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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

#461

Post by zeroonetwothree »

tomnipotent wrote: post #361
jack_h wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are outstanding systemic inequities at every level of American society. I think this needs to be backed up with evidence rather than merely asserted. I've been reading through a number of books by Thomas Sowell lately and he presents enough statistical evidence to explain disparities without any hint of racism, sexism, etc. Regardless of if you agree with him or not, the mere fact that alternate theories exis…

> many women voluntarily take time off of their career to raise children Expect there is evidence to suggest that women that earn a higher income are less likely to leave the workforce, which is further influenced by access to affordable childcare and dual incomes. The point is that when you control for these factors, a woman with the same title and responsibilities as a man will earn less for the same work.

Seems like this isn’t always the case, so your statement shouldn’t be so absolute: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/28/young-wom...

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

#462

Post by zeroonetwothree »

pfdietz wrote: post #378
slenocchio wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok how about any thinker.

https://truthout.org/articles/the-far-right-regards-human-in...

It seems like this just assumes the conclusion?

“ As an imprecise working definition (not for all times and places but for the United States today), “far right” is used here to mean political forces that (a) regard human inequality as natural, ”

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

#463

Post by eapressoandcats »

NemoNobody wrote: post #343
eapressoandcats wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 extrem…

The US has required an "immigrant class" since before and after slavery ended. People forget that we didn't like the Germans, Irish, Italians, Polish, etc At one point in the South there were jobs only Irish were hired to do bc they were very dangerous and slaves were too valuable to expend on that labor. Immigrants are necessary for our economy and have been since the beginning. This isn't a great truth but it's the…

Yes but Black people in the US have been historically treated _worse_ than immigrants, which is entirely unnecessary and leads to a lot of efforts to fix the results of previous subjugation.

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

#464

Post by ckemere »

bpodgursky wrote: post #452
ckemere wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applications for faculty positions typically comprise a CV, copies of 2-5 significant papers you’ve written, 3 letters of recommendation, a research statement, and a teaching statement. As I understand it, the DEI statement is supposed to go along with the last two. Much of what is said about DEI statements can also be said about the teaching statement. At R1 universities like MIT, people are hired for tenure track p…

UC Berkeley rejected 76% of applicants based on the DEI statement alone[1]. [1] https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davi...

I think that’s consistent with the example that I gave. I suspect someone who said “I plan to give all multiple choice exams in order to simplify grading.” in their teaching statement would likely get a poor rating?

(The 76% refers to applications to an “Advancing diversity” grant program, so it seems a bit duplicitous to suggest it represents happens in faculty hiring?)

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

#465

Post by zeroonetwothree »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #423
slenocchio wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hi - as a counterpoint, I think that inequality is desirable. In a world with limited resources I think it makes sense to allocate more resources towards people who perform acts for society which require rare skill sets, talent, etc. That might mean more money, it might mean land, it might mean status, or anything else really. The idea being that those rewards both serve as motivation and also help those people to fo…

I think that you are arguing against equity not equality. Usually the latter means “equality of opportunity”. At least that’s typically the difference in most debates.

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

#466

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

jppittma wrote: post #451
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 don't know if or not this is "coherent," but my experience has been that the type of person to oppose something like this is more often than not the type of person we were trying to filter out anyway. There may be some false negatives of course, but in terms of keeping the klan from high positions in your institution, this sort of thing seems to work.

> There may be some false negatives of course, but in terms of keeping the klan from high positions in your institution, this sort of thing seems to work.

You've highlighted exactly the problem so many people have with these DEI statements in the first place. If people have some (IMO valid) disagreements about what DEI has become, they're basically bucketed in with "the klan". So instead, people just shut up and tell reviewers what they know they want to hear, and this ideological litmus test becomes the norm.

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

#467

Post by oefrha »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #130

DEI is a strange issue in that nearly everybody agrees that it's a good target to aim for yet any action taken to get there is discrimination. I frankly see it as a cheap shortcut that some very privileged people want to take to try to wash away the sins of our racist past, not to help people, but to make ourselves feel better- or attempt to.

> nearly everybody agrees that it's a good target to aim for

You mean nearly everybody agrees in your circle, because you can easily find strong opposition if you bother to look. And that’s after making saying the opposite out loud a career-ending offense in lots of places, kinda hard to not agree with it if you want to remain employable.

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

#468

Post by dang »

lupire wrote: post #416
avs733 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument hi! that would include me, and I would ask you to think about the following question at the moment: You are wondering if a widely utilized, and VOCALLY critiqued practice is supported by anyone...then why would it be continued to be practiced. Generally what I have found is there are two sides to this - one of which is just tryi…

[flagged]

I have no idea which side you're on (I'm not parsing the thread for that) but your comments are standing out as particularly bad flamewar. Please stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

p.s. In case anyone's worried about this - if there are other accounts behaving this badly who have not been moderated yet, the reason is that we haven't seen them. You can help by flagging the comments or letting us know about them at hn@ycombinator.com.

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

#469

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

#470

Post by porknubbins »

the-smug-one wrote: post #217
porknubbins wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm pretty sure that "cultural Marxism" is a conspiracy theory, so I'd probably downvote you for that still. Seriously, what is your definition of cultural Marxism? I'm not gonna respond by picking it apart or whatever, I'll just read it and write "thank you" as a response after you've posted it.

I was not aware that that the term cultural Marxism comes from a specific conspiracy theory from the 90s. I meant to say that some of these left wing social movements divide the entire world into an oppressor and an oppressed class the way you saw in the Chinese communist revolution for example, except not on economic lines (ie Marxism) but on race/identity lines which is why I said cultural Marxism but I should have been more careful with the terminology.
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