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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

#641

Post by mlrtime »

smeej wrote: post #352
lettergram wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife enjoys going to these struggle sessions on DEI for academics (she has a PhD in neuroscience). She’s of the opinion she hasn’t been oppressed and in fact has regularly given opportunity because of her sex, so when lecturers try to reason with her or she has to write these letters they don’t know how to respond. I’ve attended a few where they try to convince her she’s repressed and the entire room just starts a…

There's also this weird mentality of, "If I was oppressed because of quality X, everyone else who has quality X was also oppressed because of it." When did it become OK to assume everyone would have the same experience just because they have some specific quality in common?

Possibly part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppression_Olympics

Meaning if you want to compete in the olympics, you need to justify it to yourself. This includes grouping others with you.

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

#642

Post by Palmik »

hnben wrote: post #598
nucleardog wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any media coverage that isn’t from a niche right wing news site yelling about the woke kids?

ground-news says "low factuality" and "100% right wing coverage". https://ground.news/article/all-hell-broke-loose-when-racist...

Seems like ground.news is just very bad, I wouldn't rely on it.

It was very easy to find other sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evi...

Note that the work is from 2016.

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

#643

Post by squigz »

inglor_cz wrote: post #637
squigz wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't think of a better way to deepen and perpetuate absurd divisions among people than the identity obsession and pseudo-quotas that the modern American progressive movement is pushing. I can: going back to ignoring the division that was already being perpetuated.

There is no going back to the 50s or 60s, American demography has changed profoundly since then and culture, too. There is , though, some space to swing the pendulum too far in the other direction, where white male is the universally undesirable employee/student, and East Asian male meets the same fate because he is "white-adjacent".

I wish I had the time and energy to unpack this. I hope someone else does.

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

#644

Post by ForHackernews »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #490
ForHackernews wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a big fan of mandatory DEI statements, but if I were trying to make a positive case for them, it might go something like this: We're a big university that is trying to serve the general public, reach students across all demographics, and produce research that is broadly applicable, not narrowly relevant to one segment of the population. We need to hire academic staff who can leverage their own personal, intel…

> We need to hire academic staff who can leverage their own personal, intellectual and cultural background to help us become a "bigger tent", I think there are contradictory imperatives here. You ultimately can't become a bigger tent across demographics while also shrinking your tent in terms of admissions selectivity. At some point, if people really mean it about serving a larger public, you just have to make yourse…

> You ultimately can't become a bigger tent across demographics while also shrinking your tent in terms of admissions selectivity.

Whether or not this is strictly true in a mathematical sense, assuming a static applicant pool (a faulty but common assumption), the fact that this is such a knee-jerk response even from commenters here on HN is really depressing.

Are we so conditioned to think of disadvantaged groups as inferior that the idea of expanding access to members of historically under-represented groups appears to you to be definitionally at odds with being a selective institution?

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

#645

Post by atq2119 »

pas wrote: post #583
ckemere wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

hm, standardized test are better for diversity, no?

They are, but that's not the motivation given in the example.

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

#646

Post by cm2187 »

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 what if you disagree with the underlying political ideology of DEI, ie the mandating equality of outcome over equality of opportunity? That's apparently a political opinion you are not allowed to hold if you are going through those application processes (and I have seen the same in the promotion process of large corporations). Is that acceptable? Do I also need to be a registered democrat to apply? I think it is morally bankrupt and reminiscent of the hollywood blacklist days.

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

#647

Post by ethbr1 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #604
ethbr1 wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

I lay it at Google and Facebook's feet by the property of 'To whom the wealth is redistributed, also inherits the responsibility.'

They've raked in a huge percentage of the ad spend that moved digital (from print).

And they've done what with it?

They fundamentally don't want to be in the business of journalism, because it's a terrible business. So they don't create content, which now means no one does.

(And that's not even getting started on the recommendation algorithm choices they've made that have incentivized low quality content. See: YouTube)

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

#648

Post by ethbr1 »

Palmik wrote: post #642
hnben wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ground-news says "low factuality" and "100% right wing coverage". https://ground.news/article/all-hell-broke-loose-when-racist...

Seems like ground.news is just very bad, I wouldn't rely on it. It was very easy to find other sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evi... Note that the work is from 2016.

Also, the Crimson, which would probably have little reason to be biased in this.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/7/7/fryer-returns-fr...

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

#649

Post by CyberDildonics »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #513
CyberDildonics wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me software that's bright red due and doesn't use 4 and 7 due to 'culture'.

That's a big goalpost move from the original claim that meanings can be different.

No it isn't. They said UIs are different in different cultures because "red implies prosperity and vitality" so prove it.

Show me some examples and evidence. Anyone can make claims based off of cliches, but when it comes time to back it up with real world examples everyone either goes silent or gets upset and makes the same claim more aggressively.

Chinese historical art has a use of red due to cinnabar being believed to be healthy and that persists in a few areas like red envelopes, but 'red means prosperity in some cultures' doesn't mean their computer interfaces are different. Their stop lights are the same too.

https://soft4europe-france.com/documentation2018/11-40/EN/do...

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

#650

Post by SpaceManNabs »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #360
SpaceManNabs wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> killer robots won't care about your race that is not necessarily true... while i agree with most of your sentiment, this statement is specifically why I believe everyone is racist, and nobody knows how racist they are if they only live in a homogeneous place. "this" being not understanding that being race-blind also being blind to correcting disparate treatment. Regardless, DEI went off too far in the track of iden…

But wouldn't race-blindness treat everyone the same? For eg. college acceptance, in my country, there is no was to prefer any kind of race, because colleges don't even see the candidates before they're accepted (with some few exceptions), and things like american "affirmative action" would be seen as directly racist.

that would require assuming everyone is race blind. That isnt the case and we should stop pretending it is.

And people still find ways to infer race.

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