions. On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy, where the de…

Feels a little bit like making people take anti-theft pledges. I don't think anyone could reasonably expect that theft would be prevented by someone pledging not to engage in it yet it might be tricky to publicly remove because "what are you, pro-theft!?!"

Similar to DEI training in general which doesn't appear to do too much. It should be argued that "we shouldn't do these trainings" yet you also don't want to be the one saying that.

What does appear to work is a company actually hiring and promoting skilled diverse individuals and not just their buds.

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

#319

Post by mintplant »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #123
rahimnathwani wrote: post #75

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…

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.

We do. I literally just had to submit a statement to this effect to the NSF. The GP is spouting uninformed opinions and then patting themselves on the back for being an "outsider".
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