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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

#531

Post by skissane »

janalsncm wrote: post #516
skissane wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, coming back to my World Zionist Congress example – you might equally say that antisemites who accuse the WZC of "secretly controlling the world" are not "engaging with it at all, and simply borrowing the term (or more likely, organically reinventing it)". And yet, I don't think that makes sense. Antisemites make all kinds of unhinged, baseless accusations against Jewish people and their community organisations…

Language is a tool. We use words because they are useful. As a practical matter, the conspiracy versions of terms have only passing resemblance with their real-world counterparts. Mentioning the relevant people isn’t actually engaging with the content of it, it is more like worldbuilding in a fictional story. New York is a real place but Spider-Man doesn’t live there. MI6 is a real organization but James Bond isn’t o…

The problem is, where do you draw the line between legitimate criticisms and conspiratorial nonsense?

Again, the Zionist example: there are definitely criticisms of Zionism which are nothing more than baseless antisemitic conspiracy theories (e.g. "Zionist Occupation Government"). But, that doesn't mean all criticisms of it are so baseless. If you read pro-Palestinian authors, or even left-wing Jewish Israelis, you will encounter critiques of Zionism, which whether they ultimately be right or wrong, can't be dismissed on the same grounds.

You will also find claims that some people on the pro-Israel side want to erase the difference between non-antisemitic criticisms of Zionism and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism, in order to put Zionism itself beyond criticism – and I think sometimes those claims are correct. On the other hand, sometimes pro-Palestinian criticisms of Zionism do cross the line into antisemitism, and as applied to those particular cases the claim is false. Part of the problem here, is it isn't always clear where to draw the line between non-antisemitic and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism–it is a question about reasonable people can disagree. Non-antisemitic criticism of Zionism and antisemitic criticism of Zionism aren't totally disjoint, they bleed into each other at the edges.

And I think we have a similar situation with "cultural Marxism". Yes, Breivik's criticisms of it are conspiratorial nonsense – but is everyone else's? There are right-wing criticisms of it which, whether correct or incorrect, arguably aren't "conspiratorial nonsense" – see for an example, see the 2018 article by the conservative lawyer Alexander Zubatov in the Jewish magazine Tablet, "Just Because Anti-Semites Talk About ‘Cultural Marxism’ Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t Real" [0]. There are even left-wing criticisms of it – the cultural Marxist desire to switch the focus of Marxism from economic to cultural issues was (and still is) heavily criticised by orthodox Marxists who view that switch as a distraction and a mistake.

And I see two other parallels to the Zionism case: firstly, just as some Zionists arguably seek to dishonestly erase the distinction between non-antisemitic and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism, in order to put it beyond criticism – in a similar way, my own impression is that some progressives seek to erase the distinction between conspiratorial (even antisemitic) criticisms of cultural Marxism, and non-conspiratorial (even if possibly mistaken) conservative criticisms of it, in order to shut down debate.

And secondly, just as the boundary between non-antisemitic and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism is open to debate, I think the same is true for the boundary between non-conspiratorial and conspiratorial criticisms of cultural Marxism. In my own mind, Zubatov is clearly on the "could well be wrong but not conspiratorial" side of that line, and Breivik is definitely on the "conspiratorial" side of the line – but I'm less clear about where to put something like the Heritage Foundation's criticisms of it. [1] And that's the core problem with your idea that we consider conspiratorial criticisms and non-conspiratorial criticisms of "cultural Marxism" to be talking about two completely unrelated things – it assumes a clearcut boundary between the two which may not actually exist. I think it makes more sense to speak of a continuum of criticisms of the one thing (ranging from the reasonable to the ludicrous, with the boundary between the two being debatable) rather than claiming the reasonable criticisms and the ludicrous criticisms are criticising two completely different things.

[0] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/just-becaus...

[1] https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2022-11/SR262.p...

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

#532

Post by ethbr1 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #298
ethbr1 wrote: post #91

One thing I've found useful in parsing modern news is to remember: A pile of extreme occurrences does not an argument make. Because there's insane stuff happening somewhere, to someone, all the time. With the benefit of digitized news we've enabled lazy trawls to create a pile of "Look at how extreme and crazy ____ is!" to support any viewpoint on any topic. Anti-gun? Here's some insane gun owners. Pro-gun? Here's so…

> An actual argument involves more annoying to fudge (and admittedly, harder to compile) data like frequency, normalization against population or historical averages, geographic localization, etc. We've seen that even these aren't that hard to fudge. Selection bias, p-hacking, mobbing researchers who publish politically unpopular results as a deterrent, etc. What you need is basically the opposite of that. Replicatio…

There's gradations of good.

I'd argue that we're at bad now, and specifically worse than even 20 years ago, itself worse than 20 years before that.

The pillaging of journalism funding, by Google and Facebook for ad revenue, substituted with "I dunno, the Internet will figure something out" isn't one of our better moments as a culture.

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

#533

Post by Dylan16807 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #494
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> that's all the parent was saying

Nuh uh. jimbokun intensified it by a huge amount with those "every" terms and saying "must" and "exactly", describing a mandate that is very stupid and ignorant of statistics in a way that rebeccaskinner's description is not very stupid and ignorant of statistics. Also,

> race quotas

The post you're replying to says "further investigation", not "race quotas".

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

#534

Post by thaumasiotes »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #489
thaumasiotes wrote: post #484

> Land acknowledgement statements are creeping into the US these days. What are the odds they make it to Israel?

You want us to acknowledge whether we're on the traditional tribal lands of Dan, Binyamin, Menasseh, Yehudah, etc?

> Binyamin

This one is really interesting. I note that you don't list the counterpart at all, but here's a selection from Weavers, Scribes, and Kings:

> In Syria in the early second millennium BCE, Amorite-speaking people grew up knowing if they belonged to the Banu-Yamina ("sons of the right" or "sons of the south") or the Banu-Sim'al ("sons of the left" or "sons of the north").

Benjamin is the only name I know of to memorialize an ethnic conflict that was apparently won long, long ago, so long ago that most people with an active interest in the time period have no idea it existed.

As far as your question goes, just the form of your answer is pretty good at reinforcing the point of my question.

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

#536

Post by thaumasiotes »

jlawson wrote: post #491
thaumasiotes wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/…

You haven't actually described any differences between the terms. (Well, you did claim one, that "motte-and-bailey is more specific", but combined with your appeal to "actual usage", that is clearly untrue.)

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

#537

Post by [deleted] »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #461
tomnipotent wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

[deleted]

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

#538

Post by bsimpson »

sensanaty wrote: post #415

The western idea of DEI has always puzzled me ever since I first came across it (or at least the D portion of DEI, which in my mind is the most important one). I'm a Serb by blood and grew up in and have lived in Indonesia for the majority of my life, and I went to an international school with kids from quite literally every single corner of the earth, many of them being some exotic mix of various ethnicities. Despit…

There's a hegemony that controls vocally-progressive places like San Francisco, big tech companies, and universities.

People who espouse DEI also tend to espouse slogans like "psychological safety" and "bring your whole self to work." Unfortunately, those slogans are as thinly constructed as the Diversity example you called out: it's code for privileging particular groups of people who look trendy in recruitment materials and PR. If I actually brought my whole self to work, I'd be fired.

Ironically, people who are critical of such policies don't feel psychologically safe. They don't want to be prejudged to be assholes, who then don't get invited to parties or get managed out at work. So, people in predominantly progressive spaces don't say out loud that the emperor has no clothes.

When DEI was first introduced, its champions insisted Diversity would be broadly constructed - that it was about enhancing creativity and identifying blind spots. Instead, it too often really means "we want a token {black, gay, etc} {person, club, etc} because it's fashionable." Bring a totally different perspective and life experience but superficially look like the majority? "Sorry, that's not Diverse enough."

If these spaces actually welcomed diverse ideas (and skepticism in the scientific method sense), perhaps we could learn from the good parts of diversity and build a society that works better for everybody. Instead we get Affirmative Action dressed up in newer clothes and whispers to trustworthy friends "can I tell you what I really think?"

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

#539

Post by beerandt »

jhardy54 wrote: post #498
beerandt wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It may not be a category (imo it is), but it's at least a hierarchy.

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

#540

Post by tomnipotent »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #461
tomnipotent wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

The irony of posting an article that proves my point, you really got me there.
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