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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

#121

Post by zdragnar »

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…

It isn't just modern news, people tend to be intellectually lazy on any topic they are emotionally invested in.

Just look at the fallout from Harvard professor Roland Fryer publishing a study (after hiring a second set of grad students to review the data because he was himself surprised by the results).

People didn't react logically, with proportionate arguments, reasoning or counter data. They reacted emotionally, forcing him to get police protection, suffering calls for his resignation, and worse.

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

#122

Post by lazide »

leosanchez wrote: post #31
anonylizard wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certain people, discovered how easy it is, to change entire institutions, by applying targeted pressure towards individual managers of those institutions. No manager dares to refuse these initiatives because they'll be instantly named by the activist, with the help of journalist friends, and ensure they lose their job. Hence by going one at a time, a small group of activists can change far larger organisations. Of co…

> No manager dares to refuse these initiatives because they'll be instantly named by the activist, with the help of journalist friends, and ensure they lose their job. Doesn't this feel very authoritarian ? Just replace manager with citizen and you have USSR.

Authoritarianism would be if it was top down.

This is more a leftist version of McCarthyism. Aka intellectual purity testing and purges.

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

#123

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #75

How would academics react to mandates requiring them to declare their support for: - Ensuring open access to research - Committing to long-term, foundational research - Prioritizing high-quality teaching and mentorship - Embracing diverse viewpoints - Questioning established academic orthodoxy - Focusing research on public rather than personal gain - Openly sharing data and methodologies - Upholding research neutrali…

They don't do this already? Who would possibly object? Why would any student attend an institution that didn't require it?

Obviously I'm not in academia, but to most outsiders this is really obvious stuff.

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

#124

Post by blueboo »

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…

This is the premise:

There are outstanding systemic inequities at every level of American society. The threat these represent to our long term survival and prosperity are such that we are keen to at least acknowledge and mark our and our prospective collaborators’ efforts to improve the status quo.

Maybe you don’t accept that. Maybe it’s asking for a virtue signal in service of performative posturing. Maybe this requirement had adverse effects (evidently it has.)

But there is a through-line of coherent logic, and the total failure here may be cause for alarm.

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

#125

Post by snek_case »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #75

How would academics react to mandates requiring them to declare their support for: - Ensuring open access to research - Committing to long-term, foundational research - Prioritizing high-quality teaching and mentorship - Embracing diverse viewpoints - Questioning established academic orthodoxy - Focusing research on public rather than personal gain - Openly sharing data and methodologies - Upholding research neutrali…

> Committing to long-term, foundational research

Here I would respond that academics are prone to looking down on applied research, but it's also incredibly important. Think of new programming languages, new types of chips that will enable future computational workloads. New ways of using or optimizing existing technology... Or even empirical research to validate the effectiveness of current industrial practices (something people often don't do, or don't do rigorously enough).

Not all research needs to be "foundational". Not all applied research needs to happen in industry. Many academics would actually benefit from climbing down from their ivory tower more often.

As it is, a huge percentage of research happening in academic CS circles would probably call itself "foundational" but is actually very much divorced from reality and useless. Just people trying to increase their citation count with an incremental extension to some widely-accepted idea.

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

#126

Post by yarg »

jmyeet wrote: post #111

So DEI is an obvious political hot-potato but that the idea that the group with all the money and power are somehow being discriminated against is just silly. Why? Because none of these discussions deals with the real bias in university admissions: legacy admissions. Harvard's undergraduate class hovers around 35% who are legacies. This is the very essence of anti-diversity and entrenching generational wealth and pow…

Intelligence is largely hereditary (people's intelligence is generally unlikely to be significantly higher or lower than that of their parents).

So if the parents were high quality academic students, there's a far higher than average likelihood that the same will be true of their children.

(The same is true for athleticism, and no-one would be surprised or think it was unreasonable that LeBron's son was offered scholarships just for who his father is.)

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

#128

Post by rahimnathwani »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #123
rahimnathwani wrote: post #75

How would academics react to mandates requiring them to declare their support for: - Ensuring open access to research - Committing to long-term, foundational research - Prioritizing high-quality teaching and mentorship - Embracing diverse viewpoints - Questioning established academic orthodoxy - Focusing research on public rather than personal gain - Openly sharing data and methodologies - Upholding research neutrali…

They don't do this already? Who would possibly object? Why would any student attend an institution that didn't require it? Obviously I'm not in academia, but to most outsiders this is really obvious stuff.

  Obviously I'm not in academia, but to most outsiders this is really obvious stuff.
That's my point. To outsiders like you and me, these things may seem obviously desirable.

But academics respond to incentives. Imagine you've spent 10 years pushing some set of conclusions based on some shaky studies you did early in your career. Do you really want people to dig deep and challenge the validity of your research?

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

#129

Post by blackhawkC17 »

svieira wrote: post #95
blackhawkC17 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And class is hard to judge objectively. Very simple, actually. $1 million+ in annual income or $10 million+ in assets is an objective starting point, all the way to mega billionaires like Musk and Bloomberg.

Congratulations, the small-time local farmer with 10 acres, two quality high tunnels, a mid-sized tractor, and a couple of trucks and trailers is now wealthy. Assets are not necessarily liquid.

Edge cases do not negate the whole point. For example, I'm pretty sure you can find a billionaire who's very cash-poor, i.e., wealth is locked up in the value of a private company. Does not change the fact that anyone with $1 billion+ of net worth is ultra-rich.

Whatever the edge case may be, anyone with $1 million+ annual income and $10 million+ in assets is undeniably upper-class, including your hypothetical farmer. Note that I never claimed their assets should be taken...just stating an objective definition for upper class.

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

#130

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

DEI is a strange issue in that nearly everybody agrees that it's a good target to aim for yet any action taken to get there is discrimination.

I frankly see it as a cheap shortcut that some very privileged people want to take to try to wash away the sins of our racist past, not to help people, but to make ourselves feel better- or attempt to.

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