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It feels like Soviet Union in the 60s vs in '89 where you knew the wall was falling sooner rather than later.
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I am familiar with diversity statements by institutions, but what would a diversity statement from an applicant consist of, what would be expected? for example, declared alignment with the institution? or statements about one's own "diversity"? just trying to get a grasp.
Here's a scoring guide to "how good" a statement is, along with examples. https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...
Look, if you don't want an echo chamber on this topic, maybe consider the point of diversity statements. I can't put it better than Stephen Jay Gould: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." Consider that a diversity statement is a way to evaluate if the applicant has…
Personally I've always thought that a lot of these issues boil down to intentional misreading or lack of understanding of things unsaid. As an example, a whole bunch of people, for some reason, took "Black Lives Matter" to mean "Only Black Lives Matter", as if that was said or as if that was the point.
In your example with Einstein, to me it would be perfectly valid for Gould to have said "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. We should seek to find and develop those people." But of course I would worry that those same people who took umbrage with the example of BLM would assume that it would be done at the expense of others, or that it would be done to exclusively benefit in a zero-sum way the unheralded, unfound geniuses in Gould's example.
I run a small startup, fifteen people, and yes, I believe in diversity in hiring and team composition. If all things are equal, then I will hire the person that brings a diverse perspective to my team, not on basis of identity but on basis of opinion, basis of experience, and basis of perspective. I will not pursue that diversity at the expense of hiring the best candidate, and I suspect my perspective is shared a lot more than people think, solely because the "If all things are equal" part is unsaid and it is simply too easy for the cynic or bad-faith arguer to assume otherwise.
Here's a scoring guide from a US university for DEI statements. To me it's much more informative to go to primary sources for what is selected for, rather than only reading about them second hand. https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...
Thanks,i agree its best to look at it directly. But i do wonder what lines like "Clearly formulates new ideas for advancing equity and inclusion at Berkeley and within their field, through their research,..." mean What does it mean for a math professor to advance diversity through their research? Like i could maybe get it for the arts or even some social sciences, but what does that look like for math?
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The first time some people will see or touch a book is when they get to elementary school. Those people are set up to fail in life, and anybody growing up from birth in an environment with no books is disadvantaged. For generations it was literally illegal for one race of people to learn to read in the United States. This is unique in the world as well - an American innovation. That type of structural oppression actu…
>The first time some people will see or touch a book is when they get to elementary school. Those people are set up to fail in life, and anybody growing up from birth in an environment with no books is disadvantaged. That is the concern of the parents, there is nothing preventing anyone from reading if they are so inclined today. >We all exist within history, it’s not some bubble where what happened before your birth…
Except it absolutely has been. The civil rights movement was full of it. Look at the history that lead to forced busing. The efforts to correct schooling disparity had become such a quagmire that an even worse solution was enforced. How can we expect things to get better, when just ending discrimination led to the worst possible outcome that was attacked from both sides. They knew the problem, and all reverting to no discrimination did was let segregationists and concerned parties kick the can down the road for 17 years after Brown vs Board of Education.
Reverse discrimination certainly has its cons, but to call it just "discriminating harder" isn't realistic. Making systemic changes hurts and feels unfair, but it's far from the racism that motivated discrimination in our past.
> Blaming the peoples of today for sins committed by the peoples of yesterday only breed resentment.
Where does this idea come from? I can recognize the disparities of the present. I can make actions to undo those. This isn't some fault I need to feel guilt for, it's just a reasonable outcome of understanding the past that lead to the current present, and a desire to change that present. Just like it is not my fault that some people are blind to the past, and feel resentful. Lots of people have resent though, some of it comes from those sins in the past. Sitting on our thumbs continues to breed resent. I don't see a major problem with shifting resent around between traditionally favored and unfavored groups, particularly if net resent goes down.
I say this with understanding that efforts can go to far, but also that oscillating between 0 mph and 100 mph to achieve an average speed of 50 is a stupid way to travel at 50 mph. Current efforts deserve to be moderated, not destroyed.
Look, if you don't want an echo chamber on this topic, maybe consider the point of diversity statements. I can't put it better than Stephen Jay Gould: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." Consider that a diversity statement is a way to evaluate if the applicant has…
I studied Math in college. Literally every single other math major I knew had parents who were in the top 10% (or higher) in wealth. Every single one. About 1/4 of the majors went to the same magnet high school in the richest county in the state. Several of them had parents that were university professors. There was NOBODY remotely like me. I had to join the Army Reserve to even be able to afford to live and go to school since I had no family help whatsoever. DEI aggressively works against people like me, because I'm a heterosexual white male. I grew up eating government peanut butter and free school lunch and waiting for the day the foodstamps would come because then there might be some food in our house instead of none, but I'm told that I'm "part of the problem". They would very happily push candidates that come from wealthy backgrounds and have parents that are rich or professors so long as they aren't white or asian or jewish. There are many programs to back-door people that are black or hispanic into PHD programs (google pre-phd programs for under-represented), but when I tried to talk to and advisor about such a program they literally laughed at me - again because I'm white and a male which means I'm "part of the problem".
Diversity is based on the belief that some group‘s behavior patterns are fitting better with the environment, even temporarily and locally. But DEI is denying this difference, expecting any behavioral pattern should deserve the same result. They can’t even reach a logic consistency.
No, you’re wrong. Belief in “diversity” is the belief that many different groups/identities can contribute, and that none are strictly “best”. DEI is an effort to include more groups in institutions, in order to benefit from the mixing of ideas that results.
I've been explicitly told "WE WILL HIRE A XYZ BECAUSE THAT WILL IMPROVE OUR US NEWS RANKING, AND ONLY THAT. BUT DON'T SAY IT OUT LOUD B/C IT'S NOT VERY LEGAL."
Beyond that, when I'm mentoring pre-phds that are preparing their applications, something I need to very carefully explain if they are white males (I'm a minority but I'm a male, fyi) is that they will have to do much better on the exams and predoc research than most of their peers in order to have the same success.
Now, everyone does their DEI incantations. Everyone puts their pronouns in their emails, their pronunciation link at the end of their signature (so they don't get mispronounced), and we participate in many alliship programs in coordination with our DEI leaders. But I doubt people really believe any of this, instead of mostly being in fear of getting fired or at the very least reprimanded. My ex-soviet colleagues joke that this is even worse than in the Soviet era, because back then you could at least joke in private about the speech being BS, but nowadays anyone would snitch on you.
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> we seem to have a tendency towards polar vortices of worldviews First past the poll voting with primaries encourages (forces) politicians to go to the extremes. Ranked choice voting can reduce extremism. It’s also cheaper for tax payers as it eliminates expensive and wildly discriminatory/disenfranchising runoff elections.
Many Americans already don't understand progressive tax as a concept. How can we realistically expect them to understand ranked choice voting?
Look, if you don't want an echo chamber on this topic, maybe consider the point of diversity statements. I can't put it better than Stephen Jay Gould: "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." Consider that a diversity statement is a way to evaluate if the applicant has…
But that isn't the job of a professor, they are there to cultivate the talent of people who are already privileged enough to be a part of academia.
I hope more people will pick up on the danger of this slippery slope. Part of the problem though is that we seem to have a tendency towards polar vortices of worldviews that suck in various issues that aren't even necessarily strongly connected, just to make them more effective in opposing the other side in an excessively concentrated way. So there is this tendency of social activists towards conformance and centrali…
It isn't a slope, this is literally rebuilding the dangerous parts of authoritarian bureaucracy - people who can't think and are then given unearned and easily abusable power over others by an objectively dumb system. The US is already there (as I like to point out, about half the US economy is government spending these days - that isn't a free market, it is some sort of mixed open-command economy); it is only a question of how far the ripples reach.