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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

#601

Post by kristopolous »

TMWNN wrote: post #582
kristopolous wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mit-scraps-diversity-state... The decision was made by MIT president Sally Kornbluth, with support from the school’s provost and six academic deans, a spokesperson told National Review on Sunday afternoon. “My goals are to tap into the full scope of human talent, to bring the very best to MIT, and to make sure they thrive once here,” Kornbluth said in a statement provided to…

steve_taylor's point is that had National Review not asked for a comment, MIT would never have formally announced this at all.

Do they generally put out announcements on Sunday afternoon? They made sure to be accessible for this. That's probably already an exception. Campuses are usually a M-F 9-5 kind of place.

So I think that's pure speculation. There wasn't that much time, they're usually closed on the weekend and there's no expectation for them to swiftly contact the media for every single change in policy.

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

#602

Post by the-smug-one »

porknubbins wrote: post #470
the-smug-one wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you!

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

#603

Post by saagarjha »

WalterBright wrote: post #528
kelipso wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe decades ago when college students based their choice of majors on feelings or whatever that might have been true. Nowadays college students are much more practical. An obvious example is the rise in CS majors in the last decade. The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.

> The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous. Pretty much all the ones I know that are good at it love it. Just like musicians and athletes. Sure, there are those in it for the money. They're usually the tweeners. > Nowadays college students are much more practical. I'm not so sure about that. There's a large number of math avoiders in college, and when they graduate discov…

That's because those don't pay you money. I know plenty of excellent engineers who couldn't care less about computer science.

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

#604

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ethbr1 wrote: post #532
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Everybody is always quick to blame the internet for everything, but I think we can actually pin this one on housing scarcity.

Journalism was funded by advertising because ad space was rare and journalistic outlets got a big chunk of it. Then the internet made ad space common -- it's on every web page full of lolcats -- and it was this reality rather than anything specific done by Facebook or Google that took the ad money.

But the internet also made it so you don't need a printing press to publish. That should have brought the cost down to what would still be sustainable after the drop in ad revenue. Until you have to make rent, because housing costs are out of control.

This is the same thing destroying our communities. You and some neighbors want to get a community lodge for local events? Forget about it, the cost is prohibitive. Stay home and don't even know your neighbors' names. And then where do you learn who to trust? The Internet?

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

#605

Post by tromp »

cogman10 wrote: post #318
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…

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…

Or like the pledges that university students have to fill out before each exam, promising not to cheat in any way. As if "you broke the pledge you signed" carries any more weight than "you cheated".

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

#606

Post by gameman144 »

pygar wrote: post #552
gameman144 wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this scenario, you should expect to have a representation of around 1 woman per 4 men, if the rate of qualified candidates is 1 woman per 4 men. If you want to hire more than that ratio, you have to be doing some discarding of otherwise qualified candidates on the basis only of being men.

Sure. But even if you want to hire at about 1 women per 4 men you would need to actively do so. I.E. create a hiring policy in which she would be selected instead of one of the other equally qualified men.

Not at all! Passively choosing from the equally-qualified-candidate distribution across the board will yield representation that's right in line with that distribution.

There may be some groups that are entirely men and some that are entirely women, but the aggregate result will approach the true population of qualified candidates.

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

#607

Post by ugh123 »

gruez wrote: post #134
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…

>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…

> (eg. "I did a, b, and c in my previous position to enhance DEI in my department")

What if they worked for a dept. that didn't promote these things and may have had policy against them? Why should a candidate need to please yet another committee or reviewer of their "body of work" to now include and require certain achievements in an area that isn't even understood by many and all but squashed now by the supreme court as a tool to recruit students?

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

#608

Post by medellin »

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 still looking for the single person who was offended by the use of master as the default git branch name. I never found them but everyone got to pretend like they were making a difference for a little bit.

These statements are the exact same thing to me.

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

#609

Post by dmurray »

ugh123 wrote: post #607
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…

> (eg. "I did a, b, and c in my previous position to enhance DEI in my department") What if they worked for a dept. that didn't promote these things and may have had policy against them? Why should a candidate need to please yet another committee or reviewer of their "body of work" to now include and require certain achievements in an area that isn't even understood by many and all but squashed now by the supreme cou…

> What if they worked for a dept. that didn't promote these things and may have had policy against them?

Then they lack experience relevant to the job, right? That's like asking "what if the applicant has no experience teaching computer science because he previously worked in the history department", except they can still make up something about feeling oppressed or fighting back against a culture they disagreed with.

This seems like the least problematic thing about mandatory DEI statements: if you value DEI, you should value candidates with some previous experience of working in the DEI industry.

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

#610

Post by Eavolution »

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.

I'll preface this with I'm not american, and I'm from a country that historically doesn't have a problem with racism against the minorities these policies affect.

These policies always seem a bit ridiculous to me. I've done nothing to discriminate against these people, so why am I being treated worse because of the actions of people I had nothing to do with? Affirmative action policies are discriminative, just not to the group they're targeted at helping. Why can't there just be equality and leave it at that?

My personal opinion is you can't discriminate based on information you don't have, so universities/employers etc shouldn't get information on a candidates race/gender/whatever that's not relevant, because that way they can't have discriminated using it

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