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

491–500 of 807 posts

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

#491

Post by jlawson »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #482
Aurornis wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy In a textbook, it would be called "equivocation". > where the debater conflates two topics Yep. I continue to be somewhat disturbed by the fact that giving a new name to a problem we've recognized for thousands of years has apparently increased awareness. Did people not realize equivocation was bad before Scott Alexander?

Because it's not just equivocation. Read more of the actual original definition/usage of motte-and-bailey.

Motte-and-bailey isn't just an argumentative form, it's also a political strategy. It's people pushing/doing controversial thing A but every time they get called on it they bring up uncontroversial thing B. Or, they even retreat to thing B, but then when the pressure is off they come back out and start pushing/doing thing A again.

"Equivocation" covers a wide variety of situations, but motte-and-bailey is more specific and includes the notions of a strategy executed over time which includes action.

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

#492

Post by eapressoandcats »

zaroth wrote: post #483
eapressoandcats wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes Europeans invented slavery, but the deadliest war as a percentage of the population in American history was the American Civil War. This lead to a period of violent segregation and repression even after the Union won. In many places Black people had effectively fewer rights than naturalized and second generation immigrants and until at least 1964. I agree that there is other complexity for the US psyche but slave…

Europeans did not in fact invent slavery.

I was responding to this person’s more precise comment with shorthand. But yes, specifically Europeans invented transporting Africans from Sub-Saharan Africa to plantations in the Americas to do labor intensive harvesting of sugar, tobacco, and cotton.

His point was that Americans didn’t uniquely invent that institution, not that there was no slavery outside of Europe.

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

#493

Post by jimbokun »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #387
jimbokun wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every immigrant was treated poorly initially, but nothing compares to the special hell inflicted on African slaves brought to this country. With the possible exception of the Native Americans.

Sure, but you don't look at that, but look at race. For example, would affirmative action policies give priority to a white irish man/woman, a descendant of the poorly-treated irish people ~100years ago, or to a black person whose (grand)parents immigrated to USA after the slavery was abolished?

I think favorable treatment for direct descendants of slaves is a much more defensible position, than favorable treatment based on “race”, which is difficult to even define.

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

#494

Post by jazzyjackson »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #386
jimbokun wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't speak to the experience of being a non-white immigrant, but I've had other forms of this experience. It sucks to be in a job interview where you have a great skill set that matches the role and a lot of relevant experience, but it's clear that the only thing the recruiter cares about is that you could add gender diversity to a team. But this is the dominant strain of DEI thinking today, and why it's seeing…

> The over riding DEI principle is that every profession, every organization, every role, must somehow have exactly the demographic breakdown of the society as a whole. I’ve simply never seen this happen, although I’ve seen a lot of accusations of it. In a very large organization you might look at how your organizations demographics compare to industry demographics in different ways, but that’s always been at most an…

you've contradicted yourself, that's all the parent was saying, that comparing your demographics with national demographics is used to identify the degree to which your organization needs to institute race quotas

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

#495

Post by jimbokun »

skissane wrote: post #435
jimbokun wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone still using the term "woke" in a serious discussion at this point is using a thought terminating cliche. (I still catch myself using it sometimes, and will try to do better.)

> Anyone still using the term "woke" in a serious discussion at this point is using a thought terminating cliche. In December 2020, New Republic published an essay by the African-American Marxist Adolph Reed Jr (professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania), entitled "Beyond the Great Awokening: Reassessing the legacies of past black organizing" [0] in which he criticises "the Woke". Now,…

> I myself tend to avoid invoking the word, because I find it derails discussions from whatever the substantive topic was, into debating what that word means and the appropriateness of using it.

This is the point I was trying to make.

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

#496

Post by goodfellah »

rr808 wrote: post #458
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 dont like the DEI industry, but affirmative action is good. Slavery ended 150 years ago and its disgraceful that so many African-Americans still live zero wealth, poor jobs, with second rate schools and healthcare. Many/most corporate jobs really dont require a lot of unique skills, its good that employers have a preference to hire under represented minorities, hopefully it'll help improve society for all of us.

The issue is that there are many who suffer from generational poverty and are not “diverse”. The DEI benefits should go to all of disadvantaged people regardless of skin color. And there are many wealthy African Americans. Why are they getting the benefits of DEI vs the generationally low income white kid?

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

#497

Post by jimbokun »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #386
jimbokun wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't speak to the experience of being a non-white immigrant, but I've had other forms of this experience. It sucks to be in a job interview where you have a great skill set that matches the role and a lot of relevant experience, but it's clear that the only thing the recruiter cares about is that you could add gender diversity to a team. But this is the dominant strain of DEI thinking today, and why it's seeing…

> The over riding DEI principle is that every profession, every organization, every role, must somehow have exactly the demographic breakdown of the society as a whole. I’ve simply never seen this happen, although I’ve seen a lot of accusations of it. In a very large organization you might look at how your organizations demographics compare to industry demographics in different ways, but that’s always been at most an…

I’ve lost count of the number of articles that simply cite disproportionate demographic distributions as proof of discrimination.

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

#498

Post by jhardy54 »

beerandt wrote: post #376
cogman10 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Imo it's very different bc the ideology pledge itself is mostly distracting from the real purpose of the dei statement (again imo), which is to provide a way to select employees based on race, etc, without it being the explicit reason. A better comparison would be if instead of an anti-theft pledge, there were a ten-commandments plus beatitudes test/ statement, without referencing the source religion. Maybe call it a…

> diversity applicants

Friendly nudge that this isn’t a meaningful term. Once you start noticing people saying things like “our hiring pool is 60% diversity” it’s hard to unsee.

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

#499

Post by pygar »

samatman wrote: post #339
pygar wrote: post #303

Most applicants for a desirable position are likely to come from the majority group of your region. So for a minority candidate to be selected they would not only have to be equal to the others - but better. That seems unfair to me. What does that mean over the long term regarding how you hire? That said, discussions about DEI tend to ignore that thing we are never meant to talk about: social class. Social class and…

> Applicants for a desirable position are likely to come from the majority group of your region. So for a minority candidate to be selected they would not only have to be equal to the others - but better. Your second sentence here doesn't actually follow from the first.

If you have 5 equally good candidates, 4 men and 1 woman that woman has a 1/5 chance of being selected. The others also have a 1/5 chance as individuals but the candidate selected has a 4/5 likelihood of being male.

If you want to hire more women what do you do exactly?

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

#500

Post by jimbokun »

nsagent wrote: post #437
jimbokun wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was the outreach aimed at you different than the outreach aimed at any other students?

It's not about treating students differently. Rather it's about where you spend your limited resources for outreach. For example, during my PhD I did outreach in both elementary and middle schools where teachers said there were skills gaps they needed help with. The demographics in some of those schools happened to be such that 80-90% of the students were black and brown.

I think if more DEI efforts were expressed as programs like this, there would be a lot less backlash.
Post reply on HN