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Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

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Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#161

Post by mpweiher »

pas wrote: post #141
gnull wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The telos of a knife is to cut, the telos of medicine is to heal, and the telos of a university is truth."

That sounds nice, but the de facto the purpose of a university is the furtherance of the intellectuals. The scientific method's purpose is to get closer to the truth. Some research does happen at universities, but academia in its current state is far from the ideal vessel for that. (Especially when it comes to softer sciences.)

> the de facto the purpose of a university is the furtherance of the intellectuals

Yes, and unavoidably so. That is why it is society's task to structure the universities in such a fashion that those goals align with society's goals.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#162

Post by collegeburner »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #129
imgabe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals." Diversity is fine. But every single piece of research has to be related to diversity? Is it not possible to do research on anything else that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with identity issues? This is not a statement about promoting diversity,…

Quoted post unavailable.

1. "anti-racism" is a specific ideological doctrine with nefarious branding because it falsely implies anyone who does not support present and future discrimination (c.f. kendi's def) is a racist. i am "anti racist" but not "Anti-Racist (TM)".

2. haidt is clearly protesting the requirement to describe how any research further's the associations "anti-racism goals". there's plenty of knowledge to be uncovered that has nothing to do with it and targeting all your work to uphold a specific viewpoint offends the general idea of "academia" as a tool for broadly and impartially adcancing knowledge.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#163

Post by concordDance »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #19
imgabe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> newly adopted requirement that everybody presenting research at the group's conferences explain how their submission advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals." Diversity is fine. But every single piece of research has to be related to diversity? Is it not possible to do research on anything else that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with identity issues? This is not a statement about promoting diversity,…

It's not so much off-topic research. The research output of much of social psychology tends to hurt the cause of DEI. They want to stop that.

You're sorta wrong. Most papers help it, but most papers are pretty shoddy...

The good ones do often hurt the DEI cause though.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#164

Post by pas »

inciampati wrote: post #20
rnk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Would you support requiring a pledge of allegiance to a particular political party or ideology before conference attendees made their presentations? This is surprisingly close. The issue at stake is more abstract than American racism. This is a dangerous precedent. And it requires some itchy mental gymnastics. Thinking about and encouraging diversity and inclusion through action is great. Forcing people to do it seem…

> This is a dangerous precedent.

Agreed. And the whole style, wording, method is dumb.

> intellectual diversity of discourse

The goal is clearly to reduce a certain part of the "thought space" (intellectual diversity), in particular the goal is to weed out anti-racist thoughts.

I guess they think of this as public health thinks of pathogens. Diversity of species is great but we still want less of pathogens.

What these people seemingly have no idea about, is that populist xenophobic movements can start, spread and become popular at no time. And obviously (?) the way to contain them is not with preemptive firebombing of academia, but by strengthening the ideals of equity, and the institutions themselves that implement those ideals. Make them shining beacons of good. The first criterion for that is efficiency, transparency, etc.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#166

Post by collegeburner »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #157
collegeburner wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does it rly change anything? like, take sports. asians have some structural advantages (endomorphism and limb to body ratio) for lifting, west africans at mnay explosive/power sports (fast twitch muscle concentration, arms/legs to body), east africans at long-distance running etc. (lighter structure, efficient muscles over long term), whites at swimming (shoulder structure & torso length). should we stop large swathe…

Studies that show the genetic diversity of the continent of Africa are in fact "anti-racist". They truthfully reveal that the psuedoscientific 19th century ideas we refer to as race had no scientific basis. Some people really haven't taken this "truth" well though. They still try to fit every new fact into their old model. Like "West African Scorpios" are much more open to emotion, while "East African Scorpios" are o…

i mean, i agree they're imperfect but there's also not "0 basis". if nothing else they may continue to associate with stuff because society often sees them as coherent groupings.

but cool, now suppose some study has a result i can't spin as "anti-racist". what do?

also you seem well-intentioned but your definition seems wildly different from kendi's defining anti-racism to include support for present discrimination to "remedy" past.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#167

Post by fdewrewrewf »

>"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

It just shows the power of ideology to crush dissent, when obviously poisonous and destructive statements like these are accepted.

If more people thought like that, then Jews would still be shovelling Germans into ovens.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#168

Post by pas »

HyperSane wrote: post #38
kenjackson wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true. Why do you think that?

But the SPSP requirement went a step further, dropping "diversity" in favor of "anti-racism," a term frequently associated with Boston University's Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist and other works. Among the book's passages is a widely shared one highlighted by Haidt: "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discriminati…

That's ... not how this works. This is not a zero-sum thing. (Even if there are parts of the problem where the actual conflicts are zero-sum, ie. there's a limit of how many first-year students can fit into classes, etc.)

Discriminating against already well off groups to help chronically not well-off groups (affirmative action) is of course discrimination but the consequence is very unlikely to cause the well-off groups to suddenly find themselves at the other end of the spectrum. (Mostly because they have a lot of other opportunities... that's why they're well-off. Of course it's not that simple, because there's stratification of these groups themselves, so it's very important to look at people individually, and don't simply give them plus/minus points just because of an external trait. Eg. skin color.)

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#169

Post by ZeroGravitas »

collegeburner wrote: post #166
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies that show the genetic diversity of the continent of Africa are in fact "anti-racist". They truthfully reveal that the psuedoscientific 19th century ideas we refer to as race had no scientific basis. Some people really haven't taken this "truth" well though. They still try to fit every new fact into their old model. Like "West African Scorpios" are much more open to emotion, while "East African Scorpios" are o…

i mean, i agree they're imperfect but there's also not "0 basis". if nothing else they may continue to associate with stuff because society often sees them as coherent groupings. but cool, now suppose some study has a result i can't spin as "anti-racist". what do? also you seem well-intentioned but your definition seems wildly different from kendi's defining anti-racism to include support for present discrimination t…

It's clear you haven't read what they are asking people to do.

You've read Haidt's take on it and have been misled, as intended.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#170

Post by pas »

busterarm wrote: post #66
zozbot234 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because what often passes for equity/diversity/inclusion in these contexts is the farthest thing from what would be truly equitable or inclusive. True diversity is not fostered by EDI goals, these are purely about enforcing conformity. And dangerous conformity at that - many people ITT have pointed out that "anti-racist" has pretty much become code for anti-Asian.

As a hiring manager, DEI efforts have made hiring a lot more challening. For my team we pretty much can only hire experienced, senior candidates with specialized skillsets. We do hire and train up juniors from time to time when our team gets big enough and has the time to mentor effectively. Anyway, women and minority candidates do apply (and get hired) for our positions but at much lower percentages. To meet DEI goa…

mandated DEI hires without also working on providing training for candidates (or at least post-hiring training) .. wow, what a bold strategy.

> We do hire and train up juniors from time to time when our team gets big enough and has the time to mentor effectively.

If DEI is a real goal then ... training has to be a real priority, not just "when big enough" and "when have time".

So if the company doesn't want to spend resources on it then it'll get strictly worse results. (Ie. it'll either find itself unable to hire people, it'll be chronically understaffed, and/or it'll end up with a lot of internal conflicts about skills/competence.)

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