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Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

economist.com

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Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#11
post #8

These Rules and Statements always remind me of the stories I heard from the GDR and USSR Days. To get your highschool diploma or PhD in the GDR you had to recite your commitment to Communist/Marxist ideas before a panel that often didn't care about it but everyone knew it was just easiest to go through the motions anyway.

And you would probably be very on point with that. Also not too different that kissing the sceptre of your king.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#12
post #10

> Professor Halley believes these innovations are “forced speech and viewpoint discrimination in the First Amendment context” That's an interesting viewpoint and I'm not sure how it squares with a university's First Amendment right to freedom of association. After all, they're at liberty to grant tenure to whomever they think is worthy of it, by their own criteria. If they think that a tenured physics professor's vie…

>I'm not sure how it squares with a university's First Amendment right to freedom of association. The short answer from the courts is - if you take money from the federal government, in any way, or have students who take money from the federal government, in any way, or distribute funds from the federal government, in any way, as a corporate entity you lose out on many of the rights entailed to a private citizen.

No doubt, but I'm unaware of which right would fall under the category "Can't have DEI statements."

If anything, government money tends to include more diversity entanglements, not fewer.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#13
Just lie. That is what corporate has always expected from this. Go find a Black woman to interview and then hire who you want. Or ask current team members to claim they are certain races. I am a straight white male. As far as my employer is concerned I am a mixed race sexual minority. My boss at one of my jobs gets credit for a 25% diverse team that is just white men + 1 Asian man (Asians do not count as diversity).

Lying is extremely underrated as a way to get things done.

It was a revelation for me when I realized that nobody follows up to check your claims for job applications in great detail, so little of it needs to be true.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#14

I still don't understand how anyone can find such rules attractive. This is as strict as the catholic church. In the private sector it tells me that a company values show much more than their employees, which probably are treated badly and have to work in an extremely strict environment. If you have to say it... People that honestly fall for such statements are too naive to really fill out any leadership position in…

Fairness is not a tenant of the new cultural revolution, nor are the revolutionaries responsive to human nature, individual rights, or even capable of rational and critical thought.

The end always justifies the means, with little care given to the truth or reality of whatever means is co-opted and tortured to advance their end.

You must adhere to the core beliefs, which will change depending on the red fool's soup de jour. Your beliefs are not important, as their beliefs are gospel without question. It is an old and very insidious religion, revitalized, that has no place in a free and civilized society. We've been down this road before. We know where it leads.

Yet we go head-long into the abyss to the chants - the same Marxist slogans and ideology that heralded the starvation and torture of tens of millions of people, whose only 'crimes' were opposition to compelled speech and the desire for individual liberty.

I'd like to think it will get better, that western civilization would reject cultural revolutionaries that produce nothing but misery and death under the banner of "equity"

...which means ownership, not exclusive equality...

but I am not hopeful. The red guard is back, but this time, they are even more dangerous given the cornucopia of deceit, false promises, reach, and old but effective tactics that poison the minds of the young, so that they march lock-step with cheers & smiles into oblivion, dragging everyone and everything with them.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#15

I still don't understand how anyone can find such rules attractive. This is as strict as the catholic church. In the private sector it tells me that a company values show much more than their employees, which probably are treated badly and have to work in an extremely strict environment. If you have to say it... People that honestly fall for such statements are too naive to really fill out any leadership position in…

Academia is such a brutal cutthroat battle for faculty positions, you have zero choice but to participate. An acquaintance was applying for faculty positions and every single position they were applying to required a DEI statement. It's only a matter of time till it starts bubbling out of academia to industry.

This is one of the things that nudged me out of academia. Once I realized the odds of making a Feynman-class discovery were low, but that was the bar for tenure (and salary scales below tenure were... Uncompetitive), I started crunching the numbers and decided I'd likely be happier in industry applying discoveries than in academia making them.

There's plenty of academics to go around. I need my hands dirty.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#16

I still don't understand how anyone can find such rules attractive. This is as strict as the catholic church. In the private sector it tells me that a company values show much more than their employees, which probably are treated badly and have to work in an extremely strict environment. If you have to say it... People that honestly fall for such statements are too naive to really fill out any leadership position in…

Academia is such a brutal cutthroat battle for faculty positions, you have zero choice but to participate. An acquaintance was applying for faculty positions and every single position they were applying to required a DEI statement. It's only a matter of time till it starts bubbling out of academia to industry.

> It's only a matter of time till it starts bubbling out of academia to industry

Hard disagree. This is the type of thing only colleges do, it’s the equivalent of an essay and also displays how different academia is from the professional world. No one cares about publications in industry, and people buy into this stuff much less sincerely than in academia

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#17

I still don't understand how anyone can find such rules attractive. This is as strict as the catholic church. In the private sector it tells me that a company values show much more than their employees, which probably are treated badly and have to work in an extremely strict environment. If you have to say it... People that honestly fall for such statements are too naive to really fill out any leadership position in…

Fairness is not a tenant of the new cultural revolution, nor are the revolutionaries responsive to human nature, individual rights, or even capable of rational and critical thought. The end always justifies the means, with little care given to the truth or reality of whatever means is co-opted and tortured to advance their end. You must adhere to the core beliefs, which will change depending on the red fool's soup de…

TBF, fairness also wasn't a tenant of the old cultural revolution either. That's why these things keep happening.

A free and civilized society has allowed the oppression, dispossession, and outright murder-without-consequence of far, far too many of its citizens to traipse along unquestioned.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#18

I still don't understand how anyone can find such rules attractive. This is as strict as the catholic church. In the private sector it tells me that a company values show much more than their employees, which probably are treated badly and have to work in an extremely strict environment. If you have to say it... People that honestly fall for such statements are too naive to really fill out any leadership position in…

Have you ever fought a war on symbolism before? Do you believe in free speech, personal liberty, and hard work?

New epistemologies have taken root and from them, derived new values. Stamping out new ideas is a very very difficult task after they've reached enough people. The new guard sees the old rules as constraining as you find the new rules.

Most revolutions happen in people's minds decades before social relations change. You have to realize that there is no repeating the thesis to the antithesis. If you want to get a step ahead of the antithesis, synthesis is one's only option.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#19
post #8

These Rules and Statements always remind me of the stories I heard from the GDR and USSR Days. To get your highschool diploma or PhD in the GDR you had to recite your commitment to Communist/Marxist ideas before a panel that often didn't care about it but everyone knew it was just easiest to go through the motions anyway.

Reminds me of having to stand in a circle with all my classmates while one of us had the privilege of holding the national flag. We then in unison had to recite a pledge to that flag, the nation and god. just thinking about having to say the pledge of allegiance gives me chills.

Re: Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

#20

> Professor Halley believes these innovations are “forced speech and viewpoint discrimination in the First Amendment context” That's an interesting viewpoint and I'm not sure how it squares with a university's First Amendment right to freedom of association. After all, they're at liberty to grant tenure to whomever they think is worthy of it, by their own criteria. If they think that a tenured physics professor's vie…

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