All: Please don't use HN for ideological battle. There are too many low-quality/predictable comments here. We want curious conversation, not sharp recitals.
I know it's hard when the topic is itself an ideological battle, but that's a good time to review the site guidelines, including this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
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 there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument, or can you point me to one online? If so, I'd honestly love to hear it, and I mean this quite genuinely. I did some googling beforehand and found loads of "how to write a good DEI statement" articles, but literally every single one of them just took it at face value that these were a good thing to begin with (or, perhaps in their defense, that "academic jobs require it", so you better learn how to write one in any case).
>but is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument, or can you point me to one online
There was a recent debate on this[1] and even the debater for the pro DEI statement side (that they could find) admitted that DEI statements that were just ideological pledges were wrong, and he was only in favor of statements about concrete things you did to advance the DEI agenda (eg. "I did a, b, and c in my previous position to enhance DEI in my department"). He argued that was justified because DEI (at least the principles, not necessarily the specific policies like affirmative action or whatever) were ostensibly things that the university cares about, and therefore they were fair game to ask for.
I’ve heard this same argument for DEI statements every time the topic has been debated: They sidestep arguments about DEI statements and instead retreat to safer arguments about how advancing DEI is a good thing.
On one hand, I get it. Arguing for DEI in an abstract sense is much easier than arguing for specific interventions.
On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy, where the debater conflates two topics and then retreats to the safer position while hoping that the audience will accept it as an argument for the more difficult position.
DEI statements have been quite unpopular as specific interventions, as noted in the article by the way that the majority of staff disagreed with them when polled privately. However, speaking out against them publicly was viewed as a very risky move and serious career mistake, so they slowly slipped into mainstream acceptance.
It’s interesting to see how they’re now quietly being removed from processes with as little attention as possible. Nobody wants to be known as the person who campaigned against them publicly, but I suspect there are a lot of people feeling relief in this case as they’re being quietly removed from the process.
Feels a little bit like making people take anti-theft pledges. I don't think anyone could reasonably expect that theft would be prevented by someone pledging not to engage in it yet it might be tricky to publicly remove because "what are you, pro-theft!?!"
Similar to DEI training in general which doesn't appear to do too much. It should be argued that "we shouldn't do these trainings" yet you also don't want to be the one saying that.
What does appear to work is a company actually hiring and promoting skilled diverse individuals and not just their buds.
Imo it's very different bc the ideology pledge itself is mostly distracting from the real purpose of the dei statement (again imo), which is to provide a way to select employees based on race, etc, without it being the explicit reason.
A better comparison would be if instead of an anti-theft pledge, there were a ten-commandments plus beatitudes test/ statement, without referencing the source religion. Maybe call it a morality pledge.
It's essentially a religious test hiding behind another name and terms, and even if it doesn't explicitly discriminate based on religion, it's obviously designed so that people of certain religions do better.
And filters people not from those religions by boosting those who essentially share the same values, or can fake it.
In the same way, dei doesn't explicity select for diversity applicants, but for people who are explicitly pro-diversity-applicant.
Which doesn't sound quite as pure of you replace "diversity" with any of the approved / included groups...
'I'm not picking applicant based on them being black, but based on them having an ideology that is pro-black-applicant.'
Although sadly we've normalized it to crossing that line as well, with the last SCOTUS nominee.
Friendly nudge that this isn’t a meaningful term. Once you start noticing people saying things like “our hiring pool is 60% diversity” it’s hard to unsee.
I don't agree. "Diversity" has a commonly accepted meaning which in the US at least, means everything except white men. Female or non-white are "diversity." A great example are the statements and articles from 2020 when Biden announced the most diverse ever White House Communications Team which was 100% female. Biden talked about how critical diversity was and bragged about this 100% female communications team. All the articles I read about it had things like "most diverse White House Communications Team in history" to describe it. At least from a gender perspective, I don't see how they could make it more clear that diversity == women
> "Diversity" has a commonly accepted meaning which in the US at least, means everything except white men.
Unfortunately this is common, because they do bad things with "diversity", even though diversity itself isn't bad. This isn't a very good defintion of what "diversity" should be, of course. There are many kind of diversity, and which are more important depends on the situation. But, regardless of it, diversity includes white men (and everyone else, too).
Visible diversity in skin colours, height, etc can be relevant for some things (e.g. movies that will have a lot of different people, or when doing research for a computer program that works on pictures of people (to do compression, colour correction for lighting conditions, etc)). Diversity in experience (even if all of them happen to be white men) can be relevant for many things (and is very helpful).
Of course, none of this should mean that you should deny application of other diversity because of their skin colours, height, gender, etc; they should not deny an application for such reasons. Having women in the White House Communications Team is not a bad thing, but that doesn't mean that having men is a bad thing!!! Having men is not a bad thing. One thing being good does not make the other one bad.
it is actually more common from the European and Middle Eastern context to call the (Turkish and Levantine and Arabian) Middle East "oriental"; in Israel, "oriental food" is hummus and felafel; the Orient Express train went to Istanbul. East Asian is the term for ... east Asians and of course the SE Asians you mentioned, and South Asian is the term for "India+Pakistan+" people. Central Asian is the "the -stans" and Mongolia and parts of Russia.
In the US almost no-one would say "asian" for any country west of Nepal. Sometimes they say "south-asian" for India or the surrounding countries, but even that term is only sometimes extended out to pakistan.
An Asian-owned company in US can easily get 80%+ Asian. Is that "diversity"?
This depends on how you frame. It is not diverse for the company, but it could be in the larger social context.
Putting the same thing in, say, San Francisco can be different from doing the same in Utah.
It does go beyond simply making a pledge, though. Applicants are required to list all the ways they've furthered the cause of this very specific issue, regardless of whether the job itself would entail or even offer opportunities to exercise such experience or not.
Like requiring an applicant for a fullstack python/js position to list in detail all of their Erlang experience, projects, talks and initiatives, and gatekeeping on that.
Now Erlang itself is great, and understanding the principles that guide it will almost certainly help you in your career (even if you never write a single line professionally). But to make this a central focus of acceptance for the job is just plain silly.
Perhaps that is a good analogy, because I agree, and that is true whether it is Erlang or if it is DEI statements or if it is something else, even if they can be good things it is certainly no good to make this a central focus of acceptance for the jub.
But the problem is they can’t even get “diverse” right. Do they mean diverse in ideas? In thought? In opinion? No.
My LARGE company is on a tirade to ensure we use diverse supplies. We’re collecting metrics on this so we can proudly state how many diverse vendors we we use. When asked what we define as diverse they stated (among other things) that they were members of the LGBQ community. So I asked “so our company is very much concerned if the owners of the companies we work with are bisexual?”
Im married to a woman, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility that I’m bi-sexual. So if, in addition to being attracted to my wife, I’m also attracted to men, then all of a sudden I’m a priority for the company.
Or like the pledges that university students have to fill out before each exam, promising not to cheat in any way. As if "you broke the pledge you signed" carries any more weight than "you cheated".
I suspect you could get away with speaking out publicly on this if you said something like "DEI statements aren't actually advancing DEI" first. You need to break the link between the statements and the goal first, so that you don't look like you're attacking the goal.
You have a much more optimistic view of the current state of public discourse than I do.
There are plenty of organizations and people ready to tear down anything seen as against the party line for their own benefit. It's so much easier to criticize than contribute, and it only takes a few criticisms that ignore nuance and present things in a different context for critical mass to gather behind those misinterpretations.
The same things that make certain public forums resistant to this are the same things limit their growth, or that limit the spread of the message (content bubbles), so I'm not sure how to get around that without a major societal and cultural shift to how information is consumed.
>On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy, where the debater conflates two topics and then retreats to the safer position while hoping that the audience will accept it as an argument for the more difficult position.
Motte and bailey accusations only work if the statemnts in question are being made by the same person. For the debater in the post above at least, is there any evidence he personally is engaging in this? Or anyone else? Otherwise it's a bit fallacious to lump everyone who's pro DEI as one entity.
> Motte and bailey accusations only work if the statemnts in question are being made by the same person.
I think it's perfectly justified in cases where debater self-identifies as part of the "bailey" community -- that is, if in other contexts the debater wouldn't oppose people arguing for the bailey position.
> On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy
In a textbook, it would be called "equivocation".
> where the debater conflates two topics
Yep.
I continue to be somewhat disturbed by the fact that giving a new name to a problem we've recognized for thousands of years has apparently increased awareness. Did people not realize equivocation was bad before Scott Alexander?
Because it's not just equivocation. Read more of the actual original definition/usage of motte-and-bailey.
Motte-and-bailey isn't just an argumentative form, it's also a political strategy. It's people pushing/doing controversial thing A but every time they get called on it they bring up uncontroversial thing B. Or, they even retreat to thing B, but then when the pressure is off they come back out and start pushing/doing thing A again.
"Equivocation" covers a wide variety of situations, but motte-and-bailey is more specific and includes the notions of a strategy executed over time which includes action.
You haven't actually described any differences between the terms. (Well, you did claim one, that "motte-and-bailey is more specific", but combined with your appeal to "actual usage", that is clearly untrue.)
Motte-and-Bailey speaks to equivocating about positions in argument. There are many other ways to equivocate, e.g. over the meaning of a single word, used in multiple ways in the same argument, as opposed to a retreat to an easier-to-defend position over the initial one presented/being discussed - as in the thread above.
The relationship between the two words is akin to the one between “rectangle” and “square”.
The original SSC article about Motte-and-Bailey used "strategic equivocation" as an alternate name, not just plain old equivocation. I.e. intentionally equivocating whenever is convenient for some political/social/whatever goal
Alternatively, you're reversing the causality. As such fallacies have become borderline ubiquitous in many relevant aspects of life, greater appreciation and understanding of what's happening led to the emergence of language that's not only more figurative and visual, but also more precise. Because while all motte and bailey fallacies will be false equivocations, not all false equivocations will be motte and bailey fallacies.
Engaging in a genocidal action and then claiming it's self defense when scrutinized is a textbook motte and bailey fallacy. Claiming that people who oppose said genocide are supporters of fringe radical elements within the genocided, is a false equivocation, but not a motte and bailey fallacy. Indeed, you could make your exact argument about association fallacies, or a wide array of other fallacies for that matter - as most tend to involve false equivocation at some point.
Thanks very much! I haven't watched this yet, but this was exactly the kind of honest discussion I was looking for that I didn't previously find, so much appreciated.
The exact question doesn't even matter that much. They could just as well give you a blank page.
What's more important is how they grade and rank you and make decisions. Eg imagine they only hired you if filled that blank page with a picture of the Pope, even if there are no explicit instructions or questions asking for it.
> (eg. "I did a, b, and c in my previous position to enhance DEI in my department")
What if they worked for a dept. that didn't promote these things and may have had policy against them? Why should a candidate need to please yet another committee or reviewer of their "body of work" to now include and require certain achievements in an area that isn't even understood by many and all but squashed now by the supreme court as a tool to recruit students?
> What if they worked for a dept. that didn't promote these things and may have had policy against them?
Then they lack experience relevant to the job, right? That's like asking "what if the applicant has no experience teaching computer science because he previously worked in the history department", except they can still make up something about feeling oppressed or fighting back against a culture they disagreed with.
This seems like the least problematic thing about mandatory DEI statements: if you value DEI, you should value candidates with some previous experience of working in the DEI industry.
My first reaction to this news was, “fine, sounds like a silly requirement.” However, being a PhD graduate from a minority background, I really have to thank my advisor for the undergraduate outreach work he did, without which there is realistically a negligible chance I would have ended up with a PhD and a great research career. I don’t know what motivated him to do this work, but from a purely pragmatic perspective, if professors know that performing such duties helps them get promoted, perhaps it’s not a bad policy, as long as inequities exist in academia. There are so many other pressures on young faculty, outreach may be something that is hard to justify spending time on unless you have to do it in some sense.
I think this is a good point. I wonder how useful diversity statements are for accomplishing this task. It just seems like cheap talk to me. More useful would be to reward people in tenure review for outreach to minorities.
I’m from a minority, just not one that is recognized as such in the convoluted system that is racial politics in the US (I am of Iraqi descent). But if I were in the shoes of someone who should be benefiting from DEI policies, I’d be pissed off with how it’s shaken out. Seems like a whole lot of empty, performative symbolism with negligible actual change. Things like DEI statements read like box ticking to me, allowing administrators to say they’ve “tried” without doing anything. Same goes for sensitivity trainings, and flashy renaming of, for example, master to main. The singular focus on symbolism has not done anyone any favors apart from a few semiotics professors, although I wonder if they’ve been chastened by how little their favored policies have accomplished.
I once helped my advisor write a grant application and he put in some great outreach stuff in the DEI section of the app. What turns me cynical about DEI statements/sections is that after we won the grant, there was no money for that inclusion programming and nobody ever checked whether we'd really done it.
It’s similar to making everyone sort their recycling, and then just throwing it all in the same landfill when it actually gets to the dump.
Why not actually recycle?
And/or if we’re not going to actually recycle, why make everyone go through such a complicated song and dance and spend so much time on something that ends up not mattering?
Wait, this is a lot more applicable of an analogy than I was expecting.
It's also a way to compel action across all professors, not just professors from historically-underrepresented groups, who would likely be bearing the brunt of the work.
This comment does not make sense in reply to this question...where did they say anything about evaluation, the point they made is the difference it made is their advisor doing outreach.
No it's not on an individual basis, outreach work means something more like the professor talked to a group of students about their work and what they can do to join their lab for a phd. There are lots and lots of undergrads who don't know a thing about graduate school.
they very well might have been evaluated based entirely on their abilities alone.
A toxic element of DEI is that now they have to always wonder (as does everyone else) if it was done because of their skin color/gender/race, regardless of what their mentor says. Because it very well may be true as well.
Just like the justice system. People should be assumed innocent until proven guilty. DEI and more broadly CRT are toxic because minorities, like all humans have faults and these ideas promote minorities to assume discrimination instead of faults. Therefore not helping these individuals improve their faults. This also promotes division and hatred in society. Overall net negative.
I happen not to agree with them, but leaving that aside they're often that Ok fine, it's a pipeline problem^, but the solution is to address that at every stage, not just the beginning.
(^meaning for example schoolgirls aren't sufficiently interested and encouraged into STEM so university applications are low, so admissions are low, so graduations are low, so job applications are low, so offers are low, so employer gender ratios are low)
STEM is something you gotta have some substantial internal motivation to do, such as doing it for a hobby. The kind of work I enjoy, you gotta really like it or it isn't going to work out for you.
For example, I was taking machines apart when I was 7 trying to figure out how they worked. I'd break open resistors to see what was inside - just baffling grey dust. Eventually I took bicycles apart, then engines, then whole cars. It was just foregone that I was going to engineering school.
I get very little joy from programming. I never program outside of work - I hike, climb, work on my house, raise my kids. But it pays the bills and I can do it, so I've put in the time to learn enough to be worth paying a salary.
When I was a kid I wanted to be a paleontologist. Then I wanted to be a smoke jumper. Now I'm a staff engineer.
Not everyone gets to do what they love. Some of us are just following the money.
Maybe decades ago when college students based their choice of majors on feelings or whatever that might have been true. Nowadays college students are much more practical. An obvious example is the rise in CS majors in the last decade.
The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.
> The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.
Pretty much all the ones I know that are good at it love it. Just like musicians and athletes.
Sure, there are those in it for the money. They're usually the tweeners.
> Nowadays college students are much more practical.
I'm not so sure about that. There's a large number of math avoiders in college, and when they graduate discover their degree is worth a minimum wage job.
Okay but the difference is that being a mediocre athlete or musician means that you're unemployed, whereas you can be a totally mediocre programmer and make well into the 6 figures. My friends who are professional musicians know far more about their craft than even the most motivated engineers I've worked with, and they make less money than the worst paid engineers I've met. I've casually played guitar for almost 20 years and been programming less than half that time ane I can't even think about going pro without a massive dedicated effort.
Ha ha ha. I have a CS PhD and am friends with grad students in many other STEM fields. There are just as many who are "passionate", or whatever geeky losers who waste their life obsessing over minutiae want to be called, as there are people who are working on their degree for the sake of practicality. I would say the latter are in fact generally more successful.
As a society we have purposely shaped the way we do STEM so that it can be carried out by an army of employees trained to do relatively simple tasks. It is much better for a company to hire 15 people to do one thing, than to hire one brilliant person to do the same.
The extra cost is just passed on to the consumer, and you gain predictability and managerial prestige.
As an example, Amazon had twice as many people working just on Alexa as there are employees total at JPL. And JPL designs, engineers, builds and operates dozens of groundbreaking spacecraft, including several space telescopes, Mars rovers, and the Voyager programme. JPL needs people with substantial internal motivation, Amazon et al. do not.
> As a society we have purposely shaped the way we do STEM so that it can be carried out by an army of employees trained to do relatively simple tasks.
I see no purposeful force "shaping" this.
> It is much better for a company to hire 15 people to do one thing, than to hire one brilliant person to do the same.
They would hire the one brilliant person if they could. The trouble is finding them.
Also, brilliant is not the same thing as enjoying the work.
Maybe put some value and engage with someone's articulation of their personal experience as opposed to simply dismissing it because it does not comport with your world view.
Not to be flippant but the saying "when you're robbing peter to pay paul, you can always count on the support of paul" comes to mind. Maybe you really are a super qualified researcher that is doing great work, but all I see as the result of this DEI stuff is sinecures and make work jobs and generally lower standards across the board. (e.g. the former harvard president, or the current press secretary)
I dont think anyone would have a problem with DEI if it was about identifying unrecognized talent and making sure it got the proper attention. Thats not what it is right now.
It's not about treating students differently. Rather it's about where you spend your limited resources for outreach.
For example, during my PhD I did outreach in both elementary and middle schools where teachers said there were skills gaps they needed help with. The demographics in some of those schools happened to be such that 80-90% of the students were black and brown.
That's not really DEI. That's just targeting schools with skills gaps, and it might have turned out to be mostly white. To be DEI, they'd have to be chosen because of ethnicity, gender, etc.
DEI is applied broadly, for example here's a list of demographics targeted for DEI from one of Biden's executive orders [1]:
The initiative will advance opportunity for communities that have historically faced employment discrimination and professional barriers, including: people of color; women; first-generation professionals and immigrants; individuals with disabilities; LGBTQ+ individuals; Americans who live in rural areas; older Americans who face age discrimination when seeking employment; parents and caregivers who face employment barriers; people of faith who require religious accommodations at work; individuals who were formerly incarcerated; and veterans and military spouses.
I was on the academic job market recently. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the process of writing my DEI statement was a valuable learning experience. For example, I read several interesting papers about randomized controlled trials testing the effects of various classroom interventions. I also have some more clarity about the relevant philosophical questions, both due to reading others' thoughts and due to being forced to articulate my own thoughts.
For those reasons, my feelings toward DEI statements are more positive now than they were before. Still, on balance, I think I'm inclined to favor removing DEI statements from faculty applications.
Yeah, this is what I am also thinking of. It makes sense for people in a position to create a culture or hire a team to know, it's a science you probably weren't exposed to in school and knowing the real effects that are known and studied is a darn good start to implementing DEI well. Doing it based on guesswork is probably worse than useless. So that's the non-ideological part.
If you actually care enough to study it and propose hiring processes that encourage it then that's an actual worthwhile education process. It can be little stuff... like I hide names on resumes and obscure gender to avoid that very well known bias. It's not perfect, but it's actually a net win all around to do that kind of thing, and you wouldn't know how big a deal it is and how much benefit it is for your team without reading. It's a complicated topic, and I think many of the concepts applied earnestly but scientifically testing them is a good idea. To be ideological.
This requirement wouldn't stop that, necessarily, but it means that such learning occurs after hiring rather than before. And after hiring there's a lot less incentive, and a lot to do.
>didn’t we just used to call it “affirmative action”?
no. in short, affirmative action represented an attempt at "equality of opportunity" in the belief that some extra pushes would remediate "the problem"
"equity" refers to forcing particular outcomes, using various measure that operate as "quotas" including the lowering of standards like entrance exam scores.
Affirmative action did not result in enough doctors meeting various criteria, so we must need to force the results we want by whatever means necessary; since we believe all people are equal, anything short of that must be the result of a pernicious mechanism
A lot of things have "said purpose" and the "real purpose" because of which such absolutely kafkaesque things survive in organizations.
The said purpose of-course is to make sure that the candidate is "committed to diversity". We can argue all day on whether a statement is in any way good measure of it. It really isn't. I have helped people write such statements and we have always written it with cynicism and great contempt for the people who might actually read it.
But the "real reason" which such concept found a great foothold in modern American universities is that it kind of acts as top kill to get rid of potential people who might actually ask questions critical of various ideological positions that the university's internal bodies might have. You either want a radical zealot or at least someone who is willing to play along for his own career-maxing goals. What you don't want is someone who can call the emperor naked. Diversity statements are excellent way to achieve this as I have seen people write one line diversity statements such as 'I don't have one as I do not think diversity is important'. Such person IMO is more intellectually honest and would be a good addition to faculty position but will not be hired.
You are right that there is tons of resentment around the DEI BS that people have to go through. Tech companies have esoteric training problems with terms like "allyship" and "bystander effect" and all that which basically smells rotten to lot of engineers but they cynically complete those trainings any ways.
The pinned comment at the top of this thread requests that "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive". Bravo to you for providing exactly that.
Too much of the discourse around this insists that these statements are useless and counterproductive. But as you've explained, they do pretty well in staffing the leadership of these orgs with people who believe in this philosophy by weeding out people who disagree or won't go along for career progression.
> The pinned comment at the top of this thread requests that "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive". Bravo to you for providing exactly that.
Consider the fine grained details of the logic involved in combining "more" with "exactly(!) that".
The above commenter framed the situation as the DEI folks being necessarily strategically dishonest and malicious, as opposed to being True Believers (more technically: Naive Realists), like most people are, though with different fantasy worlds, due to the consumption of different training material combined with the same flawed interpreter.
> The above commenter framed the situation as the DEI folks being necessarily strategically dishonest and malicious.
I think the question of whether DEI folks are dishonest is entirely irrelevant (but important). You have to put yourself in the shoes of some diversity officer and think of what you will do to feel important, save your job and get promotion.
You will obviously have to come up with idea like "diversity statements", "diversity OKR" for your engineering managers. Most engineering managers are busy building products, they might think it is stupid but still would play along since the cost of compliance is very low.
When someone stands up to this, diversity officials get the villains that further help them justify their role and existence. "Look this person is creating unsafe work environment, he needs to go". All this results into an organizations which loses its ability to question DEI initiatives even more.
It is not my claim that DEI folks are all vile, they get into a conference room and make these grand plans. It is just that the moment you create positions like "DEI officials" the incentives are aligned to set the ball rolling.
Hard disagree. The argument assumes bad intent on the part of the evil DEI and implies the only reason for the policy is too get rid of "troublemakers".
This is some peak choir preaching. If you polled people neutral, or those with the opposite opinion they would think it's nonsense.
But on this site you can just chant things like "all hail the gray ones, the ones that can't be silenced by the blues!" and be celebrated. In fact, I suspect there's a high chance of me getting banned for pointing this out.
I don’t think that is what the poster was saying. If it was, they wouldn’t have used ‘kafkaesque’.
From what I can tell, they are saying the purpose of the statements is to weed out people who will be openly honest about concerns or be willing to debate pros and cons of a controversial position held by leadership.
They could still privately disagree or not go along, they’d just have to be able to do so while keeping up appearances.
Which in my experience academically and with big-corp is very accurate. There are plenty of folks who will spout DEI party lines all day long while only hiring Asian women, or Indian men, or white women, or white men, etc. as long as no one makes a stink about it in a way they’ll get in trouble.
Notably, those folks have also finely honed their ability to nuke anyone from orbit that attempts to get them in trouble for what they are definitely doing.
From an organizational perspective, it’s actually a very valuable skill - because to make this work, they have to placate stakeholders while also getting some key metric
that the organization needs ‘done’ well enough to offset their other shenanigans.
And in any sufficiently large organization, it’s essentially impossible to do that by actually doing all the things you’re supposed to be doing to the level you’re supposed to be doing them.
Which is why large organizations (and frankly societies) tend to be kafkaesque - they have too many conflicting interests and power bases that all have potentially legitimate reasons for applicability, but are irreconcilable-in-fact/impractical when ‘the rubber meets the road’.
It's not that, the reality of fascism on uni campuses (in tech) is really bleak. Lots of people don't see the problems that don't bother them.
So it's not trying to off people for asking the wrong questions. They're trying to cut back on the assholes that say things like:
"Awktually, there is a scientific arguement that whites smarter than blacks"
"I see you're black, but how ghetto are you?"
etc. etc.
Some things may get blown out of proportion, but I think people that claim it's not so bad don't know how bad it is for someone that doesn't fit a specific mold.
> A lot of things have "said purpose" and the "real purpose" because of which such absolutely kafkaesque things survive in organizations.
I remember sitting in conference room once and between meetings we started discussing the MBA degree and how you often needed one to move up at big companies. I mused that I didn't understand why this was so important since an MBA program didn't teach you much that you couldn't learn on the job or by reading a few books.
A colleague of mine, who'd recently gotten his MBA, started laughing out loud. He said, "You're missing the whole point. Nobody cares about the course content or what you learn. The value of the MBA is that it's proof you can spend a lot of time and effort completing bullshit assignments on time without too much heel-dragging or back talk. It tells the world you'll keep your head down and not cause too much trouble for the organization".
> You are right that there is tons of resentment around the DEI BS that people have to go through. Tech companies have esoteric training problems with terms like "allyship" and "bystander effect" and all that which basically smells rotten to lot of engineers but they cynically complete those trainings any ways.
I think this is probably a feature not a bug. Companies are all about having programs whose sole purpose is to limit liability and to (for lack of a better term) quite cynically virtue signal. And if that causes the programs to be hated and later dismantled, all the better -- because it was never about actually achieving DEI but about appearing to support it. All of the corporate DEI training that I've been through were considered "cringeworthy" by literally everyone in the company. And this was in a very left-leaning company, but it was run by mostly a pile of middle aged white guys at the top.
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 arguing she is. Weirdest discussion to witness, especially when the real repressed folks are probably the janitors and security. Many never even had the opportunity to go to school
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?
There are a handful of contexts where it makes more sense, like for a HR person potentially, without trying to bring ideology into it that's the place it makes sense since that's the place where you can actually implement the concepts.
There are contexts where it is mandatory but makes no sense, like NSF Fellowship Applications where they're asking someone who is just finishing an undergraduate degree and is proposing a research project that ends in a PhD -- who has effectively no influence on hiring or even culture really, and is supposed to focus on the technical aspects and personal aspects of who they are. There are things you can fit in there, but let's say the mandatory question is worded so confusingly that it is hard to even guess what to write about. What, you're going to hire people to assist you in your research under DEI principles when you have no control over the budget? It's just confusing for someone in that position.
Staff hiring? That kind of makes more sense honestly, trying to be non-ideological here. Those people can actually hire people and create a culture that is either DEI positive or not, whatever you believe about whether they should.
Sorry, I meant to explicitly include faculty as people who create teams and are responsible for a good work culture. I agree with you, they are HR people in practice.
Faculty select teaching assistants and the research staff for their labs, effectively unilaterally. They have the power to hire and fire. They choose topics of research, and can instruct their mentees to stop a line of inquiry. This is similar in scope and power to a combined project-manager, research-manager and person-manager. They also are the decider to grant later-stage credentialing, so throw in a bit of training instructor too…
In Australia, there was a recent introduction of "Acknowledgement of Country" at both the federal and state government level. Universities and other large institutions are also "doing their part". For example, in video call meetings with more than 'n' people, a manager will read out a statement for a minute at the start of the call acknowledging the "traditional custodians of the land upon which a meeting or event is to take place". In other words, the Aboriginals that white men largely wiped out over 200 years ago. See, e.g.: https://www.indigenous.unsw.edu.au/strategy/culture-and-coun...
So now, the descendants of those white men feel guilty and have to make a little speech before each meeting. It's the most dystopian bullshit I've ever had to personally participate in, ever.
This leads to some truly bizarre moments, like a recent meeting where half of the people were Indian subcontractors physically overseas, everyone else was a first-generation immigrant to Australia, and we had to acknowledge the traditional custodianship of the area by a tribe that was completely wiped out and no longer exists, not even descendants that might appreciate the gesture.
Similarly, in another meeting an "aboriginal elder" was chosen to speak because of their native heritage. That would be nice, except that this person was pasty white, blonde haired, blue eyed, and had freckles. Literally a white person making other white people feel guilty for something their common ancestors did!
The whole thing is an absurd farce played for political points, with no substance of any kind behind it. Actual aboriginals are no better off if in some city office a bunch of people in suits verbally self-flaggilate for sins committed hundreds of years ago by people that they might not even be descendants of. (Half the population is either a first or second generation immigrant!)
I wish there was some term that is the equivalent of "realpolitik", but for race relations, so that I can more succinctly express my disdain for this type of divorced-from-reality behaviour.
Land acknowledgement statements are creeping into the US these days. I could be wrong, but they've been in Canada for a while.
There's been a bit more push back here. There's a lawsuit where a University of Washington compsci professor is suing the school for retaliation because he mocked the policy. He pointed out there is no evidence that the Salish people made use of University of Washington lands, so the whole thing is a farce.
I frequent a lot of Australian architecture and design firm websites. 99% of them all have this disclaimer on their site before you can see any content.
Is this by force or is it en vogue to do this in certain industries?
They are valid points; they do bad things with "diversity". I have seen such acknowledgements in Canada too sometimes, although I don't know if it is as bad as you describe there, because I do not know the details.
Better would be to actually avoid damaging the indigenous people and avoid damaging the land. What was done in the past is done, but you could avoid doing it again.
Saying stuff (especially stuff that doesn't even have proper good points and doesn't even help anything) is not a substitute for actually doing actually good things.
it’s great that you as a person of european descent can be annoyed that people in the office have to make statements about traditional ownership of the land. You know how aboriginal australians live, and yet you think that changing attitudes towards the past—and reason why certain groups are disadvantaged—doesn’t help?
it’s not a “sin” — it was genocide over land that did not belong to the Crown. it’s a good thing that immigrants also have to acknowledge australian culture and heritage, as well.
as far as the white-looking aboriginal is concerned, we’re just not gonna open that door.
If reading a mandatory statement is ever changing attitudes then it's not in the direction you want. Doing this serves no real purpose, and I bet if you asked any of the affected people they'd prefer more than forced empty words.
Applications for faculty positions typically comprise a CV, copies of 2-5 significant papers you’ve written, 3 letters of recommendation, a research statement, and a teaching statement. As I understand it, the DEI statement is supposed to go along with the last two.
Much of what is said about DEI statements can also be said about the teaching statement. At R1 universities like MIT, people are hired for tenure track positions based on their past (and future) research, and many teaching statements can be recitations of current hot topics (“flipped classrooms” “active learning” etc). But good ones (with evidence in letters of rec and CV) indicate that the candidate really has practiced what they propose to do in the future. To be clear, at MIT I’m sure a stellar teaching statement won’t get someone hired, but a patently false or over the top “I don’t care” one might give people pause.
As I understand, DEI statements are the same. If someone wrote “my philosophy is that we should perpetuate the structures of power and mediocrity created by focusing on wealthy pedigreed individuals rather than ability and potential found by looking in unusual places” that would raise eyebrows. Conversely, if they instead said “I TA’d for an international computational neuroscience summer school that gave opportunity to impoverished students from Africa and Asia”, people might think “That’s cool!”
But I think that most academics who are motivated by equity are not interesting in reading a ChatGPT DEI statement.
I do think that the conversation around this is really unfortunate. I find little philosophical difference between what people are looking for with DEI statements and what goes into college applications from HS students, but I hear fewer people advocating for getting rid of those essays.
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?)
I’m still looking for the single person who was offended by the use of master as the default git branch name. I never found them but everyone got to pretend like they were making a difference for a little bit.
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.
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, intellectual and cultural background to help us become a "bigger tent", but also put themselves in the shoes of others unlike themselves in the course of their teaching and research.
To that end, part of our hiring criteria are based around evaluating your ability and willingness to help us fulfil that part of our academic mission. Please provide a statement explaining how you have demonstrated this in your career to date and how you'd continue to do so at the University of Utopia.
Yes this is definitely a part of it. And another part is the usual underlying question about how well the candidate understands and is prepared for the specific job they are entering. Different universities have different kinds of diversity challenges: some have a lot of working students who aren’t in the traditional student age range, some have a disproportionately large number of deaf students due to the presence of a good program there, some have large numbers of students for whom English is a second language, etc. Each of these requires different skill sets and interests on the part of the teacher. And a DEI statement can be a way to show/evaluate how seriously the candidate is considering the actual on-the-ground demographics of the institution and the challenges it poses, as well as how the institution is trying the change demographics (whether for reasons of market demands or principle).
> 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.
A problem I've seen with this is the assumption that subjects like Physics or Chemistry or Mathematics are not broadly applicable, if it was a discovery or research by a white man.
> We need to hire academic staff who can leverage their own personal, intellectual and cultural background to help us become a "bigger tent", but also put themselves in the shoes of others unlike themselves in the course of their teaching and research.
This last part is just wrong.
You should not assume on your own what the experience of minorities unlike yourself must be like, and then treat them according to whatever you imagined in your mind.
You need to talk to people, of whatever back ground, and find out how they, as individuals, would like to be treated, what their needs are, what they are experiencing, etc.
> A problem I've seen with this is the assumption that subjects like Physics or Chemistry or Mathematics are not broadly applicable, if it was a discovery or research by a white man.
The science doesn’t know race. But determining which area to research can bias toward the benefit of certain groups.
> 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 yourselves into a less selective institution.
> 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?
>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?
I was assuming that diversity and inclusion was not reducible to the proverbial "talented tenth" of various demographic groups but in fact entailed serving the 99%.
I guess I take it for granted that top research universities intend to directly serve top students and researchers, and the general public will benefit indirectly from the research they produce.
If you entirely reject the idea of meritocracy, then yeah, go nuts. Just hold a lottery and the 2,000 luckiest kids that year go to MIT.
I don't know if it's just DEI, or other types of politics, but there seems to be a recent trend towards "you must say you agree with us, otherwise you are ostracized".
My personal opinion/observation is that as corporate and academic has trended towards less direct confrontation/arguments, this has resulted in a lot more passive aggressive behavior such as statements like these, some debatable "codes of conduct", etc.
I mean no harm when I say that it has always felt like a more "feminine" way of fighting and arguing vs "masculine" like physical or verbal arguing. Perhaps it's a result of more women in the workforce and leadership.
Our understanding of what constitutes harassment or a hostile work environment has evolved over time. Likewise, there is growing acceptance that systematic racism exists in the U.S.
The original sin of this country was slavery. We continue to try to find ways to ameliorate the long term harm which it did to our national culture. DEI is one of those attempts. And likewise, there is a desire to treat all people as individuals with equal opportunity. For the most part, this country has not lived up to that ideal.
I'm not getting into what's "masculine" or "feminine" because I believe that's contextually constructed nonsense, but I will say that some people use "nonviolent communication" tropes in a metaphorically violent way. I've also seen it used well to improve relationships and outcomes.
It’s easier to defend than you think. It’s enough to show that there was no proof of that they didn’t work at the time of introduction, and there was indication that it maybe worked. I definitely don’t have the knowledge to prove or disprove it. If there is no evidence now about its efficacy, it should be removed. Unfortunately, I’ve seen 0 discussions which mentioned any hard evidence. Even in this case, it was removed because of feelings according to the link.
HR is also a hilariously complex set of rules and bullshit that isn't that easy to manage in large organizations. Separating out DEI specifically from HR allows companies and organizations the ability to have employees ensure that the obligations of companies regarding their legal obligation towards discrimination laws are met without interfering with core HR functions. Companies haven't been adopting DEI out of the goodness of their hearts. There's a direct financial advantage when you can prove to a court that you have provided direction on issues regarding diversity. It's just a collection of CYA, and their DEI statements are an extension of that.
Did you know that prospective faculty also have to write a statement about their research, teaching, and service when they apply for a job? Is that also conspicuously performatively doing the right thing in those job responsibilities?
I think it would help to know what you think a coherent DEI statement would be.
DEI statements as you're hinting can be quite performative and full of pagentry and then things slowly drift back to how they were all along.
DEI as a field is new, and I find they are not given as much slack as non-DEI people figuring out something new and getting slack for taking risks and improving messaging.
I can try to find a few links that helped me understand more. One thing was the difference between DEI and EDI.
It seems EDI (equity, diversity, inclusion) in that order might be an updated revision that can help.
> DEI as a field is new, and I find they are not given as much slack as non-DEI people figuring out something new and getting slack for taking risks and improving messaging.
I don't think I agree with this. The only reason I think people have such an issue with DEI is that in has permeated much of their academic and professional life (in certain professions). To be honest, if you look back years ago you'd be just as likely to see people complain about the management fad of the day, but the difference with DEI is many people were/are genuinely afraid to speak against it for fear of the negative impact on their careers and lives. "non-DEI people" in new fields are "given more slack" because people just don't care if what these non-DEI folks are doing doesn't affect others' day-to-day lives.
> One thing was the difference between DEI and EDI. It seems EDI (equity, diversity, inclusion) in that order might be an updated revision that can help.
To be honest, the "E" in DEI is always the framing I had the most problems with, because in practice I've often seen it arguing for equality of outcome, vs. equality of opportunity, and this is something I fundamentally disagree with. Yes, I know what equity perhaps is intended to mean, but in practice I've seen examples where if the outcome distribution doesn't exactly match the population at large then some people conclude the process is somehow unfair and needs to be changed. This is not hypothetical, e.g. consider the kerfuffle when ElectronConf was canceled years ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868.
Not really the same thing but I worked for an organisation which had as a policy that every single team meeting had to have diversity & equality as a recurring item for discussion. 95% of the time this just meant the meeting lead saying "So...diversity - anyone got anything to say?" and then we moved onto the next item after a short silence. But every once in a while someone would raise something that might not have otherwise been brought up. It's a very crude instrument but it probably did get people to think a little more in that direction and maybe led to a little more awareness overall. The other standing item was health and safety which had a similar outcome.
It likely wasn’t General Motors you worked at… but every GM meeting must start with a safety tip - or some DEI claim.
In the engineering meetings I can tell you which one happens. And in the executive meetings that certain people can’t wait to spend 5-10 min of probably $20,000 worth of a dozen executives time with their feelings on the matter.
I fondly remember a heated discussion about chainsaw safety techniques.
When we have all the infrastructure for an even more oppressive and intrusive total information awareness regime, DEIs are so far from 1984. DEIs are just dumb paperwork and formal procedure on top of the usual facade of hiring and promotion rigamarole
I'll give you an answer for how we have used them - essentially, helping set context (indeed, we have context statements as well).
DEI activities often take a lot of time, and are often undervalued by many traditional academic metrics - they don't produce papers, rarely produce grants outside perhaps the occasional diversity supplement, etc. As a small example, to ensure that undergraduate research experience isn't reserve for those without the need to take summer jobs, I ensure all the undergraduates in my lab are paid - and this costs my lab money I don't technically have to spend. Many of my colleagues do a great deal more.
Having a required DEI statement both lets people who work in these areas highlight their work, and also makes it obvious those who don't. It's a way to do something beyond just saying "These activities are important" by moving them to the forefront.
All that being said, they are often used in a very perfunctory fashion, and while I do somewhat agree with the idea of them, in practice they've not proved useful.
Thank you for your response. But looking at your answer highlights even more to me why I think DEI statements are dumb. E.g. taking your example specifically, if the university is truly invested in DEI, simple solution: unpaid summer research internships should be forbidden; all summer research internships must be paid, and here are the guidelines around amounts, funding, etc...
The above would be one real solution to increase diversity (while not necessarily being cheap/free), with the benefit of also one not likely to be opposed from either side of the political spectrum (a true rarity these days).
True, although in this case there's a lot of pushback - if it's not during the summer, can students get both credit and paid? How hard is it to make your lab jobs work-study positions, given they are all one-off positions? And there would definitely be pushback on it being mandatory, because academics, as much as I hate that we do, tend to love free labor.
Devoting energy to those fights, and the political capital consequences of doing so, and success if you were successful, would be an excellent addition to a DEI statement, and would help explain why you were less productive than J. OtherProfessor, who chose to devote their time strictly to research.
The best DEI statements are ones that discuss action.
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.
I understand you’re trying to strong man this. But I think we need to interrogate the premise here. How does “inequity” represent a “threat” to our “long term survival and prosperity?” What is the specific causal mechanism by which we expect that to happen?
It seems facially implausible to me, given that America became prosperous when these inequalities were much worse. Why do we accept this premise as a given?
> Research has generally linked economic inequality to political and social instability, including revolution, democratic breakdown and civil conflict.
> There are outstanding systemic inequities at every level of American society.
I think this needs to be backed up with evidence rather than merely asserted. I've been reading through a number of books by Thomas Sowell lately and he presents enough statistical evidence to explain disparities without any hint of racism, sexism, etc. Regardless of if you agree with him or not, the mere fact that alternate theories exist that explain why society looks as it does today should be enough to question the foundational problem that DEI claims to address.
Take as an example the gender pay gap which is presented as women earning 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. While statistically true in aggregate, DEI tends to treat this axiomatically as a sign of sexism. If you dig into the statistics the vast majority of this difference is due to the fact that many women voluntarily take time off of their career to raise children.
> many women voluntarily take time off of their career to raise children
Expect there is evidence to suggest that women that earn a higher income are less likely to leave the workforce, which is further influenced by access to affordable childcare and dual incomes.
The point is that when you control for these factors, a woman with the same title and responsibilities as a man will earn less for the same work.
> The point is that when you control for these factors, a woman with the same title and responsibilities as a man will earn less for the same work.
That can't possibly be true, because in a market economy, the more-expensive workers (men) would be laid off and replaced by less-expensive, equally-capable "same title and responsibilities" workers (women). This doesn't seem to be the case on a grand scale, which means it's more deep/complex than the "men get paid more than women" headline we're all used to seeing.
Are you arguing that society operates from a position of optimal market theory, and that cultural norms, prejudices, and biases play no role in salary or pay rates for anyone It's not particularly hard to find examples of disparity or exploitation.
Disparity and exploitation are not the same thing as ignoring an obvious way to reduce labor costs. Why would companies be smart enough to outsource labor overseas, but somehow lack the know-how to simply hire women and save 23% of labor costs? Because the "women make 77 cents on the dollar" meme is just looking at raw incomes, and not adjusting for type of job and experience.
So you've done more search than everyone else putting out data? Maybe you can share all your hard-earned discoveries on the subject, since so you're so confidently well-informed.
Men account for 13% of nurses, but average $90k vs $76k for women.
Then why don't they just hire women to do the exact same jobs as men and save a ton of money? You're still not offering a rationale for why companies aren't making use of an easy way to reduce labor costs. Which is more likely: that companies hate women so much that they're willing to ignore an opportunity to make a massive leap in profitability? Or perhaps you need to read your studies more closely and it's not the case that men and women are paid differently for the same work?
Your study on nurses offers an explanation in the article:
> Male nurses also reported working more hours per week, at an average 39 hours plus five hours of overtime, while female nurses reported working an average of 37 hours plus four hours of overtime.
I agree that if you just count the W-2s and ignore hours worked, subfields, travel, etc. then men make more than women. My whole point is that this kind of comparison is naive.
Likewise your study on lawyers grouped a hugely varied profession all into the same category. As an analogue, take doctors. Yes male and female doctor have different average incomes even for the same level of experience. But that doesn't capture the fact that over 70% of anesthesiologists are male while in pediatrics it's the opposite. This one will have an income disparity even when men and women are equally paid for the same work. It's a similarly naive analysis to lump together all lawyers into one category.
It's a fantasy world to believe that people operate purely on rational and logical long-term thinking. What's your rationale for slavery? Why couldn't women vote until recently? What's your rationale for why American women couldn't go to bars unattended as late as the 1970s? There's literally no shortage of examples showing the mistreatment of women, yet it's hard to believe that pay discrepancy remains till this day?
The entire premise if flawed if your operating under the assumption that people think in market and game theory. Prejudices and biases easily overcome rational thinking.
> Your study on nurses offers an explanation in the article:
The differences in hours doesn't account for the difference in pay.
> over 70% of anesthesiologists are male while in pediatrics it's the opposite
Show me a single study that reinforces the data that backs up your position that satisfies the level of granularity you're grasping at. Until then, the research and data that's in supports only one of our positions.
There's a vast difference between suboptimal decision making and ignoring a massive cost saving. The line that "went make X% as much as men" is widely spread, it's inconceivable that executives haven't heard this line. And the profi gains from a 10-20% reduction in labor costs would be staggering. No, prejudice doesn't cut it as a rationale.
Slavery existed because preindustrial societies were heavily labor intensive and the returns on more skilled labor was marginal. The industrial revolution changed this, which is why abolition movements largely coincided with industrialization.
Restrictions of women's liberties stem from thousands of years of family dynamics where child mortality rates meant that women had to spend most of their fertile years bearing and caring for children. The replacement rate in preindustrial societies was something like 5-6 births per woman due to such high infant mortality rates.
> The differences in hours doesn't account for the difference in pay
It actually does, men work 2 more normal hours and 1 more overtime hour on average. Assuming overtime is paid at 2x normal wages this is about a 10% disparity in paid hours. And again, there's more than just hours worked there's travel nursing, different metro areas, and more.
> Show me a single study that reinforces the data that backs up your position that satisfies the level of granularity you're grasping at.
You're asking me to prove a negative. I don't doubt you can find individual instances of discrimination against women (and against men), my point is that the large disparities between men's and women's average wages overwhelmingly stem from differences in men and women's behavior rather than discrimination.
> The line that "went make X% as much as men" is widely spread
It's not "widely spread", it's widely researched. Show me a study that explains the pay gap as owing to mostly to behavior.
You've provided post-hoc academic rationale, rather than something the average person would have been operating under. People simply do not make decisions the way you seem to be under the impression of. I'm sure the average slave owner used your explanation rather than believing that subset of the population was sub-human chattel.
An example of a behavioral difference is salary negotiation, where assertive women are viewed negatively while a man chest-thumping is viewed positively. Tell that woman who took a lower salary because of cultural stigmas and traditions your rationale and see how far that goes. I've been in the room when a man waved off a woman because of such behavior.
> You're asking me to prove a negative.
I'm asking you to back up your claim with evidence, which you have thusly been unable to do. What you have done is nitpick specific details like that's a gotcha, rather than owing to statistics and population sampling.
Your statement (which I happen to agree with) supports DEI policies but not the specific practice of requiring a written DEI statement, which is the important distinction OP made.
I think you can be for DEI as a concept and as a corporate or school policy, but against the performative act of writing it out as some kind of weird "pledge of allegiance" in a job application.
Well, the “acknowledge and mark” phrase gets at the statement—That if the org thought objective X was authentic existential goal, it behooves them to understand how an applicant understands and would configure into that plan. (I have no claim about its efficacy. The highly-structured nature of the statement is a head-scratcher. I’m here watching the fallout with everyone else.)
I hasten to restate that is my understanding of the premise, in the spirit of collectively untangling the causal chain here. This is incendiary stuff on HN!
> it behooves them to understand how an applicant understands and would configure into that plan.
I (and a lot of us I think) follow you up to this point, but then you lose us here.
How does a written statement, the expected content of which is clearly known, give any understanding of the individual's position? This type of approach to education seems to me that it actively harms the ability to sway people's opinions.
I have this issue with a lot of discussions of DEI, there are a lot of arguments that support the DEI goal and a dearth of arguments that support the methods being used to achieve that goal.
> 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.
I'm very skeptical that there is any threat to our survival here, or that DEI is any kind of response capable of resolving it. DEI is about "justice", a set of ethical principles, not about some utilitarian calculation about social survival or prosperity.
> 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
As someone who is pro DEI and participated in DEI related activities and brainstorms during hiring: I very much doubt that.
This is an ideological statement which brings no fact, no new perspective, is not substantial and does not refute the opponent’s argument (which is that unfair DEI creates resentment that you later pay).
As per Dang’s guidelines above (specifically for this thread), this should not have been allowed on HN.
The internet gods bestowed two* of these on us today. The other one is
Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40267639. I posted an answer there to someone who asked more or less the same question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40267862. The principles are the same, so if you're willing to read it mutatis mutandis and maybe take a look at some of the other posts I linked to, you should find what you're looking for.
I dont like the DEI industry, but affirmative action is good. Slavery ended 150 years ago and its disgraceful that so many African-Americans still live zero wealth, poor jobs, with second rate schools and healthcare. Many/most corporate jobs really dont require a lot of unique skills, its good that employers have a preference to hire under represented minorities, hopefully it'll help improve society for all of us.
Tons of people had it shitty much more recently who aren’t black.
Means testing already covers all of the “zero wealth, poor jobs, and second rate schools and healthcare”. Being a minority has jack shit to do with that.
Any of the disadvantages the minorities have should be tested for directly and those should be targeted. That way all disadvantaged populations benefit and we’re not giving unfair advantages to the minority who grew up wealthy.
The issue is that there are many who suffer from generational poverty and are not “diverse”. The DEI benefits should go to all of disadvantaged people regardless of skin color. And there are many wealthy African Americans. Why are they getting the benefits of DEI vs the generationally low income white kid?
Not in America, but I was talking to some managers for a childcare service here and they were explaining why they try to favor brown people. One put it as "for want of a better measure". It's kind of strange since that's sort of what all racism is, isn't it? An easy shortcut for evaluating people without having to go to the trouble of investigating each individual.
I'll preface this with I'm not american, and I'm from a country that historically doesn't have a problem with racism against the minorities these policies affect.
These policies always seem a bit ridiculous to me. I've done nothing to discriminate against these people, so why am I being treated worse because of the actions of people I had nothing to do with? Affirmative action policies are discriminative, just not to the group they're targeted at helping. Why can't there just be equality and leave it at that?
My personal opinion is you can't discriminate based on information you don't have, so universities/employers etc shouldn't get information on a candidates race/gender/whatever that's not relevant, because that way they can't have discriminated using it
Ah, the old argument that to end racism we must embrace noble bigotry.
How about ignoring immutable characteristics, period, and picking solely on merit? I love other commenters mentioning removing personal characteristics such as name, gender and race from resumes - spot on.
There's a pattern that I see come up quite often, and it's really common with any discussion about things that involve diversity and inclusion efforts. I don't know if there's a specific term for it, but it happens roughly like this:
First, someone identifies an opportunity to improve diversity, equity, or inclusion in some way. DEI statements in academia, codes of conduct in open source projects, some rules around topics or specific language on a social media site, I'm sure you can name some other examples.
Now, this new thing may be a way to address the problem, or not. The problem it's trying to address might have been well understood or not. One way or another the idea gets some momentum.
Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it. Everything they say is carefully crafted with a veneer of respectability and plausibility. Any accusations are re-directed. There are people who are motivated and very skilled at making plausible sounding bad-faith arguments. The plausibility of course also convinces people might not intend to be making a bad faith argument, and so are authentic in their indignant responses to accusations of acting in bad faith. Still, the entire point of the arguments was ultimately to disrupt efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, and to uphold inequality. In some cases these bad faith arguments can end up being a vast majority of the discussion. They make up maybe 80% (not an exact figure) of the comments in any given HN thread about anything tangentially related to DEI for example.
The people trying to make a positive change who have been at it for a while are generally exhausted with trying to deal with the torrent of bad faith arguments, quickly recognize the pattern of them, and ultimately often end up serving as fuel for further bad-faith arguments.
In the end, it becomes nearly impossible to have a productive good faith discussion about whether the original idea is good or not, or how to improve it, because nobody can disentangle legitimate contributors and arguments from the torrent of bad faith actors who are ultimately just trying to disrupt the process. Meanwhile, communities that ought to be served by the initiative are often left standing around watching their value as people or rights to participate equally being thrown around as an abstract subject of ideological argument.
Without any better options, people double down on the original idea because it was at least made in good faith.
It might sound like all of that is an argument against DEI statements- after all, I just spent several paragraphs talking about why it would be hard to have a reasonable good faith debate about it. Still, I think that in this situation they serve a couple of useful purposes. First, I think that it moves discussions around concrete improvements away from a forum where they can be undermined by bad faith arguments and toward a form where individual authors of DEI statements can focus on concrete actions. It incentivizes action over getting mired in these bad faith arguments. If one is to write specifically about how they have or will work to improve DEI, then they necessarily must move past the bad faith and concern trolling arguments and pick some specific actions. Second, I think that it acts as a useful honeypot for people who simply can't act in good faith. If you can't identify any dimension at all along which you will work to improve DEI for any group, then it's hard to see how you can further that part of the mission of an organization. Finally, while it is virtue signaling, that doesn't necessarily need to be bad.
I am very interested in increasing diversity but I don't like the idea that anyone disagreeing with any dei suggestion should be labeled as intentionally disruptive and bad faith.
Calling 80% of discussion here bad faith aimed at holding particular groups down is a big claim that shouldn't be thrown around lightly in a good faith post.
Why? As a non-white immigrant, I’m deeply suspicious of the notion that a team with me on it is in any way different than a team without me on it based on my skin color or ethnicity. I think that line of thinking doesn’t go anywhere good, especially for me, but for everyone else too.
As soon as you make it acceptable to say that people are different based on group membership, they will start to notice those differences and categorize them as good and bad. DEI is based on the premise that people will recognize all of those differences as good but that’s completely delusional. You are socializing people to identify other people with their group membership and they’re going to take those observations in directions you don’t expect.
Anyone with a brain and sense of dignity will feel like racism is bad and unfair. Experiencing negative racism is enraging and depressing. Experiencing positive racism instantly gives you impostor syndrome and a sense of dehumanization.
The only systems that aren't racist are those that strive to be colorblind (in the sense that we're colorblind to eye or hair color).
> Why? As a non-white immigrant, I’m deeply suspicious of the notion that a team with me on it is in any way different than a team without me on it based on my skin color or ethnicity.
Perhaps, but a team that would not have hired you because of your skin color or ethnicity would also be a worse team since they would not be willing or able to hire the best candidates.
> As soon as you make it acceptable to say that people are different based on group membership, they will start to notice those differences and categorize them as good and bad. DEI is based on the premise that people will recognize all of those differences as good but that’s completely delusional.
I don't think this is the right angle to look at it. Everyone has a unique combination of experiences that they bring, and what groups someone belongs to are one part of the set of experiences that make up how they experience the world. DEI programs aren't inventing this, it's just a part of the human condition that we're shaped by the unique combination of our experiences.
Focusing on specific unique aspects of individual people's backgrounds isn't the only shape DEI can take though. Done well, I think they instead look at the shape of systems and processes in place and try broadly to consider how to remove artificial barriers so that people have an equal chance to contribute.
> You are socializing people to identify other people with their group membership and they’re going to take those observations in directions you don’t expect.
I think this does happen a lot. Tokenism and only being seen as a particular part of your identity are problems. I can't speak to the experience of being a non-white immigrant, but I've had other forms of this experience. It sucks to be in a job interview where you have a great skill set that matches the role and a lot of relevant experience, but it's clear that the only thing the recruiter cares about is that you could add gender diversity to a team. It sucks to be told that I'm wrong to suggest take-home exercises in interviews are a good option because women have caregiver duties and can't make time for them when I, a woman, prefer them because I feel like they offer a better opportunity for me to think deeply about a problem.
I don't think this is a reason to ignore DEI programs though, it's simply a failure case to be aware of.
I agree with the “eliminate artificial barriers” version of DEI. I’m a huge beneficiary of the push in the 1990s to “not see race.” But I don’t think that’s the dominant version of DEI today. I think the notion that “diverse teams are better” actually erects barriers, because it socializes people to think that the races are different.
I think the situation is different for sex diversity because men and women are different in ways that require accommodation.
It seems to me like we’re probably not too far apart in our opinions- and perhaps each of us bringing a separate set of experiences is letting us come to a better and more nuanced view.
I still do personally think that at a high level diverse teams and companies do tend to be better than non-diverse ones, especially when you have many axes of diversity. I imagine that some of that is direct benefit when someone is able to pull on their experiences to directly benefit a project, and some of it is simply that teams who hire the best people without artificial barriers will both be better and tend to be more diverse.
That’s observational rather than prescriptive though. When it comes to individual teams and individual hiring decisions I’d never advocate for anything other than hiring the best available candidate. Similarly, while you can say that across the population having diversity is good, you shouldn’t assume any specific part of an individual’s background or experience should manifest in any particular way.
All that said, I do think understanding the general ways that different aspects of a persons background impacts their work experience is a necessary part of building an effective workforce. How can you remove artificial barriers without taking time to understand what those barriers are?
Although I’ve had my own negative experiences at times, my experience overall is that most DEI initiatives I’ve been involved with have not been unaware of the risks and nuance, and people involved are usually trying to do the right things. I don’t think modern DEI approaches are overall worse- just more controversial because of broader social, cultural, and political tensions.
> I can't speak to the experience of being a non-white immigrant, but I've had other forms of this experience. It sucks to be in a job interview where you have a great skill set that matches the role and a lot of relevant experience, but it's clear that the only thing the recruiter cares about is that you could add gender diversity to a team.
But this is the dominant strain of DEI thinking today, and why it's seeing such a backlash.
The over riding DEI principle is that every profession, every organization, every role, must somehow have exactly the demographic breakdown of the society as a whole.
A moment's thought reveals why this is impractical to impossible, especially in the short to medium term. But this is how everything is evaluated through a DEI lens. Every discussion devolves just to counting how many people of each kind of group are represented in whichever topic is under discussion.
All the stuff about eliminating barriers is just the motte for this Bailey.
> The over riding DEI principle is that every profession, every organization, every role, must somehow have exactly the demographic breakdown of the society as a whole.
I’ve simply never seen this happen, although I’ve seen a lot of accusations of it. In a very large organization you might look at how your organizations demographics compare to industry demographics in different ways, but that’s always been at most an individual data point that elicits further investigation.
you've contradicted yourself, that's all the parent was saying, that comparing your demographics with national demographics is used to identify the degree to which your organization needs to institute race quotas
Nuh uh. jimbokun intensified it by a huge amount with those "every" terms and saying "must" and "exactly", describing a mandate that is very stupid and ignorant of statistics in a way that rebeccaskinner's description is not very stupid and ignorant of statistics. Also,
> race quotas
The post you're replying to says "further investigation", not "race quotas".
> The over riding DEI principle is that every profession, every organization, every role, must somehow have exactly the demographic breakdown of the society as a whole.
No it's not. That's a dumb strawman. "The over riding DEI principle" is not some guy that doesn't understand statistical variance, and doesn't accept any reason at all for fields to differ.
But we should have a starting position of being extremely skeptical of any big group that has a significantly different breakdown, especially if it's different in the specific ways that fit common discrimination.
> As a non-white immigrant, I’m deeply suspicious of the notion that a team with me on it is in any way different than a team without me on it based on my skin color or ethnicity. I think that line of thinking doesn’t go anywhere good, especially for me, but for everyone else too.
In various threads you've repeatedly argued (paraphrasing here) that you have a different set of values — e.g., giving higher priority to the family and community, vice individual choice, than in contemporary American mass culture. You've correlated this with your Bangladeshi heritage and upbringing, and you've said (again paraphrasing) that you adamantly seek to instill the same values in your own kids.
Perhaps some teams would find your values a useful addition to their mix. For those teams, your Bangladeshi name, skin tone, etc., could be instances of what the late (Black) free-market economist Walter Williams [0] referred to as "cheap-to-observe information."[1] I can't find the piece I read years ago in which Williams said that if you were choosing up sides for a pickup basketball game at a city park, and didn't know any of the other players, you'd choose the Black guys because the odds — not a certainty by any means, but the odds — were that the Black guys had played more basketball growing up than the white guys.
A related anecdote about cheap-to-observe information and its possible correlations: Years ago at my then-law firm, I was called into the office of the chair of the recruiting committee. The chair wanted me to meet a third-year law student who was at the firm for interviews. The recruiting chair said that the law student, like me, was a former Navy "nuke" officer. We shook hands; I asked, "[chief] engineer-qualified?" He smiled and nodded. "Surface-warfare qualified?" The same. I turned to the recruiting chair and said "that's all I need to know; I'm good." I had both quals myself, so I immediately concluded — provisionally — that the student was very likely to have personal qualities (work ethic, leadership, etc.) that I knew law firms found to be valuable. (I did stick around to chat for a while longer, and I knew the student wouldn't even have been invited for an interview if he wasn't already a good candidate.) We hired the student, who turned out to be a fine lawyer.
You’ve accurately described the differences, but none of those things are relevant to the workplace. All the ways I’m actually different from Americans are just a source of consternation where I have to bite my tongue and remind myself that it’s their country and I have to put up with the dog in the office, etc.
As to “cheap to observe” information: you might observe that Asian and Mormon communities socialize people to work without complaining or making demands. That seems profitable in the workplace. Is that the kind of cheap to observe information you can rely on? (It’s not—it’s illegal!)
A company I worked for long ago decided that it was ok for employees to bring their dogs to work. This worked for a time until one of the dogs pooped in the executive's office.
That was the end of that.
My dad lived in a small town for a few years. He was friendly with the mayor, and asked him what was his biggest problem. The mayor said the town was equally divided between dog lovers and dog haters. It was simply impossible for him to please both.
To be clear, Bangladeshis (and I think most Muslims) don’t “hate” dogs. There are dogs—my dad had them in the village and we had one when I was young. It’s a hygiene taboo. They’re viewed as unclean. They live outside—you don’t snuggle them or put your face up to them. It’s similar to their view of using toilet paper instead of washing after going to the bathroom. Or how North Americans view the Latin American practice of disposing of toilet paper in the trash bin rather than flushing it.
I don’t subscribe to that view of nationhood. It’s a constant source of discomfort (not just at the office, but visiting people’s houses or visiting my in laws) but it’s not my place to impose on the people whose ancestors built this country. I feel bad enough that I won’t let my wife have a dog, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
On behalf of the group of slightly-longer-ago immigrants to the country that you're classifying as having "built this country": I'm not sure why my ancestors coming here a while back means you can't say "I don't want a dog next to my desk at work".
If you're a person who lives here and works here, you get to participate in defining what the society and workplace look like, respectively. Having to type it out actually feels weird, because it's pretty self-evident. You're here, the things you do impact the culture.
If it’s just cultural have you thought of “getting the fuck over it” and letting your wife get a dog? You seem like a logical person, unless you specifically have an issue with them that isn’t cultural baggage, just embrace the ability to have dogs.
Culture includes some of our most deep-down disgust responses. I have trouble even being at people’s houses if there’s dog hair on the couch or I can smell them. It’s coded to me as a dirty environment.
As the owner of a bulldog that is essentially a furry, shedding alimentary canal with feet, I assure you there are perfectly legitimate reasons to find dogs unclean.
A few years ago I worked at a company that let people bring in dogs and I hated it. I actually like dogs and have had some myself (although not at that time), but one of my team members always brought in his huge rescue pitbull. It was always under control, never barked or lunged, but it liked to sit perfectly still, alert and upright giving me a death stare for hours at a time. All I could think was "this dog is probably not going to do anything, but if it snaps it could probably maim me in an instant."
How can I focus on work under circumstances like that? But how can I complain when it hasn't actually done anything yet? I would be "that guy." Now dog policy is something I pay attention to when choosing jobs.
> I don't like the idea that anyone disagreeing with any dei suggestion should be labeled as intentionally disruptive and bad faith.
My point isn't that anyone disagreeing with a particular suggestion is arguing in bad faith, it's that there are enough bad faith arguments that it becomes effectively impossible to have a productive discussion.
> Calling 80% of discussion here bad faith aimed at holding particular groups down is a big claim that shouldn't be thrown around lightly in a good faith post.
And therein lies the crux of the problem. Are 80% of the comments I see on DEI related threads actually acting in bad faith, or am I simply so exhausted by the constant stream of bad faith arguments that I lack the ability to discern between people acting in bad faith, uninformed people acting in good faith parroting bad-faith actors arguments, and people who are legitimately trying to engage. For that matter, am I an exhausted person who is simply tired of accusations of "wokeism" being thrown at me when I advocate for basic respect and decency, or am I a bad faith actor who tried to sneak an outrageous claim into a reasonable sounding post in order to undermine people who are in favor of DEI programs by making them all sound unreasonable? I may know that I'm simply exhausted, cynical, and seeing a steadily increasing amount of anti-DEI rhetoric here, but such is the state of discourse that there's no way for you to know for sure one way or another.
> Are 80% of the comments I see on DEI related threads actually acting in bad faith, or am I simply so exhausted by the constant stream of bad faith arguments that I lack the ability to discern between people acting in bad faith, uninformed people acting in good faith parroting bad-faith actors arguments, and people who are legitimately trying to engage.
Or perhaps your experiences on DEI run contrary to the typical experiences of other people? You seem awfully eager to call other commenters bad faith or misinformed, but do little in the way of introspection. It reminds me of an old joke:
Someone sees on the news live coverage of a car driving the wrong way down the freeway their spouse uses to commute. Worried, they call their spouse to warn them, "honey there's a car driving down the freeway, be careful!"
"It's not one, there's hundreds of them!"
As for myself, "DEI" has been a thinly veiled dogwhistle for illegal hiring policies at 3 out of the 4 companies I've worked at for the last 10 years. Examples in include: explicitly designating segment of headcount as exclusive to certain races and genders, setting specific percentage quotas on the basis of protected class (and these quotas were well above industry-wide representation of these groups), and constructing separate hiring pipelines depending on race and gender.
However, I'm not going to accuse people who have different or opposing views on DEI as acting in bad faith. 75% of the companies I've worked at used DEI as a dogwhistle for illegal policies, but that's still a very narrow slice of the world at large. I'm not going to allege that people are being disingenuous or acting in bad faith because I recognize that people have different experiences with DEI and can arrive at vastly different opinions on the acronym while acting entirely in good faith. I suggest you do the same.
Try using those words instead of the woke buzzwords. Everyone else is having the same reaction to "DEI"/etc that you're having to their common arguments.
> Anyone still using the term "woke" in a serious discussion at this point is using a thought terminating cliche.
In December 2020, New Republic published an essay by the African-American Marxist Adolph Reed Jr (professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania), entitled "Beyond the Great Awokening: Reassessing the legacies of past black organizing" [0] in which he criticises "the Woke".
Now, you may or may not agree with his criticisms, but he is not using "a thought terminating cliche". On the contrary, he means something quite specific by it: a contemporary form of progressive politics which prioritises race over class, as opposed to Reed's own classic Marxism which prioritises class over race.
I myself tend to avoid invoking the word, because I find it derails discussions from whatever the substantive topic was, into debating what that word means and the appropriateness of using it.
But, on the other hand, I think the phenomenon which Reed labels as "Woke" is a real thing, and if we aren't to call it "Woke", what then should we call it? I get the impression that some people don't want to let people call it anything, as part of a strategy to put it beyond criticism.
> I myself tend to avoid invoking the word, because I find it derails discussions from whatever the substantive topic was, into debating what that word means and the appropriateness of using it.
I agree with you that it is best avoided whenever possible.
However, I think the other points I made, that (a) some invocations of it are legitimate, and (b) it serves a useful purpose in labelling a real phenomenon, for which we don't have any widely accepted alternative label – still stand.
> Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it. Everything they say is carefully crafted with a veneer of respectability and plausibility. Any accusations are re-directed. There are people who are motivated and very skilled at making plausible sounding bad-faith arguments. The plausibility of course also convinces people might not intend to be making a bad faith argument, and so are authentic in their indignant responses to accusations of acting in bad faith.
How can you possibly have a good faith argument if you've already made your mind up that most or everyone who disagrees with you is arguing in bad faith? That in itself is not a good faith position.
You sound like you've basically constructed a closed system of thought for yourself, in which anyone who disagrees with you is arguing in bad faith.
I know one person here who frequently posts in disagreement to DEI initiatives is rayiner. He might be wrong, but I don't believe for a minute he is a bigot or acting in bad faith.
DEI is a lot like a headless religion that nobody's asked for. It's headless because instead of talking about spirit or similar high matters, it says "you are your body" and proceeds to divide people based on a few visible traits such as skin color. This quasi-religion doesn't talk about what we have in common. Instead it's fixated on superficial traits that make us different. When DEI got support among the rich and they pushed it down to the people, it obviously created resentment. Nobody likes when you're forced to say things you don't believe in and find disgusting.
I do admit that DEI has some goodwill in it, in particular the idea that our society doesn't have to be a wolf-eats-wolf "meritocracy", but I'm afraid that the goodwill has been skillfully perverted.
As a moderate, I do suspect that a lot of conservatives like to concern troll, but on the other hand, the far left really seems to like to double down on defending wild takes, like the university presidents refusing to answer whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates the code of conduct of their universities, which makes this line of questioning relevant.
> Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it. Everything they say is carefully crafted with a veneer of respectability and plausibility.
In other words, their arguments aren't intrinsically bigoted and you can't prove bigotry is their motivation because they have a "veneer" of respectability and plausibility, but because they oppose the thing you believe and feel they are secretly bigots.
> it becomes nearly impossible to have a productive good faith discussion about whether the original idea is good or not,
Because anybody that tries to gets judged to be a cryptobigot.
Lacking concrete information on who the commenters are, maybe you should judge the arguments themselves rather than trying to "read between the lines" to divine secret motives that conveniently free you from the burden of considering other points of view.
> Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it.
When you assume it’s bigots who are the ones who show up with concerns, do you see how fucked up that is?
“Whenever we propose X, the bigots get wind of it and spread FUD. All of their arguments sound fine, but I know they are in bad faith because they are exhausting.”
Have you ever considered that maybe they aren’t bigots and ironically you’re the bigot here just calling everyone who disagrees with respectability and plausibility a bigot?
(P.S. I tried to not be respectable so I don’t get lumped in with “the bigots” and have my ideas rejected out of hand.)
HN tends to avoid politics, but when it does show up, there is a definite bias if you look at the pattern of up and down votes. What's more interesting is seeing how that bias has changed over time.
I don't think that HN is middle of the road politically, I think it is mostly apolitical; the average has no significance. Some people on HN are of all political opinions, this is great, but voting seems sometimes skewed in some direction - it does not even indicate where the average is. Being very little political is one of the things I like most about HN.
> There is no such a thing as cultural Marxism. That's a conspiracy theory the nazis first created.
There is such a thing as "cultural Marxism", and it is not a conspiracy theory invented by the Nazis or anyone else.
Consider for example the 1981 book by academic Richard Weiner, "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" [0] – it discusses "cultural Marxism" as a real thing, in a positive light, and it is a real academic book, not some conspiracy theory hoax. Or similarly consider Dennis L. Dworkin's 1997 book "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies" [1] – not some conspiratorial tome, it was published by Duke University Press. Or American philosopher Frederic Jameson's 2007 book "Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism" [2] – also published by Duke University Press, and not a conspiratorial work either
Cultural Marxism is a real movement in post-war Marxism and academia. To what extent it influenced movements such as BLM is a question about which reasonable people can disagree. But its existence is not a conspiracy theory.
No doubt some of the more extreme claims uninformed people have made about it do venture into the realms of conspiracy theory. But it would be wrong to assume that everyone who makes a claim like "cultural Marxism influenced BLM" is using the phrase "cultural Marxism" in such a sense. You'd have to investigate what they actually mean by it.
I learned something today, I had no idea there was a coherent ideology of cultural Marxism. I had always assumed it was just a term made up on the spot in the spirit of “Marxism=bad leftie thing” (don’t you know how many died under Mao/Stalin?!), therefore lumping all of progressive politics in with it.
This might be contrasted with “postmodern Marxism” or “postmodern neo-Marxism” which is some kind of pseudointellectual epithet but is seems fundamentally incoherent. Postmodernism rejects grand narratives about society, but Marxism itself is a grand narrative (namely, that capitalist society should be framed as a class struggle between workers and capitalists).
In the other hand, I think there’s reason to believe the term “cultural Marxism” has undergone semantic shift recently. I see this quite frequently in progressive/conservative politics (another example is the term “woke”). So it may be best to either retire the term altogether or at least explicitly define it first. The cultural Marxism discussed in 60s and 70s academia is not the same thing as what the Norway terrorist was referring to in his manifesto.
> This might be contrasted with “postmodern Marxism” or “postmodern neo-Marxism” which is some kind of pseudointellectual epithet but is seems fundamentally incoherent. Postmodernism rejects grand narratives about society, but Marxism itself is a grand narrative (namely, that capitalist society should be framed as a class struggle between workers and capitalists).
Postmodern Marxism is a real thing too. See for example yet another Duke University Press book (Duke University is really into this kind of stuff for some reason) from 2001, "Re/presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism" [0]. Another more recent book is "The Condition of Digitality: A Post-Modern Marxism for the Practice of Digital Life" (University of Westminster Press, 2020) [1]
Are postmodernism and Marxism inherently contradictory? Well, "postmodernism" is a very broad and amorphous school of thought. The idea of postmodernism as opposition to "grand narratives" is due to Lyotard, and yes that idea seems rather incompatible with Marxism, at least in its classic form; but other postmodernist thinkers emphasised different ideas, whose incompatibility with Marxism is less obvious.
I also am picking up on the fact that you are obliquely referring to Jordan Peterson, who is known to use the phrases “postmodern Marxism” and “postmodern neo-Marxism”. Honestly, I've never paid him a great deal of attention – I'm neither one of his fans nor one of his haters, I'm just not that interested in him. So, I can't say whether he is using the phrase "postmodern Marxism" in the same sense as those academic books I cite do, or in a different sense.
> The cultural Marxism discussed in 60s and 70s academia is not the same thing as what the Norway terrorist was referring to in his manifesto.
I don’t know about that. Let me put it this way: the World Zionist Congress (WZC) is a real thing, an international conference that was first held in Switzerland in 1897, and it was held for the 38th time in Jerusalem in 2020. So the conference is not a conspiracy theory. But, if you go looking for them, you will find antisemites who will tell you that the WZC secretly controls the world’s banks and governments-that is a baseless conspiracy theory. However, even though we have both a real world factual discourse about the WZC and an unhinged antisemitic conspiracy theory about it, that doesn’t mean that the two discourses are using the term “World Zionist Congress” to mean fundamentally different things-no, they are both talking about the same thing. In the same way, just because Breivik talked about “Cultural Marxism”, doesn’t in itself prove he was talking about something different - he could be talking about the same thing, but making baseless/unhinged claims about it, and wrongly using those claims to justify his senseless mass murder of innocents
I think we have a disagreement about how to deal with a situation where two different concepts are called by the same name. In some sense they may seem the same because they have the same name, but in another they actually have no relationship. There is no logical path from A to B or vice versa. It’s not like the Norway terrorist was simply disagreeing with cultural Marxism in the academic sense. He wasn’t engaging with it at all, and simply borrowing the term (or more likely, organically reinventing it).
As a simple example, in the conspiracy, cultural Marxism is used nearly synonymously with multiculturalism. Neither of your links mention multiculturalism even once.
Well, coming back to my World Zionist Congress example – you might equally say that antisemites who accuse the WZC of "secretly controlling the world" are not "engaging with it at all, and simply borrowing the term (or more likely, organically reinventing it)". And yet, I don't think that makes sense. Antisemites make all kinds of unhinged, baseless accusations against Jewish people and their community organisations – and yet, that doesn't mean that when an antisemite says "Jew" they are talking about something completely unrelated to what non-antisemites mean by that word – if that were the case, they wouldn't (strictly speaking) be antisemites at all.
And, it is false that "cultural Marxism" the real world academic movement has "no relationship" with Breivik's concept of "cultural Marxism". In his manifesto, Breivik cites figures such as Antonio Gramsci, the Frankfurt School and György Lukács, who were foundational influences on that academic movement. So he is talking about the same thing. That doesn't mean his criticisms of it are sensible, nor do they in any way justify the unspeakable horror of his violence.
Imagine reading an antisemitic screed against the World Zionist Congress, which mentions its real founder and first President Theodor Herzl, and other key early figures such as Max Nordau, Abraham Salz and Samuel Pineles – but then baselessly accuses them of secretly controlling the world's governments. The baseless and irrational accusation doesn't change the identity of the targets of the accusation, it doesn't mean "the screed isn't actually attacking Theodor Herzl et al, rather it is attacking imaginary persons who by coincidence have the same names". In the same way, Breivik's claims about the academic cultural Marxist movement are ignorant and over-the-top, but that doesn't mean he isn't actually talking about them, and instead talking about something completely unrelated.
Language is a tool. We use words because they are useful. As a practical matter, the conspiracy versions of terms have only passing resemblance with their real-world counterparts. Mentioning the relevant people isn’t actually engaging with the content of it, it is more like worldbuilding in a fictional story. New York is a real place but Spider-Man doesn’t live there. MI6 is a real organization but James Bond isn’t on their payroll.
The problem is, where do you draw the line between legitimate criticisms and conspiratorial nonsense?
Again, the Zionist example: there are definitely criticisms of Zionism which are nothing more than baseless antisemitic conspiracy theories (e.g. "Zionist Occupation Government"). But, that doesn't mean all criticisms of it are so baseless. If you read pro-Palestinian authors, or even left-wing Jewish Israelis, you will encounter critiques of Zionism, which whether they ultimately be right or wrong, can't be dismissed on the same grounds.
You will also find claims that some people on the pro-Israel side want to erase the difference between non-antisemitic criticisms of Zionism and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism, in order to put Zionism itself beyond criticism – and I think sometimes those claims are correct. On the other hand, sometimes pro-Palestinian criticisms of Zionism do cross the line into antisemitism, and as applied to those particular cases the claim is false. Part of the problem here, is it isn't always clear where to draw the line between non-antisemitic and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism–it is a question about reasonable people can disagree. Non-antisemitic criticism of Zionism and antisemitic criticism of Zionism aren't totally disjoint, they bleed into each other at the edges.
And I think we have a similar situation with "cultural Marxism". Yes, Breivik's criticisms of it are conspiratorial nonsense – but is everyone else's? There are right-wing criticisms of it which, whether correct or incorrect, arguably aren't "conspiratorial nonsense" – see for an example, see the 2018 article by the conservative lawyer Alexander Zubatov in the Jewish magazine Tablet, "Just Because Anti-Semites Talk About ‘Cultural Marxism’ Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t Real" [0]. There are even left-wing criticisms of it – the cultural Marxist desire to switch the focus of Marxism from economic to cultural issues was (and still is) heavily criticised by orthodox Marxists who view that switch as a distraction and a mistake.
And I see two other parallels to the Zionism case: firstly, just as some Zionists arguably seek to dishonestly erase the distinction between non-antisemitic and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism, in order to put it beyond criticism – in a similar way, my own impression is that some progressives seek to erase the distinction between conspiratorial (even antisemitic) criticisms of cultural Marxism, and non-conspiratorial (even if possibly mistaken) conservative criticisms of it, in order to shut down debate.
And secondly, just as the boundary between non-antisemitic and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism is open to debate, I think the same is true for the boundary between non-conspiratorial and conspiratorial criticisms of cultural Marxism. In my own mind, Zubatov is clearly on the "could well be wrong but not conspiratorial" side of that line, and Breivik is definitely on the "conspiratorial" side of the line – but I'm less clear about where to put something like the Heritage Foundation's criticisms of it. [1] And that's the core problem with your idea that we consider conspiratorial criticisms and non-conspiratorial criticisms of "cultural Marxism" to be talking about two completely unrelated things – it assumes a clearcut boundary between the two which may not actually exist. I think it makes more sense to speak of a continuum of criticisms of the one thing (ranging from the reasonable to the ludicrous, with the boundary between the two being debatable) rather than claiming the reasonable criticisms and the ludicrous criticisms are criticising two completely different things.
The Nazi concept of "Cultural Bolshevism" has nothing to do with Cultural Marxism the post-war academic movement
"Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory" is about claiming that said post-war academic movement is a "Jewish plot". Yes, that's an antisemitic conspiracy theory. But stating that the academic movement exists, and discussing to what degree its ideas influenced contemporary social movements such as BLM, is not a conspiracy theory, and not per se antisemitic.
I think what is happening here, is some people are motivated to ignore the difference between what is a reasonable argument ("to what degree was a contemporary social movement influenced by a contemporary academic theory") and what is an unreasonable one ("it's a Jewish plot"), because they want to shut down that reasonable argument
I'm pretty sure that "cultural Marxism" is a conspiracy theory, so I'd probably downvote you for that still. Seriously, what is your definition of cultural Marxism? I'm not gonna respond by picking it apart or whatever, I'll just read it and write "thank you" as a response after you've posted it.
The culture of class revenge/justice that fuels Marxism.
"The tradition of Marxist cultural analysis has also been referred to as "cultural Marxism", and "Marxist cultural theory", in reference to Marxist ideas about culture."
I was not aware that that the term cultural Marxism comes from a specific conspiracy theory from the 90s. I meant to say that some of these left wing social movements divide the entire world into an oppressor and an oppressed class the way you saw in the Chinese communist revolution for example, except not on economic lines (ie Marxism) but on race/identity lines which is why I said cultural Marxism but I should have been more careful with the terminology.
There was a very simple reason for them: to hire more non-Asian minority faculty. Just as with SAT scores, if you evaluate candidates numerically, Asian faculty will take ~50% of the spots and Black faculty will take ~1% of the spots. But if you add a job requirement of "has helped do DEI woo for Black students" then it's a lot easier to justify hiring the Black candidate.
DEI statements are important because they show individual awareness of historical inequities and current biases that form modern society.
In an organization that wishes to promote more equitable outcomes for society and its employees, ensuring that existing/prospective employees are aware of biases that might color their own judgement is useful in counterbalancing them.
As a consequence, a DEI statement at the time of hiring or promotion is useful in encouraging self-reflection and promoting DEI.
... that said, from a personal perspective (and with apologies to anyone working in HR), they seem like the typical "moderately good idea that's run through the HR cost center grist mill and comes out as the most unimaginative, milquetoast check box possible" implementation.
> DEI statements are important because they show individual awareness of historical inequities and current biases that form modern society.
Even assuming that’s true, what is the rationale for plucking that issue out of the various ones facing society and demanding that professors express concern about it? Forcing people to characterize something as a priority is itself quite an ideological imposition.
> but is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument
hi! that would include me, and I would ask you to think about the following question at the moment: You are wondering if a widely utilized, and VOCALLY critiqued practice is supported by anyone...then why would it be continued to be practiced. Generally what I have found is there are two sides to this - one of which is just trying to do their job and one of which is trying to shout over those arguments.
I say that because when I talk with people like yourself who are asking sincerely, they kind of go 'oh'. I think you nailed the 'how to write a good DEI statement' articles are saying simply - this is required, here is how to do it. Looking more broadly, articles like that exist for most pieces of the academic hiring process simply because the process feels opaque and is steeped in traditions that are not well communicated. You can find them for things like the academic cover letter, the difference between resumes and CVs, research statements, teaching philosophies (which have nothing to do with philosophy), etc. The people actually involved in the DEI statement process not to talk about it, in part because they don't want to get screamed at by uninformed people and in part because they are busy.
Speaking personally, as an academic, DEI statements or some equivalent are as are many things - incredibly effective when used well and just taking up space when not. DEI statements are not, or at least not supposed to be, 'WHY IS DIVERSITY GOOD'. They aren't supposed to be that simply because anyone can write that and its useless for evaluation. We don't want some 1984 article of faith because its unhelpful to the actual goals of increasing equitable opportunities, which is still a big problem. What DEI statements are meant to be is more along the lines of 'here is how I practice inclusion' which isn't all that far removed from 'here is how I'm not actively an asshole'. That might trigger the same response from others of 'why' - but I (and others) think that's short sighted. The goal is to understand how you go about your work in a way that increase rather than restricts the opportunities of people of different identities. Academia has strong and tall power structures in classrooms, labs, etc. Making active efforts to hire people who are not going to use those power structures to reinforce a long history of racism and sexism is (from my perspective) the only way we can make history history. Someone who can identify why only using classroom examples about baseball or american football is an educational problem, and not do it, is beneficial to the overall enterprise because it (in increasing classroom equity) ensures equal opportunity and that we identify the best students - rather than the biggest sports fans. Bigger picture, they show not just things about DEI but about a much broader range of skills around engaging with people that are critical to effectiveness in all the roles a faculty member plays. We already fight that most graduate labs look very homogeneous. The problem isn't that they do, the problem is that those norms reduce opportunities for everyone.
To add some color, I'll give actual examples from DEI statements/conversations that help me do the job of hiring better:
* One candidate wrote in theirs about how title IX was unconstitituional and is unfair to men by giving spots to women who are bad at math. Great, you can have that opinion, but our school is going to flag you as a liability risk because we are legally compelled to comply with title IX
* Talked about their experience in a truly punishing lab environment as a person of color and how important that was to their success and 'tough love' as their mentoring style. Again, think what you want but we care and are evaluated in part by our completion rate for phd students - we also care about their well being and success and experience tells us this wouldn't.
* Last one got asked in an interview about initiatives to 'diversify' the participant pools in medical research to do more representative science. They saw it as a non issue, and then brought up several tropes about Black people in particular - including trouble being on time, holding still, following instructions and how that could negatively impact their research. Again, sure agree to disagree between them and me, but NIH cares and if you blow off NIH requirements you aren't going to get grants and aren't going to get tenure.
I’m going to be honest, those examples don’t really make me feel that DEI is serving a valid purpose. If those are the best cases then I will say good riddance. Uniformity of opinion should not be a goal of academia.
>They saw it as a non issue, and then brought up several tropes about Black people in particular - including trouble being on time, holding still, following instructions and how that could negatively impact their research.
In 2020 the Smithsonian—The Smithsonian—said that individualism, the nuclear family, the scientific method, working hard, and planning for the future are aspects of "white culture". Years later I still can't believe it. <https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/artic...>
I have no idea which side you're on (I'm not parsing the thread for that) but your comments are standing out as particularly bad flamewar. Please stop.
p.s. In case anyone's worried about this - if there are other accounts behaving this badly who have not been moderated yet, the reason is that we haven't seen them. You can help by flagging the comments or letting us know about them at hn@ycombinator.com.
I don't know if or not this is "coherent," but my experience has been that the type of person to oppose something like this is more often than not the type of person we were trying to filter out anyway. There may be some false negatives of course, but in terms of keeping the klan from high positions in your institution, this sort of thing seems to work.
> There may be some false negatives of course, but in terms of keeping the klan from high positions in your institution, this sort of thing seems to work.
You've highlighted exactly the problem so many people have with these DEI statements in the first place. If people have some (IMO valid) disagreements about what DEI has become, they're basically bucketed in with "the klan". So instead, people just shut up and tell reviewers what they know they want to hear, and this ideological litmus test becomes the norm.
I can see a DEI program as promoting the social values of an institution. A position that I once had was this. If all ethnic groups have a bell curve of intelligence. All things being equal, the ethnic groups would have similar distributions of academic qualifications.
So if a particular ethnic group is disadvantaged in a quantifiable way. Then applying a factor to who is accepted into the academic programs. Would bring in people at the upper ends of the bell curve across the different ethnic/racial groups.
In other words, all things being equal across quantifiable ethnic/racial opportunity. This would bring in the top tier candidates across all ethnicities/racial groups. And if all ethnicities/racial groups are equal in intelligence. Then it would bring in the top tier candidates across *all* ethnicities/racial groups.
> is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument
When Richard Dawkins spoke at UC Berkeley in 2008, he argued that "raising awareness" about feminism by changing how we speak and think has changed society for the better. (In the same discussion, he seeks to do the same for children's freedom from their parents' religion.) There is no doubt that Western society has changed how it treats and speaks about women.
That said, Dawkins has in more recent years found himself opposing identity politics as they seek to change language usage and perceptions of gender.
> That said, Dawkins has in more recent years found himself opposing identity politics as they seek to change language usage and perceptions of gender.
Correction: Dawkins doesn't care one whit about gender, and he has literally said so. He only cares when people cross into talking about sex, make incorrect claims about the nature of sex (spectrums and such), conflate sex with gender, and make unscientific claims about being able to change one's sex. Basically, when they enter his wheelhouse and start making a confusing mess of things.
Which seems to be the prevailing state of discourse about the matter of DEI. If I may add a reflection, maybe it was just relatively easier sociologically to recognise the injustices and inequalities that feminism decried.
A huge fraction of humans don't have gametes. That definition only works for describing a species, not individuals. That doesn't need debating, he's off in his own corner talking about a completely different metric.
Now you're cursing me to read entire twitter threads?
This isn't in fact my hobby horse so without more specifics I'll just treat him as talking past people and move on.
Looking at the video in the second link, it looks like he only spent three minutes talking about trans people and I don't see any explanation there about how you're supposed to apply his universal biological definition to individual people.
It's in the second paragraph of one of the links I posted:
"It happens to be embryologically DETERMINED by chromosomes in mammals and (in the opposite direction) birds, by temperature in some reptiles, by social factors in some fish."
Sometimes you don't get gametes. At that point, you either need to exclude those people from your classification system because it's ill-suited for this task, or you need to make your classification system significantly more complicated because there's a lot of edge cases.
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 some horrific crimes.
That's modern opinionated news in a nutshell -- here's a pile of extreme occurrences, look at how extreme they are, so you should agree that the other side is crazy.
An actual argument involves more annoying to fudge (and admittedly, harder to compile) data like frequency, normalization against population or historical averages, geographic localization, etc.
I've found arguing from questions rather than statements helps. What's the root question? And then what data would answer that question?
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.
On the question of non-lethal uses of force, the study found “sometimes quite large” racial differences in police use of force, even after accounting for “a large set of controls designed to account for important contextual and behavioural factors at the time of the police-civilian interaction”.
In stark contrast to non-lethal uses of force, however, the study observed that when it came to the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – there were no racial differences “in either the raw data or when accounting for controls”. According to one case study of the Houston police department, black people were actually 23.5% less likely to be shot by police, relative to white people, in an interaction.
Wow, I hadn't heard this before l, and it made me pretty furious:
> An important scholarly intervention within a particular field of academic research, you might say. But Prof Fryer has now revealed that at the time the research was conducted, Harvard colleagues familiar with the results urged him not to publish his findings, telling him that he’d ruin his career.
This whole article is sad and disgusting, especially because, as a result of this research, Prof Fryer was proposing some actual interventions to reduce biased applications of non-lethal use-of-force, but because the data didn't fit the prevailing narrative, it was attacked. Just gross.
> An actual argument involves more annoying to fudge (and admittedly, harder to compile) data like frequency, normalization against population or historical averages, geographic localization, etc.
We've seen that even these aren't that hard to fudge. Selection bias, p-hacking, mobbing researchers who publish politically unpopular results as a deterrent, etc.
What you need is basically the opposite of that. Replication of controversial results in preregistered studies by independent researchers trusted to be honest by both sides of the controversy. Refuting results you don't believe to be true using evidence rather than silencing the original authors. A culture of good science.
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 money.
But the internet also made it so you don't need a printing press to publish. That should have brought the cost down to what would still be sustainable after the drop in ad revenue. Until you have to make rent, because housing costs are out of control.
This is the same thing destroying our communities. You and some neighbors want to get a community lodge for local events? Forget about it, the cost is prohibitive. Stay home and don't even know your neighbors' names. And then where do you learn who to trust? The Internet?
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)
Most of the revenue from AdSense etc. goes to the site, i.e. if there are Google ads on a newspaper's website, the newspaper is getting more of the advertiser's money than Google. The problem is this is less money than they used to get, and a lot of the sites aren't journalistic outlets, so the money gets spread pretty thin.
In theory Google and Facebook could use their cut to fund journalism, but is that really what we want? The vast majority of journalism funded (and therefore controlled) by a small handful of megacorps?
Far better to make it sustainable for individual independent journalists to make living.
Do you have a breakdown in terms of ad host vs ad platform?
We know ad host revenue generated from e.g. Google Ads.
We know CPC to advertisers.
We know Google's top line ad revenue.
But I haven't seen the margin Google et al. take out of the transaction. (CPC - host revenue) / CPC
> In theory Google and Facebook could use their cut to fund journalism, but is that really what we want? The vast majority of journalism funded (and therefore controlled) by a small handful of megacorps?
I'd prefer that? It isn't that different than the historical funding model (plus loose regulation of what a newsroom meant).
> Far better to make it sustainable for individual independent journalists to make living.
I think that's apples and oranges.
The "we have a news budget that can afford to pay a stringer or correspondent to do first-party reporting and/or investigative journalism" type organization is disappearing.
Citizen journalism is important too, but I don't think it's a replacement for the above.
As I heard quipped, "Nobody goes to every local council meeting and takes written notes, so they can catch the 1-2 agenda items a year that should be big local stories."
And absent that (or similar on an international stage), we lose transparency.
We've seen how citizen coding in open source has blind spots where security/cryptography is concerned, and I'd argue we run similar risks relying solely on citizen journalists.
> Like other recent live-action remakes—such as The Little Mermaid and the upcoming Snow White—some users accused the studio of "going woke" by modernizing the original story.
> They'll make the hunter an evil White man, Bambi's mom will be a message about incel rage and Bambi will also be black," wrote @NintendoFan729.
I do not find the argument that “newspapers be newspapers” excuses this, when it clearly only goes one way, and very forcefully at that.
And therefore it would be extremely interesting to find the origin of this push. Is it systemic, i.e. always present in some form due to humans’s generous nature? Is it due to more people living in cities that we have to organize in such a way (DEI-Covid-Feminism-GW or ostracization)? Is it, as the conspiracy theorists say, a small group of influential people? Is it the Russians who sponsor those groupes to divide us?
How many Fox-like outlets are there compared to the number of MSNBC-like?
I don’t think these things are equal even on the surface. I don’t know how people aren’t asking themselves all the time “Am I even sure I believe in the things I think I do?”
The western idea of DEI has always puzzled me ever since I first came across it (or at least the D portion of DEI, which in my mind is the most important one).
I'm a Serb by blood and grew up in and have lived in Indonesia for the majority of my life, and I went to an international school with kids from quite literally every single corner of the earth, many of them being some exotic mix of various ethnicities.
Despite that, many of us are actually amazingly similar in many ways - We have a very distinct int'l kid accent that we all share, we grew up with extremely similar experiences, listening to the same music, being exposed to all the same things. Despite the superficial differences, I actually wouldn't call us a very diverse group at all when you really look at us. Some years later when I was studying, I met an int'l girl from the Bahamas and I was amazed at how similar her and my life were in many ways, despite being a literal ocean apart in completely different islands/nations. I had infinitely more in common with her than any other Serb I've ever met, yet alone the Dutch people I've met in my move to the Netherlands.
When I moved to NL, I instantly noticed that my friends and I were very different to the people there. Yet if some HR person would interview me, a white-skinned guy, and then my best friend, a black-skinned guy who has African/Japanese ancestry, I'd definitely be placed in the same "bucket" as the white Dutchies around me and my friend with the black Dutchies, despite him and I actually having identical experiences and mindsets and not really having anything in common with the Dutchies. This is, of course, understandable as an initial reaction, but my problem is that all the DEI shenanigans never get past that initial surface-level nonsense. I will probably never be labelled as anything other than "generic white guy" or perhaps at a stretch sometimes, the "eastern european guy".
I guess what I'm trying to get at in this strange ramble is that ultimately DEI should be focused on diversity of thought, and not just superficial characteristics, yet it never works out that way. Often the exact opposite, in fact, where viewpoints that don't match the superficial characteristics are often swatted away since those situations are harder to navigate than the cookie-cutter approach.
As an Asian, the DEI idea and how it was executed puzzled me as well.
Apple's first VP of diversity said [1]:
> “Diversity is the human experience. I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.”
> “there can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.”
She had to resigned [2] for saying so. That really confused me, isn't what she said... true?
From my personal experience as a central European male, they would be missing women and their outputs would have predictable and easily rectified mistakes. Unless their customer base is 90% male and they are OK with that.
And it's exactly that the experience shapes us. In the West, gender roles are still very pronounced, shaping our experiences in certain ways. Males are taught to go for wins, females for maintainability for one.
I don't think it's implied that she's making the claim that this group is going to be perfectly representative of their target demographic. She's simply saying that there is heterogeneity in a group that is ostensibly homogenous through a DEI lens.
Gender roles are just as pronounced in the East; me being in China as I write this. Maybe this says a little bit more about our biology and a little bit less about structural bias.
The point of DEI is to have the widest possible distribution of life experience among the group. Of course 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men would have different life paths, but if you project them on 2D graph and draw a circle around them, then the distance to the point of white blue-eyed woman would be about 5 diameters of that circle, and to the point of black transgender person - about 15 diameters.
The most meaningful and useful diversity would be that of social class, and yet that's the one kind of diversity the DEI bureaucracy isn't interested in diversifying.
There's a hegemony that controls vocally-progressive places like San Francisco, big tech companies, and universities.
People who espouse DEI also tend to espouse slogans like "psychological safety" and "bring your whole self to work." Unfortunately, those slogans are as thinly constructed as the Diversity example you called out: it's code for privileging particular groups of people who look trendy in recruitment materials and PR. If I actually brought my whole self to work, I'd be fired.
Ironically, people who are critical of such policies don't feel psychologically safe. They don't want to be prejudged to be assholes, who then don't get invited to parties or get managed out at work. So, people in predominantly progressive spaces don't say out loud that the emperor has no clothes.
When DEI was first introduced, its champions insisted Diversity would be broadly constructed - that it was about enhancing creativity and identifying blind spots. Instead, it too often really means "we want a token {black, gay, etc} {person, club, etc} because it's fashionable." Bring a totally different perspective and life experience but superficially look like the majority? "Sorry, that's not Diverse enough."
If these spaces actually welcomed diverse ideas (and skepticism in the scientific method sense), perhaps we could learn from the good parts of diversity and build a society that works better for everybody. Instead we get Affirmative Action dressed up in newer clothes and whispers to trustworthy friends "can I tell you what I really think?"
I identify very strongly with what you've written here.
A guy who studied at Eton and a guy who grew up in a rural village in Uganda couldn't be any more different regardless of whether they can both tick a Black African box on an application form.
The same is obviously true of a guy from a poor part of Glasgow vs. a guy who studied at Eton, regardless of whether both could tick a White British box.
It's so far from any reasonable sense of truth that I feel like I'm in some sort of bad acid trip whenever the topic comes up. To me, the act of trying to categorise people in this way is in and of itself horribly racist.
This occurs at business school in a big way. They hit diversity quotas with super rich kids from Mexico City who are probably direct descendants of the conquistadors who pillaged the people these diversity quotas are supposed to benefit.
It's amazing how shallow is the "Americanized" DEI perspective when you look at your country of origin and its neighbors. Former Yugoslavia is, comparatively, not very large, but it contains a whole lot of very diverse groups, sometimes so that the "melting pot" occasionally starts throwing angry sparks around. But to them, you're all just... "white". And thus your life experience must be also "white" and "privileged", right? Right?
Sometimes I really want to take all those privileged campus kids and their little twitter accounts and throw them into a Total Perspective Vortex.
"This is, of course, understandable as an initial reaction, but my problem is that all the DEI shenanigans never get past that initial surface-level nonsense"
It is literally all only about the surface-level - the surface of the body, the skin color. Defining diversity by this single trait is the opposite of diversity in my opinion, which your story shows quite well.
> I guess what I'm trying to get at in this strange ramble is that ultimately DEI should be focused on diversity of thought, and not just superficial characteristics, yet it never works out that way.
I think you're missing the point of DEI. The advertised purpose of DEI is to counteract racism. It's easy to be sympathetic to that objective if you look at recent history. For example, watch a movie made in the US as recently as the year 1990, and you'll see a stark under-representation of anyone Black. It's hard to chalk that up to different education levels, because it's not like acting requires formal education. Let's face it, it was racism. And this racism pervaded every industry, having inter-generational effects that compounded over time. The idea of DEI therefore is to act as an opposing force.
My main problem with DEI is it's corrosive to the social fabric. To constantly remind people of ethnicity is not a good idea. It should not be front of mind all the time. A shared civic identity should be front and center. There's also an anti-egalitarian anti-individual aspect to DEI thinking that I dislike. And the third thing that puts me off about DEI is the people who run these programs seem to be over-represented by ideological extremists and racists. Black supremacism type ideas are tolerated in these circles when they should be resolutely discarded as ethnonationalist nonsense. It is hard to fully support it until they purge themselves of such personalities.
In 1990, 12% of the population was Black. [1] In California, they were 6-8% of the population. Today those numbers aren't very different. And in fact, Americans have consistently overestimated the percentage of Black people in the US, in part due to media representations. [2]
None of this means that Hollywood is/was not racist, but the problem of media representation is different from how it is usually presented. For example, Black actors have difficulty being cast as villains, because there's a longstanding fear in Hollywood about how that would look. [3]
This is all true until you 30-something. You won't believe how your family culture and values kicks in when you become full-scale adult with non-delegateable responsibilities and other adult-life quirks. And then a midlife crisis punches you in the head. Just wait, the interesting times are ahead)
>Yet if some HR person would interview me, a white-skinned guy, and then my best friend, a black-skinned guy who has African/Japanese ancestry, I'd definitely be placed in the same "bucket" as the white Dutchies around me and my friend with the black Dutchies, despite him and I actually having identical experiences and mindsets and not really having anything in common with the Dutchies.
If they're putting you two in different buckets, how likely is it that it's to do something with one bucket and something else with the other? I imagine that, on average, the white-people-who-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other bucket is going to fare better than the black-people-who-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other bucket.
DEI is meant to counteract that. It's concerned with the initial surface-level nonsense because the initial surface-level nonsense, driven by socioeconomic and political structures and implicit bias, is what keeps HR et al. from being able to reach deeper and make conscientious calls vis a vis diversity of thought.
That's the goal. But you can't get there, under our current system and circumstances, without some DEI-like anti-filter. It's not either-or; "Measure diversity of thought," is step #2, after, "Counteract the social gravity of tribalism in its myriad forms."
All I meant was that all companies ultimately care about is what is legally required, everything else ends up just being lip service and PR.
To your question though, the law justifies the law unfortunately. That's one big reason I'm opposed to laws and government in general. Something is legal because we said its legal, or more often its legal because a prior generation said it was legal. Put worse, something is punishable because we once wrote down that you would be punished for a specific act.
I’m glad that MIT is standing up for an evidence based approach to all this, as they did with reinstating the SAT. Skin color differences don’t make organizations or schools better or worse: https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1296/GreenHandMar2024.p.... (Lack of diversity, of course, may be evidence of underlying race-based discrimination.) It was an idea that was developed in response to Supreme Court cases that prohibited using express racial quotas to eliminate the effects of past discrimination. So there was a need to come up with a different rationale for racial rebalancing.
Its all well and good that MIT is now coming to it's senses, but they'd have earned much more of my respect if they had stood on evidence based approaches from the beginning.
Its easy to follow the crowd when popular opinion swings in a crazy direction. Its even easier to see the writing on the wall and be one of the first to swing back, claiming some kind of honor or bravery in doing so.
Its a win-win. Up front you don't get blasted for being racist because you don't fall in line, and on the back end you're held up as a hero when you respond to what everyone has already realized but few have adjusted to yet.
The SAT thing was wild. I have no idea why people thought making the admissions criteria more opaque and fudge-able would help prevent bias and racism.
I saw the same thing at a company I worked at where they found at that Black people were getting lower performance ratings and there were people in the Diversity interest group advocating getting rid of numeric ratings so, you know, instead of knowing there was bias we would… not know? Like maybe it was a management psy-op or something but that was insane.
I was surprised because the person suggesting it wanted to get rid of it even though it helped his case. His argument was literally that it would help Black employees advance to get rid of the numbers. I would have expected management to want to hide the numbers.
This feels like the "defund/abolish the police" issue again. "Please retire this particular testing regime which seems to game-able via wealth and which further entrenches existing disparities," gets turned into and mischaracterized as, "Get rid of numeric ratings," because it's easier to argue against AND allows for an even more incumbent-advantageous solution to be implemented if it happens to be toppled.
If we went with the actual recommendation (e.g., to complete the analogy sandwich, "dismantle the current institution and establish a new one with a fundamentally different structure which allows for security/investigation functions to be carried out without the baggage of the previous institution"), something might actually change for the better, and we can't have that.
Beyond the culture war, I find DEI uncomfortable. I’m not the most articulate and don’t keep up with modern trends. Ask me about computers or tell me to code, but writing about social subjects when I barely leave my room and even then only to exercise feels like a nightmare. I’ve been asked to optionally write something similar during university applications in the past but along with ethnicity and other private information, N/A is the best I can think of.
I'm with you on this one. I take pride in being out of tune with pop culture, I much prefer to focus on my real-life relationships, tech, personal projects, etc. This DEI stuff seems to change so rapidly that I often have no clue whether something I said was OK or not OK in the eyes of the overlords. It's caused me quite a bit of anxiety, especially during the peak of it in June 2020.
Same and I keep up with some of subjects but the whole DEI feels like a minefield where any thing voiced can be used against you.
Example: you notice that corporate culture is a bit aggressive on the feedback which causes some negatives effects. Someone says that everyone should do some training to give more neutral feedback but I notice that also gives room to less articulated people voice less concerns as they fear they could be badly perceived.
Still, everyone around pretends that are no tradeoffs, just positive effects. I have no idea how to properly give that feedback to the organization as it will be probably be seen as odd/weird or even talking down HR work.
Although the intentions behind DEI are good such a top down approach doesn't seem to get the desired results (i.e optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify).
Unfortunately the name (and perhaps ideas?) are now tainted and I hope this doesn't impact the bottom up approaches (i.e support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings, and in general just being chill and accepting about people) which probably should have been the focus from the start.
> support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings
If that support is available to those who need it irrespective of race, sex, et cetera, sure.
Targeting underserved populations is one thing. Restricting access based on protected characteristics is illegal under any commonsense interpretation of the law.
‘Positive discrimination’ - aka excluding someone based on these attributes - is always required to make the numbers look good when slots/resources are limited - either in applicants of a given attribute or in overall resources.
So someone who would have gotten a slot based on - say - pure technical performance - won’t if these criteria are taken into account.
If you find your school has a racial distribution different from the population, targeting means making an extra effort to go to those communities. Increasing the number of applications from them. The actual filtering of the applications, however, should be neutral.
If there are a fixed number of slots, actually filtering without considering those criteria and yet ending up with a ‘good’ set of numbers based on those criteria is actually impossible.
Regardless of any additional outreach being performed.
> actually filtering without considering those criteria and yet ending up with a ‘good’ set of numbers based on those criteria is actually impossible
If there is an underlying difference in quality, yes. If it’s people from one group not getting applications in, no. There are a lot of smart people gate kept from opportunities due to trivial things like application fees.
Targeting underserved populations will necessarily disproportionately benefit African Americans because of the history of extreme oppression responsible for them being underserved. And I think that's a good thing.
I agree this can be accomplished without explicitly targeting race of other protected characteristics.
> Restricting access based on protected characteristics
What about when you turn that on its head?
"Promoting access based on ..."
If you assume a finite set of places to access then the approaches are equivalent, but for the the emphasis
I think it matters (I am unsure DEI is the solution) that people can access professional services supplied by professionals from a similar cultural background to themselves
In Aotearoa we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school for exactly this reason, and it seems to have been both hugely successful and extremely triggering.
> we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school
I see the argument for setting aside seats for people who fluently speak the language. I do not based on race. ”Black patients hav[ing] better interactions, on average, with physicians of their own race” is a problem, but segregating medical care on the basis of race isn’t the solution [1].
I remember seeing a similar study that took place at a busy walk in clinic in an area with a very diverse population. People would come in and get treated by whichever of the doctors on duty that day was available.
The researchers found that when successful treatment would require the patient to follow the doctors instructions after leaving, such as getting a prescription filled, taken the full course of medication, doing or refraining from certain exercises, etc., the patient was more likely to actually do those things the more the doctor was like them in things like race, gender, and ethnicity.
Aside: calling the Māori language "Te Reo Māori" in English is unhelpful performative posturing. Yes, that's what the language is called in Māori, but we don't call Chinese "Zhongwen" or 中文.
I know, but it's still unhelpful performative posturing. There would be zero risk of confusion if it was called simply "Māori" or "the Māori language" instead, the way we do with every other language in the world.
If one can define culture without relying on biological heredity, sure again. It would be better, however, to address the underlying issue: lack of cross-cultural knowledge that causes the reduced outcomes. (And why Māori students aren't getting into those programmes in a race-neutral process.)
I feel that deconstructing the entire culture of race is not really a practical suggestion for solving the issue. This outcome is not uncommon when you ask those against DEI how they would solve it. Often they recommend systematic solutions that they would in the end also be against because those solutions would surely use race as a targeting mechanism.
There is no such thing as a fully inclusive community. A community is defined as much by the people it excludes as the people it includes. If you try to ensure that everyone is welcome, someone else will make the decisions who to exclude. Typically by making things too uncomfortable for some groups.
If you genuinely want to target underserved populations, you must be prepared to exclude those who are not in the target audience.
It's about casting a net as wide as possible because for the one Srinivasa Ramanujan we know about, there's countless others who never got the right circumstances.
We have agreed as a society on a set of protected classes. Not being allowed to discriminate based on race or sex doesn’t mean not being able to discriminate at all.
By using DEI as a metric you end up doing the complete opposite of “optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify…”
> By using DEI as a metric you end up doing the complete opposite of “optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify…”
Let's say you're trying to hire programmers. DEI could mean going to historically black colleges and women's colleges, and encouraging people there to apply for jobs at your company. This gets you more diverse applicants, from which you pick the best available, because your goal is to hire good programmers.
But what DEI actually means in practice is someone in HR keeping statistics on how many non-white-male programmers you have, and scolding you because you haven't hired enough non-white-males. That kind of DEI leads to non-optimal use of everyone's talent, because you hire non-optimal people for the job openings you have.
No, the complete opposite of that is when you only allow white men to do things - not when you attempt to give everyone the opportunity and don’t have a good way to choose the optimal one amongst them. And that opposite setup is, I’m sure you know, exactly how things worked in most of the west until relatively recently. The overwhelming impression is that because the current setup is closer to overall optimum and further from an optimum for white men, people see it as a net loss.
I had a dinner with someone directly affected by MIT's recent slashing of DEI. At one point they mentioned that they made sure a venue had chairless locations and shuttles with lifts for baby strollers. Someone else at the dinner said "for disabled people too, right?" The person who worked at MIT organizing events reacted like they had never once considered disability access. The term "inclusion" should not be co-opted to mean "exclusion".
I am almost certain that by 2100, the current worship of skin-deep diversity will be relegated to the cabinet of ancient curiosities, along with lobotomy, bell-bottom jeans and haruspicy [0], and people will worship something equally weird, but momentarily fashionable.
Diversity is not really a value. If it were, it would have been recognized as such millennia ago, because already the Egyptians and the Babylonians knew what mixed societies looked like. It is not as if American diversity is a new phenomenon, never seen before. Rome or Alexandria in 1 AD was very diverse, and so was India when Buddha was still a young and naive prince.
Real human values, virtues and vices don't change that much across centuries. You can still discern courage, truthfulness, sloth or compassion in stories written three thousand years ago and half a world away. Diversity as a pseudovalue is a modern fad of American origin, partly conjured into being by ancient American racial problems.
Even many American allies (Japan, Taiwan, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Argentina, Israel etc.) don't bother to even pretend to worship at that DEI-emblazoned altar, so dear to the good professors of Berkeley. Countries with more distant political systems like the Arab sheikhdoms or China probably don't even understand what the word is supposed to mean.
DEI is prejudice squared. Individuals are stuffed into tight racial and gender boxes in a big bout of social engineering. It is better than stuffing them into boxcars and deporting them, but ultimately the logic behind those treatments is the same. You are not John Doe, you are White or Black or whatever, a Lego brick that can be replaced by another Lego brick of the same color and the bureaucratic system will be happy.
If you want to address racism, throw away the entire neo-racist stuff that now passes for enlightened and start again. "Whiteness" et al. belong to the same heap of historical refuse as "Judeobolshevism" or "degenerate art".
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'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 think Japan is not racist, but xenofobe (they dislike and avoid other cultures, not races) and Israel is very non-racist as they are are united by the religion regardless the race. Also racism is not particularly worse than other similar forms of prejudice - if you look at the German concentration camps, race was one of the factors but not the top.
Rest assured, woke politics in the form of support for/opposition to immigration of people with the wrong skin color is a major issue in all Scandinavian countries.
I think the more important question is: are the intentions to get actual results, or just to sidetrack anything that would take actual effort with 'but we have DEI statements'?
Probably depends on the colonialist. I expect many were in it for money at the expense of the colonised population, but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians".
Most of those have been around for decades. Some of them are legal requirements, at least in some contexts. Some are required by research funders and similar organizations. Some must be included in a teaching statement, which became a popular requirement a decade or two before DEI statements. And all contribute to the administrative bloat everyone likes to complain about.
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.
If you read this as having some academics embracing Flat Earth viewpoints, it is obvious this will not happen. The devil is in the details, what does "Embracing diverse viewpoints" even mean? Science usually drives to unique conclusions, not diverse interpretations. How many correct and diverse viewpoints exist about E=m*c^2 ?
what does "Embracing diverse viewpoints" even mean
I could have phrased this better. What I meant was: being open minded to being proven wrong.
There are many academics who will not entertain any viewpoint that's contrary to their own belief and agenda. They will happily share papers that support their preconceived notions, and be hostile towards anyone who questions whether these papers have merit.
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?
Isn't that just part of the job? If you're not wrong sometimes you're not trying hard enough. To avoid this situation you should invite others to challenge your work more quickly.
The academic job is primarily about getting funding for further work. If ten years of work were proven wrong, the academic may worry that funding agencies may stop funding them. "You've been doing the wrong work for a decade!"
So while the academic may not mind being proven wrong in their hypotheses/results/conclusions, they may stress about not being able to get more funding.
We do. I literally just had to submit a statement to this effect to the NSF. The GP is spouting uninformed opinions and then patting themselves on the back for being an "outsider".
This sort of thread pops up again and again on HN. It's frustrating to read comment after comment of people being confidently wrong about your vocation.
I have an MBA, and spent years as a Product Manager.
There is much snark on HN about MBAs and PMs being useless. I read those comments with curiosity to understand what I might learn.
Those commenters' experience is not universal, but neither is my own. Some of the comments might be based on virtually no evidence, but that's probably not the majority.
You cannot base science on political declarations /qualifications
instead of merit, if you wish for advancements in the fields.
This is all the administrative class at universitets and government,
declaring their raison d'etre and accumulated authority.
They cant really understand science or do much about it, so you cannot
base power on that, so they must work hard to construct a vehicle that
is untouchable my sciences, that will be feared.
Then you can cement your authority on the new construct and keep
adding to it, to accumulate more importance and power.
Quicky this vehicle will overtake science in relative importance
for various institutions because this is about "justice and doing
what is right and decent". Science is mundane and boring.
The decision was made by MIT president Sally Kornbluth, with support from the school’s provost and six academic deans, a spokesperson told National Review on Sunday afternoon.
“My goals are to tap into the full scope of human talent, to bring the very best to MIT, and to make sure they thrive once here,” Kornbluth said in a statement provided to NR. “We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”
Do they generally put out announcements on Sunday afternoon? They made sure to be accessible for this. That's probably already an exception. Campuses are usually a M-F 9-5 kind of place.
So I think that's pure speculation. There wasn't that much time, they're usually closed on the weekend and there's no expectation for them to swiftly contact the media for every single change in policy.
Just want to note that, currently, this is the highest comment in the thread which makes any direct references to the article we're all nominally discussing, and it's about 100 comments down. Have an extra upvote.
The hubbub began to subside slowly as Major – de Coverley paused in the doorway with a frown of puzzled disapproval, as though viewing something bizarre. He started forward in a straight line, and the wall of officers before him parted like the Red Sea. Glancing neither left nor right, he strode indomitably up to the steam counter and, in a clear, full-bodied voice that was gruff with age and resonant with ancient eminence and authority, said:
‘Gimme eat.’
Instead of eat, Corporal Snark gave Major – de Coverley a loyalty oath to sign. Major – de Coverley swept it away with mighty displeasure the moment he recognized what it was, his good eye flaring up blindingly with fiery disdain and his enormous old corrugated face darkening in mountainous wrath.
‘Gimme eat, I said,’ he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled ominously through the silent tent like claps of distant thunder.
Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble. He glanced toward Milo pleadingly for guidance. For several terrible seconds there was not a sound. Then Milo nodded.
‘Give him eat,’ he said.
Corporal Snark began giving Major – de Coverley eat. Major – de Coverley turned from the counter with his tray full and came to a stop. His eyes fell on the groups of other officers gazing at him in mute appeal, and, with righteous belligerence, he roared:
‘Give everybody eat!’
‘Give everybody eat!’ Milo echoed with joyful relief, and the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade came to an end.
My approach whenever DEI comes up now is to not express a position or opinion supporting or opposing DEI itself but to simply cite statute and recent case law.
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Section 703):
>"It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer -
(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or
(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
Duvall v. Novant Health, Inc.
>"To be clear, employers may, if they so choose, utilize D&I-type programs. What they cannot do is take adverse employment actions against employees based on their race or gender to implement such a program."
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which applied specifically to higher educational institutions, gives a very good indication as to how SCOTUS is likely to rule when a case involving private employment inevitably lands on its docket in the near future. Taking race into account when making employment decisions will be prohibited. Full stop. That includes setting race based targets/quotas, tying bonuses to their achievement, and establishing set aside jobs. What will likely be permissible will be efforts to expand candidate pools and training initiatives that focus on eliminating biases.
I never understood the american obsession with race (well, and sexuality).
I live in a small EU country on the edge of the balkans... what the hell should I write if I wanted to get hired? I'm white... everyone here is white... but just by living here, I might have a more "diverse" worldview (compared to a white american is massachussets, with enouh knowledge and money to attend MIT) than someone of a different race (also living in massachussets, with enough money and kowledge to attend MIT). But as to "what i've done", I can only put "saw two black people this year, both were tourists, saw a couple of buses of chinese tourists, or maybe japanese, I don't know".
Engineering schools should keep to engineering, killer robots won't care about your race, no matter if you're the one building them or the one making the weapons to fight against them.
The American obsession with race is deeply rooted in historically having a large, enslaved underclass that was kept down using racial justifications and against which there is still measurable bias across all areas of life (hiring, police stops, criminal sentencing, etc.)
It’s not unique to America but it is a major differentiator from other countries.
A key thing to note is that many homogeneous countries are extremely racist but don’t notice it because it doesn’t hugely impact day to day life. A mot-so-malicious example of this is that when my brother went to Korea to teach English, the parents wanted him (a white man) instead of the Asian American who was born in America and also going to the same Ivy League school. Obviously there are much less fun examples of racism but that one was… interesting. In the US that level of open racial preference would have been considered socially unacceptable, especially among the upper middle class college set.
to add to what you said, racism probably doesn't impact anyone they know either. In that sense maybe it isn't a "problem" in homogeneous countries, but it does seem like a powder-key just waiting for the fuse to be lit. Particularly in an increasingly global world.
The US has required an "immigrant class" since before and after slavery ended. People forget that we didn't like the Germans, Irish, Italians, Polish, etc
At one point in the South there were jobs only Irish were hired to do bc they were very dangerous and slaves were too valuable to expend on that labor.
Immigrants are necessary for our economy and have been since the beginning. This isn't a great truth but it's the truth.
Yes but Black people in the US have been historically treated _worse_ than immigrants, which is entirely unnecessary and leads to a lot of efforts to fix the results of previous subjugation.
Didn't you guys do the same to every other immigrant? Italian? Irish? Even us, slavs?
And isn't affirmative action a form of open racial preference? In my country, there's no way a race would play any benefit in eg. college acceptance... tbf., colleges don't even see the candidates until they're accepted (with few exceptions).
Every immigrant was treated poorly initially, but nothing compares to the special hell inflicted on African slaves brought to this country. With the possible exception of the Native Americans.
Sure, but you don't look at that, but look at race.
For example, would affirmative action policies give priority to a white irish man/woman, a descendant of the poorly-treated irish people ~100years ago, or to a black person whose (grand)parents immigrated to USA after the slavery was abolished?
Yeah I think there are plausible arguments that affirmative action is not the right way to solve the problem. Mostly I’m trying to explain the dynamic that causes affirmative action to exist.
I think favorable treatment for direct descendants of slaves is a much more defensible position, than favorable treatment based on “race”, which is difficult to even define.
This is done to every immigrant group, but generally most immigrant waves assimilate and are treated more or less equally. Through all those waves Black people were consistently and persistently treated badly, with things like official segregation, anti miscegenation laws, voting restrictions, redlining, and other unofficial policies and extra-judicial public murders.
Not sure what country you’re in but the fact of a permanent visible racial/ethnic underclass that has only recently won the right to vote among other things creates that dynamic.
> The American obsession with race is deeply rooted in … [history of slavery]
I think that’s part of it. But Europeans invented (or at least widely commercialized ) this instance of slavery, and they aren’t fretting about it. I think America’s fiery vivisection of its own morality Probably comes more out of Its role as “world saving hero police” in WWII.
The ‘suddenly thrust upon them heroism’ caused them, in the subsequent decades, to then intensively examine all the ways they were, perhaps, not living up to it.
And also, I think there’s a more fundamental thing that by being in a role of “world police” you necessarily have to use violence, but whenever you use violence, there’s always inevitably guilt and shame attached to that somewhere in the psyche, or the collective subconscious.
So… while much of the violence may have been done under the idea of righteousness, I don’t think the American people can easily escape the guilt that comes with that and I think that’s one of the reasons they kind of have such Tumultuous self reflection, about how good they really are or not.
Yes Europeans invented slavery, but the deadliest war as a percentage of the population in American history was the American Civil War. This lead to a period of violent segregation and repression even after the Union won. In many places Black people had effectively fewer rights than naturalized and second generation immigrants and until at least 1964.
I agree that there is other complexity for the US psyche but slavery and segregation is huge.
I was responding to this person’s more precise comment with shorthand. But yes, specifically Europeans invented transporting Africans from Sub-Saharan Africa to plantations in the Americas to do labor intensive harvesting of sugar, tobacco, and cotton.
His point was that Americans didn’t uniquely invent that institution, not that there was no slavery outside of Europe.
Hmmm, war is often fought under a 'banner' that is different from the fundamental motivations. This the the classic "Jihadi's Dilemma": you need to craft an ideology to recruit those willing to die in the name of it.
Race has been a reliable 'cause-de-celebre' in the US politik for long eras, seemingly. I think you ought focus less on these superficial causes and more on fundamental ones: economics, resources, capital.
Which sort of goes hand in hand with the idea of white privilege. If I grow up dirt poor, with uneducated parents, in a rural dirt poor region where there wasn’t anyone except other white people in a 100 mile radius for me to be favoured over, apparently I’ve still benefited from some sort of systemic or inherent bias in favour of myself on the basis of race. Which apparently needs to be corrected and puts me at a disadvantage when applying to certain schools or jobs.
The term "white privilege" is a bit of a misnomer. What it's mean to convey is the fact that a white person is much less likely to get passed over for something than a person of color. It doesn't mean an actual privilege, more the lack of a hardship.
That doesn't mean one didn't experience hardship, just that it's unlikely to have been due to the color of your skin.
Which may have been true in 1970s, today I get told in emails to pass over White and Asian candidates because we need more diversity. The sheer hubris of putting racism in writing makes me feel like I'm in a topsy turvy 1950s.
It is true in 2024 also, just that you have to choose a location different from US; go to Southeast Asia to see it in action everyday, where everyone is extra nice to white people - sales people are extra polite, people laugh extra hard at everything white people say, the lady at the counter pays first attention to white people among the group of folks waiting and so on. I have heard white people say "I loved the experience, everyone was so nice"... Of course it was, of course they were.
To be fair, there are flip sides to this too e.g
white folks are more likely to be overcharged, more likely to be subject of scams etc but that's just the other side of the same coin.
And so the cosmic scales apparently require that this person be discriminated against, not on the basis of anything they’ve done, or have had done for them, but because of the colour of their skin and what wasn’t done to them. Regardless of all other hardships and lack of opportunity they may have experienced their whole life.
I still don’t follow the logic, if you’re claiming there is some to be followed.
> And so the cosmic scales apparently require that this person be discriminated against [...] because of the colour of their skin and what wasn’t done to them.
The scale was already tipped because of race. Is it unfair to try to tip it back? Is there no way at all to reasonably apply pressure?
Even if your answer is that it's unfair, it should be easy for you to understand why some people try.
And if any attempt to adjust the scale counts as "discrimination", then "discrimination" is not necessarily a dirty word.
> not on the basis of anything they’ve done, or have had done for them, [...] Regardless of all other hardships and lack of opportunity they may have experienced their whole life.
Well, if you had a way to measure that, it would help a lot. But if you don't have a way to measure it, I feel like disregarding it is probably reasonable.
"Don't try to fix problem X, because for some people problem X compensates for problem Y" is a pretty bad reason not to try to fix X. (With problem X being racism and problem Y being the other discrimination this white poor person faced.)
To steel man the "white privilege" argument, would be to say a black person growing up equally poor as you, would still be at a disadvantage to you in terms of how they would be treated.
(And yes, that's ironic if you are then discriminated against specifically due to the assumption you are inherently privileged.)
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 identity politics instead of correcting all forms of socioeconomic disparity so wtv. I am not surprised that you could not see the best argument in all the noise and the chaos.
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.
I have no idea what this has to do with socialism.... I was born in a socialist state, and we were very friendly with huge parts of africa and asia (we were even "the leaders" of the third world (by the proper definition of the third world)).
What the hell is a “DEI” statement anyways? The site is a bit light on what this means, only a bunch of satirical and sarcastic posts. Almost feels like it was generated by LLM.
Is it something like this?
“I helped a group of first generation, low income students apply to college and obtain $50,000 in grants”
Note how saying you’ll “treat everyone the same” will get you penalized. How doing the things they want isn’t enough to demonstrate your commitment to their cause.
They want true believers, but will settle for people who are willing to let others control what they say and do.
During the red scare, there was a movement to try and force professors to sign loyalty oaths stating that they weren’t communist. Imagine that this went one step further: rather than signing a loyalty pledge, they required professors to compose their own loyalty statements. And that they would be judged on the ideological correctness of their statement. For instance, it wouldn’t be enough to pledge not to be communist; they would also had to pledge to be actively anti-communist. This didn’t happen during the red scare, but if you s/communist/racist, it is happening now.
what? an implementation of an ai? no not really. Those things are hard, take millions of dollars to train ... it doesn't really show, say Marx's M-C-M' equation, r = s/(c + v) or any of the other theories in his text or anything else in that comment. I don't see how say https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3 relates to a place "with no dissent".
That's just a bunch of trigger-words and scapegoats pasted together.
You seem very confused about how Google Gemini, or any ML-based system for that matter, is trained.
It is a natural consequence of these systems that they output the same biases that go into the input; e.g., the classic translation of "they are a doctor/nurse" in a language with gender-neutral pro/nouns to "he/she is a doctor/nurse" in English. Therefore, if one were to train any such system on the Founding Fathers or Nazi soldiers, it is only natural to expect that the system would output white/German/Eastern European men in each case. Yet Gemini doesn't; instead, Gemini introduces its own bias to erase the one in the input and instead always produce an "equal" cocktail of white/black/asian men/women (which, ironically, is still biased and racist because that only captures the races that woke employees at Google feel are important, but it takes actual intellectual honesty to see one's own biases), regardless of whether that results in historical inaccuracies or downright falsehoods. This is a very intentional bias and dishonesty, not something that can just be shrugged off as "it's hard and takes millions of dollars to train".
You're looking at buggy output, attributing political agency to it and speculating some fanciful story about a moustache twirling blue haired villain burning tiny american flags.
It was a software defect.
It's like claiming Stability AI wants everyone to have 6 or 7 fingers because that's how it draws hands or they're secretly occult theosophists because their mirrors don't generate reflections right so they believe mirrors are dimensional portals.
My point: DEI is the result, not the mean. If you do “DEI”, you will result in something un-DEI. We you do things right, DEI will show itself eventually.
You can't by controlling the thermometer to control the temperature.
DEI statements are culty. I see it no different than a religious fundamentalist college asking faculty to sign an oath of allegiance. At least in such a case, you can always know beforehand the BS you'll put up with, unlike secular universities that are adopting DEI statements.
There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is.
A pledge to God?
The mishandling of DEI doesn’t invalidate the need to fix broken systems which fail to select the best people instead of those who score highest in easily gamed and inherently biased metrics.
> There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done.
This is the Trojan Horse, just like the fundamentalists coming to spread peace and love in society of course.
Fortunately, people are judged by outcome and action, not stated intention, and we can see DEI has failed in this regard.
IQ tests are not easily gamed and suggesting otherwise is mostly lying. They might be too easy, or have too low a ceiling (SAT), or might have some mild response to coaching. But a very stupid person cannot come out the other side with the very high score, and a very smart person should be able to figure them out sufficiently that they prove their utility.
I don't think the person you are answering to is referring to IQ tests.
Do you often have proper IQ tests when navigating in the academic sector? I personally never have one.
On top of that, I'm not sure IQ tests themselves are really relevant to select people in the academic sector. They already have demonstrated they master their subject with their grades, so we already know they are smart enough, and it is not because someone score higher in an IQ test that this person will be more valuable for the academic sector, where collaboration and mentoring are as valuable as the holywood cliché of the genius solving all the problems. IQ does not tell much about laziness or motivation or willingness to follow the good scientific process, ...
Also, at this level, you are selecting people amongst a set of candidates that are all already very very close in IQ, to the point that choosing on IQ alone is not making scientific sense: if the IQ questions would have been randomly different, or if they would have passed the test a different day, the scores would have been slightly different and the selection would have been different. The scores would not have been totally different, of course, but slightly different, and because the candidates are all very close, it would have changed the winner.
For having been part of it, the selection process in the academic sector is very very very difficult and is very very prone to unconscious bias. When you have 5 very good candidates and you need to pick one, how do you decide? At the end, it is very often "on feeling": "for this person, I feel they will be a good match". It's a fair way of choosing, because choosing someone that you "don't feel it" over someone that you "feel it" is just very counter-intuitive. But it means that between two persons, it is often the one that "looks superficially the best for the job" that gets it, which is easily affected by unconscious bias (for example, you will "feel it" more easily with someone of your own culture), or can easily be gamed (for example, to progress, you need to build a professional network and manage your reputation, and some very good candidates are just not interested to play these silly games).
By the way, the author of the Post-Meritocracy Manifesto is known as "Bantik" on 1990s Usenet, there is high quality evidence on the Web that that's correct, some of it has been removed from Google. That just shows the background behind some of the most prominent people in DEI programs, at least in open-source.
You can go pretty deep if you try to discover the fundamental belief systems or reasoning behind the 'core' DEI people. A lot of people just casually agree that "being fair" and "not being racist" is good. And it certainly is. And like many movements that involve propaganda/control/power, the key to enlisting large support is to hide the real motivations and goals within a cozy shell of easily consumable "moral" niceties.
Ironically, the methods that the DEI types use are not even hidden. There are numerous books and "scholarly" articles that discuss their methods in detail and also their true purpose.
At it's root DEI is one of the byproducts of Critical Race Theory which is derived from Critical Theory which is (arguably) the root of Marxism and a bunch of other -isms. You can think of Critical Theory as the most abstract form of that particular tree of political theory and Marxism applies it to class inequality and CRT applies it to race/gender inequality. This is a simplification, but it's good enough for now.
The CRT leader types are without a doubt anti-meritocracy, anti-science, anti-civilization, anti-family, etc.. They have said so directly and emphatically in books, papers, talks, etc..
I don't think your post here is substantive. You are only vaguely complaining about an ill-defined group of people, as is customary in political speech.
If you wanted to discredit "numerous books" you should have named at least one. Do you have an example?
> There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is.
There is, but there's definitely some similarities too. Specifically that if you happen to believe in these things, advancement of their goals is one of the most important things you can do, which causes a big temptation to misappropriate institutional power to further the cause.
Regarding the pledges specifically, both require employees to take personal positions to advance at work, which I think is the part blackhawkC17 finds "culty".
> There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is.
In the eyes of the advocates for each, I actually don't know that there is.
Religious pledges likely are intended to say "we want faculty who will teach and represent the values this school holds and that students expect out of this institution", which feels pretty much exactly like the rationale for DEI pledges.
I think the OP doesn't either trust the declared goals of "countering institutional prejudice" and "improving the quality of the student body", or doesn't believe that DEI actually does anything relevant in this sense.
Even for banal acne treatments, proof of safety and efficiency through several stages of trials is required before people are actually subject to it.
With DEI, we are just expected to believe that it actually works and should be applied across the country because some smart people say so.
The article actually doesn’t say any such thing. It simply assumes that a Chinese propaganda machine is focused only on “wokeism”. Dog forbid that they should seek to use propaganda to attack both sides - which is far more effective at spreading division.
"This notwithstanding, the passionate fervour that informs contemporary anti-racist rhetoric, and that of environmental groups such as Extinction Rebellion, and the LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other) movements that share its goals and feed off its righteous
indignation, constitutes a calculated iconoclastic assault on the West’s history and culture."
"Culture war was, after all, one of the People’s Republic’s earliest exports to the West. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has, for years, explicitly viewed it as its ‘magic weapon’. Why, then, this book asks, did a twentieth-century Chinese revolutionary ideology become so adaptable and spectacularly successful in the West?"
By the way, I've been censored multiple times on this site, for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party and it's connections with the woke movement, by the way. It's awful.
My submission is now the top Google result for "beijing woke" and "woke propaganda war" right now, and the HN censorship is plainly visible for everyone to see worldwide.
It's the 7th result for the term "woke propaganda", by the way.
13:08 UTC: To any potential Chinese Communist Party trolls, the more you try to censor me, the more I'm going to be posting about you. Same for russian trolls. Your propaganda is destroying the lives of innocent people here in the West.
The massive amount of ignorance in your reply is quite galling.
It’s awfully apparent that you subscribe to a political extreme right wing view if you feel that Climate and LGBTQ issues are extremism.
Climate concern and LGBTQ pride were barely even a thing during Mao’s time, yet to listen to you you’d think the Chairman himself created and pushed those onto the public stage.
Meanwhile the MCPC is not the same thing as the CCP, despite your apparent belief to think they are.
And give us a break with this “poor me, I’ve been censored on this site” mentality.
Everyone here is free to say what they want. It’s up to the collective here to decide (by and large) if such messages are deemed worthwhile or not. If they’re not then they’ll get flagged and downvoted.
I have posted messages on right wing sites such as Gateway Pundit and Breitbart and have been moderated out of existence (as I suspected I would). Both strong right wing sites.
That wasn’t censorship and nor do I complain about it. I am however happy to observe it. They’re both privately run websites are and free to do what they like.
The trouble is that you have apparently mistaken the MCPC with the CCP.
The Maoists are an underground faction in China, and see the CCP are a political enemy.
Yet you’re so reverently “anti woke” (despite “woke” being simply an umbrella term used the the extreme right to group anything they don’t like together without it actually meaning anything), that you come accross as the same sort of person who thinks anyone to the left of Nixon can only be a Marxist/Communist/Liberal flag waving pinko.
Your position lacks nuance, empathy, and understanding.
I’ll have to admit, whilst I often see claims of me being Marxist or Communist because I’m trans, this is the first time I’ve been grouped in as a Maoist.
I dislike all forms of censorship of lawful speech, whether it's coming from the Left or the Right. And the spirit of the First Amendment is what matters. I do understand that private sites can censor your lawful speech legally, but I still think it's somewhat morally wrong to do so.
In the 2010s and 2020s the censorship[1] (and cancelling of open-source software authors) is coming mostly from the Left - and I hate it.
In the 1990s the censorship was coming from the Right - and I hated that as well. I still remember a group called "Focus on the Family" and its pressure on the government to adopt widespread Internet filtering.
I have no problem with trans people in any way whatsoever, what they do with their bodies and in their private lives is absolutely none of my business. I only get annoyed when segments of their political movement start to enact speech codes[1] and other means of impeding our right to freedom of speech. I understand it doesn't mean all trans people are doing this, it is just a vocal minority.
To clarify: When I complain about "Woke" I complain about those people within the movement who are trying to take our hard-earned Western liberties away, including freedom of speech and thought. These liberties were acquired over hundreds of years of hardship by so many people, throughout history. People who chose to suffer in the name of liberty, for the good of other people. And certain segments of the Left want to diminish or even eliminate them.
And by the way I agree with the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement, yes there is a serious problem with discrimination against Black people by law enforcement. And other minorities too. Those with less power in society tend to be discriminated against the worst. It really does appear to be a "pecking order", almost something from the animal world, which is terrible.
But I still don't think censorship (and especially cancelling people) is ever a suitable response to discrimination or offensive speech. Offensive speech should be countered with further, lawful speech.
The quoted text in my first post above is taken from the book, it's not my specific personal opinion. If it were to be the case that Extinction Rebellion and other peaceful protest groups were to be labelled "extremist" I would be seriously considering that we are living in a police state. It's completely unacceptable to brand peaceful political movements as "extremist" to me. That has no place in a free society.
As demonstrated before by history, I'm worried that the left-wing Woke movement might provoke a right-wing backlash, and it's why Trump or someone even worse could get into power at some point. I think we need to keep protecting our individual liberties, so people don't end up voting a right wing party into power, as a knee-jerk reaction.
I hope I've thought it all through properly. So it looks like I'm a bit of a fence sitter on the matter, but are still strongly in favor of individual liberty.
By the way, many of my posts here are getting 50:50 with an almost equal number of upvotes as they are downvotes. Many just "0", or "1", but not -1 or any worse than that. So HN opinion seems to be split on it?
1. The "Contributor Covenant" code of conduct and others. These codes of conduct are the main censorship issue I'm bothered about nowadays.
To clarify: When I complain about "Woke" I complain about those people within the movement who are trying to take our long-earned Western liberties away“
I think you’ll find what’s really happening is that people are having to adjust to the real world, and are being held accountable for previously socially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination.
The irony in your statement is that you also say you support BLM, yet the same people who would agree with your statement above, are totally against BLM.
Gateway Pundit, Breitbart and Fox News are three very active right wing places that routinely silence left wing voices.
Trump’s own Truth Social advertises itself as a place of free speech, however it has been shown to be shadow banning posts up the yazoo that the moderators (whomever they are) feel don’t toe the party line.
You not experiencing something does not mean it doesn’t happen.
I wasn’t discriminated against as a trans woman until I came out as trans.
Since then I’ve lost a job, and been verbally abused, simply for being a trans woman.
You claim the the LGBTQ cause is extremism. As a member of the group I can tell you that given the huge amount of laws being made to legislate us out of existence, I’m seeing extremism on both sides.
If students uttered a DEI statement every morning in their homeroom classes over the Pledge of Allegiance to a flag, we'd all be in a much better place culturally.
I'm a white upper middle-class dude, and there used to be a time where it was only guys like me that got into prestigious schools, and had a chance at landing influential jobs - while others would either get silently rejected, scolded for trying, or simply laughed out of the office.
So while the intentions for DEI were good, the reality might be that they've regressed back to initial problem. Should some people be rejected, simply because they're overrepresented? And must your workers write/sign a statement that basically says "I, [name], hereby agree that discrimination is good if it is for the greater good."
If you see yourself (or your group) as a victim it's easy to rationalize rather extreme measures to "fix" the world.
The intentions behind a lot of these things are good but the sensitivity of the subject has made it hard(er) to have a healthy discussion about these issues.
I don't think that's a good explanation. The vast majority of people behind such initiatives don't come from underprivileged or victimized backgrounds.
It's more about this idea of being an advocate for the downtrodden - a good person fighting the racists on behalf of those without a voice. And because you're fighting the good fight, it's of course OK to make the oppressors uncomfortable or to bully them into submission.
Depending on your priors, this is either messed up, or it's messed up not to act and accept the status quo. Pick your poison, I guess.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
I mean, that sword cuts both ways. If you just decide that the other side of the aisle is comprised of monsters, why stop at making them uncomfortable or bullying them? Why not persecute them further? And why would they not do the same to you, if given the opportunity? It all just seems so vicious and wrong headed. We conceived of tolerance in order to allow for discourse and the above perspective seems so stupid regressive.
They do censor research on the opposite of their viewpoint, though. Which further reinforces their impression that they are right. We’re back to 1590 in terms of civilizational evolution.
People might be surprised how dumb top universities can be. When everyone is biased to thinking they're the best, it pretty easily creates tunnel vision.
This came more from administrators in universities and funding agencies than the professors themselves, who are mostly dragged along for the ride, or go through whatever motions it takes to get promoted or obtain an administrator position. Tenure would actually work more against administrative abuse than for it.
Perhaps it used to, however a tenured professor can easily be "cancelled" today if their academic research or writing strays too far from home base. Frankly, I am not sure it ever did. It seems like it might have always been used more as a threat (by retraction) than anything else.
I think they meant mortality as in the old guard that have power and use it to protect their point of view die off and are replaced with a new guard that does the same.
For those unfamiliar with how org structures work in academia/tenure... (at least, assume this is still true)
Once attaining tenure, your promotion track focuses on faculty leadership positions.
These positions are selected by a combination of administration & faculty. It varies institute to institute, but strong candidates usually have backing from both.
These positions are almost always held by tenured faculty, as non-tenure is looked down upon for historical/political reasons.
Note: You only need to please 2 types of stakeholders: administration & faculty.
Ergo, the path to promotion becomes:
- Make tenure
- Politick with faculty colleagues
- Politick with administration
- Wait for someone to die
This leads to a weird bent where your bosses (faculty) are selected for their ability to navigate political winds and say the thing that most people agree with, moreso than being disagreeably brilliant.
Cause few are brave enough to stick their neck out and stand up to it. Those who do are called nasty names and are forced to withstand a ideological purity trial that carries some potential of being fired.
There is a lot risk for a minor reward, especially if you don't actually care about the institution you are defending.
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 course, every action has a reaction. Enough resentment has built up, that made anti-woke a legitimate position to take in the public eye, with no longer much risk of losing the job. This makes all the previous tactics lose their power.
Also, the 'anti-woke' crowd is learning these tactics too. From congressional grilling of university presidents, to gamers explicitly documenting the DEI consultancy involvements, its all targeting and absolutely destroying individuals to cause a chilling effect on the populace at large.
> 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.
I don't know why you're getting down voted for this. It's a very precise description of what has been happening the last decade. Conform and declare your support or be ruined, even if you have valid criticisms and disagreements with the doctrine.
If a minority can impose their will into institutions, destroying the life of anybody that opposes them, you need a quite messed-up conception of power structures to place that minority "down".
Do you think every participant to Mao’s cultural revolution was consenting?
No. People do whatever they can throughout history, and end up having to participate to larger changes. The only remedy we’ve found was Humanism, l’esprit critique, education for everyone, and raising awareness and allergy to all authoritarian acts, but see, in the last 50 years, I’ve seen younger people who aren’t even aware who Diderot is, let alone had enough literacy to read or write those books fluently if they spent the time, even in $130k jobs. Then we flooded each country with about 12% people who haven’t had those Humanism tenants taughts at school.
I’ll from using a stronger metaphor because it will sound cheesy, but by losing the teachings of logic, rhetoric and history, our civilization is not able to hold the pillars of democracy anymore.
I’ve been here. “We can’t hire any more white men” is probably an illegal stance, but what do I gain from fighting that? Nothing, and I suspect I’d be fired.
I’m a tadpole in a huge lake. I have no influence over these likely illegal hiring decisions. And unless I’m just incredibly unlucky, these same conversations are happening everywhere at big companies.
American society is a bit messed up going back to slavery (and maybe the treatment of the indigenous people). That part (America of all countries) is not a surprise. It's also not new, random e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness
Maybe this also has to do with the general idea that it's not up to a government to do things, it's up to individuals, which to me is how Americans think. I would think that dealing with inequalities in society, ensuring everyone has equal opportunity and has their basic needs provided for (health, education etc.) would be the function of a government. If the government isn't addressing that then you have a vacuum. To me it's obvious that e.g. hiring policies or university acceptance criteria are not the right place to fix society but rather issues should be addressed upstream from those. By the government. But having government do things seem to be something Americans dislike.
Just as a side point, approx 3-4% of slaves ended up in North America.
Most went to the Carribbean and South America (Brazil mainly).
Nobody ever seems to want to talk about those countries though for some reason.
Nor do they seem particularly interested in the slave trade that exists now in many countries in one form or another.
My guess is its because these other examples are not politically useful.
>Just as a side point, approx 3-4% of slaves ended up in North America. Most went to the Carribbean and South America (Brazil mainly). Nobody ever seems to want to talk about those countries though for some reason.
The average SJW/Redditor/DEI advocate sincerely believes that slavery has existed in only one country in the world's history: In the United States, involving Africans. The etymology of the word "slav"? Brazil? Haiti? Guadeloupe? North Africans enslaving Europeans? Vikings taking thralls? Feudalism? Never heard of 'em.
Here in Brazil, we care, and we try to make amends: there are quotas for black people in universities, and our law is rigorous against manifestation of racism in social media, or in real life. I think it is expected that any place that enslaved people make their amends for their past crimes. But I fail to understand how for American people this should mean talking about slavery in Brazil instead of in their own country.
America is the most likely country for this to happen to, due to the unresolved issues surrounding slavery and the abandonment of reconstruction after the civil war. This is compounded when viewed through the USAs founding mythology.
Other countries have done worse, but they haven't done so as hypocritically as the United States.
I don't think an issue that lasted for barely 1/3 of our country's history and hasn't been legal for the entirety of this century, last century, or much of the century before that is the problem. I think people's addiction to being full-time victims is the issue, because if you're always a victim, you never have to be responsbile for anything in your life, you can always blame your imagined "oppressor". People do this, teach their children that they are also victims regardless of their actions, and maintain a long line of familial victimhood. DEI is a direct symptom of that.
It was too outrageous to be believed until it was too late.
Remember the term "SJW" (social justice warrior) from around a decade ago? That was wokeism and DEI before it got its current branding. The people who saw this coming were dismissed as crazy.
Supposedly it's decades long work by the Chinese Communist Party that started in the 1960s and led up to where we are now. I wonder if the Soviet Union was also involved?
"The effects of this brainwashing are shown in the American Left’s adoption of the CCP’s key concepts and nomenclature."
"Today’s common use of the word “progressive” by the radical Left traces its intellectual origin straight to the Marxist-Leninist “dialectical” categorization of people into reactionaries and progressives. It is not from the modern legacy of the American Progressive Movement represented by William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M. La Follette, and Henry A. Wallace."
"The primary method of Mao’s brainwashing in Yenan was “consciousness raising,” which has become since the 1960s the main strategy of the American Left, especially the radical American feminist movement."
"This was the first time I heard that phrase, which, over the years, moved out of China and on to the streets and fashions of America in the 1960s."
By the way I'm getting a lot of upvotes, and downvotes too for this post. So it's a mixed reaction from the readers of this site.
If DEI was about removing barriers due to racial (both conscious and unconscious) biases, then it wouldn't be so controversial. For example, symphonies auditioning candidates behind a screen so they hiring people are only presented with the sound of their playing. But DEI is the opposite of that. It's about very explicitly identifying race/gender/etc up front and then using that as the primary basis for hiring decisions. Disqualifying someone because of their race is not only allowed but required by DEI policies.
How did we end up with it ending up as "no more white males", white people excluded from events and buildings, people talking about how they like their white free orgs in publicly traded companies, companies with no white people in a white majority city described as diverse, someone posting on HN with a full sense of righteousness about the Google Gemini racism scandal that he'd consider a request for a photo containing only white people to an LLM suspect but one of any other ethnicity perfectly fine.
From me I'd like to ask where all the people from the Indian sub continent are in the Gemini Photos given they make a large percentage of developers at Google but are non existent in the output. Why the literal erasure of ~2 billion people?
I often see the "complaint" (hard to find the right word here - it's discussed in somewhat coded/conspiratorial language for fear of sounding racist I'm sure) that when Indians are hired into a company, they'll then begin hiring more and more Indians. As you say, this is actually a rather natural human tendency and I doubt it's limited to Indians. Of course, many people here will also note that they get most of their jobs through their network (side note; it must be nice speaking as an introvert who just has to apply to jobs like a regular schlub). Well, if you're Indian, especially from India, I bet your network is going to be fairly Indian.
Universities typically have an old guard. They all cared too much about keeping their heads down and collecting their pay cheques too oppose this. It's not just new screening, it's active cowardice.
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 power. It should be front and center in any college DEI discussions.
The problem is it doesn't end there. Having a Harvard undergraduate degree opens up so many doors for graduate school, residencies for doctors, academia, etc.
So before you get worked up on the topic of DEI (on either side), please give a thought to legacy admissions.
Legacy makes a lot of sense from an admissions standpoint. Having rich/connected peers is the main point of harvard for everyone else applying. I think what people have a problem with with DEI is that it largely seems counter to their goals of maximizing prestige and career success of graduates.
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.)
That’s not the point. In addition to any inherent advantages for children of graduates from elite universities, there is an explicit bias in their favor for admissions decisions.
An inbuilt assumption of what you say is that you believe in meritocracy, specifically that the powerful and wealthy are that way at least part by merit. The flipside of this assumption is that poverty is a personal moral failure.
Personally i reject both of these assertions. So much of wealth can be attributed to imperialism, war, slavery, segregation, instituational discrimination and so on.
But let's assume what you say is true: if the wealthy are that way out of merit and they have more ability, intelligence or whatever, why do they need an davantage in college admissions at all? Wouldn't their own merit shine through?
Wealth already gives a host of advantages: opportunities, tutoring, access to people and not having to, say, work jobs to just survive. On top of all those advantages, why do they also need systemic bias in admissions?
The system is unfair by design because it needs to be for those who benefit from it.
When did I ever say that the children of wealthy alumni should be prioritised?
I'm not assuming that the wealthy are there by merit, I'm assuming that the competent are.
And yes, universities will admit the idiot sons of the rich, just because of a donation - but that's an entirely different conversation to one regarding the prioritisation of the children of alumni who already proved themselves to be useful.
> An inbuilt assumption of what you say is that you believe in meritocracy, specifically that the powerful and wealthy are that way at least part by merit.
That is not what a meritocracy is. Meritocracy means our brightest and most capable lead us, instead of democracy where it is basically whoever can play the political game the best.
Bret Weinstein suggested this on his podcast - that we select leaders because they would do the best job - and we DON'T let them self-select. They're called to serve similar to jury duty. I don't recall how the selection would be done, which seems like the harder part.
This is fantastic news. Requiring faculty staff to write what is essentially a short ideological treatise to be considered for employment is more in line with something I'd expect in Mao's China.
To quote the link, and by golly does it seem germane to the topic at hand:
In the year 2081, the Constitution dictates that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, earpiece radios for the intelligent that broadcast loud noises meant to disrupt thoughts, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic.
George and Hazel Bergeron have a 14-year old son named Harrison. He takes after his father, who is highly intelligent and physically strong. The government removes Harrison from his home. His parents are barely aware because of Hazel's low intelligence and George's mandated handicaps.
George and Hazel watch a ballet on TV. Some dancers are weighed down to counteract their gracefulness and masked to hide their attractiveness. George's thoughts are continually interrupted by the different noises emitted by his handicap radio. Hazel urges George to lie down and rest his "handicap bag", 47 pounds (21 kg) of weights locked around his neck. She suggests taking a few of the weights out of the bag, but George resists because it is against the law.
On TV, a reporter struggles to read a bulletin and hands it to the ballerina wearing the most grotesque mask and heaviest weights. She begins reading in her natural, beautiful voice before switching to a more unpleasant one. Harrison's escape from prison is announced, and a full-body photograph of him is shown. He is seven feet (2.1 m) tall and burdened by three hundred pounds (140 kg) of handicaps.
George recognizes his son for a moment, before having the thought eliminated by his radio. Harrison storms the TV studio in an attempt to overthrow the government. He declares himself Emperor and rips off both his own handicaps and those of a ballerina, whom he chooses as his Empress.
Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, enters the studio and kills Harrison and the Empress with two shotgun blasts. She threatens the musicians at gunpoint to put on their handicaps again. The TV goes dark. George, who left to get a beer and has returned, asks Hazel why she is crying, to which she replies that something sad happened on television that she cannot remember.
TL;DR - a dystopia where anyone with an "advantage" is "handicapped" to make everyone "equal". Advantages such as intelligence and beauty must not be used to let anyone get ahead.
The notion that any of us could ever *be equal* has always annoyed me at how obviously absurd it is but I’m glad to see this has been written about before. It’s like we’ve already descended into 1984 territory and we’re all spouting about “equality” because it’s the “right thing to do” even though we all know it’s not physically possible. Equal opportunities are not enough, or so it would be said, because history! Well.. the historical period I care about!
And then we all act shocked when someone turns to violence to force people to grapple with reality
I disagree that “other senses of equality” come with “good reason.” In fact, I find it to be an insidious corruption of the meaning of the word to further the agenda of those in power. That’s exactly how evil works. Wolves in sheep’s clothing. “Standing for equality” while owning more wealth than 98% of the population.
There have been, more or less, two major modifications to the Constitution. We are now on version 3, depending on how you slice it.
There have also been modifications to our understanding of freedoms. The old comprehension of freedoms the government should safeguard evolved to freedom of speech (and expression), freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
It's okay for people to decide there are more equalities relevant than the simple protection against divine birthright mandates. Especially since we've had hundreds of years to witness the consequences of believing that kind of equality is all that matters.
> “Standing for equality” while owning more wealth than 98% of the population.
I'm afraid I'd have to know who you are thinking of as wolves in sheep's clothing to know what you mean here.
I’m a bit oppositionally defiant, so something like this, while I wholly believe in the core sentiment (of diversity, not the affirmations), would engender immediate resistance from me.
I am assuming that there is vastly less to this than this particular cluster of publications, and too many of the commenters here, are getting themselves worked up about.
I'm not sure if you're questioning whether the story was true or whether it was important or whether it was offtopic for HN.
If it was untrue, then we will have made a bad moderation call and should have waited. However, today has brought more 3rd party reports on the story, albeit still from ideologically slanted publications (e.g. https://nypost.com/2024/05/06/us-news/mit-bans-controversial...), so I think the odds of it being true are getting a bit higher.
If you mean it wasn't important, that's a matter of preference. There's no story on the front page that everyone thinks is important. It's enough if enough do.
If you mean it was offtopic for HN, I've addressed that in a bunch of other places.
Sorry, I just meant to the story itself. NY Post and Unherd are low-quality sources given to beatups they think are in favour of their ideology.
I am specifically sceptical that this is any sort of significant thing, let alone a huge deal.
I'm not saying Unherd falsified quotes or anything, but I'm not at all convinced that this passes e.g. the Wikipedia "reliable sources" test of being worth mentioning in general (which Unherd probably wouldn't be and the NYP explicitly isn't).
Has anything mainstream covered it? I had a look in Google News for "MIT DEI" and it was overwhelmingly trash-tier sources of the Unherd/NYP level.
I think you were right to be skeptical though—I had the same worry. Sometimes we wait until a story has had more independent verification, but in this case the community appetite to discuss it was so strong, I decided not to stand in front of the train.
Note that this ban appears to be only for faculty hiring.
Most MIT employees are staff. I don't know if MIT requires DEI statements from staff hires, but I know other universities do, e.g. UC Berkeley, where I used to work. And yet, (as one example of many) check out the 7/7 white faces in leadership at executive.berkeley.edu/our-team
You really took a turn there by calling attention to their skin color. The interesting thing here isn’t that they look the same, but that they think the same.
A profitable company that lacks DEI is still a success
A company that loses money but has plenty of DEI is a failure.
DEI is not the factor that determines success or failure.
It is a tool that you can use but it makes no sense as a goal or target in itself. If your customer base has some attributes that aren't reflected in the staff, maybe hiring some will help you relate. The idea that your company must match the 'diversity' of the general public (in one country) is all backward.
> If your customer base has some attributes that aren't reflected in the staff, maybe hiring some will help you relate.
How does it work? If you hire them in customer research or marketing teams, yes, it brings value in understanding the customer. If you just hire them across all departments, like IT or facilities management, what do you get?
Our company for a while would recap promotions every quarter and breakdown promation rates by race... it was awakward and antithetical to what they were trying to accompish. Had a weird undertone of calling out races for underachieving lmao
"Blacks are being promoted 20% less than whites. We are getting better but can do even more to promote the interests of blacks at the company"
Pretty sure I didn't get a Stanford job in part because I didn't submit a DEI statement. It was optional, but clearly sort of like breathing is optional. I actually wrote one, had it reviewed, rewrote. As someone in federal government who made the mistake of being born white and male, but has worked their whole life on these issues (among many others) and made what I think are very defensibly equitable hiring and selection decisions that reflect the US in gender, race, and creed, the whole thing felt very ... icky.
The problem is making the mistake of being born white and male! The best thing I've learned from all of this is that it's literally free to identify as whatever you'd like, whenever you'd like, so if opportunities are being taken from you on the basis of race or gender, you should take advantage of that. No one can deny that you identify as that thing, since identifying as something is the literal exact same thing as being that thing. That's how I became a non-binary black lesbian woman!
Like when they opened up the "Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing" for non-binary and trans people... So men showed up and claimed to be non-binary to get access to something that was available to any other person except them. We need to continue seeing stuff like this until we fully choke out the idea of admittance based on anything other than "Is this person the best for the role?".
I agree with then that it is better to not require DEI (due to the reasons they mention there (they are compelled speech and are irrelevant to what you are applying for, and that there are other contributions that are independent from DEI, as explained there), and others), but that does not necessarily mean that DEI should be banned; it only means that they should not be required, and that DEI statements alone are not a suitable criteria for admission. What is a suitable criteria is your competence at your work, if you have done it good.
Wikipedia says "Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are organizational frameworks which seek to promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination on the basis of identity or disability." This is not inherently a bad thing, although bad things can be (and are) done with it (like bad things can be (and are) done with many things), such as the required DEI statements over everything else.
Just because someone wrote a DEI statement does not necessarily mean that they are not qualified (or good at science or whatever it is they are applying for) nor does it necessary mean that they are qualified, and the same is true if they did not make a DEI statement.
One article (apparently by the same author) mentions that the Canadian government denied Patanjali Kambhampati (a physical chemist who seems quite accomplished, and works on quantum dots, has published 132 papers, and has an h index of 37) grants because he refuses to write the kind of woke diversity statement that the Canadian grant authorities demand. It also says, "What's even worse than diversity statements, is evaluating them as the first step in the grant-giving process". Of course, a better evaluation should be by the scientific merit, not by diversity statements.
Yes, but just like Stanford, you probably can't say the word "American" without getting summoned to a disciplinary hearing and asking your landlord to have you evicted ah la San Francisco's way of doing things...
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.
> nearly everybody agrees that it's a good target to aim for
You mean nearly everybody agrees in your circle, because you can easily find strong opposition if you bother to look. And that’s after making saying the opposite out loud a career-ending offense in lots of places, kinda hard to not agree with it if you want to remain employable.
DEI exists in countries with no racist past. Does it make it aby better? Also DEI exists in places that were historically very diverse, like the Balkans (a mix of ethnic, culture and religions) and it did not help, actually, because it is highlighting the differences that we worked for hundreds of years to integrate. Fortunately there was no significant impact around here as people were wise enough.
I think the modern-day conflation of the philosophical notion of diversity with “diversity of skin color” / “racial diversity” is actually harmful. When we speak of diversity today we often imply a sort of supposed-deserved reparations toward the “minorities.” Obviously there are so many incorrect aspects of these assumptions, but many people in power, perhaps all, have accumulated guilt that needs an outlet.
Diversity, the platonic form, is about diversity of thought, opinion, and experience. It is about improving our ability as a group to solve the problems we face by introducing alternative perspectives and viewpoints. It has nothing to do with race or gender necessarily but demand for diversity greatly outweighs the supply and as with all measured things, measuring the number of “diverse” hires has ceased to be a meaningful metric. Granted, it never was a meaningful metric as such, but it has become actively harmful in modern day.
> think the modern-day conflation of the philosophical notion of diversity with “diversity of skin color” / “racial diversity” is actually harmful.
I absolutely agree with this. To use myself as an example: as a Bangladeshi who grew up in the American south, I bring a super diverse viewpoint to a group of say white new englanders.
But why does that matter in a professional setting? I’d love to hear someone precisely articulate how they think I’d behave differently from a white new englander in the same position, and why that “diversity” would make the team “stronger.”
Because most people in technology have end users. Quite often those end users come from many different backgrounds. Having more people in the room who can think in terms of a larger subset of the user base will always produce a better product.
I work in the post secondary education sector. I am the only person on my team who doesn’t have a college degree. I often have to help them see our software through that lense so that we don’t make assumptions that all of our users are college educated or even know what their post-high school options are.
The fact that you’re casually comparing differences between users of different races to the different between people with different education levels is remarkable. You think that race is so meaningful?
I think your background and experience is meaningful. And, like it or not, people of different races frequently have differing backgrounds and experiences.
How's that not just a justification for discriminating against people based on race? Unless you're going to assert that those "meaningful" differences in "background or experiences" are necessarily positive, which is completely illogical.
When it comes to optimizing a sorting algorithm for some hardware, it probably doesn't matter. Now suppose you're making a user interface design choice. It would be good to have someone who knows how users from a different subculture would interpret it.
But things like that often have more to do with culture/geography than race. Someone from Mississippi will have a much different perspective than someone from Massachusetts, even if they're the same race. And a larger difference in perspective than two people who grew up across the street from each other, even if they're different races. But that doesn't show up in the group photo for the brochure.
Is there evidence that Americans of different ethnicities interpret user interface features differently?
If not, isn’t it concerning that in the year 2024 we casually assume that these sorts of differences exist? Isn’t that an example of DEI thinking accentuating the notion of differences? It seems like a new take on this: https://youtu.be/E8PBrhFN35c?si=90DSnwgHubAvJwr8
Ethnicity is then being used as a proxy for culture, even though it's a bad one, because it's a visible one.
It's basically starting from the premise that cultural diversity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. Whereas traditional racism is more like starting from the premise that cultural homogeneity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. It's applying the same fallacy to the opposite premise, which is an error regardless of which premise is correct.
UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures.
Suppose you don't care anything for all of this political noise and you just want to make money. Do you want to use the same colors on your website in the countries where red implies danger as the ones where red implies prosperity and vitality? If it will be the same for everyone, might knowing how some large subset of the viewers will interpret it change what you choose?
> UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures.
Really? Can you provide actual examples?
JFYI, I speak Russian, Ukrainian, German, and Mandarin Chinese. I've used native-written apps in all these languages, and I have not seen any significant variations in the UI color selections.
I guess Mandarin Chinese is probably the best example because the red color is seen as more "festive", so it's more common in various app icons.
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.
The actual claim was "UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures."
I don't know about that prosperity thing, but I can give you an example that happens a lot. Some groups use red to mean stopped and green to mean moving, while others use red to mean danger and moving, and green to mean safe and stopped. This isn't directly country-related but I believe there's significant variation based on location.
Oh, wait, while searching to double check that I found an example of exactly what you asked for. CJK stock market displays tend to use red for increases, while the West uses red for decreases.
I searched and I didn't see any examples of that. Oh, wait, I searched again and all I saw was the opposite. Oh, wait, I searched again and still found typical displays.
The post I replied to talked about websites and they didn't say different colors were used in some circumstances, they literally mean different things.
Why does everyone have the same colors in traffic lights (except for japan's blue lights which comes from language, not cultural significance)
> The post I replied to talked about websites and they didn't say different colors were used in some circumstances, they literally mean different things.
I'll quote it again.
"UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures."
And all the examples I gave have red meaning opposite things in user interfaces based on cultural assumptions.
Off/danger. Number up/number down. Occupied/available.
Websites were just one example of UI.
> It's funny that this person speaks multiple languages and actually used different apps but was downvoted anyway.
They said they haven't seen any. That doesn't override actual examples!
> arbitrary choices made a long time ago that became standards
That sounds like a description of culture.
> If it was cultural then newer designs like computer interfaces would be affected.
Does the big TV run by a computer not count as an interface?
Okay, do you have some pictures of chinese stock websites?
> Also you ignored traffic lights.
What about them? Yes Japan uses the same color scheme as the US for traffic lights. Because the idea spread that way. I don't see how that's relevant to either of my examples that talked about Japan?
...you're not suggesting that one situation where colors match invalidates situations where colors are different, right?
Older choices affect newer choices, and consistent choices become culture.
Once upon a time, stock chart makers made an arbitrary choice influenced by older choices that had become culture. Those older choices being a general association with fortune, and a specific association with loss of money. (With intermediate steps, I think, but I'm being brief.) And those associations were different for different groups. Now the chart colors are part of culture too.
A choice being arbitrary doesn't mean it was random. You can trace the influence here.
But even if it had been random, it's culture now. Money in red has implications, and the implications vary.
So now ui choices in different countries is because of deep cultural meaning, but they could be arbitrary, but that doesn't mean it's random and now the arbitrary choice is now the culture? Seems like circular logic to rationalize arbitrary choices made anonymously.
You have to analyze it on a case by case basis. It only sounds silly if you try to generalize everything into a single rule.
Different choices have different levels of cultural depth. Often the depth is zero. But it varies.
And culture is created by arbitrary decisions coalescing into guidelines. If it's not coalescing, then it's not culture. You have to look at the big picture to tell if something is culture or not.
If it's all chosen because colors are deeply cultural then they would be the same. If important stuff is all different and arbitrary then it's not cultural.
Most color choices are arbitrary, some of them are shallowly cultural, and some of them are deeply cultural.
HN having an orange banner at the top isn't significantly cultural. Traffic lights are worldwide culture. Black or green for positive money and red for negative money are US culture. Red for positive money and black or green for negative money are Chinese culture. These choices tie into older associations, which affects the depth. But even if they were shallow they'd still be culture.
If you wanted specific links you should have said so 4 days ago after I wrote "You can also do a text search for china red green stocks, or japan red green stocks."
If you want a citation for HN's orange not being deeply cultural, then you got me, I didn't actually check. But let's see... "The orange logo was chosen because it was the opposite of VC websites which were typically forest green or navy blue" yeah that's not deep culture.
The canonical example is hand gestures and their use in UI elements such as mouse cursors.
More broadly speaking, exposure to different languages can often make you aware of issues that are not familiar to someone who only knows English, such as e.g.: existence of grammatical gender; pluralization that has to deal with more cases than just one/many (e.g. different forms for 2/3/...); the fact that placeholders in a format string may need to be reordered in different locales; drastically different length of text in different languages; the fact that notions such as upper/lowercase are not universal; sequences of letters that are treated as single characters in some languages; etc. Now of course all this applies to non-native speakers as well, but for more "exotic" languages out there it's usually their native speakers who provide such experience.
japanese ui is often more dense and information rich. there are left to right and right to left cultures. tonnes of difference between cultures and understand of the world.
Does hiring someone whose native script is “right-to-left” make a difference to the product though?
On the one hand, there are people who deeply understand the technical intricacies of Unicode BiDi yet can’t actually read Arabic or Hebrew
On the other hand, if the business doesn’t view Arabic markets (or Israel) as viable to pursue, it doesn’t matter how much you are aware of those languages, it is irrelevant to the product
And what about backend developer roles, where UI concerns like BiDi are largely a non-issue?
I think DEI as implemented is worse than this. It’s a calculated, prepared defense against the possibility of future bigoted behavior.
Corporate America (which increasingly includes universities whose primary business is endowment investment) don’t just want to wash away our past, they want to ensure they can keep operating business as usual.
DEI is insurance. Yeah the bad thing may happen but we paid for it before hand so we are insulated against further repercussions.
> I have posted quite a bit about them (see collection here), and object to them because they are not only compelled speech and are often completely irrelevant to what you’re applying for, but also ignore the fact that there are many ways to make contributions to society beyond enacting DEI. (For example, what about a college applicant who has taught illiterate adults to read?)
That is DEI. The writer is either confused or gaslighting for their own agenda.
I think this shift is happening all along the spectrum. This particular example is about the left shifting to the right, but there is also a bigger picture.
It's a natural consequence of the statistics that 1. people get more conservative on average as they get older, and the average age of most countries is steadily increasing, and 2. conservatives have more children on average, and political views are partially heritable.
Are you excluding the possibility that after seeing first hand over the past decade that these policies are often detrimental to an organization despite the popular narrative otherwise, people are no longer willing to play pretend for fear of being ostracized.
My fiancé works for non-profits and an educational institution (Canada). In the former, every grant application or program has to involve some DEI component regardless of how little sense it makes. Applying for funding for replacing a failing HVAC system for a skating rink? Applying for new gutters for a shed that houses field maintenance equipment? Please write a brief essay on how these projects benefit and advance equity for minorities!
In the latter, hiring and promotions have become nearly exclusively about race. Internal candidates have been explicitly told that they’re going to be passed over in favour of others because they’re not diverse. Under-qualified individuals are hired based on skin colour.
The American focus on race is a bit insane to outsiders. Putting such a big focus on race in university applications is just weird. Even worse, having top universities openly discriminate against people based on their race or heritage with affirmative action or similar policies, all in the name of equality, is unbelievable to Europeans like me. What the hell is wrong with the US if a person has a worse chance to be accepted into uni just because they happen to be born Asian? How is no one in DEI committees seeing the utter hypocrisy here?
I firmly believe that the US is your best chance when you look for a country with equality and acceptance regarding race, religion, and culture. A lot of my US friends experienced a dire wake-up call when visiting and finding their belief that Europe is more accepting and less conservative than the US to be dead wrong.
I'm European too and I can assure you that non-white people are discriminated at the admission stage to top European universities. Not via race, but via name. It's well known that universities and landlords reject people because they have a Muslim sounding name.
We have DEI in Europe too, but here it's increasingly codified into law.
I can guarantee you this is not the case, at least at the uni where I‘m doing my PhD. There is no name in the admission system, it‘s done automatically by grades or tests most of the time.
Could you please name one or two of such universities? I am a EU citizen and I literally never heard of this. I am aware that in some regions in some of our countries you might end up with a racist professor etc., but never heard you can be excluded based on name.
In Poland, admission to public universities is only based on your standardized test score. People grading standardized tests don't know your name or anything beyond a number, so discrimination is simply impossible.
Race is a distraction from the ultimate divide: class. IMO, every policy that wants to promote equality should revolve solely around class.
In every place on earth, richer upper-class people are more advantaged than those from the lower classes. Every social policy should focus on lessening that gap (I recognize that the gap can't be closed entirely).
> every policy that wants to promote equality should revolve solely around class.
That was the case in USSR. There were university admission quotas for workers, peasants, etc. In practice, they resulted in discrimination agains Jewish applicants.
To fulfill the class quotas, the examiners had to fail a disproportionate number of some of the strongest applicants. A whole set of "Jewish problems", colloquially known as " coffins", was developed. At MIT, Tanya Khovanova has written on this subject.
Not sure exactly how this relates, but you're still saying with people being failed that the class representation was more equitable? Not sure what them being jewish has anything to do with it?
A brutal truth is that wealthy, upper class people have resources for training their kids that legitimately better prepare them for academic success than poorer kids.
Those distinctions are irrelevant. Education was free in USSR. Access to math circles and specialized math schools was also free. It was not necessary to hire a tutor or pay for advanced classes to get admitted, unless we’re talking about the Conservatory or MGIMO.
Source: I was born and received education in USSR, so can tell Soviet propaganda from reality.
Friend of mine's boyfriend was born in the USSR and was Jewish. To get into college he had to pass a mathematics test that anyone who learned math in high school wouldn't be able to pass. He got in. Then his dad applied for a visa to move to Israel and they kicked him out.
Guy hates communists, leftists, f*scists, Putin, and anything like DEI. Basically anyone that seems to have a habit of doing to people what the communists did to him.
I think it's a good point to be really suspicious of systems that categorize people into convenient boxes based on things that have no control over. That then determines what happens to them.
Even lebron james gets the n word spray painted on his house. Class may be the main divide, but race is still an absolutely huge one that transcends class.
But then it ends up being tied to race since black folks are on average coming from a less wealthier class than white people.
And class is hard to judge objectively. If you go by income tax, many wealthy people show very little income since they live on their family wealth. E.g a house fully paid off and only earning meager income from a side business, while their stocks they inherited are climbing millions in valuation.
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.
10 acres of farmland is worth around $30,000 its also 200 meters by 200 meters they probably don't need much of a tractor and can probably do with one truck for what amounts to a hobby nobody could live on.
The USDA says a small family farm averages around 231 acres or about $693,000 in land. Even adding the equipment its a long way from 10M in assets and that isn't even accounting for the elephant in the room DEBT.
Any sole proprietorship which is net positive to the tune of 10M is in fact by any reasonable measure wealthy.
Most of those situations the student wouldn't own those assets. If you go by how much money relatives have, then you end up being unfair to kids who have been disowned or if the kid has a rich uncle that has never given anyone a penny, etc.
Yes, the US is obsessed over race. That's because Americans are traumatized. I agree it's not a good thing. However, diversity in university admission is a good thing. There are many different ways to have diversity. Diversity is not easy to achieve and since it's sensitive topic it's often not done right.
Diversity in university admissions is a good thing. But US universities guarantee equality of outcome. This is wrong, it should be merit based. If you argue that there is a clear ethnicity correlated class divide, you can achieve more fair diversity by giving more chances to student's from poor backgrounds, instead of focusing on their ethnicity.
This one is really interesting. I note that you don't list the counterpart at all, but here's a selection from Weavers, Scribes, and Kings:
> In Syria in the early second millennium BCE, Amorite-speaking people grew up knowing if they belonged to the Banu-Yamina ("sons of the right" or "sons of the south") or the Banu-Sim'al ("sons of the left" or "sons of the north").
Benjamin is the only name I know of to memorialize an ethnic conflict that was apparently won long, long ago, so long ago that most people with an active interest in the time period have no idea it existed.
As far as your question goes, just the form of your answer is pretty good at reinforcing the point of my question.
You think it's off topic? What would be an example of a reason land acknowledgments are a bad idea in Israel that wouldn't also make them a bad idea somewhere else?
I know it's annoying when these things get declared offtopic because of course they're connected by a sequence of associations—and you're right, it doesn't take that long of a sequence—but if you think about it from the overall topic of the thread, hopefully it makes more sense.
The right wing conspiracists would talk about a "New World Order" and something they called "problem-reaction-solution", so they thought this Left authoritarian Woke movement, was designed deliberate by something (the elites?) to push society to voting right as a knee jerk reaction..
I wonder if those conspiracy theories themselves are Chinese propaganda of some kind, or maybe Russian, or are the propagandists themselves giving away the game plan in plain sight. Right in front of you, where the psychological blind spot is. As Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian regimes seem to like Trump and a having right-wing party in power.
So is it a meta conspiracy??? And the real people behind it are China and Russia? That's likely too far fetched though.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here—it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for—and yes, this is the case regardless of which ideology an account is for or against:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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I think DEI/affirmative action is immoral, but I can also acknowledge that the topic tends to result in too much low-quality political spite in the comments.
But is there a wider problem if people stop discussing controversial but very important topics on the Internet in general? Can something be done to fence off the low quality comments, without removing them from public view? Instead of outright banning political controversy?
>DEI statements are important because they show individual awareness of historical inequities and current biases that form modern society.
Only the currently approved ones.
The perfect example: holocaust denial. Ask anyone in the US how many people died in the holocaust. The answer is 6 million and they are all Jews.
The real number is 14 million with 8 million Slavs, 6 million Jews and 2 million misc of gays, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, the work shy, etc..
The double think is so strong that you can have two people from the same village, in the same camp, dead on the same day and have one be a victim of the holocaust, and the other not just because one was a Jew and the other a Communist.
Because the Holocaust can refer to either the Nazi's genocide of Jews or all the genocides carried out by Nazi Germany. Most often it is the former.
So to reframe this, if you ask people how many people died in the Jewish genocide they'll probably give you the figure of how many Jews died, yes. They aren't ignoring all of the other victims, they're giving you the statistic of what they thought you asked for.
This is no different than separating out the genocide of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire and the genocide of Greeks by the same regime.
>>The double think is so strong that you can have two people from the same village, in the same camp, dead on the same day and have one be a victim of the holocaust, and the other not just because one was a Jew and the other a Communist.
Or to put it another way. If Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were both captured by time traveling Nazis and sent to Treblinka Marx would count towards the holocaust and Engels would not in the Wests version of holocaust denial.
Are you just now learning that words have definitions? Do you know what a definition is? The Holocaust is defined, a priori, as the Nazi genocide of Jews, whether in gas chambers or in killing fields. It's a word with a definition. The Nazi killing of communists for being communist is a politicide, not a genocide. The Nazi killing of gypsies is also genocide, similar to the Holocaust, but it definitionally isn't the Holocaust.
Wait so your definition of Holocaust denier is not the person that denies that 6 million Jews were systematically killed by the Nazi Germany machine, but the person who believes in the Holocaust of the Jews, but does not include other atrocities perpetrated by Nazis on the European population?
Can you clarify?
And in your opinion, did these DEI statements ever have Jews in mind?
Germany and Russia both committed daunting atrocities during the war, killed millions of people, but it's unsurprising that people associate "Holocaust" with 6 million Jewish dead, because the Jewish genocide is where the label originated.
I'm getting the impression a lot of Americans are now not just comfortable with systemic inequality, but are gravitating toward a position that it's actually desirable. In this environment, DEI bafflegab just pushes them in that direction.
That's a mischaracterization. No one is _for_ inequality. The opposition you speak of is _for_ race/gender blind meritocracy. Anyone with a little knowledge of economics understands that groups of people cut across any dimension will always have different outcomes; Russian Americans earn more than French Americans, Japanese Americans earn more than Fillipino Americans, taller people earn more than shorter people, etc.
No one thinks inequality is desirable. The opposition you speak of think it's unavoidable. And bad public policy will have effects that make the situation worse for everyone.
Hi - as a counterpoint, I think that inequality is desirable.
In a world with limited resources I think it makes sense to allocate more resources towards people who perform acts for society which require rare skill sets, talent, etc. That might mean more money, it might mean land, it might mean status, or anything else really.
The idea being that those rewards both serve as motivation and also help those people to focus on the good work that they are doing.
You can apply this to basically anything - I think that a more beautiful person, all else being equal, should recieve favourable treatment over an ugly one.
The main downside of such an approach seems to be that, to put it simply, losers get less than winners and to some people that seems unfair. But it's only unfair if the rewards allocated aren't proportional to merit.
I don't really consider this to be controversial to be honest - I think someone who is twice as good as me as a programmer, or contributes twice as much value to the business, or hell, is twice as good at football as me - should receive at least twice as much. That's unequal, but it's also sane and right.
I think that you are arguing against equity not equality. Usually the latter means “equality of opportunity”. At least that’s typically the difference in most debates.
A society in which the children of successful people are prioritised over the children of unsuccessful people is almost certain to lead to better outcomes for exactly the same reasons.
I came from an underprivileged background myself, if I were investing money with an aim to generating a return, I'd far sooner give it to a banker's son than someone from the estate I grew up on. I was the exception, not the rule, and the older I get the more I figure I must just be some sort of genetic freak, since the overwhelming opinion seems to be that our fate is predestined, nowadays.
Family wealth is probably an indicator for future success. I don't know the numbers, but I would expect family wealth to correlate positively with the earnings of the children. So if you want a return on investment, it makes sense to bet on the wealthy.
But I thought we were talking merit and opportunity? No, being a banker's son doesn't predestine you to being more skillful. You should already have enough counterexamples to demonstrate that fact.
Your comment is borderline bewildering. It's like corruption and nepotism don't exist.
Can you send me writing or video of any serious thinker advocating for this? The OP is a common straw-man characterization of the position I described.
It's interesting how "no one is for inequality" is taken as a statement that doesn't require proof (my original statement was about my impression, not a clear statement that was the case.)
I suggest that categorical statement that, universally, everyone is against inequality, needs some justification. Historically it's certainly not true AT ALL.
“ As an imprecise working definition (not for all times and places but for the United States today), “far right” is used here to mean political forces that (a) regard human inequality as natural, ”
As an Indian-American, "South Asian" is a perfectly reasonable ethnic grouping in the United States. Collectively, that represents ~1% of the US population, too small a grouping to reasonably split out when talking about ethnicity in general terms.
All cultures are fractal. For my own ethnic heritage, for example, I could insist on splitting out:
* South Indian Dravidians from North Indian Arynans
* Kannadigas from other South Indians
* Lingayats from Vaishnavites
But that level of detail (absent special contexts where its relevant) would almost always confuse rather than clarify.
South Asian is not "reasonable" it is pretty much racist. We white people could not be bothered with actually noticing the difference between Pakistan and India is the reason.
> Lingayats from Vaishnavites
This tells me you are probably some kind of humanities graduate from some murican university ?
I'm Indian-American, as I stated above, and the list of subcategories are my own ethnic taxonomy.
I'm not sure what part of the Lingayat distinction bothers you. My grandparents would characterize it as "Lingayat" vs "Brahmina"; would you have preferred that framing?
Calling "south Asia" the somewhat geographically and ethnically coherent region consisting of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan (excluding other parts of Asia that are located equally south because they are distinctly east or west) is a refreshingly objective naming.
Maybe such a region is too large and diverse to be meaningful, but there's no reason to accuse anybody of confusing parts of the old British empire or of embracing silly nationalist newspeak.
In the US, “south asian” is fine. In the UK, there’s enough of each group where I think you should distinguish Indian versus Pakistani versus Bangladeshi. It’s not a group of people who want to be lumped together, same with Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese. They're also far less closely related to each other than say British people and French people.
> I think you should distinguish Indian versus Pakistani versus Bangladeshi. It’s not a group of people who want to be lumped together, same with Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese.
It is a very different situation though. 100 years ago, there was just one country, India – with a great deal of internal ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity. And then, it was split into two over religion, and then one of those splits split again (due to a whole host of issues, although ethnicity and language were both significant factors). Whereas, China, Japan and Korea were distinct countries going back many centuries. You aren't comparing like and like here.
> They're also far less closely related to each other than say British people and French people.
In ethnic and linguistic terms, the majority populations of both Dhaka and Kolkata are basically the same people, the big difference is their religion (although Kolkata is 20% Muslim, and Dhaka around 3-4% Hindu). One can make similar points about the relationship between Lahore and Ludhiana. It is true that people in Dhaka and Lahore are not closely related, but the same is true between Kolkata and Ludhiana. The case of the British and French doesn't have any real parallels.
India was never one country until the modern incarnation. It was centrally administered under a series of empires, like the Austro-Hungarian empire. The groupings within the subcontinent are more different from each other than Western European countries. Even Bengalis, a distinctive ethnolinguistic group, are divided between India and Bangladesh based on religion, which is a major division—a much bigger one than the religious divisions that differentiate countries in Europe.
Many countries we identify as distinct in Western Europe are much more similar to each other than India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are. For example, France and Spain—both are Catholic, and their languages were considered merely different dialects of Vulgar Latin until the 1400s.
> India was never one country until the modern incarnation. It was centrally administered under a series of empires, like the Austro-Hungarian empire.
At the height of the Mughal Empire, it encompassed most of what would later be considered India, with the exception of the far south. You can argue that an empire is not a country, but if we argue in that way, well for most of European history, Europe didn't have countries either.
> Even Bengalis, a distinctive ethnolinguistic group, are divided between India and Bangladesh based on religion, which is a major division—a much bigger one than the religious divisions that differentiate countries in Europe.
There is a significant minority of Bengali Muslims in India, and a smaller minority of Bengali Hindus in Bangladesh. The Indian-Pakistan and India-Bangladesh divides have never neatly followed the religious divide, certainly never as neatly as religious nationalists on both sides would have it.
> For example, France and Spain—both are Catholic, and their languages were considered merely different dialects of Vulgar Latin until the 1400s.
Old French and Old Spanish were already identifiably distinct languages by the 9th century. Some argue (following Robert Wright) that a major impetus for them becoming identified as distinct languages was Charlemagne's Latin pronunciation reform. Prior to Charlemagne, Latin in Romance Europe was pronounced based on the local dialect – so the same Latin text would be read aloud using a French pronunciation in France, a Spanish pronunciation in Spain, an Italian pronunciation in Italy, etc. Monks from Britain and Ireland, having no indigenous tradition of Latin pronunciation, instead devised their own based on phonetic spelling. Charlemagne's advisors convinced him (however incorrectly) that the British/Irish tradition of pronouncing Latin was truer to the original, and so he imposed it on the Church–which suddenly made Latin and the vernacular seem like much more different languages. Now, that said, Wright's thesis is controversial – but even its academic critics, I don't think many of them would agree with you in putting the distinction between vulgar Latin and Old Romance so late.
And, while no denying the difference between Islam and Hinduism is bigger than difference between Catholicism and Protestantism, Europe shows parallel cases of countries with a common language and culture, where the major difference is the dominant religion – the primary difference between Austria and Germany, is the former has traditionally had a Catholic supermajority with a small Protestant minority, the latter was traditionally dominated by Protestants, albeit with a large Catholic minority.
The vulgar of different European places was already splintered into very different variants many centuries before the 1400s, it just matured from a continuum of random informal dialects, the further you travel the better linguist you have to be, to more consolidated and more recognized languages (plenty of different ones in "France" and "Spain").
One reason this American (me) says "South Asian" is because here "Indian" also means "indigenous North American".
If hypothetically the government of India were to declare that the name in English of the country shall in the future be "Bharat" or "Hindustan", Americans would rapidly switch to the new name, and I would no longer be tempted to say "South Asian" when I mean Indian.
This is the most ridiculous take I've seen all year. South Asia is an established geographical-cultural term that includes the two largest countries in Southern Asia - India and Pakistan.
May be in the HN bubble "South Asia" is an expected term, very likely because HN crowd might be subjected to far left academia. But it is offensive and racist for actual Indians.
I value DEI as a critical part of addressing systemic injustice and building a strong, multifaceted organization.
However, these statement requirements look like absolute trash. The sort of thing that is wholly performative. Frankly, it's good they are being dropped in my view.
An intervention is only as good as the work needed to intervene. Saying, "spend ten minutes writing up a statement that no one will ever read and then discard" does zero actual lifting towards enabling inclusion.
DEI policies are useful only inasmuch as they mask, rather than expose, the inequities of the system. Once people start taking it seriously and understanding the exploitative nature of capitalism, DEI gets dropped like a hot potato.
Ignoring the pros and cons of these statements, I would bet money that the biggest (or perhaps "real") reason they're being axed is that nobody is reading them. It's one thing to all agree that something sounds great on paper, until you're forced to sit down and read page after page after page of drivel the authors didn't want to have to write while trying to say the things that you probably want to hear.
It seems like it's every day that I see signs that institutions are preparing for and aligning themselves with a prospective Trump presidency. Recent purges of media are another big one, especially of ones featuring marginalized groups, though thoughtful and challenging stories in general are targets - inclusive, ironically-though-quite-creatively, of something like Helldivers 2. You might not think that that example counts, but I do. It fits what is fast becoming the zeitgeist, one of monoliths flexing their ability to act with impunity, individuals left with nothing more than futile, quiet acts of resistance (which don't ultimately do much resisting). The guy at the top is doing it, after all, so for those at the top of their particular interest (market, field, etc.): why not? Who's going to stop you?
Our democracy might be and remain intact, but our democratic values - particularly those of valuing forthright thought; of speaking up and across instead of down; and of not hiding our faults behind smug strength or stone walls of silence, but instead exposing them so that they may be cleansed and sutured - do seem to be in jeopardy. This is an example of choosing easy over rigorous, and that's sad, especially for MIT.
We have ample evidence of how this happens in societies descending into radical nationalism, if not fascism. So, now I'm just wondering if we're the "learn from the past"-types or the "doomed to repeat it"-types. (Just as much as I'd like to know the answer to that, I'd love to hear from someone who understands what I'm trying to say here, even if they disagree.)
The specific way you phrased that question makes me suspect you misinterpreted this as a banning of speech. Not at all. They're removing a class of required question from application forms. “The MIT administration has advised the departments that were requiring DEI statements to stop requiring them and to stop using this kind of information. This has just recently been disclosed to the faculty, but a general announcement to the students is not planned.”
Unless I'm misunderstanding your question, the very start of the article seems to cover it:
>DEI statements are affirmations made when you’re applying for college admission, university jobs, or even science-society grants, recounting to the authorities your philosophy of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” your history of DEI activities, and how you will implement DEI initiatives if you get the admission/job/grant.
Futhermore, the counterexample cited, teaching adult literacy, seems like a good way of furthering equity and inclusion to me. This sounded like the author contradicting themselves.
Most applicants for a desirable position are likely to come from the majority group of your region. So for a minority candidate to be selected they would not only have to be equal to the others - but better. That seems unfair to me. What does that mean over the long term regarding how you hire?
That said, discussions about DEI tend to ignore that thing we are never meant to talk about: social class. Social class and money overrides everything.
> Applicants for a desirable position are likely to come from the majority group of your region. So for a minority candidate to be selected they would not only have to be equal to the others - but better.
Your second sentence here doesn't actually follow from the first.
If you have 5 equally good candidates, 4 men and 1 woman that woman has a 1/5 chance of being selected. The others also have a 1/5 chance as individuals but the candidate selected has a 4/5 likelihood of being male.
If you want to hire more women what do you do exactly?
In this scenario, you should expect to have a representation of around 1 woman per 4 men, if the rate of qualified candidates is 1 woman per 4 men. If you want to hire more than that ratio, you have to be doing some discarding of otherwise qualified candidates on the basis only of being men.
Sure. But even if you want to hire at about 1 women per 4 men you would need to actively do so. I.E. create a hiring policy in which she would be selected instead of one of the other equally qualified men.
Not at all! Passively choosing from the equally-qualified-candidate distribution across the board will yield representation that's right in line with that distribution.
There may be some groups that are entirely men and some that are entirely women, but the aggregate result will approach the true population of qualified candidates.
Yes, it's true that if you want to hire some group of people above their percent rate in your applicant pool, you're going to have to put your thumb on the scale for that group of people.
But this has the opposite effect from what you were just claiming. It means you hire worse candidates merely on the basis of their immutable characteristics.
Or, equivalently, you discriminate against other candidates on the basis of their immutable characteristics. Which is illegal in the US.
When recruiting students into science/technology-centric paths (which is what MIT is looking for), it's important to accept that the required mix of interest in the subject and a strong work ethic is just not all that common. It's also difficult to predict which students are going to have those characteristics based solely on high school grades, SAT scores, etc.
Thus excluding anyone from the pool of applicants on the basis of things like gender, ethnicity, etc. means you end up with fewer students going into challenging math and science programs, which is really not a good outcome in terms of remaining competitive with China and other booming technological sectors. For example, Caltech used to be all-male until c.1970 and is now about 45% female at the undergraduate level - but the curriculum is still as rigorous as ever.
P.S. STEAM is better than STEM; the arts these days have many tie-ins with technology and STEM students with no experience of any of the arts are missing out on many economic and personal growth opportunities.
We already have a word for "STEAM": "Academia". Unless you don't consider, say, History an art or a science, in which case, why do you hate historians so much that you'd make up an acronym that basically means "not you specifically"?
All: Please don't use HN for ideological battle. There are too many low-quality/predictable comments here. We want curious conversation, not sharp recitals.
I know it's hard when the topic is itself an ideological battle, but that's a good time to review the site guidelines, including this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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 there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument, or can you point me to one online? If so, I'd honestly love to hear it, and I mean this quite genuinely. I did some googling beforehand and found loads of "how to write a good DEI statement" articles, but literally every single one of them just took it at face value that these were a good thing to begin with (or, perhaps in their defense, that "academic jobs require it", so you better learn how to write one in any case).
>but is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument, or can you point me to one online
There was a recent debate on this[1] and even the debater for the pro DEI statement side (that they could find) admitted that DEI statements that were just ideological pledges were wrong, and he was only in favor of statements about concrete things you did to advance the DEI agenda (eg. "I did a, b, and c in my previous position to enhance DEI in my department"). He argued that was justified because DEI (at least the principles, not necessarily the specific policies like affirmative action or whatever) were ostensibly things that the university cares about, and therefore they were fair game to ask for.
[1] https://opentodebate.org/debate/are-dei-mandates-for-univers... (it's a podcast but there's a transcript tab on the page)
I’ve heard this same argument for DEI statements every time the topic has been debated: They sidestep arguments about DEI statements and instead retreat to safer arguments about how advancing DEI is a good thing.
On one hand, I get it. Arguing for DEI in an abstract sense is much easier than arguing for specific interventions.
On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy, where the debater conflates two topics and then retreats to the safer position while hoping that the audience will accept it as an argument for the more difficult position.
DEI statements have been quite unpopular as specific interventions, as noted in the article by the way that the majority of staff disagreed with them when polled privately. However, speaking out against them publicly was viewed as a very risky move and serious career mistake, so they slowly slipped into mainstream acceptance.
It’s interesting to see how they’re now quietly being removed from processes with as little attention as possible. Nobody wants to be known as the person who campaigned against them publicly, but I suspect there are a lot of people feeling relief in this case as they’re being quietly removed from the process.
Feels a little bit like making people take anti-theft pledges. I don't think anyone could reasonably expect that theft would be prevented by someone pledging not to engage in it yet it might be tricky to publicly remove because "what are you, pro-theft!?!"
Similar to DEI training in general which doesn't appear to do too much. It should be argued that "we shouldn't do these trainings" yet you also don't want to be the one saying that.
What does appear to work is a company actually hiring and promoting skilled diverse individuals and not just their buds.
Imo it's very different bc the ideology pledge itself is mostly distracting from the real purpose of the dei statement (again imo), which is to provide a way to select employees based on race, etc, without it being the explicit reason.
A better comparison would be if instead of an anti-theft pledge, there were a ten-commandments plus beatitudes test/ statement, without referencing the source religion. Maybe call it a morality pledge.
It's essentially a religious test hiding behind another name and terms, and even if it doesn't explicitly discriminate based on religion, it's obviously designed so that people of certain religions do better.
And filters people not from those religions by boosting those who essentially share the same values, or can fake it.
In the same way, dei doesn't explicity select for diversity applicants, but for people who are explicitly pro-diversity-applicant.
Which doesn't sound quite as pure of you replace "diversity" with any of the approved / included groups...
'I'm not picking applicant based on them being black, but based on them having an ideology that is pro-black-applicant.'
Although sadly we've normalized it to crossing that line as well, with the last SCOTUS nominee.
> diversity applicants
Friendly nudge that this isn’t a meaningful term. Once you start noticing people saying things like “our hiring pool is 60% diversity” it’s hard to unsee.
I don't agree. "Diversity" has a commonly accepted meaning which in the US at least, means everything except white men. Female or non-white are "diversity." A great example are the statements and articles from 2020 when Biden announced the most diverse ever White House Communications Team which was 100% female. Biden talked about how critical diversity was and bragged about this 100% female communications team. All the articles I read about it had things like "most diverse White House Communications Team in history" to describe it. At least from a gender perspective, I don't see how they could make it more clear that diversity == women
> "Diversity" has a commonly accepted meaning which in the US at least, means everything except white men.
Unfortunately this is common, because they do bad things with "diversity", even though diversity itself isn't bad. This isn't a very good defintion of what "diversity" should be, of course. There are many kind of diversity, and which are more important depends on the situation. But, regardless of it, diversity includes white men (and everyone else, too).
Visible diversity in skin colours, height, etc can be relevant for some things (e.g. movies that will have a lot of different people, or when doing research for a computer program that works on pictures of people (to do compression, colour correction for lighting conditions, etc)). Diversity in experience (even if all of them happen to be white men) can be relevant for many things (and is very helpful).
Of course, none of this should mean that you should deny application of other diversity because of their skin colours, height, gender, etc; they should not deny an application for such reasons. Having women in the White House Communications Team is not a bad thing, but that doesn't mean that having men is a bad thing!!! Having men is not a bad thing. One thing being good does not make the other one bad.
> none of this should mean that you should deny application
Is there any evidence that anybody was _ever_ doing this after about 1950 or so?
Asians aren't counted as "diversity" either. This is why they're referred to as "an inconvenient minority" in the context of DEI.
For that, does "asians" mean people from the middle of asia (ie middle east), or people from south east asia (ie oriental)?
Asking because the term has different meanings in say the UK (asian -> from middle east) vs Australia (asian -> from south east asia).
>people from south east asia (ie oriental)
it is actually more common from the European and Middle Eastern context to call the (Turkish and Levantine and Arabian) Middle East "oriental"; in Israel, "oriental food" is hummus and felafel; the Orient Express train went to Istanbul. East Asian is the term for ... east Asians and of course the SE Asians you mentioned, and South Asian is the term for "India+Pakistan+" people. Central Asian is the "the -stans" and Mongolia and parts of Russia.
Wow, it's even more complicated than I realised. :)
In the US almost no-one would say "asian" for any country west of Nepal. Sometimes they say "south-asian" for India or the surrounding countries, but even that term is only sometimes extended out to pakistan.
[flagged]
Read replies to the tweet https://twitter.com/USAndMumbai/status/1787772852084830251
An Asian-owned company in US can easily get 80%+ Asian. Is that "diversity"?
This depends on how you frame. It is not diverse for the company, but it could be in the larger social context. Putting the same thing in, say, San Francisco can be different from doing the same in Utah.
It may not be a category (imo it is), but it's at least a hierarchy.
It does go beyond simply making a pledge, though. Applicants are required to list all the ways they've furthered the cause of this very specific issue, regardless of whether the job itself would entail or even offer opportunities to exercise such experience or not.
Like requiring an applicant for a fullstack python/js position to list in detail all of their Erlang experience, projects, talks and initiatives, and gatekeeping on that.
Now Erlang itself is great, and understanding the principles that guide it will almost certainly help you in your career (even if you never write a single line professionally). But to make this a central focus of acceptance for the job is just plain silly.
Perhaps that is a good analogy, because I agree, and that is true whether it is Erlang or if it is DEI statements or if it is something else, even if they can be good things it is certainly no good to make this a central focus of acceptance for the jub.
But the problem is they can’t even get “diverse” right. Do they mean diverse in ideas? In thought? In opinion? No.
My LARGE company is on a tirade to ensure we use diverse supplies. We’re collecting metrics on this so we can proudly state how many diverse vendors we we use. When asked what we define as diverse they stated (among other things) that they were members of the LGBQ community. So I asked “so our company is very much concerned if the owners of the companies we work with are bisexual?”
Im married to a woman, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility that I’m bi-sexual. So if, in addition to being attracted to my wife, I’m also attracted to men, then all of a sudden I’m a priority for the company.
It boggles my mind.
Or like the pledges that university students have to fill out before each exam, promising not to cheat in any way. As if "you broke the pledge you signed" carries any more weight than "you cheated".
> “feels a little bit like people making anti-theft pledges”
Slate Star Codex covered this so well on https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-murderism/
I suspect you could get away with speaking out publicly on this if you said something like "DEI statements aren't actually advancing DEI" first. You need to break the link between the statements and the goal first, so that you don't look like you're attacking the goal.
You have a much more optimistic view of the current state of public discourse than I do.
There are plenty of organizations and people ready to tear down anything seen as against the party line for their own benefit. It's so much easier to criticize than contribute, and it only takes a few criticisms that ignore nuance and present things in a different context for critical mass to gather behind those misinterpretations.
The same things that make certain public forums resistant to this are the same things limit their growth, or that limit the spread of the message (content bubbles), so I'm not sure how to get around that without a major societal and cultural shift to how information is consumed.
>On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy, where the debater conflates two topics and then retreats to the safer position while hoping that the audience will accept it as an argument for the more difficult position.
Motte and bailey accusations only work if the statemnts in question are being made by the same person. For the debater in the post above at least, is there any evidence he personally is engaging in this? Or anyone else? Otherwise it's a bit fallacious to lump everyone who's pro DEI as one entity.
> Motte and bailey accusations only work if the statemnts in question are being made by the same person.
I think it's perfectly justified in cases where debater self-identifies as part of the "bailey" community -- that is, if in other contexts the debater wouldn't oppose people arguing for the bailey position.
> On the other hand, this is the textbook example of a Motte-and-bailey fallacy
In a textbook, it would be called "equivocation".
> where the debater conflates two topics
Yep.
I continue to be somewhat disturbed by the fact that giving a new name to a problem we've recognized for thousands of years has apparently increased awareness. Did people not realize equivocation was bad before Scott Alexander?
Because it's not just equivocation. Read more of the actual original definition/usage of motte-and-bailey.
Motte-and-bailey isn't just an argumentative form, it's also a political strategy. It's people pushing/doing controversial thing A but every time they get called on it they bring up uncontroversial thing B. Or, they even retreat to thing B, but then when the pressure is off they come back out and start pushing/doing thing A again.
"Equivocation" covers a wide variety of situations, but motte-and-bailey is more specific and includes the notions of a strategy executed over time which includes action.
You haven't actually described any differences between the terms. (Well, you did claim one, that "motte-and-bailey is more specific", but combined with your appeal to "actual usage", that is clearly untrue.)
Motte-and-Bailey speaks to equivocating about positions in argument. There are many other ways to equivocate, e.g. over the meaning of a single word, used in multiple ways in the same argument, as opposed to a retreat to an easier-to-defend position over the initial one presented/being discussed - as in the thread above.
The relationship between the two words is akin to the one between “rectangle” and “square”.
The original SSC article about Motte-and-Bailey used "strategic equivocation" as an alternate name, not just plain old equivocation. I.e. intentionally equivocating whenever is convenient for some political/social/whatever goal
Alternatively, you're reversing the causality. As such fallacies have become borderline ubiquitous in many relevant aspects of life, greater appreciation and understanding of what's happening led to the emergence of language that's not only more figurative and visual, but also more precise. Because while all motte and bailey fallacies will be false equivocations, not all false equivocations will be motte and bailey fallacies.
Engaging in a genocidal action and then claiming it's self defense when scrutinized is a textbook motte and bailey fallacy. Claiming that people who oppose said genocide are supporters of fringe radical elements within the genocided, is a false equivocation, but not a motte and bailey fallacy. Indeed, you could make your exact argument about association fallacies, or a wide array of other fallacies for that matter - as most tend to involve false equivocation at some point.
Thanks very much! I haven't watched this yet, but this was exactly the kind of honest discussion I was looking for that I didn't previously find, so much appreciated.
Would it make more sense to have a generic statement, where one could do more dei side or it could be reaching out to undergraduates.
Basically, a "aside from your teaching and research ability, what have you done to improve your campus that would make us want to hire you"
It's much more ambiguous, on what is valuable.
(I have no idea what the hiring process is like, just a random thoughts)
The exact question doesn't even matter that much. They could just as well give you a blank page.
What's more important is how they grade and rank you and make decisions. Eg imagine they only hired you if filled that blank page with a picture of the Pope, even if there are no explicit instructions or questions asking for it.
> (eg. "I did a, b, and c in my previous position to enhance DEI in my department")
What if they worked for a dept. that didn't promote these things and may have had policy against them? Why should a candidate need to please yet another committee or reviewer of their "body of work" to now include and require certain achievements in an area that isn't even understood by many and all but squashed now by the supreme court as a tool to recruit students?
> What if they worked for a dept. that didn't promote these things and may have had policy against them?
Then they lack experience relevant to the job, right? That's like asking "what if the applicant has no experience teaching computer science because he previously worked in the history department", except they can still make up something about feeling oppressed or fighting back against a culture they disagreed with.
This seems like the least problematic thing about mandatory DEI statements: if you value DEI, you should value candidates with some previous experience of working in the DEI industry.
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My first reaction to this news was, “fine, sounds like a silly requirement.” However, being a PhD graduate from a minority background, I really have to thank my advisor for the undergraduate outreach work he did, without which there is realistically a negligible chance I would have ended up with a PhD and a great research career. I don’t know what motivated him to do this work, but from a purely pragmatic perspective, if professors know that performing such duties helps them get promoted, perhaps it’s not a bad policy, as long as inequities exist in academia. There are so many other pressures on young faculty, outreach may be something that is hard to justify spending time on unless you have to do it in some sense.
I think this is a good point. I wonder how useful diversity statements are for accomplishing this task. It just seems like cheap talk to me. More useful would be to reward people in tenure review for outreach to minorities.
I’m from a minority, just not one that is recognized as such in the convoluted system that is racial politics in the US (I am of Iraqi descent). But if I were in the shoes of someone who should be benefiting from DEI policies, I’d be pissed off with how it’s shaken out. Seems like a whole lot of empty, performative symbolism with negligible actual change. Things like DEI statements read like box ticking to me, allowing administrators to say they’ve “tried” without doing anything. Same goes for sensitivity trainings, and flashy renaming of, for example, master to main. The singular focus on symbolism has not done anyone any favors apart from a few semiotics professors, although I wonder if they’ve been chastened by how little their favored policies have accomplished.
One of the things it does do is separate people who treat it as a box checking exercise from the people who approach it seriously.
Such is the nature of bureaucracies, whatever is easy to measure will become the measure
I once helped my advisor write a grant application and he put in some great outreach stuff in the DEI section of the app. What turns me cynical about DEI statements/sections is that after we won the grant, there was no money for that inclusion programming and nobody ever checked whether we'd really done it.
And that is the ‘performative’ part.
It’s similar to making everyone sort their recycling, and then just throwing it all in the same landfill when it actually gets to the dump.
Why not actually recycle?
And/or if we’re not going to actually recycle, why make everyone go through such a complicated song and dance and spend so much time on something that ends up not mattering?
Wait, this is a lot more applicable of an analogy than I was expecting.
It's also a way to compel action across all professors, not just professors from historically-underrepresented groups, who would likely be bearing the brunt of the work.
Perhaps you were simply evaluated against your noggin and not your skin?
Edit: what are the arguments against this?
This comment does not make sense in reply to this question...where did they say anything about evaluation, the point they made is the difference it made is their advisor doing outreach.
I made the mental leap of “the advisor reached out because they saw the potential” which I assumed… was assumed.
No it's not on an individual basis, outreach work means something more like the professor talked to a group of students about their work and what they can do to join their lab for a phd. There are lots and lots of undergrads who don't know a thing about graduate school.
In this case, "outreach" means [1]:
[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/outreach#dictiona...they very well might have been evaluated based entirely on their abilities alone.
A toxic element of DEI is that now they have to always wonder (as does everyone else) if it was done because of their skin color/gender/race, regardless of what their mentor says. Because it very well may be true as well.
Just like the justice system. People should be assumed innocent until proven guilty. DEI and more broadly CRT are toxic because minorities, like all humans have faults and these ideas promote minorities to assume discrimination instead of faults. Therefore not helping these individuals improve their faults. This also promotes division and hatred in society. Overall net negative.
to be fair, I don't think yelling at someone for their flaws is very effective at fixing them.
My reasoning can be summed up as "look at prison recidivism vs Skinner's work on positive reinforcement".
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> Edit: what are the arguments against this?
I happen not to agree with them, but leaving that aside they're often that Ok fine, it's a pipeline problem^, but the solution is to address that at every stage, not just the beginning.
(^meaning for example schoolgirls aren't sufficiently interested and encouraged into STEM so university applications are low, so admissions are low, so graduations are low, so job applications are low, so offers are low, so employer gender ratios are low)
STEM is something you gotta have some substantial internal motivation to do, such as doing it for a hobby. The kind of work I enjoy, you gotta really like it or it isn't going to work out for you.
For example, I was taking machines apart when I was 7 trying to figure out how they worked. I'd break open resistors to see what was inside - just baffling grey dust. Eventually I took bicycles apart, then engines, then whole cars. It was just foregone that I was going to engineering school.
I get very little joy from programming. I never program outside of work - I hike, climb, work on my house, raise my kids. But it pays the bills and I can do it, so I've put in the time to learn enough to be worth paying a salary.
When I was a kid I wanted to be a paleontologist. Then I wanted to be a smoke jumper. Now I'm a staff engineer.
Not everyone gets to do what they love. Some of us are just following the money.
Maybe decades ago when college students based their choice of majors on feelings or whatever that might have been true. Nowadays college students are much more practical. An obvious example is the rise in CS majors in the last decade.
The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.
As a STEM student who actually did a STEM job (basic science research) you have to love it to make a career out of it.
The pay isn’t fantastic and your career is basically doing the same thing (with more skill over time) for 30 years. With most of your work a failure.
Even people who liked it often bailed.
Programming is a bit different. You can make a lot of money, have varied jobs and just grin and bear it for the money.
Have to agree the lower salary means you have to love it to spend years doing it. I moved to CS because of that mainly.
> The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.
Pretty much all the ones I know that are good at it love it. Just like musicians and athletes.
Sure, there are those in it for the money. They're usually the tweeners.
> Nowadays college students are much more practical.
I'm not so sure about that. There's a large number of math avoiders in college, and when they graduate discover their degree is worth a minimum wage job.
Okay but the difference is that being a mediocre athlete or musician means that you're unemployed, whereas you can be a totally mediocre programmer and make well into the 6 figures. My friends who are professional musicians know far more about their craft than even the most motivated engineers I've worked with, and they make less money than the worst paid engineers I've met. I've casually played guitar for almost 20 years and been programming less than half that time ane I can't even think about going pro without a massive dedicated effort.
That's because those don't pay you money. I know plenty of excellent engineers who couldn't care less about computer science.
I'm an engineer, and I'm not much into the academic side of computer science. But I enjoy engineering very much.
> The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.
You clearly don't have much exposure to the stem bubble. Overwhelming majority are passionate geeks.
Ha ha ha. I have a CS PhD and am friends with grad students in many other STEM fields. There are just as many who are "passionate", or whatever geeky losers who waste their life obsessing over minutiae want to be called, as there are people who are working on their degree for the sake of practicality. I would say the latter are in fact generally more successful.
> losers who waste their life obsessing over minutiae want to be called
Enjoying your work is not the same thing as obsessing over irrelevant minutia.
To go into a subject, with no foundation, no motivation and no interest. How is this a set up for success?
I mean, sure, people can go into any subject, but... if they're to succeed?
As a society we have purposely shaped the way we do STEM so that it can be carried out by an army of employees trained to do relatively simple tasks. It is much better for a company to hire 15 people to do one thing, than to hire one brilliant person to do the same.
The extra cost is just passed on to the consumer, and you gain predictability and managerial prestige.
As an example, Amazon had twice as many people working just on Alexa as there are employees total at JPL. And JPL designs, engineers, builds and operates dozens of groundbreaking spacecraft, including several space telescopes, Mars rovers, and the Voyager programme. JPL needs people with substantial internal motivation, Amazon et al. do not.
> As a society we have purposely shaped the way we do STEM so that it can be carried out by an army of employees trained to do relatively simple tasks.
I see no purposeful force "shaping" this.
> It is much better for a company to hire 15 people to do one thing, than to hire one brilliant person to do the same.
They would hire the one brilliant person if they could. The trouble is finding them.
Also, brilliant is not the same thing as enjoying the work.
perhaps he wasn't. clearly we are at an impasse
Maybe put some value and engage with someone's articulation of their personal experience as opposed to simply dismissing it because it does not comport with your world view.
What did I dismiss?
By all accounts they sounds quite successful as well as appreciative of their undergraduate advisor.
Engage in their experience? See above. Should I have snuck in there somewhere “nice job kind gentle person, you succeeded” or something?
What world view is that?
Not to be flippant but the saying "when you're robbing peter to pay paul, you can always count on the support of paul" comes to mind. Maybe you really are a super qualified researcher that is doing great work, but all I see as the result of this DEI stuff is sinecures and make work jobs and generally lower standards across the board. (e.g. the former harvard president, or the current press secretary)
I dont think anyone would have a problem with DEI if it was about identifying unrecognized talent and making sure it got the proper attention. Thats not what it is right now.
How was the outreach aimed at you different than the outreach aimed at any other students?
It's not about treating students differently. Rather it's about where you spend your limited resources for outreach.
For example, during my PhD I did outreach in both elementary and middle schools where teachers said there were skills gaps they needed help with. The demographics in some of those schools happened to be such that 80-90% of the students were black and brown.
That's not really DEI. That's just targeting schools with skills gaps, and it might have turned out to be mostly white. To be DEI, they'd have to be chosen because of ethnicity, gender, etc.
DEI is applied broadly, for example here's a list of demographics targeted for DEI from one of Biden's executive orders [1]:
[1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...Unsurprisingly, "poor people" are not targeted for help.
Nor "people who are doing badly at school".
I think if more DEI efforts were expressed as programs like this, there would be a lot less backlash.
I was on the academic job market recently. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the process of writing my DEI statement was a valuable learning experience. For example, I read several interesting papers about randomized controlled trials testing the effects of various classroom interventions. I also have some more clarity about the relevant philosophical questions, both due to reading others' thoughts and due to being forced to articulate my own thoughts.
For those reasons, my feelings toward DEI statements are more positive now than they were before. Still, on balance, I think I'm inclined to favor removing DEI statements from faculty applications.
Yeah, this is what I am also thinking of. It makes sense for people in a position to create a culture or hire a team to know, it's a science you probably weren't exposed to in school and knowing the real effects that are known and studied is a darn good start to implementing DEI well. Doing it based on guesswork is probably worse than useless. So that's the non-ideological part.
If you actually care enough to study it and propose hiring processes that encourage it then that's an actual worthwhile education process. It can be little stuff... like I hide names on resumes and obscure gender to avoid that very well known bias. It's not perfect, but it's actually a net win all around to do that kind of thing, and you wouldn't know how big a deal it is and how much benefit it is for your team without reading. It's a complicated topic, and I think many of the concepts applied earnestly but scientifically testing them is a good idea. To be ideological.
This requirement wouldn't stop that, necessarily, but it means that such learning occurs after hiring rather than before. And after hiring there's a lot less incentive, and a lot to do.
> it's a science you probably weren't exposed to in school
Interesting take, why do you think it is you likely weren’t expose to DEI in school?
While I’m thinking about it, didn’t we just used to call it “affirmative action”?
>didn’t we just used to call it “affirmative action”?
no. in short, affirmative action represented an attempt at "equality of opportunity" in the belief that some extra pushes would remediate "the problem"
"equity" refers to forcing particular outcomes, using various measure that operate as "quotas" including the lowering of standards like entrance exam scores.
Affirmative action did not result in enough doctors meeting various criteria, so we must need to force the results we want by whatever means necessary; since we believe all people are equal, anything short of that must be the result of a pernicious mechanism
> "equity" refers to forcing particular outcomes,
Oh, ok. Well we used to have a different word for that.
I guess: maths, physics, engineering, anything that’s not Sociology or Economics?
https://twitter.com/Rule3O3/status/1705282969584140749
A lot of things have "said purpose" and the "real purpose" because of which such absolutely kafkaesque things survive in organizations.
The said purpose of-course is to make sure that the candidate is "committed to diversity". We can argue all day on whether a statement is in any way good measure of it. It really isn't. I have helped people write such statements and we have always written it with cynicism and great contempt for the people who might actually read it.
But the "real reason" which such concept found a great foothold in modern American universities is that it kind of acts as top kill to get rid of potential people who might actually ask questions critical of various ideological positions that the university's internal bodies might have. You either want a radical zealot or at least someone who is willing to play along for his own career-maxing goals. What you don't want is someone who can call the emperor naked. Diversity statements are excellent way to achieve this as I have seen people write one line diversity statements such as 'I don't have one as I do not think diversity is important'. Such person IMO is more intellectually honest and would be a good addition to faculty position but will not be hired.
You are right that there is tons of resentment around the DEI BS that people have to go through. Tech companies have esoteric training problems with terms like "allyship" and "bystander effect" and all that which basically smells rotten to lot of engineers but they cynically complete those trainings any ways.
The pinned comment at the top of this thread requests that "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive". Bravo to you for providing exactly that.
Too much of the discourse around this insists that these statements are useless and counterproductive. But as you've explained, they do pretty well in staffing the leadership of these orgs with people who believe in this philosophy by weeding out people who disagree or won't go along for career progression.
> The pinned comment at the top of this thread requests that "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive". Bravo to you for providing exactly that.
Consider the fine grained details of the logic involved in combining "more" with "exactly(!) that".
The above commenter framed the situation as the DEI folks being necessarily strategically dishonest and malicious, as opposed to being True Believers (more technically: Naive Realists), like most people are, though with different fantasy worlds, due to the consumption of different training material combined with the same flawed interpreter.
> The above commenter framed the situation as the DEI folks being necessarily strategically dishonest and malicious.
I think the question of whether DEI folks are dishonest is entirely irrelevant (but important). You have to put yourself in the shoes of some diversity officer and think of what you will do to feel important, save your job and get promotion.
You will obviously have to come up with idea like "diversity statements", "diversity OKR" for your engineering managers. Most engineering managers are busy building products, they might think it is stupid but still would play along since the cost of compliance is very low.
When someone stands up to this, diversity officials get the villains that further help them justify their role and existence. "Look this person is creating unsafe work environment, he needs to go". All this results into an organizations which loses its ability to question DEI initiatives even more.
It is not my claim that DEI folks are all vile, they get into a conference room and make these grand plans. It is just that the moment you create positions like "DEI officials" the incentives are aligned to set the ball rolling.
Ya, these are certainly valid points....once Humans get into groups, all sorts of bizarre dynamics kick into gear.
Affairs on this planet always remind me of this movie clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmHy34EWlpw
....except, it's hard to figure out who is chasing who!! lol
The line at 2:40 gets me every time.
Maybe us folks should get together and decide if our Dear Leaders and Experts might need a bit of a time out to consider how they've been behaving.
Hard disagree. The argument assumes bad intent on the part of the evil DEI and implies the only reason for the policy is too get rid of "troublemakers".
This is some peak choir preaching. If you polled people neutral, or those with the opposite opinion they would think it's nonsense.
But on this site you can just chant things like "all hail the gray ones, the ones that can't be silenced by the blues!" and be celebrated. In fact, I suspect there's a high chance of me getting banned for pointing this out.
I don’t think that is what the poster was saying. If it was, they wouldn’t have used ‘kafkaesque’.
From what I can tell, they are saying the purpose of the statements is to weed out people who will be openly honest about concerns or be willing to debate pros and cons of a controversial position held by leadership.
They could still privately disagree or not go along, they’d just have to be able to do so while keeping up appearances.
Which in my experience academically and with big-corp is very accurate. There are plenty of folks who will spout DEI party lines all day long while only hiring Asian women, or Indian men, or white women, or white men, etc. as long as no one makes a stink about it in a way they’ll get in trouble.
Notably, those folks have also finely honed their ability to nuke anyone from orbit that attempts to get them in trouble for what they are definitely doing.
From an organizational perspective, it’s actually a very valuable skill - because to make this work, they have to placate stakeholders while also getting some key metric that the organization needs ‘done’ well enough to offset their other shenanigans.
And in any sufficiently large organization, it’s essentially impossible to do that by actually doing all the things you’re supposed to be doing to the level you’re supposed to be doing them.
Which is why large organizations (and frankly societies) tend to be kafkaesque - they have too many conflicting interests and power bases that all have potentially legitimate reasons for applicability, but are irreconcilable-in-fact/impractical when ‘the rubber meets the road’.
It's not that, the reality of fascism on uni campuses (in tech) is really bleak. Lots of people don't see the problems that don't bother them.
So it's not trying to off people for asking the wrong questions. They're trying to cut back on the assholes that say things like:
"Awktually, there is a scientific arguement that whites smarter than blacks" "I see you're black, but how ghetto are you?" etc. etc.
Some things may get blown out of proportion, but I think people that claim it's not so bad don't know how bad it is for someone that doesn't fit a specific mold.
> A lot of things have "said purpose" and the "real purpose" because of which such absolutely kafkaesque things survive in organizations.
I remember sitting in conference room once and between meetings we started discussing the MBA degree and how you often needed one to move up at big companies. I mused that I didn't understand why this was so important since an MBA program didn't teach you much that you couldn't learn on the job or by reading a few books.
A colleague of mine, who'd recently gotten his MBA, started laughing out loud. He said, "You're missing the whole point. Nobody cares about the course content or what you learn. The value of the MBA is that it's proof you can spend a lot of time and effort completing bullshit assignments on time without too much heel-dragging or back talk. It tells the world you'll keep your head down and not cause too much trouble for the organization".
At the large well known company where we worked we joked that we paid our +1s some money to sit through the course around diversity.
> proof you can spend a lot of time and effort completing bullshit assignments on time without too much heel-dragging or back talk.
You don't need an MBA for that, a highschool GPA would be enough proof.
Not really the same. High school is typically prodded to completion by parents. MBA degrees are a better indicator of voluntary involvement.
It's telling that dei in latin means gods and I always found it weird that people rarely point this out.
Well, at one point the academia did think about it and then tried using IED instead but then they thought it might blow up in their face :)
> You are right that there is tons of resentment around the DEI BS that people have to go through. Tech companies have esoteric training problems with terms like "allyship" and "bystander effect" and all that which basically smells rotten to lot of engineers but they cynically complete those trainings any ways.
I think this is probably a feature not a bug. Companies are all about having programs whose sole purpose is to limit liability and to (for lack of a better term) quite cynically virtue signal. And if that causes the programs to be hated and later dismantled, all the better -- because it was never about actually achieving DEI but about appearing to support it. All of the corporate DEI training that I've been through were considered "cringeworthy" by literally everyone in the company. And this was in a very left-leaning company, but it was run by mostly a pile of middle aged white guys at the top.
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 arguing she is. Weirdest discussion to witness, especially when the real repressed folks are probably the janitors and security. Many never even had the opportunity to go to school
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.
There are a handful of contexts where it makes more sense, like for a HR person potentially, without trying to bring ideology into it that's the place it makes sense since that's the place where you can actually implement the concepts.
There are contexts where it is mandatory but makes no sense, like NSF Fellowship Applications where they're asking someone who is just finishing an undergraduate degree and is proposing a research project that ends in a PhD -- who has effectively no influence on hiring or even culture really, and is supposed to focus on the technical aspects and personal aspects of who they are. There are things you can fit in there, but let's say the mandatory question is worded so confusingly that it is hard to even guess what to write about. What, you're going to hire people to assist you in your research under DEI principles when you have no control over the budget? It's just confusing for someone in that position.
Staff hiring? That kind of makes more sense honestly, trying to be non-ideological here. Those people can actually hire people and create a culture that is either DEI positive or not, whatever you believe about whether they should.
> There are a handful of contexts where it makes more sense, like for a HR person potentially
In academia, faculty functionally ARE HR people - with significant power
Sorry, I meant to explicitly include faculty as people who create teams and are responsible for a good work culture. I agree with you, they are HR people in practice.
What does that mean?
I work in industry.
Is my my tech lead an HR person? My manager? My VP? My Board? My majority shareholders? If not, why is a faculty professor an HR person?
Professor has more choice/control of team than your VP|Mananger|Lead
Professor is like CEO of 8 person company (or independent division). All your other examples are cogs in huge machine.
Faculty select teaching assistants and the research staff for their labs, effectively unilaterally. They have the power to hire and fire. They choose topics of research, and can instruct their mentees to stop a line of inquiry. This is similar in scope and power to a combined project-manager, research-manager and person-manager. They also are the decider to grant later-stage credentialing, so throw in a bit of training instructor too…
> seemed very "1984" to me
In Australia, there was a recent introduction of "Acknowledgement of Country" at both the federal and state government level. Universities and other large institutions are also "doing their part". For example, in video call meetings with more than 'n' people, a manager will read out a statement for a minute at the start of the call acknowledging the "traditional custodians of the land upon which a meeting or event is to take place". In other words, the Aboriginals that white men largely wiped out over 200 years ago. See, e.g.: https://www.indigenous.unsw.edu.au/strategy/culture-and-coun...
So now, the descendants of those white men feel guilty and have to make a little speech before each meeting. It's the most dystopian bullshit I've ever had to personally participate in, ever.
This leads to some truly bizarre moments, like a recent meeting where half of the people were Indian subcontractors physically overseas, everyone else was a first-generation immigrant to Australia, and we had to acknowledge the traditional custodianship of the area by a tribe that was completely wiped out and no longer exists, not even descendants that might appreciate the gesture.
Similarly, in another meeting an "aboriginal elder" was chosen to speak because of their native heritage. That would be nice, except that this person was pasty white, blonde haired, blue eyed, and had freckles. Literally a white person making other white people feel guilty for something their common ancestors did!
The whole thing is an absurd farce played for political points, with no substance of any kind behind it. Actual aboriginals are no better off if in some city office a bunch of people in suits verbally self-flaggilate for sins committed hundreds of years ago by people that they might not even be descendants of. (Half the population is either a first or second generation immigrant!)
I wish there was some term that is the equivalent of "realpolitik", but for race relations, so that I can more succinctly express my disdain for this type of divorced-from-reality behaviour.
Land acknowledgement statements are creeping into the US these days. I could be wrong, but they've been in Canada for a while.
There's been a bit more push back here. There's a lawsuit where a University of Washington compsci professor is suing the school for retaliation because he mocked the policy. He pointed out there is no evidence that the Salish people made use of University of Washington lands, so the whole thing is a farce.
I frequent a lot of Australian architecture and design firm websites. 99% of them all have this disclaimer on their site before you can see any content.
Is this by force or is it en vogue to do this in certain industries?
They are valid points; they do bad things with "diversity". I have seen such acknowledgements in Canada too sometimes, although I don't know if it is as bad as you describe there, because I do not know the details.
Better would be to actually avoid damaging the indigenous people and avoid damaging the land. What was done in the past is done, but you could avoid doing it again.
Saying stuff (especially stuff that doesn't even have proper good points and doesn't even help anything) is not a substitute for actually doing actually good things.
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it’s great that you as a person of european descent can be annoyed that people in the office have to make statements about traditional ownership of the land. You know how aboriginal australians live, and yet you think that changing attitudes towards the past—and reason why certain groups are disadvantaged—doesn’t help?
it’s not a “sin” — it was genocide over land that did not belong to the Crown. it’s a good thing that immigrants also have to acknowledge australian culture and heritage, as well.
as far as the white-looking aboriginal is concerned, we’re just not gonna open that door.
If reading a mandatory statement is ever changing attitudes then it's not in the direction you want. Doing this serves no real purpose, and I bet if you asked any of the affected people they'd prefer more than forced empty words.
Applications for faculty positions typically comprise a CV, copies of 2-5 significant papers you’ve written, 3 letters of recommendation, a research statement, and a teaching statement. As I understand it, the DEI statement is supposed to go along with the last two.
Much of what is said about DEI statements can also be said about the teaching statement. At R1 universities like MIT, people are hired for tenure track positions based on their past (and future) research, and many teaching statements can be recitations of current hot topics (“flipped classrooms” “active learning” etc). But good ones (with evidence in letters of rec and CV) indicate that the candidate really has practiced what they propose to do in the future. To be clear, at MIT I’m sure a stellar teaching statement won’t get someone hired, but a patently false or over the top “I don’t care” one might give people pause.
As I understand, DEI statements are the same. If someone wrote “my philosophy is that we should perpetuate the structures of power and mediocrity created by focusing on wealthy pedigreed individuals rather than ability and potential found by looking in unusual places” that would raise eyebrows. Conversely, if they instead said “I TA’d for an international computational neuroscience summer school that gave opportunity to impoverished students from Africa and Asia”, people might think “That’s cool!”
But I think that most academics who are motivated by equity are not interesting in reading a ChatGPT DEI statement.
I do think that the conversation around this is really unfortunate. I find little philosophical difference between what people are looking for with DEI statements and what goes into college applications from HS students, but I hear fewer people advocating for getting rid of those essays.
UC Berkeley rejected 76% of applicants based on the DEI statement alone[1].
[1] https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davi...
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.
I’m still looking for the single person who was offended by the use of master as the default git branch name. I never found them but everyone got to pretend like they were making a difference for a little bit.
These statements are the exact same thing to me.
> I never found them but everyone got to pretend like they were making a difference for a little bit.
Keyword: virtue signalling
> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling
(in Germany, it is common to use a much more derogatory term for a related concept: "[der] Tugendterror" [virtue terror]).
EDIT: I accidentally linked the German Wikipedia page. Here the link to the English Wikipedia:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling
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.
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, intellectual and cultural background to help us become a "bigger tent", but also put themselves in the shoes of others unlike themselves in the course of their teaching and research.
To that end, part of our hiring criteria are based around evaluating your ability and willingness to help us fulfil that part of our academic mission. Please provide a statement explaining how you have demonstrated this in your career to date and how you'd continue to do so at the University of Utopia.
Yes this is definitely a part of it. And another part is the usual underlying question about how well the candidate understands and is prepared for the specific job they are entering. Different universities have different kinds of diversity challenges: some have a lot of working students who aren’t in the traditional student age range, some have a disproportionately large number of deaf students due to the presence of a good program there, some have large numbers of students for whom English is a second language, etc. Each of these requires different skill sets and interests on the part of the teacher. And a DEI statement can be a way to show/evaluate how seriously the candidate is considering the actual on-the-ground demographics of the institution and the challenges it poses, as well as how the institution is trying the change demographics (whether for reasons of market demands or principle).
> 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.
A problem I've seen with this is the assumption that subjects like Physics or Chemistry or Mathematics are not broadly applicable, if it was a discovery or research by a white man.
> We need to hire academic staff who can leverage their own personal, intellectual and cultural background to help us become a "bigger tent", but also put themselves in the shoes of others unlike themselves in the course of their teaching and research.
This last part is just wrong.
You should not assume on your own what the experience of minorities unlike yourself must be like, and then treat them according to whatever you imagined in your mind.
You need to talk to people, of whatever back ground, and find out how they, as individuals, would like to be treated, what their needs are, what they are experiencing, etc.
> A problem I've seen with this is the assumption that subjects like Physics or Chemistry or Mathematics are not broadly applicable, if it was a discovery or research by a white man.
The science doesn’t know race. But determining which area to research can bias toward the benefit of certain groups.
Theoretically, yes.
But I see this more often assumed than demonstrated.
> 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 yourselves into a less selective institution.
> 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?
>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?
I was assuming that diversity and inclusion was not reducible to the proverbial "talented tenth" of various demographic groups but in fact entailed serving the 99%.
I guess I take it for granted that top research universities intend to directly serve top students and researchers, and the general public will benefit indirectly from the research they produce.
If you entirely reject the idea of meritocracy, then yeah, go nuts. Just hold a lottery and the 2,000 luckiest kids that year go to MIT.
I don't know if it's just DEI, or other types of politics, but there seems to be a recent trend towards "you must say you agree with us, otherwise you are ostracized".
My personal opinion/observation is that as corporate and academic has trended towards less direct confrontation/arguments, this has resulted in a lot more passive aggressive behavior such as statements like these, some debatable "codes of conduct", etc.
I mean no harm when I say that it has always felt like a more "feminine" way of fighting and arguing vs "masculine" like physical or verbal arguing. Perhaps it's a result of more women in the workforce and leadership.
Our understanding of what constitutes harassment or a hostile work environment has evolved over time. Likewise, there is growing acceptance that systematic racism exists in the U.S.
The original sin of this country was slavery. We continue to try to find ways to ameliorate the long term harm which it did to our national culture. DEI is one of those attempts. And likewise, there is a desire to treat all people as individuals with equal opportunity. For the most part, this country has not lived up to that ideal.
I'm not getting into what's "masculine" or "feminine" because I believe that's contextually constructed nonsense, but I will say that some people use "nonviolent communication" tropes in a metaphorically violent way. I've also seen it used well to improve relationships and outcomes.
It’s easier to defend than you think. It’s enough to show that there was no proof of that they didn’t work at the time of introduction, and there was indication that it maybe worked. I definitely don’t have the knowledge to prove or disprove it. If there is no evidence now about its efficacy, it should be removed. Unfortunately, I’ve seen 0 discussions which mentioned any hard evidence. Even in this case, it was removed because of feelings according to the link.
Remember the phrase "HR is not your friend?"
HR is also a hilariously complex set of rules and bullshit that isn't that easy to manage in large organizations. Separating out DEI specifically from HR allows companies and organizations the ability to have employees ensure that the obligations of companies regarding their legal obligation towards discrimination laws are met without interfering with core HR functions. Companies haven't been adopting DEI out of the goodness of their hearts. There's a direct financial advantage when you can prove to a court that you have provided direction on issues regarding diversity. It's just a collection of CYA, and their DEI statements are an extension of that.
It’s just being conspicuous that they’re doing the performatively ‘right thing’, something academia is quite familiar with.
That way they can point to their statement anytime grant writers/sponsors need to show their respective stakeholders that they’re ’good folks’.
Don’t worry, regardless they’ll still treat their grad students as terribly as the law allows (and a bit worse).
Did you know that prospective faculty also have to write a statement about their research, teaching, and service when they apply for a job? Is that also conspicuously performatively doing the right thing in those job responsibilities?
Do they have to actually follow through and deliver concretely on those things? With some expected concrete impact?
If so, then I wouldn’t consider them performative at least.
(Maybe conspicuously doing what is perceived as the right thing is how people get hired…)
I think it would help to know what you think a coherent DEI statement would be.
DEI statements as you're hinting can be quite performative and full of pagentry and then things slowly drift back to how they were all along.
DEI as a field is new, and I find they are not given as much slack as non-DEI people figuring out something new and getting slack for taking risks and improving messaging.
I can try to find a few links that helped me understand more. One thing was the difference between DEI and EDI.
It seems EDI (equity, diversity, inclusion) in that order might be an updated revision that can help.
> DEI as a field is new, and I find they are not given as much slack as non-DEI people figuring out something new and getting slack for taking risks and improving messaging.
I don't think I agree with this. The only reason I think people have such an issue with DEI is that in has permeated much of their academic and professional life (in certain professions). To be honest, if you look back years ago you'd be just as likely to see people complain about the management fad of the day, but the difference with DEI is many people were/are genuinely afraid to speak against it for fear of the negative impact on their careers and lives. "non-DEI people" in new fields are "given more slack" because people just don't care if what these non-DEI folks are doing doesn't affect others' day-to-day lives.
> One thing was the difference between DEI and EDI. It seems EDI (equity, diversity, inclusion) in that order might be an updated revision that can help.
To be honest, the "E" in DEI is always the framing I had the most problems with, because in practice I've often seen it arguing for equality of outcome, vs. equality of opportunity, and this is something I fundamentally disagree with. Yes, I know what equity perhaps is intended to mean, but in practice I've seen examples where if the outcome distribution doesn't exactly match the population at large then some people conclude the process is somehow unfair and needs to be changed. This is not hypothetical, e.g. consider the kerfuffle when ElectronConf was canceled years ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868.
There are a boatload of bad programmers. Does that make programming bad?
Not really the same thing but I worked for an organisation which had as a policy that every single team meeting had to have diversity & equality as a recurring item for discussion. 95% of the time this just meant the meeting lead saying "So...diversity - anyone got anything to say?" and then we moved onto the next item after a short silence. But every once in a while someone would raise something that might not have otherwise been brought up. It's a very crude instrument but it probably did get people to think a little more in that direction and maybe led to a little more awareness overall. The other standing item was health and safety which had a similar outcome.
It likely wasn’t General Motors you worked at… but every GM meeting must start with a safety tip - or some DEI claim.
In the engineering meetings I can tell you which one happens. And in the executive meetings that certain people can’t wait to spend 5-10 min of probably $20,000 worth of a dozen executives time with their feelings on the matter.
I fondly remember a heated discussion about chainsaw safety techniques.
When we have all the infrastructure for an even more oppressive and intrusive total information awareness regime, DEIs are so far from 1984. DEIs are just dumb paperwork and formal procedure on top of the usual facade of hiring and promotion rigamarole
Havel's Greengrocer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless#Hav...
Ya, I would put DEI up there with leetcode interview questions: not very good filters, but filters nonetheless that you have to navigate.
I'll give you an answer for how we have used them - essentially, helping set context (indeed, we have context statements as well).
DEI activities often take a lot of time, and are often undervalued by many traditional academic metrics - they don't produce papers, rarely produce grants outside perhaps the occasional diversity supplement, etc. As a small example, to ensure that undergraduate research experience isn't reserve for those without the need to take summer jobs, I ensure all the undergraduates in my lab are paid - and this costs my lab money I don't technically have to spend. Many of my colleagues do a great deal more.
Having a required DEI statement both lets people who work in these areas highlight their work, and also makes it obvious those who don't. It's a way to do something beyond just saying "These activities are important" by moving them to the forefront.
All that being said, they are often used in a very perfunctory fashion, and while I do somewhat agree with the idea of them, in practice they've not proved useful.
Thank you for your response. But looking at your answer highlights even more to me why I think DEI statements are dumb. E.g. taking your example specifically, if the university is truly invested in DEI, simple solution: unpaid summer research internships should be forbidden; all summer research internships must be paid, and here are the guidelines around amounts, funding, etc...
The above would be one real solution to increase diversity (while not necessarily being cheap/free), with the benefit of also one not likely to be opposed from either side of the political spectrum (a true rarity these days).
True, although in this case there's a lot of pushback - if it's not during the summer, can students get both credit and paid? How hard is it to make your lab jobs work-study positions, given they are all one-off positions? And there would definitely be pushback on it being mandatory, because academics, as much as I hate that we do, tend to love free labor.
Devoting energy to those fights, and the political capital consequences of doing so, and success if you were successful, would be an excellent addition to a DEI statement, and would help explain why you were less productive than J. OtherProfessor, who chose to devote their time strictly to research.
The best DEI statements are ones that discuss action.
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.
I understand you’re trying to strong man this. But I think we need to interrogate the premise here. How does “inequity” represent a “threat” to our “long term survival and prosperity?” What is the specific causal mechanism by which we expect that to happen?
It seems facially implausible to me, given that America became prosperous when these inequalities were much worse. Why do we accept this premise as a given?
> Research has generally linked economic inequality to political and social instability, including revolution, democratic breakdown and civil conflict.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
> There are outstanding systemic inequities at every level of American society.
I think this needs to be backed up with evidence rather than merely asserted. I've been reading through a number of books by Thomas Sowell lately and he presents enough statistical evidence to explain disparities without any hint of racism, sexism, etc. Regardless of if you agree with him or not, the mere fact that alternate theories exist that explain why society looks as it does today should be enough to question the foundational problem that DEI claims to address.
Take as an example the gender pay gap which is presented as women earning 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. While statistically true in aggregate, DEI tends to treat this axiomatically as a sign of sexism. If you dig into the statistics the vast majority of this difference is due to the fact that many women voluntarily take time off of their career to raise children.
> many women voluntarily take time off of their career to raise children
Expect there is evidence to suggest that women that earn a higher income are less likely to leave the workforce, which is further influenced by access to affordable childcare and dual incomes.
The point is that when you control for these factors, a woman with the same title and responsibilities as a man will earn less for the same work.
> The point is that when you control for these factors, a woman with the same title and responsibilities as a man will earn less for the same work.
That can't possibly be true, because in a market economy, the more-expensive workers (men) would be laid off and replaced by less-expensive, equally-capable "same title and responsibilities" workers (women). This doesn't seem to be the case on a grand scale, which means it's more deep/complex than the "men get paid more than women" headline we're all used to seeing.
Are you arguing that society operates from a position of optimal market theory, and that cultural norms, prejudices, and biases play no role in salary or pay rates for anyone It's not particularly hard to find examples of disparity or exploitation.
Disparity and exploitation are not the same thing as ignoring an obvious way to reduce labor costs. Why would companies be smart enough to outsource labor overseas, but somehow lack the know-how to simply hire women and save 23% of labor costs? Because the "women make 77 cents on the dollar" meme is just looking at raw incomes, and not adjusting for type of job and experience.
> "women make 77 cents on the dollar" meme
So you've done more search than everyone else putting out data? Maybe you can share all your hard-earned discoveries on the subject, since so you're so confidently well-informed.
Men account for 13% of nurses, but average $90k vs $76k for women.
https://blog.carlow.edu/2022/12/29/how-the-gender-pay-gap-im...
Female lawyers under 35 make 90% of their male counterparts, but the gap increases to 76% by middle age.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/05/women-lawyers...
The trend continues for doctors, police, and even teachers.
> lack the know-how to simply hire women and save 23% of labor costs
If you think "know-how" is the problem, you're ill equipped for this conversation.
Then why don't they just hire women to do the exact same jobs as men and save a ton of money? You're still not offering a rationale for why companies aren't making use of an easy way to reduce labor costs. Which is more likely: that companies hate women so much that they're willing to ignore an opportunity to make a massive leap in profitability? Or perhaps you need to read your studies more closely and it's not the case that men and women are paid differently for the same work?
Your study on nurses offers an explanation in the article:
> Male nurses also reported working more hours per week, at an average 39 hours plus five hours of overtime, while female nurses reported working an average of 37 hours plus four hours of overtime.
I agree that if you just count the W-2s and ignore hours worked, subfields, travel, etc. then men make more than women. My whole point is that this kind of comparison is naive.
Likewise your study on lawyers grouped a hugely varied profession all into the same category. As an analogue, take doctors. Yes male and female doctor have different average incomes even for the same level of experience. But that doesn't capture the fact that over 70% of anesthesiologists are male while in pediatrics it's the opposite. This one will have an income disparity even when men and women are equally paid for the same work. It's a similarly naive analysis to lump together all lawyers into one category.
> You're still not offering a rationale
It's a fantasy world to believe that people operate purely on rational and logical long-term thinking. What's your rationale for slavery? Why couldn't women vote until recently? What's your rationale for why American women couldn't go to bars unattended as late as the 1970s? There's literally no shortage of examples showing the mistreatment of women, yet it's hard to believe that pay discrepancy remains till this day?
The entire premise if flawed if your operating under the assumption that people think in market and game theory. Prejudices and biases easily overcome rational thinking.
> Your study on nurses offers an explanation in the article:
The differences in hours doesn't account for the difference in pay.
> over 70% of anesthesiologists are male while in pediatrics it's the opposite
Show me a single study that reinforces the data that backs up your position that satisfies the level of granularity you're grasping at. Until then, the research and data that's in supports only one of our positions.
There's a vast difference between suboptimal decision making and ignoring a massive cost saving. The line that "went make X% as much as men" is widely spread, it's inconceivable that executives haven't heard this line. And the profi gains from a 10-20% reduction in labor costs would be staggering. No, prejudice doesn't cut it as a rationale.
Slavery existed because preindustrial societies were heavily labor intensive and the returns on more skilled labor was marginal. The industrial revolution changed this, which is why abolition movements largely coincided with industrialization.
Restrictions of women's liberties stem from thousands of years of family dynamics where child mortality rates meant that women had to spend most of their fertile years bearing and caring for children. The replacement rate in preindustrial societies was something like 5-6 births per woman due to such high infant mortality rates.
> The differences in hours doesn't account for the difference in pay
It actually does, men work 2 more normal hours and 1 more overtime hour on average. Assuming overtime is paid at 2x normal wages this is about a 10% disparity in paid hours. And again, there's more than just hours worked there's travel nursing, different metro areas, and more.
> Show me a single study that reinforces the data that backs up your position that satisfies the level of granularity you're grasping at.
You're asking me to prove a negative. I don't doubt you can find individual instances of discrimination against women (and against men), my point is that the large disparities between men's and women's average wages overwhelmingly stem from differences in men and women's behavior rather than discrimination.
> The line that "went make X% as much as men" is widely spread
It's not "widely spread", it's widely researched. Show me a study that explains the pay gap as owing to mostly to behavior.
You've provided post-hoc academic rationale, rather than something the average person would have been operating under. People simply do not make decisions the way you seem to be under the impression of. I'm sure the average slave owner used your explanation rather than believing that subset of the population was sub-human chattel.
An example of a behavioral difference is salary negotiation, where assertive women are viewed negatively while a man chest-thumping is viewed positively. Tell that woman who took a lower salary because of cultural stigmas and traditions your rationale and see how far that goes. I've been in the room when a man waved off a woman because of such behavior.
> You're asking me to prove a negative.
I'm asking you to back up your claim with evidence, which you have thusly been unable to do. What you have done is nitpick specific details like that's a gotcha, rather than owing to statistics and population sampling.
Noticing a pay disparity and concluding that it's due to discrimination is just as much of a post-hoc analysis.
And yes, when you account for experience, field, location, etc. the pay disparity effectively disappears (less than 1%)
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/08/01/are-wome...
Seems like this isn’t always the case, so your statement shouldn’t be so absolute: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/28/young-wom...
The irony of posting an article that proves my point, you really got me there.
Your statement (which I happen to agree with) supports DEI policies but not the specific practice of requiring a written DEI statement, which is the important distinction OP made.
I think you can be for DEI as a concept and as a corporate or school policy, but against the performative act of writing it out as some kind of weird "pledge of allegiance" in a job application.
Well, the “acknowledge and mark” phrase gets at the statement—That if the org thought objective X was authentic existential goal, it behooves them to understand how an applicant understands and would configure into that plan. (I have no claim about its efficacy. The highly-structured nature of the statement is a head-scratcher. I’m here watching the fallout with everyone else.)
I hasten to restate that is my understanding of the premise, in the spirit of collectively untangling the causal chain here. This is incendiary stuff on HN!
> it behooves them to understand how an applicant understands and would configure into that plan.
I (and a lot of us I think) follow you up to this point, but then you lose us here.
How does a written statement, the expected content of which is clearly known, give any understanding of the individual's position? This type of approach to education seems to me that it actively harms the ability to sway people's opinions.
I have this issue with a lot of discussions of DEI, there are a lot of arguments that support the DEI goal and a dearth of arguments that support the methods being used to achieve that goal.
> How does a written statement, the expected content of which is clearly known, give any understanding of the individual's position?
ChatGPT, please write me a DEI statement for this job interview.
> 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.
I'm very skeptical that there is any threat to our survival here, or that DEI is any kind of response capable of resolving it. DEI is about "justice", a set of ethical principles, not about some utilitarian calculation about social survival or prosperity.
> 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
As someone who is pro DEI and participated in DEI related activities and brainstorms during hiring: I very much doubt that.
This is an ideological statement which brings no fact, no new perspective, is not substantial and does not refute the opponent’s argument (which is that unfair DEI creates resentment that you later pay).
As per Dang’s guidelines above (specifically for this thread), this should not have been allowed on HN.
Now I wonder: Why is it here?
> Now I wonder: Why is it here?
The internet gods bestowed two* of these on us today. The other one is Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40267639. I posted an answer there to someone who asked more or less the same question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40267862. The principles are the same, so if you're willing to read it mutatis mutandis and maybe take a look at some of the other posts I linked to, you should find what you're looking for.
(* no, it's not a trend—just random fluctuation)
I dont like the DEI industry, but affirmative action is good. Slavery ended 150 years ago and its disgraceful that so many African-Americans still live zero wealth, poor jobs, with second rate schools and healthcare. Many/most corporate jobs really dont require a lot of unique skills, its good that employers have a preference to hire under represented minorities, hopefully it'll help improve society for all of us.
Tons of people had it shitty much more recently who aren’t black.
Means testing already covers all of the “zero wealth, poor jobs, and second rate schools and healthcare”. Being a minority has jack shit to do with that.
Any of the disadvantages the minorities have should be tested for directly and those should be targeted. That way all disadvantaged populations benefit and we’re not giving unfair advantages to the minority who grew up wealthy.
The issue is that there are many who suffer from generational poverty and are not “diverse”. The DEI benefits should go to all of disadvantaged people regardless of skin color. And there are many wealthy African Americans. Why are they getting the benefits of DEI vs the generationally low income white kid?
Not in America, but I was talking to some managers for a childcare service here and they were explaining why they try to favor brown people. One put it as "for want of a better measure". It's kind of strange since that's sort of what all racism is, isn't it? An easy shortcut for evaluating people without having to go to the trouble of investigating each individual.
I'll preface this with I'm not american, and I'm from a country that historically doesn't have a problem with racism against the minorities these policies affect.
These policies always seem a bit ridiculous to me. I've done nothing to discriminate against these people, so why am I being treated worse because of the actions of people I had nothing to do with? Affirmative action policies are discriminative, just not to the group they're targeted at helping. Why can't there just be equality and leave it at that?
My personal opinion is you can't discriminate based on information you don't have, so universities/employers etc shouldn't get information on a candidates race/gender/whatever that's not relevant, because that way they can't have discriminated using it
Ah, the old argument that to end racism we must embrace noble bigotry. How about ignoring immutable characteristics, period, and picking solely on merit? I love other commenters mentioning removing personal characteristics such as name, gender and race from resumes - spot on.
There's a pattern that I see come up quite often, and it's really common with any discussion about things that involve diversity and inclusion efforts. I don't know if there's a specific term for it, but it happens roughly like this:
First, someone identifies an opportunity to improve diversity, equity, or inclusion in some way. DEI statements in academia, codes of conduct in open source projects, some rules around topics or specific language on a social media site, I'm sure you can name some other examples.
Now, this new thing may be a way to address the problem, or not. The problem it's trying to address might have been well understood or not. One way or another the idea gets some momentum.
Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it. Everything they say is carefully crafted with a veneer of respectability and plausibility. Any accusations are re-directed. There are people who are motivated and very skilled at making plausible sounding bad-faith arguments. The plausibility of course also convinces people might not intend to be making a bad faith argument, and so are authentic in their indignant responses to accusations of acting in bad faith. Still, the entire point of the arguments was ultimately to disrupt efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, and to uphold inequality. In some cases these bad faith arguments can end up being a vast majority of the discussion. They make up maybe 80% (not an exact figure) of the comments in any given HN thread about anything tangentially related to DEI for example.
The people trying to make a positive change who have been at it for a while are generally exhausted with trying to deal with the torrent of bad faith arguments, quickly recognize the pattern of them, and ultimately often end up serving as fuel for further bad-faith arguments.
In the end, it becomes nearly impossible to have a productive good faith discussion about whether the original idea is good or not, or how to improve it, because nobody can disentangle legitimate contributors and arguments from the torrent of bad faith actors who are ultimately just trying to disrupt the process. Meanwhile, communities that ought to be served by the initiative are often left standing around watching their value as people or rights to participate equally being thrown around as an abstract subject of ideological argument.
Without any better options, people double down on the original idea because it was at least made in good faith.
It might sound like all of that is an argument against DEI statements- after all, I just spent several paragraphs talking about why it would be hard to have a reasonable good faith debate about it. Still, I think that in this situation they serve a couple of useful purposes. First, I think that it moves discussions around concrete improvements away from a forum where they can be undermined by bad faith arguments and toward a form where individual authors of DEI statements can focus on concrete actions. It incentivizes action over getting mired in these bad faith arguments. If one is to write specifically about how they have or will work to improve DEI, then they necessarily must move past the bad faith and concern trolling arguments and pick some specific actions. Second, I think that it acts as a useful honeypot for people who simply can't act in good faith. If you can't identify any dimension at all along which you will work to improve DEI for any group, then it's hard to see how you can further that part of the mission of an organization. Finally, while it is virtue signaling, that doesn't necessarily need to be bad.
I am very interested in increasing diversity but I don't like the idea that anyone disagreeing with any dei suggestion should be labeled as intentionally disruptive and bad faith.
Calling 80% of discussion here bad faith aimed at holding particular groups down is a big claim that shouldn't be thrown around lightly in a good faith post.
> am very interested in increasing diversity
Why? As a non-white immigrant, I’m deeply suspicious of the notion that a team with me on it is in any way different than a team without me on it based on my skin color or ethnicity. I think that line of thinking doesn’t go anywhere good, especially for me, but for everyone else too.
As soon as you make it acceptable to say that people are different based on group membership, they will start to notice those differences and categorize them as good and bad. DEI is based on the premise that people will recognize all of those differences as good but that’s completely delusional. You are socializing people to identify other people with their group membership and they’re going to take those observations in directions you don’t expect.
Anyone with a brain and sense of dignity will feel like racism is bad and unfair. Experiencing negative racism is enraging and depressing. Experiencing positive racism instantly gives you impostor syndrome and a sense of dehumanization.
The only systems that aren't racist are those that strive to be colorblind (in the sense that we're colorblind to eye or hair color).
There sure is a lot of effort invested in changing hair color, given that we're blind to it.
> The only systems that aren't racist are those that strive to be colorblind (in the sense that we're colorblind to eye or hair color).
Eye/hair color being a distinguishing feature is mostly a white people thing in its own right...
> Why? As a non-white immigrant, I’m deeply suspicious of the notion that a team with me on it is in any way different than a team without me on it based on my skin color or ethnicity.
Perhaps, but a team that would not have hired you because of your skin color or ethnicity would also be a worse team since they would not be willing or able to hire the best candidates.
> As soon as you make it acceptable to say that people are different based on group membership, they will start to notice those differences and categorize them as good and bad. DEI is based on the premise that people will recognize all of those differences as good but that’s completely delusional.
I don't think this is the right angle to look at it. Everyone has a unique combination of experiences that they bring, and what groups someone belongs to are one part of the set of experiences that make up how they experience the world. DEI programs aren't inventing this, it's just a part of the human condition that we're shaped by the unique combination of our experiences.
Focusing on specific unique aspects of individual people's backgrounds isn't the only shape DEI can take though. Done well, I think they instead look at the shape of systems and processes in place and try broadly to consider how to remove artificial barriers so that people have an equal chance to contribute.
> You are socializing people to identify other people with their group membership and they’re going to take those observations in directions you don’t expect.
I think this does happen a lot. Tokenism and only being seen as a particular part of your identity are problems. I can't speak to the experience of being a non-white immigrant, but I've had other forms of this experience. It sucks to be in a job interview where you have a great skill set that matches the role and a lot of relevant experience, but it's clear that the only thing the recruiter cares about is that you could add gender diversity to a team. It sucks to be told that I'm wrong to suggest take-home exercises in interviews are a good option because women have caregiver duties and can't make time for them when I, a woman, prefer them because I feel like they offer a better opportunity for me to think deeply about a problem.
I don't think this is a reason to ignore DEI programs though, it's simply a failure case to be aware of.
I agree with the “eliminate artificial barriers” version of DEI. I’m a huge beneficiary of the push in the 1990s to “not see race.” But I don’t think that’s the dominant version of DEI today. I think the notion that “diverse teams are better” actually erects barriers, because it socializes people to think that the races are different.
I think the situation is different for sex diversity because men and women are different in ways that require accommodation.
It seems to me like we’re probably not too far apart in our opinions- and perhaps each of us bringing a separate set of experiences is letting us come to a better and more nuanced view.
I still do personally think that at a high level diverse teams and companies do tend to be better than non-diverse ones, especially when you have many axes of diversity. I imagine that some of that is direct benefit when someone is able to pull on their experiences to directly benefit a project, and some of it is simply that teams who hire the best people without artificial barriers will both be better and tend to be more diverse.
That’s observational rather than prescriptive though. When it comes to individual teams and individual hiring decisions I’d never advocate for anything other than hiring the best available candidate. Similarly, while you can say that across the population having diversity is good, you shouldn’t assume any specific part of an individual’s background or experience should manifest in any particular way.
All that said, I do think understanding the general ways that different aspects of a persons background impacts their work experience is a necessary part of building an effective workforce. How can you remove artificial barriers without taking time to understand what those barriers are?
Although I’ve had my own negative experiences at times, my experience overall is that most DEI initiatives I’ve been involved with have not been unaware of the risks and nuance, and people involved are usually trying to do the right things. I don’t think modern DEI approaches are overall worse- just more controversial because of broader social, cultural, and political tensions.
> I can't speak to the experience of being a non-white immigrant, but I've had other forms of this experience. It sucks to be in a job interview where you have a great skill set that matches the role and a lot of relevant experience, but it's clear that the only thing the recruiter cares about is that you could add gender diversity to a team.
But this is the dominant strain of DEI thinking today, and why it's seeing such a backlash.
The over riding DEI principle is that every profession, every organization, every role, must somehow have exactly the demographic breakdown of the society as a whole.
A moment's thought reveals why this is impractical to impossible, especially in the short to medium term. But this is how everything is evaluated through a DEI lens. Every discussion devolves just to counting how many people of each kind of group are represented in whichever topic is under discussion.
All the stuff about eliminating barriers is just the motte for this Bailey.
> The over riding DEI principle is that every profession, every organization, every role, must somehow have exactly the demographic breakdown of the society as a whole.
I’ve simply never seen this happen, although I’ve seen a lot of accusations of it. In a very large organization you might look at how your organizations demographics compare to industry demographics in different ways, but that’s always been at most an individual data point that elicits further investigation.
I’ve lost count of the number of articles that simply cite disproportionate demographic distributions as proof of discrimination.
you've contradicted yourself, that's all the parent was saying, that comparing your demographics with national demographics is used to identify the degree to which your organization needs to institute race quotas
> that's all the parent was saying
Nuh uh. jimbokun intensified it by a huge amount with those "every" terms and saying "must" and "exactly", describing a mandate that is very stupid and ignorant of statistics in a way that rebeccaskinner's description is not very stupid and ignorant of statistics. Also,
> race quotas
The post you're replying to says "further investigation", not "race quotas".
> The over riding DEI principle is that every profession, every organization, every role, must somehow have exactly the demographic breakdown of the society as a whole.
No it's not. That's a dumb strawman. "The over riding DEI principle" is not some guy that doesn't understand statistical variance, and doesn't accept any reason at all for fields to differ.
But we should have a starting position of being extremely skeptical of any big group that has a significantly different breakdown, especially if it's different in the specific ways that fit common discrimination.
You start out disputing my claim…and end by reinforcing it.
You don't see the difference between "x must be y always everywhere even in tiny groups" and "start skeptical if x isn't y in big groups"?
I don't know how much simpler I can make this. Those statements are not the same.
they're the same from the perspective that race is a factor which merits equalizing
It might need equalizing.
It depends on why the balance is the way it is.
It's good to check sometimes.
> As a non-white immigrant, I’m deeply suspicious of the notion that a team with me on it is in any way different than a team without me on it based on my skin color or ethnicity. I think that line of thinking doesn’t go anywhere good, especially for me, but for everyone else too.
In various threads you've repeatedly argued (paraphrasing here) that you have a different set of values — e.g., giving higher priority to the family and community, vice individual choice, than in contemporary American mass culture. You've correlated this with your Bangladeshi heritage and upbringing, and you've said (again paraphrasing) that you adamantly seek to instill the same values in your own kids.
Perhaps some teams would find your values a useful addition to their mix. For those teams, your Bangladeshi name, skin tone, etc., could be instances of what the late (Black) free-market economist Walter Williams [0] referred to as "cheap-to-observe information."[1] I can't find the piece I read years ago in which Williams said that if you were choosing up sides for a pickup basketball game at a city park, and didn't know any of the other players, you'd choose the Black guys because the odds — not a certainty by any means, but the odds — were that the Black guys had played more basketball growing up than the white guys.
A related anecdote about cheap-to-observe information and its possible correlations: Years ago at my then-law firm, I was called into the office of the chair of the recruiting committee. The chair wanted me to meet a third-year law student who was at the firm for interviews. The recruiting chair said that the law student, like me, was a former Navy "nuke" officer. We shook hands; I asked, "[chief] engineer-qualified?" He smiled and nodded. "Surface-warfare qualified?" The same. I turned to the recruiting chair and said "that's all I need to know; I'm good." I had both quals myself, so I immediately concluded — provisionally — that the student was very likely to have personal qualities (work ethic, leadership, etc.) that I knew law firms found to be valuable. (I did stick around to chat for a while longer, and I knew the student wouldn't even have been invited for an interview if he wasn't already a good candidate.) We hired the student, who turned out to be a fine lawyer.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams
[1] https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/opinion/walter-williams-our...
You’ve accurately described the differences, but none of those things are relevant to the workplace. All the ways I’m actually different from Americans are just a source of consternation where I have to bite my tongue and remind myself that it’s their country and I have to put up with the dog in the office, etc.
As to “cheap to observe” information: you might observe that Asian and Mormon communities socialize people to work without complaining or making demands. That seems profitable in the workplace. Is that the kind of cheap to observe information you can rely on? (It’s not—it’s illegal!)
> I have to put up with the dog in the office
A company I worked for long ago decided that it was ok for employees to bring their dogs to work. This worked for a time until one of the dogs pooped in the executive's office.
That was the end of that.
My dad lived in a small town for a few years. He was friendly with the mayor, and asked him what was his biggest problem. The mayor said the town was equally divided between dog lovers and dog haters. It was simply impossible for him to please both.
Which was a relief for me.
To be clear, Bangladeshis (and I think most Muslims) don’t “hate” dogs. There are dogs—my dad had them in the village and we had one when I was young. It’s a hygiene taboo. They’re viewed as unclean. They live outside—you don’t snuggle them or put your face up to them. It’s similar to their view of using toilet paper instead of washing after going to the bathroom. Or how North Americans view the Latin American practice of disposing of toilet paper in the trash bin rather than flushing it.
It's "their" country? It's yours too. Be the dog-free workplace you want to see in the world.
I don’t subscribe to that view of nationhood. It’s a constant source of discomfort (not just at the office, but visiting people’s houses or visiting my in laws) but it’s not my place to impose on the people whose ancestors built this country. I feel bad enough that I won’t let my wife have a dog, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
On behalf of the group of slightly-longer-ago immigrants to the country that you're classifying as having "built this country": I'm not sure why my ancestors coming here a while back means you can't say "I don't want a dog next to my desk at work".
If you're a person who lives here and works here, you get to participate in defining what the society and workplace look like, respectively. Having to type it out actually feels weird, because it's pretty self-evident. You're here, the things you do impact the culture.
If it’s just cultural have you thought of “getting the fuck over it” and letting your wife get a dog? You seem like a logical person, unless you specifically have an issue with them that isn’t cultural baggage, just embrace the ability to have dogs.
Culture includes some of our most deep-down disgust responses. I have trouble even being at people’s houses if there’s dog hair on the couch or I can smell them. It’s coded to me as a dirty environment.
Not being a dog person doesn't make you a xenophobe! Lots of Americans don't like dogs. You are one of them.
Your first two sentences are true in general. But if you had ever met my mom you'd know my personal dislike of dogs is rooted in xenophobia.
As the owner of a bulldog that is essentially a furry, shedding alimentary canal with feet, I assure you there are perfectly legitimate reasons to find dogs unclean.
I agree with Thomas (see his response to your comment, "below").
Are you making a category mistake here?
A few years ago I worked at a company that let people bring in dogs and I hated it. I actually like dogs and have had some myself (although not at that time), but one of my team members always brought in his huge rescue pitbull. It was always under control, never barked or lunged, but it liked to sit perfectly still, alert and upright giving me a death stare for hours at a time. All I could think was "this dog is probably not going to do anything, but if it snaps it could probably maim me in an instant."
How can I focus on work under circumstances like that? But how can I complain when it hasn't actually done anything yet? I would be "that guy." Now dog policy is something I pay attention to when choosing jobs.
> I don't like the idea that anyone disagreeing with any dei suggestion should be labeled as intentionally disruptive and bad faith.
My point isn't that anyone disagreeing with a particular suggestion is arguing in bad faith, it's that there are enough bad faith arguments that it becomes effectively impossible to have a productive discussion.
> Calling 80% of discussion here bad faith aimed at holding particular groups down is a big claim that shouldn't be thrown around lightly in a good faith post.
And therein lies the crux of the problem. Are 80% of the comments I see on DEI related threads actually acting in bad faith, or am I simply so exhausted by the constant stream of bad faith arguments that I lack the ability to discern between people acting in bad faith, uninformed people acting in good faith parroting bad-faith actors arguments, and people who are legitimately trying to engage. For that matter, am I an exhausted person who is simply tired of accusations of "wokeism" being thrown at me when I advocate for basic respect and decency, or am I a bad faith actor who tried to sneak an outrageous claim into a reasonable sounding post in order to undermine people who are in favor of DEI programs by making them all sound unreasonable? I may know that I'm simply exhausted, cynical, and seeing a steadily increasing amount of anti-DEI rhetoric here, but such is the state of discourse that there's no way for you to know for sure one way or another.
Personally I’d focus on arguments instead of motivations and skip arguing with those were it seems it will be or when it becomes unproductive.
> Are 80% of the comments I see on DEI related threads actually acting in bad faith, or am I simply so exhausted by the constant stream of bad faith arguments that I lack the ability to discern between people acting in bad faith, uninformed people acting in good faith parroting bad-faith actors arguments, and people who are legitimately trying to engage.
Or perhaps your experiences on DEI run contrary to the typical experiences of other people? You seem awfully eager to call other commenters bad faith or misinformed, but do little in the way of introspection. It reminds me of an old joke:
Someone sees on the news live coverage of a car driving the wrong way down the freeway their spouse uses to commute. Worried, they call their spouse to warn them, "honey there's a car driving down the freeway, be careful!"
"It's not one, there's hundreds of them!"
As for myself, "DEI" has been a thinly veiled dogwhistle for illegal hiring policies at 3 out of the 4 companies I've worked at for the last 10 years. Examples in include: explicitly designating segment of headcount as exclusive to certain races and genders, setting specific percentage quotas on the basis of protected class (and these quotas were well above industry-wide representation of these groups), and constructing separate hiring pipelines depending on race and gender.
However, I'm not going to accuse people who have different or opposing views on DEI as acting in bad faith. 75% of the companies I've worked at used DEI as a dogwhistle for illegal policies, but that's still a very narrow slice of the world at large. I'm not going to allege that people are being disingenuous or acting in bad faith because I recognize that people have different experiences with DEI and can arrive at vastly different opinions on the acronym while acting entirely in good faith. I suggest you do the same.
> when I advocate for basic respect and decency
Try using those words instead of the woke buzzwords. Everyone else is having the same reaction to "DEI"/etc that you're having to their common arguments.
Anyone still using the term "woke" in a serious discussion at this point is using a thought terminating cliche.
(I still catch myself using it sometimes, and will try to do better.)
> Anyone still using the term "woke" in a serious discussion at this point is using a thought terminating cliche.
In December 2020, New Republic published an essay by the African-American Marxist Adolph Reed Jr (professor emeritus of political science at the University of Pennsylvania), entitled "Beyond the Great Awokening: Reassessing the legacies of past black organizing" [0] in which he criticises "the Woke".
Now, you may or may not agree with his criticisms, but he is not using "a thought terminating cliche". On the contrary, he means something quite specific by it: a contemporary form of progressive politics which prioritises race over class, as opposed to Reed's own classic Marxism which prioritises class over race.
I myself tend to avoid invoking the word, because I find it derails discussions from whatever the substantive topic was, into debating what that word means and the appropriateness of using it.
But, on the other hand, I think the phenomenon which Reed labels as "Woke" is a real thing, and if we aren't to call it "Woke", what then should we call it? I get the impression that some people don't want to let people call it anything, as part of a strategy to put it beyond criticism.
[0] https://newrepublic.com/article/160305/beyond-great-awokenin...
> I myself tend to avoid invoking the word, because I find it derails discussions from whatever the substantive topic was, into debating what that word means and the appropriateness of using it.
This is the point I was trying to make.
I agree with you that it is best avoided whenever possible.
However, I think the other points I made, that (a) some invocations of it are legitimate, and (b) it serves a useful purpose in labelling a real phenomenon, for which we don't have any widely accepted alternative label – still stand.
So avoiding using the word is a good heuristic, not an algorithm.
> Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it. Everything they say is carefully crafted with a veneer of respectability and plausibility. Any accusations are re-directed. There are people who are motivated and very skilled at making plausible sounding bad-faith arguments. The plausibility of course also convinces people might not intend to be making a bad faith argument, and so are authentic in their indignant responses to accusations of acting in bad faith.
How can you possibly have a good faith argument if you've already made your mind up that most or everyone who disagrees with you is arguing in bad faith? That in itself is not a good faith position.
You sound like you've basically constructed a closed system of thought for yourself, in which anyone who disagrees with you is arguing in bad faith.
I know one person here who frequently posts in disagreement to DEI initiatives is rayiner. He might be wrong, but I don't believe for a minute he is a bigot or acting in bad faith.
DEI is a lot like a headless religion that nobody's asked for. It's headless because instead of talking about spirit or similar high matters, it says "you are your body" and proceeds to divide people based on a few visible traits such as skin color. This quasi-religion doesn't talk about what we have in common. Instead it's fixated on superficial traits that make us different. When DEI got support among the rich and they pushed it down to the people, it obviously created resentment. Nobody likes when you're forced to say things you don't believe in and find disgusting.
I do admit that DEI has some goodwill in it, in particular the idea that our society doesn't have to be a wolf-eats-wolf "meritocracy", but I'm afraid that the goodwill has been skillfully perverted.
As a moderate, I do suspect that a lot of conservatives like to concern troll, but on the other hand, the far left really seems to like to double down on defending wild takes, like the university presidents refusing to answer whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates the code of conduct of their universities, which makes this line of questioning relevant.
> Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it. Everything they say is carefully crafted with a veneer of respectability and plausibility.
In other words, their arguments aren't intrinsically bigoted and you can't prove bigotry is their motivation because they have a "veneer" of respectability and plausibility, but because they oppose the thing you believe and feel they are secretly bigots.
> it becomes nearly impossible to have a productive good faith discussion about whether the original idea is good or not,
Because anybody that tries to gets judged to be a cryptobigot.
Lacking concrete information on who the commenters are, maybe you should judge the arguments themselves rather than trying to "read between the lines" to divine secret motives that conveniently free you from the burden of considering other points of view.
> Next, bigots get wind of the thing and start concern trolling and spreading FUD about it.
When you assume it’s bigots who are the ones who show up with concerns, do you see how fucked up that is?
“Whenever we propose X, the bigots get wind of it and spread FUD. All of their arguments sound fine, but I know they are in bad faith because they are exhausting.”
Have you ever considered that maybe they aren’t bigots and ironically you’re the bigot here just calling everyone who disagrees with respectability and plausibility a bigot?
(P.S. I tried to not be respectable so I don’t get lumped in with “the bigots” and have my ideas rejected out of hand.)
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HN tends to avoid politics, but when it does show up, there is a definite bias if you look at the pattern of up and down votes. What's more interesting is seeing how that bias has changed over time.
Is it really possible to talk about DEI without politics eventually? Seems like we are ignoring the elephant of the room
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I don't think that HN is middle of the road politically, I think it is mostly apolitical; the average has no significance. Some people on HN are of all political opinions, this is great, but voting seems sometimes skewed in some direction - it does not even indicate where the average is. Being very little political is one of the things I like most about HN.
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I don't know if "cultural Marxism" is a real thing or not.
What do I know is that I have not met anyone who used that term who could explain it, or most of their other very confidently-held beliefs either.
> There is no such a thing as cultural Marxism. That's a conspiracy theory the nazis first created.
There is such a thing as "cultural Marxism", and it is not a conspiracy theory invented by the Nazis or anyone else.
Consider for example the 1981 book by academic Richard Weiner, "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology" [0] – it discusses "cultural Marxism" as a real thing, in a positive light, and it is a real academic book, not some conspiracy theory hoax. Or similarly consider Dennis L. Dworkin's 1997 book "Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies" [1] – not some conspiratorial tome, it was published by Duke University Press. Or American philosopher Frederic Jameson's 2007 book "Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism" [2] – also published by Duke University Press, and not a conspiratorial work either
Cultural Marxism is a real movement in post-war Marxism and academia. To what extent it influenced movements such as BLM is a question about which reasonable people can disagree. But its existence is not a conspiracy theory.
No doubt some of the more extreme claims uninformed people have made about it do venture into the realms of conspiracy theory. But it would be wrong to assume that everyone who makes a claim like "cultural Marxism influenced BLM" is using the phrase "cultural Marxism" in such a sense. You'd have to investigate what they actually mean by it.
[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=4G0XAAAAIAAJ
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=dY1Cgg8NV64C
[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=pY69yJnmEAYC
I learned something today, I had no idea there was a coherent ideology of cultural Marxism. I had always assumed it was just a term made up on the spot in the spirit of “Marxism=bad leftie thing” (don’t you know how many died under Mao/Stalin?!), therefore lumping all of progressive politics in with it.
This might be contrasted with “postmodern Marxism” or “postmodern neo-Marxism” which is some kind of pseudointellectual epithet but is seems fundamentally incoherent. Postmodernism rejects grand narratives about society, but Marxism itself is a grand narrative (namely, that capitalist society should be framed as a class struggle between workers and capitalists).
In the other hand, I think there’s reason to believe the term “cultural Marxism” has undergone semantic shift recently. I see this quite frequently in progressive/conservative politics (another example is the term “woke”). So it may be best to either retire the term altogether or at least explicitly define it first. The cultural Marxism discussed in 60s and 70s academia is not the same thing as what the Norway terrorist was referring to in his manifesto.
> This might be contrasted with “postmodern Marxism” or “postmodern neo-Marxism” which is some kind of pseudointellectual epithet but is seems fundamentally incoherent. Postmodernism rejects grand narratives about society, but Marxism itself is a grand narrative (namely, that capitalist society should be framed as a class struggle between workers and capitalists).
Postmodern Marxism is a real thing too. See for example yet another Duke University Press book (Duke University is really into this kind of stuff for some reason) from 2001, "Re/presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism" [0]. Another more recent book is "The Condition of Digitality: A Post-Modern Marxism for the Practice of Digital Life" (University of Westminster Press, 2020) [1]
Are postmodernism and Marxism inherently contradictory? Well, "postmodernism" is a very broad and amorphous school of thought. The idea of postmodernism as opposition to "grand narratives" is due to Lyotard, and yes that idea seems rather incompatible with Marxism, at least in its classic form; but other postmodernist thinkers emphasised different ideas, whose incompatibility with Marxism is less obvious.
I also am picking up on the fact that you are obliquely referring to Jordan Peterson, who is known to use the phrases “postmodern Marxism” and “postmodern neo-Marxism”. Honestly, I've never paid him a great deal of attention – I'm neither one of his fans nor one of his haters, I'm just not that interested in him. So, I can't say whether he is using the phrase "postmodern Marxism" in the same sense as those academic books I cite do, or in a different sense.
> The cultural Marxism discussed in 60s and 70s academia is not the same thing as what the Norway terrorist was referring to in his manifesto.
I don’t know about that. Let me put it this way: the World Zionist Congress (WZC) is a real thing, an international conference that was first held in Switzerland in 1897, and it was held for the 38th time in Jerusalem in 2020. So the conference is not a conspiracy theory. But, if you go looking for them, you will find antisemites who will tell you that the WZC secretly controls the world’s banks and governments-that is a baseless conspiracy theory. However, even though we have both a real world factual discourse about the WZC and an unhinged antisemitic conspiracy theory about it, that doesn’t mean that the two discourses are using the term “World Zionist Congress” to mean fundamentally different things-no, they are both talking about the same thing. In the same way, just because Breivik talked about “Cultural Marxism”, doesn’t in itself prove he was talking about something different - he could be talking about the same thing, but making baseless/unhinged claims about it, and wrongly using those claims to justify his senseless mass murder of innocents
[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=0PdqvSOo-rgC
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=qSkNEAAAQBAJ
I think we have a disagreement about how to deal with a situation where two different concepts are called by the same name. In some sense they may seem the same because they have the same name, but in another they actually have no relationship. There is no logical path from A to B or vice versa. It’s not like the Norway terrorist was simply disagreeing with cultural Marxism in the academic sense. He wasn’t engaging with it at all, and simply borrowing the term (or more likely, organically reinventing it).
As a simple example, in the conspiracy, cultural Marxism is used nearly synonymously with multiculturalism. Neither of your links mention multiculturalism even once.
Well, coming back to my World Zionist Congress example – you might equally say that antisemites who accuse the WZC of "secretly controlling the world" are not "engaging with it at all, and simply borrowing the term (or more likely, organically reinventing it)". And yet, I don't think that makes sense. Antisemites make all kinds of unhinged, baseless accusations against Jewish people and their community organisations – and yet, that doesn't mean that when an antisemite says "Jew" they are talking about something completely unrelated to what non-antisemites mean by that word – if that were the case, they wouldn't (strictly speaking) be antisemites at all.
And, it is false that "cultural Marxism" the real world academic movement has "no relationship" with Breivik's concept of "cultural Marxism". In his manifesto, Breivik cites figures such as Antonio Gramsci, the Frankfurt School and György Lukács, who were foundational influences on that academic movement. So he is talking about the same thing. That doesn't mean his criticisms of it are sensible, nor do they in any way justify the unspeakable horror of his violence.
Imagine reading an antisemitic screed against the World Zionist Congress, which mentions its real founder and first President Theodor Herzl, and other key early figures such as Max Nordau, Abraham Salz and Samuel Pineles – but then baselessly accuses them of secretly controlling the world's governments. The baseless and irrational accusation doesn't change the identity of the targets of the accusation, it doesn't mean "the screed isn't actually attacking Theodor Herzl et al, rather it is attacking imaginary persons who by coincidence have the same names". In the same way, Breivik's claims about the academic cultural Marxist movement are ignorant and over-the-top, but that doesn't mean he isn't actually talking about them, and instead talking about something completely unrelated.
Language is a tool. We use words because they are useful. As a practical matter, the conspiracy versions of terms have only passing resemblance with their real-world counterparts. Mentioning the relevant people isn’t actually engaging with the content of it, it is more like worldbuilding in a fictional story. New York is a real place but Spider-Man doesn’t live there. MI6 is a real organization but James Bond isn’t on their payroll.
The problem is, where do you draw the line between legitimate criticisms and conspiratorial nonsense?
Again, the Zionist example: there are definitely criticisms of Zionism which are nothing more than baseless antisemitic conspiracy theories (e.g. "Zionist Occupation Government"). But, that doesn't mean all criticisms of it are so baseless. If you read pro-Palestinian authors, or even left-wing Jewish Israelis, you will encounter critiques of Zionism, which whether they ultimately be right or wrong, can't be dismissed on the same grounds.
You will also find claims that some people on the pro-Israel side want to erase the difference between non-antisemitic criticisms of Zionism and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism, in order to put Zionism itself beyond criticism – and I think sometimes those claims are correct. On the other hand, sometimes pro-Palestinian criticisms of Zionism do cross the line into antisemitism, and as applied to those particular cases the claim is false. Part of the problem here, is it isn't always clear where to draw the line between non-antisemitic and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism–it is a question about reasonable people can disagree. Non-antisemitic criticism of Zionism and antisemitic criticism of Zionism aren't totally disjoint, they bleed into each other at the edges.
And I think we have a similar situation with "cultural Marxism". Yes, Breivik's criticisms of it are conspiratorial nonsense – but is everyone else's? There are right-wing criticisms of it which, whether correct or incorrect, arguably aren't "conspiratorial nonsense" – see for an example, see the 2018 article by the conservative lawyer Alexander Zubatov in the Jewish magazine Tablet, "Just Because Anti-Semites Talk About ‘Cultural Marxism’ Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t Real" [0]. There are even left-wing criticisms of it – the cultural Marxist desire to switch the focus of Marxism from economic to cultural issues was (and still is) heavily criticised by orthodox Marxists who view that switch as a distraction and a mistake.
And I see two other parallels to the Zionism case: firstly, just as some Zionists arguably seek to dishonestly erase the distinction between non-antisemitic and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism, in order to put it beyond criticism – in a similar way, my own impression is that some progressives seek to erase the distinction between conspiratorial (even antisemitic) criticisms of cultural Marxism, and non-conspiratorial (even if possibly mistaken) conservative criticisms of it, in order to shut down debate.
And secondly, just as the boundary between non-antisemitic and antisemitic criticisms of Zionism is open to debate, I think the same is true for the boundary between non-conspiratorial and conspiratorial criticisms of cultural Marxism. In my own mind, Zubatov is clearly on the "could well be wrong but not conspiratorial" side of that line, and Breivik is definitely on the "conspiratorial" side of the line – but I'm less clear about where to put something like the Heritage Foundation's criticisms of it. [1] And that's the core problem with your idea that we consider conspiratorial criticisms and non-conspiratorial criticisms of "cultural Marxism" to be talking about two completely unrelated things – it assumes a clearcut boundary between the two which may not actually exist. I think it makes more sense to speak of a continuum of criticisms of the one thing (ranging from the reasonable to the ludicrous, with the boundary between the two being debatable) rather than claiming the reasonable criticisms and the ludicrous criticisms are criticising two completely different things.
[0] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/just-becaus...
[1] https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2022-11/SR262.p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...
The Nazi concept of "Cultural Bolshevism" has nothing to do with Cultural Marxism the post-war academic movement
"Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory" is about claiming that said post-war academic movement is a "Jewish plot". Yes, that's an antisemitic conspiracy theory. But stating that the academic movement exists, and discussing to what degree its ideas influenced contemporary social movements such as BLM, is not a conspiracy theory, and not per se antisemitic.
I think what is happening here, is some people are motivated to ignore the difference between what is a reasonable argument ("to what degree was a contemporary social movement influenced by a contemporary academic theory") and what is an unreasonable one ("it's a Jewish plot"), because they want to shut down that reasonable argument
What is your point here? That a left wing Wikipedia editor has a left wing defensive opinion?
Did you bother to look at the sources? https://newrepublic.com/article/144317/trumps-racism-myth-cu...
Good stuff.
I'm pretty sure that "cultural Marxism" is a conspiracy theory, so I'd probably downvote you for that still. Seriously, what is your definition of cultural Marxism? I'm not gonna respond by picking it apart or whatever, I'll just read it and write "thank you" as a response after you've posted it.
The culture of class revenge/justice that fuels Marxism.
"The tradition of Marxist cultural analysis has also been referred to as "cultural Marxism", and "Marxist cultural theory", in reference to Marxist ideas about culture."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_cultural_analysis
It is >also< a name used by people who believe in a conspiracy theory about egalitarian politics.
Thank you I meant the first one, I did not know about the specific conspiracy theory.
I was not aware that that the term cultural Marxism comes from a specific conspiracy theory from the 90s. I meant to say that some of these left wing social movements divide the entire world into an oppressor and an oppressed class the way you saw in the Chinese communist revolution for example, except not on economic lines (ie Marxism) but on race/identity lines which is why I said cultural Marxism but I should have been more careful with the terminology.
Thank you!
There was a very simple reason for them: to hire more non-Asian minority faculty. Just as with SAT scores, if you evaluate candidates numerically, Asian faculty will take ~50% of the spots and Black faculty will take ~1% of the spots. But if you add a job requirement of "has helped do DEI woo for Black students" then it's a lot easier to justify hiring the Black candidate.
I'll take a shot at a strongperson argument...
DEI statements are important because they show individual awareness of historical inequities and current biases that form modern society.
In an organization that wishes to promote more equitable outcomes for society and its employees, ensuring that existing/prospective employees are aware of biases that might color their own judgement is useful in counterbalancing them.
As a consequence, a DEI statement at the time of hiring or promotion is useful in encouraging self-reflection and promoting DEI.
... that said, from a personal perspective (and with apologies to anyone working in HR), they seem like the typical "moderately good idea that's run through the HR cost center grist mill and comes out as the most unimaginative, milquetoast check box possible" implementation.
> DEI statements are important because they show individual awareness of historical inequities and current biases that form modern society.
Even assuming that’s true, what is the rationale for plucking that issue out of the various ones facing society and demanding that professors express concern about it? Forcing people to characterize something as a priority is itself quite an ideological imposition.
Because employers want employees to have the skills and knowledge to work on problems the employers care about.
> but is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument
hi! that would include me, and I would ask you to think about the following question at the moment: You are wondering if a widely utilized, and VOCALLY critiqued practice is supported by anyone...then why would it be continued to be practiced. Generally what I have found is there are two sides to this - one of which is just trying to do their job and one of which is trying to shout over those arguments.
I say that because when I talk with people like yourself who are asking sincerely, they kind of go 'oh'. I think you nailed the 'how to write a good DEI statement' articles are saying simply - this is required, here is how to do it. Looking more broadly, articles like that exist for most pieces of the academic hiring process simply because the process feels opaque and is steeped in traditions that are not well communicated. You can find them for things like the academic cover letter, the difference between resumes and CVs, research statements, teaching philosophies (which have nothing to do with philosophy), etc. The people actually involved in the DEI statement process not to talk about it, in part because they don't want to get screamed at by uninformed people and in part because they are busy.
Speaking personally, as an academic, DEI statements or some equivalent are as are many things - incredibly effective when used well and just taking up space when not. DEI statements are not, or at least not supposed to be, 'WHY IS DIVERSITY GOOD'. They aren't supposed to be that simply because anyone can write that and its useless for evaluation. We don't want some 1984 article of faith because its unhelpful to the actual goals of increasing equitable opportunities, which is still a big problem. What DEI statements are meant to be is more along the lines of 'here is how I practice inclusion' which isn't all that far removed from 'here is how I'm not actively an asshole'. That might trigger the same response from others of 'why' - but I (and others) think that's short sighted. The goal is to understand how you go about your work in a way that increase rather than restricts the opportunities of people of different identities. Academia has strong and tall power structures in classrooms, labs, etc. Making active efforts to hire people who are not going to use those power structures to reinforce a long history of racism and sexism is (from my perspective) the only way we can make history history. Someone who can identify why only using classroom examples about baseball or american football is an educational problem, and not do it, is beneficial to the overall enterprise because it (in increasing classroom equity) ensures equal opportunity and that we identify the best students - rather than the biggest sports fans. Bigger picture, they show not just things about DEI but about a much broader range of skills around engaging with people that are critical to effectiveness in all the roles a faculty member plays. We already fight that most graduate labs look very homogeneous. The problem isn't that they do, the problem is that those norms reduce opportunities for everyone.
To add some color, I'll give actual examples from DEI statements/conversations that help me do the job of hiring better:
* One candidate wrote in theirs about how title IX was unconstitituional and is unfair to men by giving spots to women who are bad at math. Great, you can have that opinion, but our school is going to flag you as a liability risk because we are legally compelled to comply with title IX
* Talked about their experience in a truly punishing lab environment as a person of color and how important that was to their success and 'tough love' as their mentoring style. Again, think what you want but we care and are evaluated in part by our completion rate for phd students - we also care about their well being and success and experience tells us this wouldn't.
* Last one got asked in an interview about initiatives to 'diversify' the participant pools in medical research to do more representative science. They saw it as a non issue, and then brought up several tropes about Black people in particular - including trouble being on time, holding still, following instructions and how that could negatively impact their research. Again, sure agree to disagree between them and me, but NIH cares and if you blow off NIH requirements you aren't going to get grants and aren't going to get tenure.
If you want to see how it works in practice, here are the rubrics I developed for my department to evaluate DEI statements (which are totally blinded as are all application materials): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3agby1zv572km6bjuiymd/Teachin...
I’m going to be honest, those examples don’t really make me feel that DEI is serving a valid purpose. If those are the best cases then I will say good riddance. Uniformity of opinion should not be a goal of academia.
Why do you think choices in hiring are the only way to ameliorate current conditions?
>They saw it as a non issue, and then brought up several tropes about Black people in particular - including trouble being on time, holding still, following instructions and how that could negatively impact their research.
In 2020 the Smithsonian—The Smithsonian—said that individualism, the nuclear family, the scientific method, working hard, and planning for the future are aspects of "white culture". Years later I still can't believe it. <https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/artic...>
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I have no idea which side you're on (I'm not parsing the thread for that) but your comments are standing out as particularly bad flamewar. Please stop.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. In case anyone's worried about this - if there are other accounts behaving this badly who have not been moderated yet, the reason is that we haven't seen them. You can help by flagging the comments or letting us know about them at hn@ycombinator.com.
I don't know if or not this is "coherent," but my experience has been that the type of person to oppose something like this is more often than not the type of person we were trying to filter out anyway. There may be some false negatives of course, but in terms of keeping the klan from high positions in your institution, this sort of thing seems to work.
> There may be some false negatives of course, but in terms of keeping the klan from high positions in your institution, this sort of thing seems to work.
You've highlighted exactly the problem so many people have with these DEI statements in the first place. If people have some (IMO valid) disagreements about what DEI has become, they're basically bucketed in with "the klan". So instead, people just shut up and tell reviewers what they know they want to hear, and this ideological litmus test becomes the norm.
I can see a DEI program as promoting the social values of an institution. A position that I once had was this. If all ethnic groups have a bell curve of intelligence. All things being equal, the ethnic groups would have similar distributions of academic qualifications.
So if a particular ethnic group is disadvantaged in a quantifiable way. Then applying a factor to who is accepted into the academic programs. Would bring in people at the upper ends of the bell curve across the different ethnic/racial groups.
In other words, all things being equal across quantifiable ethnic/racial opportunity. This would bring in the top tier candidates across all ethnicities/racial groups. And if all ethnicities/racial groups are equal in intelligence. Then it would bring in the top tier candidates across *all* ethnicities/racial groups.
> is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument
When Richard Dawkins spoke at UC Berkeley in 2008, he argued that "raising awareness" about feminism by changing how we speak and think has changed society for the better. (In the same discussion, he seeks to do the same for children's freedom from their parents' religion.) There is no doubt that Western society has changed how it treats and speaks about women.
That said, Dawkins has in more recent years found himself opposing identity politics as they seek to change language usage and perceptions of gender.
> That said, Dawkins has in more recent years found himself opposing identity politics as they seek to change language usage and perceptions of gender.
Correction: Dawkins doesn't care one whit about gender, and he has literally said so. He only cares when people cross into talking about sex, make incorrect claims about the nature of sex (spectrums and such), conflate sex with gender, and make unscientific claims about being able to change one's sex. Basically, when they enter his wheelhouse and start making a confusing mess of things.
Thanks, I'm happy to be corrected.
> making a confusing mess of things.
Which seems to be the prevailing state of discourse about the matter of DEI. If I may add a reflection, maybe it was just relatively easier sociologically to recognise the injustices and inequalities that feminism decried.
What claims is he making specifically?
> the nature of sex (spectrums and such)
Sex shows itself to be a spectrum pretty often.
> unscientific claims about being able to change one's sex
Phenotype or genotype?
They don't always match even without any medical intervention, and a change in hormones can drastically change phenotype.
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/175240399517425272...
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/178678872412412757...
You can debate him there if this is your hobby horse.
A huge fraction of humans don't have gametes. That definition only works for describing a species, not individuals. That doesn't need debating, he's off in his own corner talking about a completely different metric.
He addresses that in one of the links.
Now you're cursing me to read entire twitter threads?
This isn't in fact my hobby horse so without more specifics I'll just treat him as talking past people and move on.
Looking at the video in the second link, it looks like he only spent three minutes talking about trans people and I don't see any explanation there about how you're supposed to apply his universal biological definition to individual people.
It's in the second paragraph of one of the links I posted:
"It happens to be embryologically DETERMINED by chromosomes in mammals and (in the opposite direction) birds, by temperature in some reptiles, by social factors in some fish."
Most of the time!
Sometimes you don't get gametes. At that point, you either need to exclude those people from your classification system because it's ill-suited for this task, or you need to make your classification system significantly more complicated because there's a lot of edge cases.
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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 some horrific crimes.
That's modern opinionated news in a nutshell -- here's a pile of extreme occurrences, look at how extreme they are, so you should agree that the other side is crazy.
An actual argument involves more annoying to fudge (and admittedly, harder to compile) data like frequency, normalization against population or historical averages, geographic localization, etc.
I've found arguing from questions rather than statements helps. What's the root question? And then what data would answer that question?
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.
Context for others who missed this particular storm in a teacup: https://freespeechunion.org/harvard-professor-needed-armed-p...
On the question of non-lethal uses of force, the study found “sometimes quite large” racial differences in police use of force, even after accounting for “a large set of controls designed to account for important contextual and behavioural factors at the time of the police-civilian interaction”.
In stark contrast to non-lethal uses of force, however, the study observed that when it came to the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – there were no racial differences “in either the raw data or when accounting for controls”. According to one case study of the Houston police department, black people were actually 23.5% less likely to be shot by police, relative to white people, in an interaction.
Wow, I hadn't heard this before l, and it made me pretty furious:
> An important scholarly intervention within a particular field of academic research, you might say. But Prof Fryer has now revealed that at the time the research was conducted, Harvard colleagues familiar with the results urged him not to publish his findings, telling him that he’d ruin his career.
This whole article is sad and disgusting, especially because, as a result of this research, Prof Fryer was proposing some actual interventions to reduce biased applications of non-lethal use-of-force, but because the data didn't fit the prevailing narrative, it was attacked. Just gross.
Fry's treatment was a travesty on multiple levels.
Any media coverage that isn’t from a niche right wing news site yelling about the woke kids?
So it's not true?
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...
> An actual argument involves more annoying to fudge (and admittedly, harder to compile) data like frequency, normalization against population or historical averages, geographic localization, etc.
We've seen that even these aren't that hard to fudge. Selection bias, p-hacking, mobbing researchers who publish politically unpopular results as a deterrent, etc.
What you need is basically the opposite of that. Replication of controversial results in preregistered studies by independent researchers trusted to be honest by both sides of the controversy. Refuting results you don't believe to be true using evidence rather than silencing the original authors. A culture of good science.
How to get that is a different question.
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 money.
But the internet also made it so you don't need a printing press to publish. That should have brought the cost down to what would still be sustainable after the drop in ad revenue. Until you have to make rent, because housing costs are out of control.
This is the same thing destroying our communities. You and some neighbors want to get a community lodge for local events? Forget about it, the cost is prohibitive. Stay home and don't even know your neighbors' names. And then where do you learn who to trust? The Internet?
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)
Most of the revenue from AdSense etc. goes to the site, i.e. if there are Google ads on a newspaper's website, the newspaper is getting more of the advertiser's money than Google. The problem is this is less money than they used to get, and a lot of the sites aren't journalistic outlets, so the money gets spread pretty thin.
In theory Google and Facebook could use their cut to fund journalism, but is that really what we want? The vast majority of journalism funded (and therefore controlled) by a small handful of megacorps?
Far better to make it sustainable for individual independent journalists to make living.
Do you have a breakdown in terms of ad host vs ad platform?
We know ad host revenue generated from e.g. Google Ads.
We know CPC to advertisers.
We know Google's top line ad revenue.
But I haven't seen the margin Google et al. take out of the transaction. (CPC - host revenue) / CPC
> In theory Google and Facebook could use their cut to fund journalism, but is that really what we want? The vast majority of journalism funded (and therefore controlled) by a small handful of megacorps?
I'd prefer that? It isn't that different than the historical funding model (plus loose regulation of what a newsroom meant).
> Far better to make it sustainable for individual independent journalists to make living.
I think that's apples and oranges.
The "we have a news budget that can afford to pay a stringer or correspondent to do first-party reporting and/or investigative journalism" type organization is disappearing.
Citizen journalism is important too, but I don't think it's a replacement for the above.
As I heard quipped, "Nobody goes to every local council meeting and takes written notes, so they can catch the 1-2 agenda items a year that should be big local stories."
And absent that (or similar on an international stage), we lose transparency.
We've seen how citizen coding in open source has blind spots where security/cryptography is concerned, and I'd argue we run similar risks relying solely on citizen journalists.
In [1] there's:
> Like other recent live-action remakes—such as The Little Mermaid and the upcoming Snow White—some users accused the studio of "going woke" by modernizing the original story.
> They'll make the hunter an evil White man, Bambi's mom will be a message about incel rage and Bambi will also be black," wrote @NintendoFan729.
That's this Tweet: https://twitter.com/NintendoFan729/status/170756134256606837... – 5 likes, 641 views. From some random anonymous account with 322 followers and an average of about 5 tweets per day.
Yet here it is, cited in a major magazine, as evidence of ... something or the other.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/disney-modernized-bambi-remake-spar...
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I do not find the argument that “newspapers be newspapers” excuses this, when it clearly only goes one way, and very forcefully at that.
And therefore it would be extremely interesting to find the origin of this push. Is it systemic, i.e. always present in some form due to humans’s generous nature? Is it due to more people living in cities that we have to organize in such a way (DEI-Covid-Feminism-GW or ostracization)? Is it, as the conspiracy theorists say, a small group of influential people? Is it the Russians who sponsor those groupes to divide us?
It doesn't go only one way though.
I can count 6+ instances on both the Fox News and MSNBC front pages right now.
How many Fox-like outlets are there compared to the number of MSNBC-like?
I don’t think these things are equal even on the surface. I don’t know how people aren’t asking themselves all the time “Am I even sure I believe in the things I think I do?”
The western idea of DEI has always puzzled me ever since I first came across it (or at least the D portion of DEI, which in my mind is the most important one).
I'm a Serb by blood and grew up in and have lived in Indonesia for the majority of my life, and I went to an international school with kids from quite literally every single corner of the earth, many of them being some exotic mix of various ethnicities.
Despite that, many of us are actually amazingly similar in many ways - We have a very distinct int'l kid accent that we all share, we grew up with extremely similar experiences, listening to the same music, being exposed to all the same things. Despite the superficial differences, I actually wouldn't call us a very diverse group at all when you really look at us. Some years later when I was studying, I met an int'l girl from the Bahamas and I was amazed at how similar her and my life were in many ways, despite being a literal ocean apart in completely different islands/nations. I had infinitely more in common with her than any other Serb I've ever met, yet alone the Dutch people I've met in my move to the Netherlands.
When I moved to NL, I instantly noticed that my friends and I were very different to the people there. Yet if some HR person would interview me, a white-skinned guy, and then my best friend, a black-skinned guy who has African/Japanese ancestry, I'd definitely be placed in the same "bucket" as the white Dutchies around me and my friend with the black Dutchies, despite him and I actually having identical experiences and mindsets and not really having anything in common with the Dutchies. This is, of course, understandable as an initial reaction, but my problem is that all the DEI shenanigans never get past that initial surface-level nonsense. I will probably never be labelled as anything other than "generic white guy" or perhaps at a stretch sometimes, the "eastern european guy".
I guess what I'm trying to get at in this strange ramble is that ultimately DEI should be focused on diversity of thought, and not just superficial characteristics, yet it never works out that way. Often the exact opposite, in fact, where viewpoints that don't match the superficial characteristics are often swatted away since those situations are harder to navigate than the cookie-cutter approach.
As an Asian, the DEI idea and how it was executed puzzled me as well.
Apple's first VP of diversity said [1]:
> “Diversity is the human experience. I get a little bit frustrated when diversity or the term diversity is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.”
> “there can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.”
She had to resigned [2] for saying so. That really confused me, isn't what she said... true?
[1]: https://qz.com/1097425/apples-first-ever-vp-of-diversity-and... [2]: https://nypost.com/2017/11/17/apples-diversity-chief-lasts-j...
From my personal experience as a central European male, they would be missing women and their outputs would have predictable and easily rectified mistakes. Unless their customer base is 90% male and they are OK with that.
And it's exactly that the experience shapes us. In the West, gender roles are still very pronounced, shaping our experiences in certain ways. Males are taught to go for wins, females for maintainability for one.
I don't think it's implied that she's making the claim that this group is going to be perfectly representative of their target demographic. She's simply saying that there is heterogeneity in a group that is ostensibly homogenous through a DEI lens.
Gender roles are just as pronounced in the East; me being in China as I write this. Maybe this says a little bit more about our biology and a little bit less about structural bias.
The point of DEI is to have the widest possible distribution of life experience among the group. Of course 12 white, blue-eyed, blonde men would have different life paths, but if you project them on 2D graph and draw a circle around them, then the distance to the point of white blue-eyed woman would be about 5 diameters of that circle, and to the point of black transgender person - about 15 diameters.
The most meaningful and useful diversity would be that of social class, and yet that's the one kind of diversity the DEI bureaucracy isn't interested in diversifying.
I think the goals of a sufficiently complex and large system is what the results are.
There's a hegemony that controls vocally-progressive places like San Francisco, big tech companies, and universities.
People who espouse DEI also tend to espouse slogans like "psychological safety" and "bring your whole self to work." Unfortunately, those slogans are as thinly constructed as the Diversity example you called out: it's code for privileging particular groups of people who look trendy in recruitment materials and PR. If I actually brought my whole self to work, I'd be fired.
Ironically, people who are critical of such policies don't feel psychologically safe. They don't want to be prejudged to be assholes, who then don't get invited to parties or get managed out at work. So, people in predominantly progressive spaces don't say out loud that the emperor has no clothes.
When DEI was first introduced, its champions insisted Diversity would be broadly constructed - that it was about enhancing creativity and identifying blind spots. Instead, it too often really means "we want a token {black, gay, etc} {person, club, etc} because it's fashionable." Bring a totally different perspective and life experience but superficially look like the majority? "Sorry, that's not Diverse enough."
If these spaces actually welcomed diverse ideas (and skepticism in the scientific method sense), perhaps we could learn from the good parts of diversity and build a society that works better for everybody. Instead we get Affirmative Action dressed up in newer clothes and whispers to trustworthy friends "can I tell you what I really think?"
I identify very strongly with what you've written here.
A guy who studied at Eton and a guy who grew up in a rural village in Uganda couldn't be any more different regardless of whether they can both tick a Black African box on an application form.
The same is obviously true of a guy from a poor part of Glasgow vs. a guy who studied at Eton, regardless of whether both could tick a White British box.
It's so far from any reasonable sense of truth that I feel like I'm in some sort of bad acid trip whenever the topic comes up. To me, the act of trying to categorise people in this way is in and of itself horribly racist.
This occurs at business school in a big way. They hit diversity quotas with super rich kids from Mexico City who are probably direct descendants of the conquistadors who pillaged the people these diversity quotas are supposed to benefit.
It's amazing how shallow is the "Americanized" DEI perspective when you look at your country of origin and its neighbors. Former Yugoslavia is, comparatively, not very large, but it contains a whole lot of very diverse groups, sometimes so that the "melting pot" occasionally starts throwing angry sparks around. But to them, you're all just... "white". And thus your life experience must be also "white" and "privileged", right? Right?
Sometimes I really want to take all those privileged campus kids and their little twitter accounts and throw them into a Total Perspective Vortex.
It's "DEI by photography". You need to see DEI when you look at a photo of a group of employees.
"This is, of course, understandable as an initial reaction, but my problem is that all the DEI shenanigans never get past that initial surface-level nonsense"
It is literally all only about the surface-level - the surface of the body, the skin color. Defining diversity by this single trait is the opposite of diversity in my opinion, which your story shows quite well.
> I guess what I'm trying to get at in this strange ramble is that ultimately DEI should be focused on diversity of thought, and not just superficial characteristics, yet it never works out that way.
I think you're missing the point of DEI. The advertised purpose of DEI is to counteract racism. It's easy to be sympathetic to that objective if you look at recent history. For example, watch a movie made in the US as recently as the year 1990, and you'll see a stark under-representation of anyone Black. It's hard to chalk that up to different education levels, because it's not like acting requires formal education. Let's face it, it was racism. And this racism pervaded every industry, having inter-generational effects that compounded over time. The idea of DEI therefore is to act as an opposing force.
My main problem with DEI is it's corrosive to the social fabric. To constantly remind people of ethnicity is not a good idea. It should not be front of mind all the time. A shared civic identity should be front and center. There's also an anti-egalitarian anti-individual aspect to DEI thinking that I dislike. And the third thing that puts me off about DEI is the people who run these programs seem to be over-represented by ideological extremists and racists. Black supremacism type ideas are tolerated in these circles when they should be resolutely discarded as ethnonationalist nonsense. It is hard to fully support it until they purge themselves of such personalities.
In 1990, 12% of the population was Black. [1] In California, they were 6-8% of the population. Today those numbers aren't very different. And in fact, Americans have consistently overestimated the percentage of Black people in the US, in part due to media representations. [2]
None of this means that Hollywood is/was not racist, but the problem of media representation is different from how it is usually presented. For example, Black actors have difficulty being cast as villains, because there's a longstanding fear in Hollywood about how that would look. [3]
[1] https://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1991-02.pdf
[2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/4435/public-overestimates-us-bl...
[3] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/kumail-n...
This is all true until you 30-something. You won't believe how your family culture and values kicks in when you become full-scale adult with non-delegateable responsibilities and other adult-life quirks. And then a midlife crisis punches you in the head. Just wait, the interesting times are ahead)
You actually explained the need for DEI.
>Yet if some HR person would interview me, a white-skinned guy, and then my best friend, a black-skinned guy who has African/Japanese ancestry, I'd definitely be placed in the same "bucket" as the white Dutchies around me and my friend with the black Dutchies, despite him and I actually having identical experiences and mindsets and not really having anything in common with the Dutchies.
If they're putting you two in different buckets, how likely is it that it's to do something with one bucket and something else with the other? I imagine that, on average, the white-people-who-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other bucket is going to fare better than the black-people-who-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other bucket.
DEI is meant to counteract that. It's concerned with the initial surface-level nonsense because the initial surface-level nonsense, driven by socioeconomic and political structures and implicit bias, is what keeps HR et al. from being able to reach deeper and make conscientious calls vis a vis diversity of thought.
Why not measure on diversity of thought then?
That's the goal. But you can't get there, under our current system and circumstances, without some DEI-like anti-filter. It's not either-or; "Measure diversity of thought," is step #2, after, "Counteract the social gravity of tribalism in its myriad forms."
Because measuring diversity of thought is much more difficult, and thought isn't a legally protected class.
> thought isn't a legally protected
So the law justifies the law?
All I meant was that all companies ultimately care about is what is legally required, everything else ends up just being lip service and PR.
To your question though, the law justifies the law unfortunately. That's one big reason I'm opposed to laws and government in general. Something is legal because we said its legal, or more often its legal because a prior generation said it was legal. Put worse, something is punishable because we once wrote down that you would be punished for a specific act.
[dead]
I’m glad that MIT is standing up for an evidence based approach to all this, as they did with reinstating the SAT. Skin color differences don’t make organizations or schools better or worse: https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1296/GreenHandMar2024.p.... (Lack of diversity, of course, may be evidence of underlying race-based discrimination.) It was an idea that was developed in response to Supreme Court cases that prohibited using express racial quotas to eliminate the effects of past discrimination. So there was a need to come up with a different rationale for racial rebalancing.
Its all well and good that MIT is now coming to it's senses, but they'd have earned much more of my respect if they had stood on evidence based approaches from the beginning.
Its easy to follow the crowd when popular opinion swings in a crazy direction. Its even easier to see the writing on the wall and be one of the first to swing back, claiming some kind of honor or bravery in doing so.
Its a win-win. Up front you don't get blasted for being racist because you don't fall in line, and on the back end you're held up as a hero when you respond to what everyone has already realized but few have adjusted to yet.
The SAT thing was wild. I have no idea why people thought making the admissions criteria more opaque and fudge-able would help prevent bias and racism.
I saw the same thing at a company I worked at where they found at that Black people were getting lower performance ratings and there were people in the Diversity interest group advocating getting rid of numeric ratings so, you know, instead of knowing there was bias we would… not know? Like maybe it was a management psy-op or something but that was insane.
> instead of knowing there was bias
Why do you automatically assume this? Might be related to why people wanted to hide these numbers.
I was surprised because the person suggesting it wanted to get rid of it even though it helped his case. His argument was literally that it would help Black employees advance to get rid of the numbers. I would have expected management to want to hide the numbers.
This feels like the "defund/abolish the police" issue again. "Please retire this particular testing regime which seems to game-able via wealth and which further entrenches existing disparities," gets turned into and mischaracterized as, "Get rid of numeric ratings," because it's easier to argue against AND allows for an even more incumbent-advantageous solution to be implemented if it happens to be toppled.
If we went with the actual recommendation (e.g., to complete the analogy sandwich, "dismantle the current institution and establish a new one with a fundamentally different structure which allows for security/investigation functions to be carried out without the baggage of the previous institution"), something might actually change for the better, and we can't have that.
Beyond the culture war, I find DEI uncomfortable. I’m not the most articulate and don’t keep up with modern trends. Ask me about computers or tell me to code, but writing about social subjects when I barely leave my room and even then only to exercise feels like a nightmare. I’ve been asked to optionally write something similar during university applications in the past but along with ethnicity and other private information, N/A is the best I can think of.
I'm with you on this one. I take pride in being out of tune with pop culture, I much prefer to focus on my real-life relationships, tech, personal projects, etc. This DEI stuff seems to change so rapidly that I often have no clue whether something I said was OK or not OK in the eyes of the overlords. It's caused me quite a bit of anxiety, especially during the peak of it in June 2020.
Same and I keep up with some of subjects but the whole DEI feels like a minefield where any thing voiced can be used against you.
Example: you notice that corporate culture is a bit aggressive on the feedback which causes some negatives effects. Someone says that everyone should do some training to give more neutral feedback but I notice that also gives room to less articulated people voice less concerns as they fear they could be badly perceived.
Still, everyone around pretends that are no tradeoffs, just positive effects. I have no idea how to properly give that feedback to the organization as it will be probably be seen as odd/weird or even talking down HR work.
Although the intentions behind DEI are good such a top down approach doesn't seem to get the desired results (i.e optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify).
Unfortunately the name (and perhaps ideas?) are now tainted and I hope this doesn't impact the bottom up approaches (i.e support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings, and in general just being chill and accepting about people) which probably should have been the focus from the start.
> support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings
If that support is available to those who need it irrespective of race, sex, et cetera, sure.
Targeting underserved populations is one thing. Restricting access based on protected characteristics is illegal under any commonsense interpretation of the law.
‘Positive discrimination’ - aka excluding someone based on these attributes - is always required to make the numbers look good when slots/resources are limited - either in applicants of a given attribute or in overall resources.
So someone who would have gotten a slot based on - say - pure technical performance - won’t if these criteria are taken into account.
It’s fundamental and ‘working as intended’.
If you find your school has a racial distribution different from the population, targeting means making an extra effort to go to those communities. Increasing the number of applications from them. The actual filtering of the applications, however, should be neutral.
If there are a fixed number of slots, actually filtering without considering those criteria and yet ending up with a ‘good’ set of numbers based on those criteria is actually impossible.
Regardless of any additional outreach being performed.
It’s basic analysis.
> actually filtering without considering those criteria and yet ending up with a ‘good’ set of numbers based on those criteria is actually impossible
If there is an underlying difference in quality, yes. If it’s people from one group not getting applications in, no. There are a lot of smart people gate kept from opportunities due to trivial things like application fees.
And what application fees are you talking about exactly?
Because if that is the issue, that sounds pretty cheap and easy to fix.
Targeting underserved populations will necessarily disproportionately benefit African Americans because of the history of extreme oppression responsible for them being underserved. And I think that's a good thing.
I agree this can be accomplished without explicitly targeting race of other protected characteristics.
> Restricting access based on protected characteristics
What about when you turn that on its head?
"Promoting access based on ..."
If you assume a finite set of places to access then the approaches are equivalent, but for the the emphasis
I think it matters (I am unsure DEI is the solution) that people can access professional services supplied by professionals from a similar cultural background to themselves
In Aotearoa we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school for exactly this reason, and it seems to have been both hugely successful and extremely triggering.
> we have mechanisms to encourage Māori applicants to law and medical school
I see the argument for setting aside seats for people who fluently speak the language. I do not based on race. ”Black patients hav[ing] better interactions, on average, with physicians of their own race” is a problem, but segregating medical care on the basis of race isn’t the solution [1].
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7174451/
I remember seeing a similar study that took place at a busy walk in clinic in an area with a very diverse population. People would come in and get treated by whichever of the doctors on duty that day was available.
The researchers found that when successful treatment would require the patient to follow the doctors instructions after leaving, such as getting a prescription filled, taken the full course of medication, doing or refraining from certain exercises, etc., the patient was more likely to actually do those things the more the doctor was like them in things like race, gender, and ethnicity.
> see the argument for setting aside seats for people who fluently speak the language. I do not based on race.
It is based on culture
It is not enough to have genes.
And since most Māori people speak English it would simply be stupid to base it on language as that language would be English not Te Reo Māori
Aside: calling the Māori language "Te Reo Māori" in English is unhelpful performative posturing. Yes, that's what the language is called in Māori, but we don't call Chinese "Zhongwen" or 中文.
Untrue
It is what it's called, here, in NZ English
I know, but it's still unhelpful performative posturing. There would be zero risk of confusion if it was called simply "Māori" or "the Māori language" instead, the way we do with every other language in the world.
> it's still unhelpful performative posturing
Why exactly is it "unhelpful"? You say there's no risk of simply saying Maori - what is the risk in calling it what it's called?
It is a difficult adjustment for us here, especially for older generations, the change has been very dramatic.
"unhelpful" is a mild expression of discomfort
> It is based on culture
If one can define culture without relying on biological heredity, sure again. It would be better, however, to address the underlying issue: lack of cross-cultural knowledge that causes the reduced outcomes. (And why Māori students aren't getting into those programmes in a race-neutral process.)
I feel that deconstructing the entire culture of race is not really a practical suggestion for solving the issue. This outcome is not uncommon when you ask those against DEI how they would solve it. Often they recommend systematic solutions that they would in the end also be against because those solutions would surely use race as a targeting mechanism.
> deconstructing the entire culture of race is not really a practical suggestion for solving the issue
Sure. But normalising discrimination based on race entrenches it.
If everyone is well fed and feeling secure, it feels good to be generous.
When folks are hungry and/or insecure, it feels like taking from their and their children’s mouths and giving to their competition.
And there are essentially fractal levels of division possible.
And so the wheel turns.
There is no such thing as a fully inclusive community. A community is defined as much by the people it excludes as the people it includes. If you try to ensure that everyone is welcome, someone else will make the decisions who to exclude. Typically by making things too uncomfortable for some groups.
If you genuinely want to target underserved populations, you must be prepared to exclude those who are not in the target audience.
It's about casting a net as wide as possible because for the one Srinivasa Ramanujan we know about, there's countless others who never got the right circumstances.
> no such thing as a fully inclusive community
We have agreed as a society on a set of protected classes. Not being allowed to discriminate based on race or sex doesn’t mean not being able to discriminate at all.
By using DEI as a metric you end up doing the complete opposite of “optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify…”
> By using DEI as a metric you end up doing the complete opposite of “optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify…”
That is a puzzling statement. Why is it true?
Let's say you're trying to hire programmers. DEI could mean going to historically black colleges and women's colleges, and encouraging people there to apply for jobs at your company. This gets you more diverse applicants, from which you pick the best available, because your goal is to hire good programmers.
But what DEI actually means in practice is someone in HR keeping statistics on how many non-white-male programmers you have, and scolding you because you haven't hired enough non-white-males. That kind of DEI leads to non-optimal use of everyone's talent, because you hire non-optimal people for the job openings you have.
No, the complete opposite of that is when you only allow white men to do things - not when you attempt to give everyone the opportunity and don’t have a good way to choose the optimal one amongst them. And that opposite setup is, I’m sure you know, exactly how things worked in most of the west until relatively recently. The overwhelming impression is that because the current setup is closer to overall optimum and further from an optimum for white men, people see it as a net loss.
I had a dinner with someone directly affected by MIT's recent slashing of DEI. At one point they mentioned that they made sure a venue had chairless locations and shuttles with lifts for baby strollers. Someone else at the dinner said "for disabled people too, right?" The person who worked at MIT organizing events reacted like they had never once considered disability access. The term "inclusion" should not be co-opted to mean "exclusion".
I am almost certain that by 2100, the current worship of skin-deep diversity will be relegated to the cabinet of ancient curiosities, along with lobotomy, bell-bottom jeans and haruspicy [0], and people will worship something equally weird, but momentarily fashionable.
Diversity is not really a value. If it were, it would have been recognized as such millennia ago, because already the Egyptians and the Babylonians knew what mixed societies looked like. It is not as if American diversity is a new phenomenon, never seen before. Rome or Alexandria in 1 AD was very diverse, and so was India when Buddha was still a young and naive prince.
Real human values, virtues and vices don't change that much across centuries. You can still discern courage, truthfulness, sloth or compassion in stories written three thousand years ago and half a world away. Diversity as a pseudovalue is a modern fad of American origin, partly conjured into being by ancient American racial problems.
Even many American allies (Japan, Taiwan, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Argentina, Israel etc.) don't bother to even pretend to worship at that DEI-emblazoned altar, so dear to the good professors of Berkeley. Countries with more distant political systems like the Arab sheikhdoms or China probably don't even understand what the word is supposed to mean.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex
I am unsure about most of those countries but Japan and Israel have a reputation for being extremely racist
Prejudice of any form is unhelpful. Racism is particularly nasty
DEI is prejudice squared. Individuals are stuffed into tight racial and gender boxes in a big bout of social engineering. It is better than stuffing them into boxcars and deporting them, but ultimately the logic behind those treatments is the same. You are not John Doe, you are White or Black or whatever, a Lego brick that can be replaced by another Lego brick of the same color and the bureaucratic system will be happy.
If you want to address racism, throw away the entire neo-racist stuff that now passes for enlightened and start again. "Whiteness" et al. belong to the same heap of historical refuse as "Judeobolshevism" or "degenerate art".
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.
Thank you. In the immortal words of Aenea, "choose again".
> 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.
I think Japan is not racist, but xenofobe (they dislike and avoid other cultures, not races) and Israel is very non-racist as they are are united by the religion regardless the race. Also racism is not particularly worse than other similar forms of prejudice - if you look at the German concentration camps, race was one of the factors but not the top.
Rest assured, woke politics in the form of support for/opposition to immigration of people with the wrong skin color is a major issue in all Scandinavian countries.
I think the more important question is: are the intentions to get actual results, or just to sidetrack anything that would take actual effort with 'but we have DEI statements'?
"The path to hell is paved with good intentions"
Were the intentions behind colonialism good, too, in your opinion?
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Probably depends on the colonialist. I expect many were in it for money at the expense of the colonised population, but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians".
> but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians".
Do you have any examples for this ?
This poem captures some of the spirit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden
Other thought “And clean our cities of the crooked nose vermin” so it’s all good?
In practice both paths were bad in varying ways, it's just that one was paved with a disregard for others, the second paved with good intentions.
eg: Daisy Bates oozed good intentions
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bates-daisy-may-83
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bates_(author)
and strongly put the case that:
and a number of other firm opinions that spawned a regime of hugging "the good ones" to death while abusing the "in betweens".But yeah, good intentions.
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 neutrality and objectivity against external influences
Most of those have been around for decades. Some of them are legal requirements, at least in some contexts. Some are required by research funders and similar organizations. Some must be included in a teaching statement, which became a popular requirement a decade or two before DEI statements. And all contribute to the administrative bloat everyone likes to complain about.
> 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.
A declaration of support for those line items would be more impactful if it came from the university administration.
> - Embracing diverse viewpoints
If you read this as having some academics embracing Flat Earth viewpoints, it is obvious this will not happen. The devil is in the details, what does "Embracing diverse viewpoints" even mean? Science usually drives to unique conclusions, not diverse interpretations. How many correct and diverse viewpoints exist about E=m*c^2 ?
There are many academics who will not entertain any viewpoint that's contrary to their own belief and agenda. They will happily share papers that support their preconceived notions, and be hostile towards anyone who questions whether these papers have merit.
OK, with that definition not only it make sense, but close minded academics are not worth to be academics.
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.
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?
Isn't that just part of the job? If you're not wrong sometimes you're not trying hard enough. To avoid this situation you should invite others to challenge your work more quickly.
The academic job is primarily about getting funding for further work. If ten years of work were proven wrong, the academic may worry that funding agencies may stop funding them. "You've been doing the wrong work for a decade!"
So while the academic may not mind being proven wrong in their hypotheses/results/conclusions, they may stress about not being able to get more funding.
We do. I literally just had to submit a statement to this effect to the NSF. The GP is spouting uninformed opinions and then patting themselves on the back for being an "outsider".
BTW I have nothing to gain from 'spouting uninformed opinions'.
My opinion is mostly based on my own interactions with certain academics, and others I've had the opportunity to directly observe.
Perhaps the patterns I've seen are not universal. But that doesn't mean that they are not common or, as you seem to suggest, do not exist at all.
> Why so hostile?
This sort of thread pops up again and again on HN. It's frustrating to read comment after comment of people being confidently wrong about your vocation.
I have an MBA, and spent years as a Product Manager.
There is much snark on HN about MBAs and PMs being useless. I read those comments with curiosity to understand what I might learn.
Those commenters' experience is not universal, but neither is my own. Some of the comments might be based on virtually no evidence, but that's probably not the majority.
Does "external influences" include the American Communist Party? How about the Chinese Communist Party?
If everything is a priority/mandate than nothing is.
You cannot base science on political declarations /qualifications instead of merit, if you wish for advancements in the fields.
This is all the administrative class at universitets and government, declaring their raison d'etre and accumulated authority.
They cant really understand science or do much about it, so you cannot base power on that, so they must work hard to construct a vehicle that is untouchable my sciences, that will be feared. Then you can cement your authority on the new construct and keep adding to it, to accumulate more importance and power.
Quicky this vehicle will overtake science in relative importance for various institutions because this is about "justice and doing what is right and decent". Science is mundane and boring.
It's quite telling that the MIT president was too scared to announce this despite only 1 in 20 faculty supporting DEI statements.
Quoting: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mit-scraps-diversity-state...
The decision was made by MIT president Sally Kornbluth, with support from the school’s provost and six academic deans, a spokesperson told National Review on Sunday afternoon.
“My goals are to tap into the full scope of human talent, to bring the very best to MIT, and to make sure they thrive once here,” Kornbluth said in a statement provided to NR. “We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”
steve_taylor's point is that had National Review not asked for a comment, MIT would never have formally announced this at all.
Do they generally put out announcements on Sunday afternoon? They made sure to be accessible for this. That's probably already an exception. Campuses are usually a M-F 9-5 kind of place.
So I think that's pure speculation. There wasn't that much time, they're usually closed on the weekend and there's no expectation for them to swiftly contact the media for every single change in policy.
Just want to note that, currently, this is the highest comment in the thread which makes any direct references to the article we're all nominally discussing, and it's about 100 comments down. Have an extra upvote.
The hubbub began to subside slowly as Major – de Coverley paused in the doorway with a frown of puzzled disapproval, as though viewing something bizarre. He started forward in a straight line, and the wall of officers before him parted like the Red Sea. Glancing neither left nor right, he strode indomitably up to the steam counter and, in a clear, full-bodied voice that was gruff with age and resonant with ancient eminence and authority, said:
‘Gimme eat.’
Instead of eat, Corporal Snark gave Major – de Coverley a loyalty oath to sign. Major – de Coverley swept it away with mighty displeasure the moment he recognized what it was, his good eye flaring up blindingly with fiery disdain and his enormous old corrugated face darkening in mountainous wrath.
‘Gimme eat, I said,’ he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled ominously through the silent tent like claps of distant thunder.
Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble. He glanced toward Milo pleadingly for guidance. For several terrible seconds there was not a sound. Then Milo nodded.
‘Give him eat,’ he said.
Corporal Snark began giving Major – de Coverley eat. Major – de Coverley turned from the counter with his tray full and came to a stop. His eyes fell on the groups of other officers gazing at him in mute appeal, and, with righteous belligerence, he roared:
‘Give everybody eat!’
‘Give everybody eat!’ Milo echoed with joyful relief, and the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade came to an end.
(From Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Longer passage here: https://mathematicalcrap.com/2022/08/14/the-great-loyalty-oa... )
My approach whenever DEI comes up now is to not express a position or opinion supporting or opposing DEI itself but to simply cite statute and recent case law.
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Section 703):
>"It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer -
Duvall v. Novant Health, Inc.>"To be clear, employers may, if they so choose, utilize D&I-type programs. What they cannot do is take adverse employment actions against employees based on their race or gender to implement such a program."
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which applied specifically to higher educational institutions, gives a very good indication as to how SCOTUS is likely to rule when a case involving private employment inevitably lands on its docket in the near future. Taking race into account when making employment decisions will be prohibited. Full stop. That includes setting race based targets/quotas, tying bonuses to their achievement, and establishing set aside jobs. What will likely be permissible will be efforts to expand candidate pools and training initiatives that focus on eliminating biases.
I never understood the american obsession with race (well, and sexuality).
I live in a small EU country on the edge of the balkans... what the hell should I write if I wanted to get hired? I'm white... everyone here is white... but just by living here, I might have a more "diverse" worldview (compared to a white american is massachussets, with enouh knowledge and money to attend MIT) than someone of a different race (also living in massachussets, with enough money and kowledge to attend MIT). But as to "what i've done", I can only put "saw two black people this year, both were tourists, saw a couple of buses of chinese tourists, or maybe japanese, I don't know".
Engineering schools should keep to engineering, killer robots won't care about your race, no matter if you're the one building them or the one making the weapons to fight against them.
The American obsession with race is deeply rooted in historically having a large, enslaved underclass that was kept down using racial justifications and against which there is still measurable bias across all areas of life (hiring, police stops, criminal sentencing, etc.)
It’s not unique to America but it is a major differentiator from other countries.
A key thing to note is that many homogeneous countries are extremely racist but don’t notice it because it doesn’t hugely impact day to day life. A mot-so-malicious example of this is that when my brother went to Korea to teach English, the parents wanted him (a white man) instead of the Asian American who was born in America and also going to the same Ivy League school. Obviously there are much less fun examples of racism but that one was… interesting. In the US that level of open racial preference would have been considered socially unacceptable, especially among the upper middle class college set.
> A key thing to note is that many homogeneous countries are extremely racist but don’t notice it because it doesn’t hugely impact day to day life
It is 10 years old, but WaPo created a map of how people responded to a question about someone of another race being their neighbor.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...
to add to what you said, racism probably doesn't impact anyone they know either. In that sense maybe it isn't a "problem" in homogeneous countries, but it does seem like a powder-key just waiting for the fuse to be lit. Particularly in an increasingly global world.
Wow, this is an illuminating map. Restores a bit of faith in Western values.
The US has required an "immigrant class" since before and after slavery ended. People forget that we didn't like the Germans, Irish, Italians, Polish, etc
At one point in the South there were jobs only Irish were hired to do bc they were very dangerous and slaves were too valuable to expend on that labor.
Immigrants are necessary for our economy and have been since the beginning. This isn't a great truth but it's the truth.
Yes but Black people in the US have been historically treated _worse_ than immigrants, which is entirely unnecessary and leads to a lot of efforts to fix the results of previous subjugation.
Didn't you guys do the same to every other immigrant? Italian? Irish? Even us, slavs?
And isn't affirmative action a form of open racial preference? In my country, there's no way a race would play any benefit in eg. college acceptance... tbf., colleges don't even see the candidates until they're accepted (with few exceptions).
Every immigrant was treated poorly initially, but nothing compares to the special hell inflicted on African slaves brought to this country. With the possible exception of the Native Americans.
Sure, but you don't look at that, but look at race.
For example, would affirmative action policies give priority to a white irish man/woman, a descendant of the poorly-treated irish people ~100years ago, or to a black person whose (grand)parents immigrated to USA after the slavery was abolished?
Yeah I think there are plausible arguments that affirmative action is not the right way to solve the problem. Mostly I’m trying to explain the dynamic that causes affirmative action to exist.
I think favorable treatment for direct descendants of slaves is a much more defensible position, than favorable treatment based on “race”, which is difficult to even define.
This is done to every immigrant group, but generally most immigrant waves assimilate and are treated more or less equally. Through all those waves Black people were consistently and persistently treated badly, with things like official segregation, anti miscegenation laws, voting restrictions, redlining, and other unofficial policies and extra-judicial public murders.
Not sure what country you’re in but the fact of a permanent visible racial/ethnic underclass that has only recently won the right to vote among other things creates that dynamic.
> The American obsession with race is deeply rooted in … [history of slavery]
I think that’s part of it. But Europeans invented (or at least widely commercialized ) this instance of slavery, and they aren’t fretting about it. I think America’s fiery vivisection of its own morality Probably comes more out of Its role as “world saving hero police” in WWII.
The ‘suddenly thrust upon them heroism’ caused them, in the subsequent decades, to then intensively examine all the ways they were, perhaps, not living up to it.
And also, I think there’s a more fundamental thing that by being in a role of “world police” you necessarily have to use violence, but whenever you use violence, there’s always inevitably guilt and shame attached to that somewhere in the psyche, or the collective subconscious.
So… while much of the violence may have been done under the idea of righteousness, I don’t think the American people can easily escape the guilt that comes with that and I think that’s one of the reasons they kind of have such Tumultuous self reflection, about how good they really are or not.
Pretty complex national psyche.
Yes Europeans invented slavery, but the deadliest war as a percentage of the population in American history was the American Civil War. This lead to a period of violent segregation and repression even after the Union won. In many places Black people had effectively fewer rights than naturalized and second generation immigrants and until at least 1964.
I agree that there is other complexity for the US psyche but slavery and segregation is huge.
Europeans did not in fact invent slavery.
I was responding to this person’s more precise comment with shorthand. But yes, specifically Europeans invented transporting Africans from Sub-Saharan Africa to plantations in the Americas to do labor intensive harvesting of sugar, tobacco, and cotton.
His point was that Americans didn’t uniquely invent that institution, not that there was no slavery outside of Europe.
Hmmm, war is often fought under a 'banner' that is different from the fundamental motivations. This the the classic "Jihadi's Dilemma": you need to craft an ideology to recruit those willing to die in the name of it.
Race has been a reliable 'cause-de-celebre' in the US politik for long eras, seemingly. I think you ought focus less on these superficial causes and more on fundamental ones: economics, resources, capital.
Which sort of goes hand in hand with the idea of white privilege. If I grow up dirt poor, with uneducated parents, in a rural dirt poor region where there wasn’t anyone except other white people in a 100 mile radius for me to be favoured over, apparently I’ve still benefited from some sort of systemic or inherent bias in favour of myself on the basis of race. Which apparently needs to be corrected and puts me at a disadvantage when applying to certain schools or jobs.
The term "white privilege" is a bit of a misnomer. What it's mean to convey is the fact that a white person is much less likely to get passed over for something than a person of color. It doesn't mean an actual privilege, more the lack of a hardship.
That doesn't mean one didn't experience hardship, just that it's unlikely to have been due to the color of your skin.
Which may have been true in 1970s, today I get told in emails to pass over White and Asian candidates because we need more diversity. The sheer hubris of putting racism in writing makes me feel like I'm in a topsy turvy 1950s.
It is true in 2024 also, just that you have to choose a location different from US; go to Southeast Asia to see it in action everyday, where everyone is extra nice to white people - sales people are extra polite, people laugh extra hard at everything white people say, the lady at the counter pays first attention to white people among the group of folks waiting and so on. I have heard white people say "I loved the experience, everyone was so nice"... Of course it was, of course they were.
To be fair, there are flip sides to this too e.g white folks are more likely to be overcharged, more likely to be subject of scams etc but that's just the other side of the same coin.
So in South East Asia they are nice to minorities? That's nice.
Yeah, it's especially confusing trying to understand how it's the Asians fault, too.
Yep, on one hand, concetration camps in US for japanese people not that long ago, and now discriminated against when applying for college...
And so the cosmic scales apparently require that this person be discriminated against, not on the basis of anything they’ve done, or have had done for them, but because of the colour of their skin and what wasn’t done to them. Regardless of all other hardships and lack of opportunity they may have experienced their whole life.
I still don’t follow the logic, if you’re claiming there is some to be followed.
> And so the cosmic scales apparently require that this person be discriminated against [...] because of the colour of their skin and what wasn’t done to them.
The scale was already tipped because of race. Is it unfair to try to tip it back? Is there no way at all to reasonably apply pressure?
Even if your answer is that it's unfair, it should be easy for you to understand why some people try.
And if any attempt to adjust the scale counts as "discrimination", then "discrimination" is not necessarily a dirty word.
> not on the basis of anything they’ve done, or have had done for them, [...] Regardless of all other hardships and lack of opportunity they may have experienced their whole life.
Well, if you had a way to measure that, it would help a lot. But if you don't have a way to measure it, I feel like disregarding it is probably reasonable.
"Don't try to fix problem X, because for some people problem X compensates for problem Y" is a pretty bad reason not to try to fix X. (With problem X being racism and problem Y being the other discrimination this white poor person faced.)
To steel man the "white privilege" argument, would be to say a black person growing up equally poor as you, would still be at a disadvantage to you in terms of how they would be treated.
(And yes, that's ironic if you are then discriminated against specifically due to the assumption you are inherently privileged.)
> 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 identity politics instead of correcting all forms of socioeconomic disparity so wtv. I am not surprised that you could not see the best argument in all the noise and the chaos.
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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I have no idea what this has to do with socialism.... I was born in a socialist state, and we were very friendly with huge parts of africa and asia (we were even "the leaders" of the third world (by the proper definition of the third world)).
Not a lot of actual details in the piece. Anyone have links to academic job ads before and after this alleged change in policy?
What the hell is a “DEI” statement anyways? The site is a bit light on what this means, only a bunch of satirical and sarcastic posts. Almost feels like it was generated by LLM.
Is it something like this?
“I helped a group of first generation, low income students apply to college and obtain $50,000 in grants”
Not sure what’s wrong with this…
No, it’s a profession of ideological commitment. What you suggest would get a low to middling score.
Here’s a rubric that’s representative of others I’ve seen: https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/Rubric...
Note how saying you’ll “treat everyone the same” will get you penalized. How doing the things they want isn’t enough to demonstrate your commitment to their cause.
They want true believers, but will settle for people who are willing to let others control what they say and do.
As an Asian, this is really scary, and reminds me of Communist times where people are often asked to write "self reflections".
During the red scare, there was a movement to try and force professors to sign loyalty oaths stating that they weren’t communist. Imagine that this went one step further: rather than signing a loyalty pledge, they required professors to compose their own loyalty statements. And that they would be judged on the ideological correctness of their statement. For instance, it wouldn’t be enough to pledge not to be communist; they would also had to pledge to be actively anti-communist. This didn’t happen during the red scare, but if you s/communist/racist, it is happening now.
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have any citations or specific examples?
How about the replies to my other comment here, accusing me of being white, and white people of being the problem?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40269870
Examples in the last paragraph not enough?
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/21/24079371/google-ai-gemini...
what? an implementation of an ai? no not really. Those things are hard, take millions of dollars to train ... it doesn't really show, say Marx's M-C-M' equation, r = s/(c + v) or any of the other theories in his text or anything else in that comment. I don't see how say https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3 relates to a place "with no dissent".
That's just a bunch of trigger-words and scapegoats pasted together.
You seem very confused about how Google Gemini, or any ML-based system for that matter, is trained.
It is a natural consequence of these systems that they output the same biases that go into the input; e.g., the classic translation of "they are a doctor/nurse" in a language with gender-neutral pro/nouns to "he/she is a doctor/nurse" in English. Therefore, if one were to train any such system on the Founding Fathers or Nazi soldiers, it is only natural to expect that the system would output white/German/Eastern European men in each case. Yet Gemini doesn't; instead, Gemini introduces its own bias to erase the one in the input and instead always produce an "equal" cocktail of white/black/asian men/women (which, ironically, is still biased and racist because that only captures the races that woke employees at Google feel are important, but it takes actual intellectual honesty to see one's own biases), regardless of whether that results in historical inaccuracies or downright falsehoods. This is a very intentional bias and dishonesty, not something that can just be shrugged off as "it's hard and takes millions of dollars to train".
You're looking at buggy output, attributing political agency to it and speculating some fanciful story about a moustache twirling blue haired villain burning tiny american flags.
It was a software defect.
It's like claiming Stability AI wants everyone to have 6 or 7 fingers because that's how it draws hands or they're secretly occult theosophists because their mirrors don't generate reflections right so they believe mirrors are dimensional portals.
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My point: DEI is the result, not the mean. If you do “DEI”, you will result in something un-DEI. We you do things right, DEI will show itself eventually. You can't by controlling the thermometer to control the temperature.
DEI statements are culty. I see it no different than a religious fundamentalist college asking faculty to sign an oath of allegiance. At least in such a case, you can always know beforehand the BS you'll put up with, unlike secular universities that are adopting DEI statements.
There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is.
A pledge to God?
The mishandling of DEI doesn’t invalidate the need to fix broken systems which fail to select the best people instead of those who score highest in easily gamed and inherently biased metrics.
> There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done.
This is the Trojan Horse, just like the fundamentalists coming to spread peace and love in society of course.
Fortunately, people are judged by outcome and action, not stated intention, and we can see DEI has failed in this regard.
> easily gamed and inherently biased metrics
IQ tests are not easily gamed and suggesting otherwise is mostly lying. They might be too easy, or have too low a ceiling (SAT), or might have some mild response to coaching. But a very stupid person cannot come out the other side with the very high score, and a very smart person should be able to figure them out sufficiently that they prove their utility.
I don't think the person you are answering to is referring to IQ tests.
Do you often have proper IQ tests when navigating in the academic sector? I personally never have one.
On top of that, I'm not sure IQ tests themselves are really relevant to select people in the academic sector. They already have demonstrated they master their subject with their grades, so we already know they are smart enough, and it is not because someone score higher in an IQ test that this person will be more valuable for the academic sector, where collaboration and mentoring are as valuable as the holywood cliché of the genius solving all the problems. IQ does not tell much about laziness or motivation or willingness to follow the good scientific process, ...
Also, at this level, you are selecting people amongst a set of candidates that are all already very very close in IQ, to the point that choosing on IQ alone is not making scientific sense: if the IQ questions would have been randomly different, or if they would have passed the test a different day, the scores would have been slightly different and the selection would have been different. The scores would not have been totally different, of course, but slightly different, and because the candidates are all very close, it would have changed the winner.
For having been part of it, the selection process in the academic sector is very very very difficult and is very very prone to unconscious bias. When you have 5 very good candidates and you need to pick one, how do you decide? At the end, it is very often "on feeling": "for this person, I feel they will be a good match". It's a fair way of choosing, because choosing someone that you "don't feel it" over someone that you "feel it" is just very counter-intuitive. But it means that between two persons, it is often the one that "looks superficially the best for the job" that gets it, which is easily affected by unconscious bias (for example, you will "feel it" more easily with someone of your own culture), or can easily be gamed (for example, to progress, you need to build a professional network and manage your reputation, and some very good candidates are just not interested to play these silly games).
I think the authoritarian Woke subtype are against meritocracy as a concept. https://postmeritocracy.org/
By the way, the author of the Post-Meritocracy Manifesto is known as "Bantik" on 1990s Usenet, there is high quality evidence on the Web that that's correct, some of it has been removed from Google. That just shows the background behind some of the most prominent people in DEI programs, at least in open-source.
https://archive.ph/P258A https://archive.ph/NsPmk https://archive.ph/EkJzO https://web.archive.org/web/20180717044421/http://s35819.gri... Bantik writes, in 2000: https://everything2.com/title/How+to+Be+a+Charismatic+Cult+L... - "How to Be a Charismatic Cult Leader"
You can go pretty deep if you try to discover the fundamental belief systems or reasoning behind the 'core' DEI people. A lot of people just casually agree that "being fair" and "not being racist" is good. And it certainly is. And like many movements that involve propaganda/control/power, the key to enlisting large support is to hide the real motivations and goals within a cozy shell of easily consumable "moral" niceties.
Ironically, the methods that the DEI types use are not even hidden. There are numerous books and "scholarly" articles that discuss their methods in detail and also their true purpose.
At it's root DEI is one of the byproducts of Critical Race Theory which is derived from Critical Theory which is (arguably) the root of Marxism and a bunch of other -isms. You can think of Critical Theory as the most abstract form of that particular tree of political theory and Marxism applies it to class inequality and CRT applies it to race/gender inequality. This is a simplification, but it's good enough for now.
The CRT leader types are without a doubt anti-meritocracy, anti-science, anti-civilization, anti-family, etc.. They have said so directly and emphatically in books, papers, talks, etc..
I don't think your post here is substantive. You are only vaguely complaining about an ill-defined group of people, as is customary in political speech.
If you wanted to discredit "numerous books" you should have named at least one. Do you have an example?
> There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is.
There is, but there's definitely some similarities too. Specifically that if you happen to believe in these things, advancement of their goals is one of the most important things you can do, which causes a big temptation to misappropriate institutional power to further the cause.
Regarding the pledges specifically, both require employees to take personal positions to advance at work, which I think is the part blackhawkC17 finds "culty".
> There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is.
In the eyes of the advocates for each, I actually don't know that there is.
Religious pledges likely are intended to say "we want faculty who will teach and represent the values this school holds and that students expect out of this institution", which feels pretty much exactly like the rationale for DEI pledges.
I think the OP doesn't either trust the declared goals of "countering institutional prejudice" and "improving the quality of the student body", or doesn't believe that DEI actually does anything relevant in this sense.
Even for banal acne treatments, proof of safety and efficiency through several stages of trials is required before people are actually subject to it.
With DEI, we are just expected to believe that it actually works and should be applied across the country because some smart people say so.
What other metric is so valuable then?
This Woke stuff apparently has its roots in communist party propaganda https://www.hoover.org/research/beijings-woke-propaganda-war...
I've submitted that link to the HN front page by the way. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40263411
The article actually doesn’t say any such thing. It simply assumes that a Chinese propaganda machine is focused only on “wokeism”. Dog forbid that they should seek to use propaganda to attack both sides - which is far more effective at spreading division.
Here's a book about it: David M. Jones, The Strategy of Maoism in the West - Rage and the Radical Left:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strategy-Maoism-West-Rage-Radical/d...
https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/bafykbzacedx5ta6zzpq2ix4km2x5sf...
"This notwithstanding, the passionate fervour that informs contemporary anti-racist rhetoric, and that of environmental groups such as Extinction Rebellion, and the LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other) movements that share its goals and feed off its righteous indignation, constitutes a calculated iconoclastic assault on the West’s history and culture."
"Culture war was, after all, one of the People’s Republic’s earliest exports to the West. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has, for years, explicitly viewed it as its ‘magic weapon’. Why, then, this book asks, did a twentieth-century Chinese revolutionary ideology become so adaptable and spectacularly successful in the West?"
By the way, I've been censored multiple times on this site, for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party and it's connections with the woke movement, by the way. It's awful.
My submission is now the top Google result for "beijing woke" and "woke propaganda war" right now, and the HN censorship is plainly visible for everyone to see worldwide.
It's the 7th result for the term "woke propaganda", by the way.
13:08 UTC: To any potential Chinese Communist Party trolls, the more you try to censor me, the more I'm going to be posting about you. Same for russian trolls. Your propaganda is destroying the lives of innocent people here in the West.
The massive amount of ignorance in your reply is quite galling.
It’s awfully apparent that you subscribe to a political extreme right wing view if you feel that Climate and LGBTQ issues are extremism.
Climate concern and LGBTQ pride were barely even a thing during Mao’s time, yet to listen to you you’d think the Chairman himself created and pushed those onto the public stage.
Meanwhile the MCPC is not the same thing as the CCP, despite your apparent belief to think they are.
And give us a break with this “poor me, I’ve been censored on this site” mentality.
Everyone here is free to say what they want. It’s up to the collective here to decide (by and large) if such messages are deemed worthwhile or not. If they’re not then they’ll get flagged and downvoted.
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I have posted messages on right wing sites such as Gateway Pundit and Breitbart and have been moderated out of existence (as I suspected I would). Both strong right wing sites.
That wasn’t censorship and nor do I complain about it. I am however happy to observe it. They’re both privately run websites are and free to do what they like.
The trouble is that you have apparently mistaken the MCPC with the CCP.
The Maoists are an underground faction in China, and see the CCP are a political enemy.
Yet you’re so reverently “anti woke” (despite “woke” being simply an umbrella term used the the extreme right to group anything they don’t like together without it actually meaning anything), that you come accross as the same sort of person who thinks anyone to the left of Nixon can only be a Marxist/Communist/Liberal flag waving pinko.
Your position lacks nuance, empathy, and understanding.
I’ll have to admit, whilst I often see claims of me being Marxist or Communist because I’m trans, this is the first time I’ve been grouped in as a Maoist.
I dislike all forms of censorship of lawful speech, whether it's coming from the Left or the Right. And the spirit of the First Amendment is what matters. I do understand that private sites can censor your lawful speech legally, but I still think it's somewhat morally wrong to do so.
In the 2010s and 2020s the censorship[1] (and cancelling of open-source software authors) is coming mostly from the Left - and I hate it.
In the 1990s the censorship was coming from the Right - and I hated that as well. I still remember a group called "Focus on the Family" and its pressure on the government to adopt widespread Internet filtering.
I have no problem with trans people in any way whatsoever, what they do with their bodies and in their private lives is absolutely none of my business. I only get annoyed when segments of their political movement start to enact speech codes[1] and other means of impeding our right to freedom of speech. I understand it doesn't mean all trans people are doing this, it is just a vocal minority.
To clarify: When I complain about "Woke" I complain about those people within the movement who are trying to take our hard-earned Western liberties away, including freedom of speech and thought. These liberties were acquired over hundreds of years of hardship by so many people, throughout history. People who chose to suffer in the name of liberty, for the good of other people. And certain segments of the Left want to diminish or even eliminate them.
And by the way I agree with the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement, yes there is a serious problem with discrimination against Black people by law enforcement. And other minorities too. Those with less power in society tend to be discriminated against the worst. It really does appear to be a "pecking order", almost something from the animal world, which is terrible.
But I still don't think censorship (and especially cancelling people) is ever a suitable response to discrimination or offensive speech. Offensive speech should be countered with further, lawful speech.
The quoted text in my first post above is taken from the book, it's not my specific personal opinion. If it were to be the case that Extinction Rebellion and other peaceful protest groups were to be labelled "extremist" I would be seriously considering that we are living in a police state. It's completely unacceptable to brand peaceful political movements as "extremist" to me. That has no place in a free society.
As demonstrated before by history, I'm worried that the left-wing Woke movement might provoke a right-wing backlash, and it's why Trump or someone even worse could get into power at some point. I think we need to keep protecting our individual liberties, so people don't end up voting a right wing party into power, as a knee-jerk reaction.
I hope I've thought it all through properly. So it looks like I'm a bit of a fence sitter on the matter, but are still strongly in favor of individual liberty.
By the way, many of my posts here are getting 50:50 with an almost equal number of upvotes as they are downvotes. Many just "0", or "1", but not -1 or any worse than that. So HN opinion seems to be split on it?
1. The "Contributor Covenant" code of conduct and others. These codes of conduct are the main censorship issue I'm bothered about nowadays.
To clarify: When I complain about "Woke" I complain about those people within the movement who are trying to take our long-earned Western liberties away“
I think you’ll find what’s really happening is that people are having to adjust to the real world, and are being held accountable for previously socially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination.
The irony in your statement is that you also say you support BLM, yet the same people who would agree with your statement above, are totally against BLM.
Mostly from the left?
Gateway Pundit, Breitbart and Fox News are three very active right wing places that routinely silence left wing voices.
Trump’s own Truth Social advertises itself as a place of free speech, however it has been shown to be shadow banning posts up the yazoo that the moderators (whomever they are) feel don’t toe the party line.
You not experiencing something does not mean it doesn’t happen.
I wasn’t discriminated against as a trans woman until I came out as trans.
Since then I’ve lost a job, and been verbally abused, simply for being a trans woman.
You claim the the LGBTQ cause is extremism. As a member of the group I can tell you that given the huge amount of laws being made to legislate us out of existence, I’m seeing extremism on both sides.
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If students uttered a DEI statement every morning in their homeroom classes over the Pledge of Allegiance to a flag, we'd all be in a much better place culturally.
This news is interesting (but is there even a legitimate source?) but this flame bait troll article is well below HN standards.
Slightly better reporting:
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mit-scraps-diversity-sta...
That National Review article seems to be a rehash of it's reference from https://unherd.com/newsroom/mit-becomes-first-elite-universi... which claims to actually have been in communication with the university.
Wondering why there's no leaked copy of the email -- or was it promulgated by phone calls and announcements in the regular meetings?
Clicked through some links in the article. Really mind boggling material. How did such garbage end up in top universities is really weird.
Decades of institutional discrimination.
I'm a white upper middle-class dude, and there used to be a time where it was only guys like me that got into prestigious schools, and had a chance at landing influential jobs - while others would either get silently rejected, scolded for trying, or simply laughed out of the office.
So while the intentions for DEI were good, the reality might be that they've regressed back to initial problem. Should some people be rejected, simply because they're overrepresented? And must your workers write/sign a statement that basically says "I, [name], hereby agree that discrimination is good if it is for the greater good."
If you see yourself (or your group) as a victim it's easy to rationalize rather extreme measures to "fix" the world.
The intentions behind a lot of these things are good but the sensitivity of the subject has made it hard(er) to have a healthy discussion about these issues.
I don't think that's a good explanation. The vast majority of people behind such initiatives don't come from underprivileged or victimized backgrounds.
It's more about this idea of being an advocate for the downtrodden - a good person fighting the racists on behalf of those without a voice. And because you're fighting the good fight, it's of course OK to make the oppressors uncomfortable or to bully them into submission.
Depending on your priors, this is either messed up, or it's messed up not to act and accept the status quo. Pick your poison, I guess.
C.S. Lewis wrote it sharper than I ever could:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
The anti-racist's burden, so to speak
I mean, that sword cuts both ways. If you just decide that the other side of the aisle is comprised of monsters, why stop at making them uncomfortable or bullying them? Why not persecute them further? And why would they not do the same to you, if given the opportunity? It all just seems so vicious and wrong headed. We conceived of tolerance in order to allow for discourse and the above perspective seems so stupid regressive.
But we're not talking about protected classes. They did not take "extreme measures."
We're talking about large institutions adopting policies to shield themselves from potential lawsuits from protected classes.
> "extreme measures."
What is this [0] then?
[0] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/can-job-postings-in-can...
They do censor research on the opposite of their viewpoint, though. Which further reinforces their impression that they are right. We’re back to 1590 in terms of civilizational evolution.
People might be surprised how dumb top universities can be. When everyone is biased to thinking they're the best, it pretty easily creates tunnel vision.
Tenure is also a blessing and a curse.
It ensures academic freedom.
But it also ensures someone has limited checks on their bullshit, until they retire.
This came more from administrators in universities and funding agencies than the professors themselves, who are mostly dragged along for the ride, or go through whatever motions it takes to get promoted or obtain an administrator position. Tenure would actually work more against administrative abuse than for it.
>It ensures academic freedom.
Perhaps it used to, however a tenured professor can easily be "cancelled" today if their academic research or writing strays too far from home base. Frankly, I am not sure it ever did. It seems like it might have always been used more as a threat (by retraction) than anything else.
Isn't mortality supposed to be check-and-balance on the bullshit in science?
Did you really mean mortality as in "exercising the 2nd Amendment", or morality?
I think they meant mortality as in the old guard that have power and use it to protect their point of view die off and are replaced with a new guard that does the same.
Definitely mortality.
For those unfamiliar with how org structures work in academia/tenure... (at least, assume this is still true)
Once attaining tenure, your promotion track focuses on faculty leadership positions.
These positions are selected by a combination of administration & faculty. It varies institute to institute, but strong candidates usually have backing from both.
These positions are almost always held by tenured faculty, as non-tenure is looked down upon for historical/political reasons.
Note: You only need to please 2 types of stakeholders: administration & faculty.
Ergo, the path to promotion becomes:
This leads to a weird bent where your bosses (faculty) are selected for their ability to navigate political winds and say the thing that most people agree with, moreso than being disagreeably brilliant.I don't understand how this crap got into America of all countries
Cause few are brave enough to stick their neck out and stand up to it. Those who do are called nasty names and are forced to withstand a ideological purity trial that carries some potential of being fired.
There is a lot risk for a minor reward, especially if you don't actually care about the institution you are defending.
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 course, every action has a reaction. Enough resentment has built up, that made anti-woke a legitimate position to take in the public eye, with no longer much risk of losing the job. This makes all the previous tactics lose their power.
Also, the 'anti-woke' crowd is learning these tactics too. From congressional grilling of university presidents, to gamers explicitly documenting the DEI consultancy involvements, its all targeting and absolutely destroying individuals to cause a chilling effect on the populace at large.
> 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.
I don't know why you're getting down voted for this. It's a very precise description of what has been happening the last decade. Conform and declare your support or be ruined, even if you have valid criticisms and disagreements with the doctrine.
I would assume it’s precisely because it’s a precise and accurate description. Given the current climate.
> Authoritarianism would be if it was top down.
If a minority can impose their will into institutions, destroying the life of anybody that opposes them, you need a quite messed-up conception of power structures to place that minority "down".
When said minority are just as likely to be peers or subordinates within the power structure, I don’t see how it could be ‘from the top’. Do you?
Because you can't put the power to influence behavior on a straight line.
Each clique has it's own power structure.
Charisma, rule of law, pity, revenge, resentment, morality, resources, it's all a part of it.
Do you think every participant to Mao’s cultural revolution was consenting?
No. People do whatever they can throughout history, and end up having to participate to larger changes. The only remedy we’ve found was Humanism, l’esprit critique, education for everyone, and raising awareness and allergy to all authoritarian acts, but see, in the last 50 years, I’ve seen younger people who aren’t even aware who Diderot is, let alone had enough literacy to read or write those books fluently if they spent the time, even in $130k jobs. Then we flooded each country with about 12% people who haven’t had those Humanism tenants taughts at school.
I’ll from using a stronger metaphor because it will sound cheesy, but by losing the teachings of logic, rhetoric and history, our civilization is not able to hold the pillars of democracy anymore.
I’ve been here. “We can’t hire any more white men” is probably an illegal stance, but what do I gain from fighting that? Nothing, and I suspect I’d be fired.
I’m a tadpole in a huge lake. I have no influence over these likely illegal hiring decisions. And unless I’m just incredibly unlucky, these same conversations are happening everywhere at big companies.
American society is a bit messed up going back to slavery (and maybe the treatment of the indigenous people). That part (America of all countries) is not a surprise. It's also not new, random e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness
Maybe this also has to do with the general idea that it's not up to a government to do things, it's up to individuals, which to me is how Americans think. I would think that dealing with inequalities in society, ensuring everyone has equal opportunity and has their basic needs provided for (health, education etc.) would be the function of a government. If the government isn't addressing that then you have a vacuum. To me it's obvious that e.g. hiring policies or university acceptance criteria are not the right place to fix society but rather issues should be addressed upstream from those. By the government. But having government do things seem to be something Americans dislike.
Just as a side point, approx 3-4% of slaves ended up in North America. Most went to the Carribbean and South America (Brazil mainly). Nobody ever seems to want to talk about those countries though for some reason. Nor do they seem particularly interested in the slave trade that exists now in many countries in one form or another. My guess is its because these other examples are not politically useful.
>Just as a side point, approx 3-4% of slaves ended up in North America. Most went to the Carribbean and South America (Brazil mainly). Nobody ever seems to want to talk about those countries though for some reason.
The average SJW/Redditor/DEI advocate sincerely believes that slavery has existed in only one country in the world's history: In the United States, involving Africans. The etymology of the word "slav"? Brazil? Haiti? Guadeloupe? North Africans enslaving Europeans? Vikings taking thralls? Feudalism? Never heard of 'em.
Here in Brazil, we care, and we try to make amends: there are quotas for black people in universities, and our law is rigorous against manifestation of racism in social media, or in real life. I think it is expected that any place that enslaved people make their amends for their past crimes. But I fail to understand how for American people this should mean talking about slavery in Brazil instead of in their own country.
America is the most likely country for this to happen to, due to the unresolved issues surrounding slavery and the abandonment of reconstruction after the civil war. This is compounded when viewed through the USAs founding mythology.
Other countries have done worse, but they haven't done so as hypocritically as the United States.
>unresolved issues surrounding slavery
>country was founded 248 years ago
>the "issue" stopped happening 159 years ago
I don't think an issue that lasted for barely 1/3 of our country's history and hasn't been legal for the entirety of this century, last century, or much of the century before that is the problem. I think people's addiction to being full-time victims is the issue, because if you're always a victim, you never have to be responsbile for anything in your life, you can always blame your imagined "oppressor". People do this, teach their children that they are also victims regardless of their actions, and maintain a long line of familial victimhood. DEI is a direct symptom of that.
You were the last western country to deal with slavery, and it took a civil war to force the issue.
Then reconstruction was ended due to a political backlash from the south.
Don't pretend this is all over.
It was too outrageous to be believed until it was too late.
Remember the term "SJW" (social justice warrior) from around a decade ago? That was wokeism and DEI before it got its current branding. The people who saw this coming were dismissed as crazy.
Supposedly it's decades long work by the Chinese Communist Party that started in the 1960s and led up to where we are now. I wonder if the Soviet Union was also involved?
Here's an article, from what appears to be a reliable source: https://www.hoover.org/research/beijings-woke-propaganda-war...
"The effects of this brainwashing are shown in the American Left’s adoption of the CCP’s key concepts and nomenclature."
"Today’s common use of the word “progressive” by the radical Left traces its intellectual origin straight to the Marxist-Leninist “dialectical” categorization of people into reactionaries and progressives. It is not from the modern legacy of the American Progressive Movement represented by William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M. La Follette, and Henry A. Wallace."
"The primary method of Mao’s brainwashing in Yenan was “consciousness raising,” which has become since the 1960s the main strategy of the American Left, especially the radical American feminist movement."
"This was the first time I heard that phrase, which, over the years, moved out of China and on to the streets and fashions of America in the 1960s."
By the way I'm getting a lot of upvotes, and downvotes too for this post. So it's a mixed reaction from the readers of this site.
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> DEI is meant to be a counter to this.
If DEI was about removing barriers due to racial (both conscious and unconscious) biases, then it wouldn't be so controversial. For example, symphonies auditioning candidates behind a screen so they hiring people are only presented with the sound of their playing. But DEI is the opposite of that. It's about very explicitly identifying race/gender/etc up front and then using that as the primary basis for hiring decisions. Disqualifying someone because of their race is not only allowed but required by DEI policies.
How did we end up with it ending up as "no more white males", white people excluded from events and buildings, people talking about how they like their white free orgs in publicly traded companies, companies with no white people in a white majority city described as diverse, someone posting on HN with a full sense of righteousness about the Google Gemini racism scandal that he'd consider a request for a photo containing only white people to an LLM suspect but one of any other ethnicity perfectly fine.
From me I'd like to ask where all the people from the Indian sub continent are in the Gemini Photos given they make a large percentage of developers at Google but are non existent in the output. Why the literal erasure of ~2 billion people?
I often see the "complaint" (hard to find the right word here - it's discussed in somewhat coded/conspiratorial language for fear of sounding racist I'm sure) that when Indians are hired into a company, they'll then begin hiring more and more Indians. As you say, this is actually a rather natural human tendency and I doubt it's limited to Indians. Of course, many people here will also note that they get most of their jobs through their network (side note; it must be nice speaking as an introvert who just has to apply to jobs like a regular schlub). Well, if you're Indian, especially from India, I bet your network is going to be fairly Indian.
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Cowardice selected for by ejecting the non cowards through filters that makes them not hired at these places
Universities typically have an old guard. They all cared too much about keeping their heads down and collecting their pay cheques too oppose this. It's not just new screening, it's active cowardice.
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 power. It should be front and center in any college DEI discussions.
The problem is it doesn't end there. Having a Harvard undergraduate degree opens up so many doors for graduate school, residencies for doctors, academia, etc.
So before you get worked up on the topic of DEI (on either side), please give a thought to legacy admissions.
Why can’t we be against both legacy admissions and DEI admissions?
Let’s eliminate all the forms of unfair bias.
There is always a hint.
Let's say I am an Eagle Scout. I want to write about something I did as an Eagle.
Well, guess, what. I've told you a metric F-ton about myself.
What makes that unfair? Being an Eagle Scout can convey information about your talents and character.
It's explicitly favoring people over immutable characteristics like race or what university your parents attended that is unfair.
Nothing is wrong with it, but it gives a STRONG hint on demographics I bet.
The only solution is to ban participation in any organizations of any sort before one attends college.
Legacy makes a lot of sense from an admissions standpoint. Having rich/connected peers is the main point of harvard for everyone else applying. I think what people have a problem with with DEI is that it largely seems counter to their goals of maximizing prestige and career success of graduates.
i would guess that the biggest incentive for legacy admissions is related to maximizing donations from the alumni parents but i'm just speculating
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.)
That’s not the point. In addition to any inherent advantages for children of graduates from elite universities, there is an explicit bias in their favor for admissions decisions.
Yes, an explicit bias in favour of students more likely to be useful to the university.
An inbuilt assumption of what you say is that you believe in meritocracy, specifically that the powerful and wealthy are that way at least part by merit. The flipside of this assumption is that poverty is a personal moral failure.
Personally i reject both of these assertions. So much of wealth can be attributed to imperialism, war, slavery, segregation, instituational discrimination and so on.
But let's assume what you say is true: if the wealthy are that way out of merit and they have more ability, intelligence or whatever, why do they need an davantage in college admissions at all? Wouldn't their own merit shine through?
Wealth already gives a host of advantages: opportunities, tutoring, access to people and not having to, say, work jobs to just survive. On top of all those advantages, why do they also need systemic bias in admissions?
The system is unfair by design because it needs to be for those who benefit from it.
When did I ever say that the children of wealthy alumni should be prioritised?
I'm not assuming that the wealthy are there by merit, I'm assuming that the competent are.
And yes, universities will admit the idiot sons of the rich, just because of a donation - but that's an entirely different conversation to one regarding the prioritisation of the children of alumni who already proved themselves to be useful.
> An inbuilt assumption of what you say is that you believe in meritocracy, specifically that the powerful and wealthy are that way at least part by merit.
That is not what a meritocracy is. Meritocracy means our brightest and most capable lead us, instead of democracy where it is basically whoever can play the political game the best.
Bret Weinstein suggested this on his podcast - that we select leaders because they would do the best job - and we DON'T let them self-select. They're called to serve similar to jury duty. I don't recall how the selection would be done, which seems like the harder part.
This is fantastic news. Requiring faculty staff to write what is essentially a short ideological treatise to be considered for employment is more in line with something I'd expect in Mao's China.
The sooner we realise that DEI is making us head towards a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron situation, the better off everyone will be.
To quote the link, and by golly does it seem germane to the topic at hand:
In the year 2081, the Constitution dictates that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too beautiful, earpiece radios for the intelligent that broadcast loud noises meant to disrupt thoughts, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic. George and Hazel Bergeron have a 14-year old son named Harrison. He takes after his father, who is highly intelligent and physically strong. The government removes Harrison from his home. His parents are barely aware because of Hazel's low intelligence and George's mandated handicaps. George and Hazel watch a ballet on TV. Some dancers are weighed down to counteract their gracefulness and masked to hide their attractiveness. George's thoughts are continually interrupted by the different noises emitted by his handicap radio. Hazel urges George to lie down and rest his "handicap bag", 47 pounds (21 kg) of weights locked around his neck. She suggests taking a few of the weights out of the bag, but George resists because it is against the law. On TV, a reporter struggles to read a bulletin and hands it to the ballerina wearing the most grotesque mask and heaviest weights. She begins reading in her natural, beautiful voice before switching to a more unpleasant one. Harrison's escape from prison is announced, and a full-body photograph of him is shown. He is seven feet (2.1 m) tall and burdened by three hundred pounds (140 kg) of handicaps. George recognizes his son for a moment, before having the thought eliminated by his radio. Harrison storms the TV studio in an attempt to overthrow the government. He declares himself Emperor and rips off both his own handicaps and those of a ballerina, whom he chooses as his Empress. Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, enters the studio and kills Harrison and the Empress with two shotgun blasts. She threatens the musicians at gunpoint to put on their handicaps again. The TV goes dark. George, who left to get a beer and has returned, asks Hazel why she is crying, to which she replies that something sad happened on television that she cannot remember.
TL;DR - a dystopia where anyone with an "advantage" is "handicapped" to make everyone "equal". Advantages such as intelligence and beauty must not be used to let anyone get ahead.
It was adapted into a short film - 2081 - and it's very very good. It's free on this site: https://www.teaching2081.org/watch-the-film#form
It was also adapted into a (terrible) full length feature film with Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee). If you like Vonnegut, you might like it.
The notion that any of us could ever *be equal* has always annoyed me at how obviously absurd it is but I’m glad to see this has been written about before. It’s like we’ve already descended into 1984 territory and we’re all spouting about “equality” because it’s the “right thing to do” even though we all know it’s not physically possible. Equal opportunities are not enough, or so it would be said, because history! Well.. the historical period I care about!
And then we all act shocked when someone turns to violence to force people to grapple with reality
The Declaration declares people were "created equal," and even that phrase has historical context to answer "in what sense?"
Nobody is born with divine right of kings. That's the point. Other senses of equality come later and with good reason.
I disagree that “other senses of equality” come with “good reason.” In fact, I find it to be an insidious corruption of the meaning of the word to further the agenda of those in power. That’s exactly how evil works. Wolves in sheep’s clothing. “Standing for equality” while owning more wealth than 98% of the population.
There have been, more or less, two major modifications to the Constitution. We are now on version 3, depending on how you slice it.
There have also been modifications to our understanding of freedoms. The old comprehension of freedoms the government should safeguard evolved to freedom of speech (and expression), freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
It's okay for people to decide there are more equalities relevant than the simple protection against divine birthright mandates. Especially since we've had hundreds of years to witness the consequences of believing that kind of equality is all that matters.
> “Standing for equality” while owning more wealth than 98% of the population.
I'm afraid I'd have to know who you are thinking of as wolves in sheep's clothing to know what you mean here.
Jesus Christ. What a dark story.
Typical Vonnegut. I sincerely mean this, may he rest in peace. The man was haunted.
I’m a bit oppositionally defiant, so something like this, while I wholly believe in the core sentiment (of diversity, not the affirmations), would engender immediate resistance from me.
This looks very badly sourced.
I agree. I'm assuming that https://unherd.com/newsroom/mit-becomes-first-elite-universi... is true because otherwise they'd be fabricating quotes and that seems unlikely, although the site does have an ideological slant.
It's a little surprising that more publications haven't reported on it yet though.
I am assuming that there is vastly less to this than this particular cluster of publications, and too many of the commenters here, are getting themselves worked up about.
I'm not sure if you're questioning whether the story was true or whether it was important or whether it was offtopic for HN.
If it was untrue, then we will have made a bad moderation call and should have waited. However, today has brought more 3rd party reports on the story, albeit still from ideologically slanted publications (e.g. https://nypost.com/2024/05/06/us-news/mit-bans-controversial...), so I think the odds of it being true are getting a bit higher.
If you mean it wasn't important, that's a matter of preference. There's no story on the front page that everyone thinks is important. It's enough if enough do.
If you mean it was offtopic for HN, I've addressed that in a bunch of other places.
Sorry, I just meant to the story itself. NY Post and Unherd are low-quality sources given to beatups they think are in favour of their ideology.
I am specifically sceptical that this is any sort of significant thing, let alone a huge deal.
I'm not saying Unherd falsified quotes or anything, but I'm not at all convinced that this passes e.g. the Wikipedia "reliable sources" test of being worth mentioning in general (which Unherd probably wouldn't be and the NYP explicitly isn't).
Has anything mainstream covered it? I had a look in Google News for "MIT DEI" and it was overwhelmingly trash-tier sources of the Unherd/NYP level.
It looks like the mainstream sources were just lagging behind the ideological vanguard, which makes sense since the latter care about it more.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/us/mit-diversity-statemen...
I think you were right to be skeptical though—I had the same worry. Sometimes we wait until a story has had more independent verification, but in this case the community appetite to discuss it was so strong, I decided not to stand in front of the train.
ok, NYT clearly passes :-)
Note that this ban appears to be only for faculty hiring.
Most MIT employees are staff. I don't know if MIT requires DEI statements from staff hires, but I know other universities do, e.g. UC Berkeley, where I used to work. And yet, (as one example of many) check out the 7/7 white faces in leadership at executive.berkeley.edu/our-team
You really took a turn there by calling attention to their skin color. The interesting thing here isn’t that they look the same, but that they think the same.
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“Taking a turn” means I think I understand where you’re going, but then you take your point someplace else.
I agree with most of what you’re saying. The casual racial stereotyping is where you lose me.
> The casual racial stereotyping is where you lose me.
Nothing "casual" about it. Very deliberate. White people completely unwilling to see blatant racism (e.g. in hiring) when it stares them in the face.
You are a parody of your own point and you don’t even see it. Truly remarkable.
> Only a white person could come up with that.
lol
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statments (DEI)
For those previously blissfully ignorant; such as me.
Recently wrote a corporate DEI policy. Our policy is to not regard DEI as a metric of value. It’s absurd.
A profitable company that lacks DEI is still a success
A company that loses money but has plenty of DEI is a failure.
DEI is not the factor that determines success or failure.
It is a tool that you can use but it makes no sense as a goal or target in itself. If your customer base has some attributes that aren't reflected in the staff, maybe hiring some will help you relate. The idea that your company must match the 'diversity' of the general public (in one country) is all backward.
> If your customer base has some attributes that aren't reflected in the staff, maybe hiring some will help you relate.
How does it work? If you hire them in customer research or marketing teams, yes, it brings value in understanding the customer. If you just hire them across all departments, like IT or facilities management, what do you get?
> Our policy is to not regard DEI as a metric of value
can you expand on what this means practically and how it differs from others?
We need you at every fortune 500 company.
Our company for a while would recap promotions every quarter and breakdown promation rates by race... it was awakward and antithetical to what they were trying to accompish. Had a weird undertone of calling out races for underachieving lmao
"Blacks are being promoted 20% less than whites. We are getting better but can do even more to promote the interests of blacks at the company"
Pretty sure I didn't get a Stanford job in part because I didn't submit a DEI statement. It was optional, but clearly sort of like breathing is optional. I actually wrote one, had it reviewed, rewrote. As someone in federal government who made the mistake of being born white and male, but has worked their whole life on these issues (among many others) and made what I think are very defensibly equitable hiring and selection decisions that reflect the US in gender, race, and creed, the whole thing felt very ... icky.
The problem is making the mistake of being born white and male! The best thing I've learned from all of this is that it's literally free to identify as whatever you'd like, whenever you'd like, so if opportunities are being taken from you on the basis of race or gender, you should take advantage of that. No one can deny that you identify as that thing, since identifying as something is the literal exact same thing as being that thing. That's how I became a non-binary black lesbian woman!
Like when they opened up the "Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing" for non-binary and trans people... So men showed up and claimed to be non-binary to get access to something that was available to any other person except them. We need to continue seeing stuff like this until we fully choke out the idea of admittance based on anything other than "Is this person the best for the role?".
https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-...
ChatGPT is fantastic for writing DEI statements.
Again, Vaclav Havel's "Power of the Powerless" somehow comes to mind.
I agree with then that it is better to not require DEI (due to the reasons they mention there (they are compelled speech and are irrelevant to what you are applying for, and that there are other contributions that are independent from DEI, as explained there), and others), but that does not necessarily mean that DEI should be banned; it only means that they should not be required, and that DEI statements alone are not a suitable criteria for admission. What is a suitable criteria is your competence at your work, if you have done it good.
Wikipedia says "Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are organizational frameworks which seek to promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination on the basis of identity or disability." This is not inherently a bad thing, although bad things can be (and are) done with it (like bad things can be (and are) done with many things), such as the required DEI statements over everything else.
Just because someone wrote a DEI statement does not necessarily mean that they are not qualified (or good at science or whatever it is they are applying for) nor does it necessary mean that they are qualified, and the same is true if they did not make a DEI statement.
One article (apparently by the same author) mentions that the Canadian government denied Patanjali Kambhampati (a physical chemist who seems quite accomplished, and works on quantum dots, has published 132 papers, and has an h index of 37) grants because he refuses to write the kind of woke diversity statement that the Canadian grant authorities demand. It also says, "What's even worse than diversity statements, is evaluating them as the first step in the grant-giving process". Of course, a better evaluation should be by the scientific merit, not by diversity statements.
Yes, but just like Stanford, you probably can't say the word "American" without getting summoned to a disciplinary hearing and asking your landlord to have you evicted ah la San Francisco's way of doing things...
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.
> nearly everybody agrees that it's a good target to aim for
You mean nearly everybody agrees in your circle, because you can easily find strong opposition if you bother to look. And that’s after making saying the opposite out loud a career-ending offense in lots of places, kinda hard to not agree with it if you want to remain employable.
DEI exists in countries with no racist past. Does it make it aby better? Also DEI exists in places that were historically very diverse, like the Balkans (a mix of ethnic, culture and religions) and it did not help, actually, because it is highlighting the differences that we worked for hundreds of years to integrate. Fortunately there was no significant impact around here as people were wise enough.
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I think the modern-day conflation of the philosophical notion of diversity with “diversity of skin color” / “racial diversity” is actually harmful. When we speak of diversity today we often imply a sort of supposed-deserved reparations toward the “minorities.” Obviously there are so many incorrect aspects of these assumptions, but many people in power, perhaps all, have accumulated guilt that needs an outlet.
Diversity, the platonic form, is about diversity of thought, opinion, and experience. It is about improving our ability as a group to solve the problems we face by introducing alternative perspectives and viewpoints. It has nothing to do with race or gender necessarily but demand for diversity greatly outweighs the supply and as with all measured things, measuring the number of “diverse” hires has ceased to be a meaningful metric. Granted, it never was a meaningful metric as such, but it has become actively harmful in modern day.
> think the modern-day conflation of the philosophical notion of diversity with “diversity of skin color” / “racial diversity” is actually harmful.
I absolutely agree with this. To use myself as an example: as a Bangladeshi who grew up in the American south, I bring a super diverse viewpoint to a group of say white new englanders.
But why does that matter in a professional setting? I’d love to hear someone precisely articulate how they think I’d behave differently from a white new englander in the same position, and why that “diversity” would make the team “stronger.”
Because most people in technology have end users. Quite often those end users come from many different backgrounds. Having more people in the room who can think in terms of a larger subset of the user base will always produce a better product.
I work in the post secondary education sector. I am the only person on my team who doesn’t have a college degree. I often have to help them see our software through that lense so that we don’t make assumptions that all of our users are college educated or even know what their post-high school options are.
The fact that you’re casually comparing differences between users of different races to the different between people with different education levels is remarkable. You think that race is so meaningful?
I think your background and experience is meaningful. And, like it or not, people of different races frequently have differing backgrounds and experiences.
How's that not just a justification for discriminating against people based on race? Unless you're going to assert that those "meaningful" differences in "background or experiences" are necessarily positive, which is completely illogical.
I already described why I think they're positive. You remain unconvinced. Have a nice day.
When it comes to optimizing a sorting algorithm for some hardware, it probably doesn't matter. Now suppose you're making a user interface design choice. It would be good to have someone who knows how users from a different subculture would interpret it.
But things like that often have more to do with culture/geography than race. Someone from Mississippi will have a much different perspective than someone from Massachusetts, even if they're the same race. And a larger difference in perspective than two people who grew up across the street from each other, even if they're different races. But that doesn't show up in the group photo for the brochure.
Is there evidence that Americans of different ethnicities interpret user interface features differently?
If not, isn’t it concerning that in the year 2024 we casually assume that these sorts of differences exist? Isn’t that an example of DEI thinking accentuating the notion of differences? It seems like a new take on this: https://youtu.be/E8PBrhFN35c?si=90DSnwgHubAvJwr8
Cultural differences exist. For example, colors have different meanings in different cultures:
https://blog.grio.com/2020/06/uxui-design-across-cultures-us...
Ethnicity is then being used as a proxy for culture, even though it's a bad one, because it's a visible one.
It's basically starting from the premise that cultural diversity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. Whereas traditional racism is more like starting from the premise that cultural homogeneity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. It's applying the same fallacy to the opposite premise, which is an error regardless of which premise is correct.
UI colors can be racist?
This is ideological tea-leaf reading.
UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures.
Suppose you don't care anything for all of this political noise and you just want to make money. Do you want to use the same colors on your website in the countries where red implies danger as the ones where red implies prosperity and vitality? If it will be the same for everyone, might knowing how some large subset of the viewers will interpret it change what you choose?
> UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures.
Really? Can you provide actual examples?
JFYI, I speak Russian, Ukrainian, German, and Mandarin Chinese. I've used native-written apps in all these languages, and I have not seen any significant variations in the UI color selections.
I guess Mandarin Chinese is probably the best example because the red color is seen as more "festive", so it's more common in various app icons.
There is no evidence for what you are saying.
red has pretty strong connotations in some east asian cultures.
just like how 13 is taboo, 4 and 7 can be taboo. these things do matter sometimes. respect matters.
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...
The actual claim was "UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures."
I don't know about that prosperity thing, but I can give you an example that happens a lot. Some groups use red to mean stopped and green to mean moving, while others use red to mean danger and moving, and green to mean safe and stopped. This isn't directly country-related but I believe there's significant variation based on location.
Oh, wait, while searching to double check that I found an example of exactly what you asked for. CJK stock market displays tend to use red for increases, while the West uses red for decreases.
I searched and I didn't see any examples of that. Oh, wait, I searched again and all I saw was the opposite. Oh, wait, I searched again and still found typical displays.
Here's a couple. I searched for nyse display and china stock market display. There's a lot of examples when you do those searches.
https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-JH281_0708NY_M_...
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/A14FJ5/a-screen-with-the-market-sh...
You can also do a text search for china red green stocks, or japan red green stocks.
Bonus fun fact: If the little display on the taxi in japan is red, that means available, and green means occupied.
The post I replied to talked about websites and they didn't say different colors were used in some circumstances, they literally mean different things.
Why does everyone have the same colors in traffic lights (except for japan's blue lights which comes from language, not cultural significance)
https://www.rd.com/article/heres-japan-blue-traffic-lights/
It's funny that this person speaks multiple languages and actually used different apps but was downvoted anyway.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40271465
> The post I replied to talked about websites and they didn't say different colors were used in some circumstances, they literally mean different things.
I'll quote it again.
"UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures."
And all the examples I gave have red meaning opposite things in user interfaces based on cultural assumptions.
Off/danger. Number up/number down. Occupied/available.
Websites were just one example of UI.
> It's funny that this person speaks multiple languages and actually used different apps but was downvoted anyway.
They said they haven't seen any. That doesn't override actual examples!
How do you know any of that is cultural and not just something due to arbitrary choices made a long time ago that became standards?
If it was cultural then newer designs like computer interfaces would be affected. Also you ignored traffic lights.
> arbitrary choices made a long time ago that became standards
That sounds like a description of culture.
> If it was cultural then newer designs like computer interfaces would be affected.
Does the big TV run by a computer not count as an interface?
Okay, do you have some pictures of chinese stock websites?
> Also you ignored traffic lights.
What about them? Yes Japan uses the same color scheme as the US for traffic lights. Because the idea spread that way. I don't see how that's relevant to either of my examples that talked about Japan?
...you're not suggesting that one situation where colors match invalidates situations where colors are different, right?
That sounds like a description of culture.
So either colors were chosen because they have a deep cultural meaning or they were chosen arbitrarily?
Those are the options, yes. Or a mixture.
Older choices affect newer choices, and consistent choices become culture.
Once upon a time, stock chart makers made an arbitrary choice influenced by older choices that had become culture. Those older choices being a general association with fortune, and a specific association with loss of money. (With intermediate steps, I think, but I'm being brief.) And those associations were different for different groups. Now the chart colors are part of culture too.
A choice being arbitrary doesn't mean it was random. You can trace the influence here.
But even if it had been random, it's culture now. Money in red has implications, and the implications vary.
So now ui choices in different countries is because of deep cultural meaning, but they could be arbitrary, but that doesn't mean it's random and now the arbitrary choice is now the culture? Seems like circular logic to rationalize arbitrary choices made anonymously.
You have to analyze it on a case by case basis. It only sounds silly if you try to generalize everything into a single rule.
Different choices have different levels of cultural depth. Often the depth is zero. But it varies.
And culture is created by arbitrary decisions coalescing into guidelines. If it's not coalescing, then it's not culture. You have to look at the big picture to tell if something is culture or not.
The big picture is that people stop when the traffic light turns red.
...so you are suggesting that one situation where colors match invalidates situations where colors are different.
You're implying that if red's meaning in one situation is the same, then red's other meanings in other situations must be the same.
Okay I guess. I don't know why you would think that, but I don't have much hope of convincing you otherwise.
If it's all chosen because colors are deeply cultural then they would be the same. If important stuff is all different and arbitrary then it's not cultural.
> all chosen because colors are deeply cultural
> all different and arbitrary
Those are the extremes of the spectrum.
Color choices are not at either extreme.
Most color choices are arbitrary, some of them are shallowly cultural, and some of them are deeply cultural.
HN having an orange banner at the top isn't significantly cultural. Traffic lights are worldwide culture. Black or green for positive money and red for negative money are US culture. Red for positive money and black or green for negative money are Chinese culture. These choices tie into older associations, which affects the depth. But even if they were shallow they'd still be culture.
Do you have a source for any of this?
You want me to pick one out of google? They all say the same thing https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/paradox-red-green-festive-per... https://www.bbc.com/news/av/business-33464903
Here's a link full of its own links https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/6982/excep...
Or we can look at how old the western association with red as negative money is: https://grammarist.com/idiom/in-the-red-and-in-the-black/
If you wanted specific links you should have said so 4 days ago after I wrote "You can also do a text search for china red green stocks, or japan red green stocks."
If you want a citation for HN's orange not being deeply cultural, then you got me, I didn't actually check. But let's see... "The orange logo was chosen because it was the opposite of VC websites which were typically forest green or navy blue" yeah that's not deep culture.
If you use black for “bad” or destructive operations and white for “good” or creative operations, you’re perpetuating literal anti-blackness.
You aren’t fooling anyone.
The canonical example is hand gestures and their use in UI elements such as mouse cursors.
More broadly speaking, exposure to different languages can often make you aware of issues that are not familiar to someone who only knows English, such as e.g.: existence of grammatical gender; pluralization that has to deal with more cases than just one/many (e.g. different forms for 2/3/...); the fact that placeholders in a format string may need to be reordered in different locales; drastically different length of text in different languages; the fact that notions such as upper/lowercase are not universal; sequences of letters that are treated as single characters in some languages; etc. Now of course all this applies to non-native speakers as well, but for more "exotic" languages out there it's usually their native speakers who provide such experience.
japanese ui is often more dense and information rich. there are left to right and right to left cultures. tonnes of difference between cultures and understand of the world.
Does hiring someone whose native script is “right-to-left” make a difference to the product though?
On the one hand, there are people who deeply understand the technical intricacies of Unicode BiDi yet can’t actually read Arabic or Hebrew
On the other hand, if the business doesn’t view Arabic markets (or Israel) as viable to pursue, it doesn’t matter how much you are aware of those languages, it is irrelevant to the product
And what about backend developer roles, where UI concerns like BiDi are largely a non-issue?
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Only around 20% of people killed by police are black. And obviously not all of those are “murder”—some are clearly justified.
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I think DEI as implemented is worse than this. It’s a calculated, prepared defense against the possibility of future bigoted behavior.
Corporate America (which increasingly includes universities whose primary business is endowment investment) don’t just want to wash away our past, they want to ensure they can keep operating business as usual.
DEI is insurance. Yeah the bad thing may happen but we paid for it before hand so we are insulated against further repercussions.
> I have posted quite a bit about them (see collection here), and object to them because they are not only compelled speech and are often completely irrelevant to what you’re applying for, but also ignore the fact that there are many ways to make contributions to society beyond enacting DEI. (For example, what about a college applicant who has taught illiterate adults to read?)
That is DEI. The writer is either confused or gaslighting for their own agenda.
Well now that that’s sorted, maybe we can start fixing real problems with higher Ed.
Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend.
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DEI statements are so Soviet-like that even very mild centrism is far to the right from them.
So, shift to the right ... very relative to the starting point, right?
I think this shift is happening all along the spectrum. This particular example is about the left shifting to the right, but there is also a bigger picture.
It's a natural consequence of the statistics that 1. people get more conservative on average as they get older, and the average age of most countries is steadily increasing, and 2. conservatives have more children on average, and political views are partially heritable.
Are you excluding the possibility that after seeing first hand over the past decade that these policies are often detrimental to an organization despite the popular narrative otherwise, people are no longer willing to play pretend for fear of being ostracized.
My fiancé works for non-profits and an educational institution (Canada). In the former, every grant application or program has to involve some DEI component regardless of how little sense it makes. Applying for funding for replacing a failing HVAC system for a skating rink? Applying for new gutters for a shed that houses field maintenance equipment? Please write a brief essay on how these projects benefit and advance equity for minorities!
In the latter, hiring and promotions have become nearly exclusively about race. Internal candidates have been explicitly told that they’re going to be passed over in favour of others because they’re not diverse. Under-qualified individuals are hired based on skin colour.
And will we, in about 50 years after emails get released, find a sizable donation from Elon Musk a few days before this announcement?
The American focus on race is a bit insane to outsiders. Putting such a big focus on race in university applications is just weird. Even worse, having top universities openly discriminate against people based on their race or heritage with affirmative action or similar policies, all in the name of equality, is unbelievable to Europeans like me. What the hell is wrong with the US if a person has a worse chance to be accepted into uni just because they happen to be born Asian? How is no one in DEI committees seeing the utter hypocrisy here?
I firmly believe that the US is your best chance when you look for a country with equality and acceptance regarding race, religion, and culture. A lot of my US friends experienced a dire wake-up call when visiting and finding their belief that Europe is more accepting and less conservative than the US to be dead wrong.
I'm European too and I can assure you that non-white people are discriminated at the admission stage to top European universities. Not via race, but via name. It's well known that universities and landlords reject people because they have a Muslim sounding name.
We have DEI in Europe too, but here it's increasingly codified into law.
I can guarantee you this is not the case, at least at the uni where I‘m doing my PhD. There is no name in the admission system, it‘s done automatically by grades or tests most of the time.
Same, and even in the ones that have interview. I would guess outside very bad language skills it might even give boost...
I don't see how you could possibly hire graduate students into a lab without knowing their research and publishing history (impossible to anonymize).
Academia certainly has its faults, but you won't find a field more accepting of diversity and hiring foreigners anywhere else.
+1 - University of Warsaw and other universities I know - admission is automatic based on grades only
Could you please name one or two of such universities? I am a EU citizen and I literally never heard of this. I am aware that in some regions in some of our countries you might end up with a racist professor etc., but never heard you can be excluded based on name.
That's simply illegal.
In Poland, admission to public universities is only based on your standardized test score. People grading standardized tests don't know your name or anything beyond a number, so discrimination is simply impossible.
Any reference or link to those policies? I have never seen such a thing.
In Portugal you get into university strictly based on your test scores and school grades, the university doesn't get to "pick" who it accepts.
Which countries are you referring to?
Race is a distraction from the ultimate divide: class. IMO, every policy that wants to promote equality should revolve solely around class.
In every place on earth, richer upper-class people are more advantaged than those from the lower classes. Every social policy should focus on lessening that gap (I recognize that the gap can't be closed entirely).
> every policy that wants to promote equality should revolve solely around class.
That was the case in USSR. There were university admission quotas for workers, peasants, etc. In practice, they resulted in discrimination agains Jewish applicants.
To fulfill the class quotas, the examiners had to fail a disproportionate number of some of the strongest applicants. A whole set of "Jewish problems", colloquially known as " coffins", was developed. At MIT, Tanya Khovanova has written on this subject.
Not sure exactly how this relates, but you're still saying with people being failed that the class representation was more equitable? Not sure what them being jewish has anything to do with it?
A brutal truth is that wealthy, upper class people have resources for training their kids that legitimately better prepare them for academic success than poorer kids.
The rich, smart kids in this example were Jews.
In USSR, nobody was rich.
> In USSR, nobody was rich.
Despite Soviet propaganda to the contrary, social class continued to exist in the USSR.
At the top of the class hierarchy, were senior party officials and their families.
Next rung down were university-educated professionals (doctors, engineers, scientists, etc)
Then came skilled factory workers, etc
Unskilled labourers were near the bottom of the Soviet class hierarchy
Those distinctions are irrelevant. Education was free in USSR. Access to math circles and specialized math schools was also free. It was not necessary to hire a tutor or pay for advanced classes to get admitted, unless we’re talking about the Conservatory or MGIMO.
Source: I was born and received education in USSR, so can tell Soviet propaganda from reality.
Class based admission meant discrimination against Jews.
Friend of mine's boyfriend was born in the USSR and was Jewish. To get into college he had to pass a mathematics test that anyone who learned math in high school wouldn't be able to pass. He got in. Then his dad applied for a visa to move to Israel and they kicked him out.
Guy hates communists, leftists, f*scists, Putin, and anything like DEI. Basically anyone that seems to have a habit of doing to people what the communists did to him.
I think it's a good point to be really suspicious of systems that categorize people into convenient boxes based on things that have no control over. That then determines what happens to them.
Even lebron james gets the n word spray painted on his house. Class may be the main divide, but race is still an absolutely huge one that transcends class.
Nit: it was spray-painted on his gate, not his house (mansion).
How?
> How can you even remotely believe that wasn't a false flag?
Please don't edit your comments to deprive replies of context. That's unfair to both repliers and readers.
Edit: It's always fine to add an edit, as I did here.
What evidence is there that it’s not what it seems? Its not like there’s a shortage of people who’d try something like that in this country.
It’s by design
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100% ^.
But then it ends up being tied to race since black folks are on average coming from a less wealthier class than white people.
And class is hard to judge objectively. If you go by income tax, many wealthy people show very little income since they live on their family wealth. E.g a house fully paid off and only earning meager income from a side business, while their stocks they inherited are climbing millions in valuation.
The rich are really good at hiding they are rich.
> But then it ends up being tied to race since black folks are on average coming from a less wealthier class than white people.
Yes, addressing class inequality will also help to address racial inequality.
Seems like a strength, not a weakness.
> 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.
> 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
Donald Trump comes to mind, struggling to pay $464M bond set by New York judge.
10 acres of farmland is worth around $30,000 its also 200 meters by 200 meters they probably don't need much of a tractor and can probably do with one truck for what amounts to a hobby nobody could live on.
The USDA says a small family farm averages around 231 acres or about $693,000 in land. Even adding the equipment its a long way from 10M in assets and that isn't even accounting for the elephant in the room DEBT.
Any sole proprietorship which is net positive to the tune of 10M is in fact by any reasonable measure wealthy.
Most of those situations the student wouldn't own those assets. If you go by how much money relatives have, then you end up being unfair to kids who have been disowned or if the kid has a rich uncle that has never given anyone a penny, etc.
Yes, the US is obsessed over race. That's because Americans are traumatized. I agree it's not a good thing. However, diversity in university admission is a good thing. There are many different ways to have diversity. Diversity is not easy to achieve and since it's sensitive topic it's often not done right.
Diversity in university admissions is a good thing. But US universities guarantee equality of outcome. This is wrong, it should be merit based. If you argue that there is a clear ethnicity correlated class divide, you can achieve more fair diversity by giving more chances to student's from poor backgrounds, instead of focusing on their ethnicity.
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> Land acknowledgement statements are creeping into the US these days.
What are the odds they make it to Israel?
You want us to acknowledge whether we're on the traditional tribal lands of Dan, Binyamin, Menasseh, Yehudah, etc?
> Binyamin
This one is really interesting. I note that you don't list the counterpart at all, but here's a selection from Weavers, Scribes, and Kings:
> In Syria in the early second millennium BCE, Amorite-speaking people grew up knowing if they belonged to the Banu-Yamina ("sons of the right" or "sons of the south") or the Banu-Sim'al ("sons of the left" or "sons of the north").
Benjamin is the only name I know of to memorialize an ethnic conflict that was apparently won long, long ago, so long ago that most people with an active interest in the time period have no idea it existed.
As far as your question goes, just the form of your answer is pretty good at reinforcing the point of my question.
They'd probably want to go back to the Canaanites.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40270596.
You think it's off topic? What would be an example of a reason land acknowledgments are a bad idea in Israel that wouldn't also make them a bad idea somewhere else?
We already had one flamewar going about Israel.
I know it's annoying when these things get declared offtopic because of course they're connected by a sequence of associations—and you're right, it doesn't take that long of a sequence—but if you think about it from the overall topic of the thread, hopefully it makes more sense.
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Please don't post ideological flamewar comments. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The right wing conspiracists would talk about a "New World Order" and something they called "problem-reaction-solution", so they thought this Left authoritarian Woke movement, was designed deliberate by something (the elites?) to push society to voting right as a knee jerk reaction..
I wonder if those conspiracy theories themselves are Chinese propaganda of some kind, or maybe Russian, or are the propagandists themselves giving away the game plan in plain sight. Right in front of you, where the psychological blind spot is. As Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian regimes seem to like Trump and a having right-wing party in power.
So is it a meta conspiracy??? And the real people behind it are China and Russia? That's likely too far fetched though.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here—it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for—and yes, this is the case regardless of which ideology an account is for or against: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38036251 was a perfectly good comment, for example.
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I think DEI/affirmative action is immoral, but I can also acknowledge that the topic tends to result in too much low-quality political spite in the comments.
But is there a wider problem if people stop discussing controversial but very important topics on the Internet in general? Can something be done to fence off the low quality comments, without removing them from public view? Instead of outright banning political controversy?
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>DEI statements are important because they show individual awareness of historical inequities and current biases that form modern society.
Only the currently approved ones.
The perfect example: holocaust denial. Ask anyone in the US how many people died in the holocaust. The answer is 6 million and they are all Jews.
The real number is 14 million with 8 million Slavs, 6 million Jews and 2 million misc of gays, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, the work shy, etc..
The double think is so strong that you can have two people from the same village, in the same camp, dead on the same day and have one be a victim of the holocaust, and the other not just because one was a Jew and the other a Communist.
Because the Holocaust can refer to either the Nazi's genocide of Jews or all the genocides carried out by Nazi Germany. Most often it is the former.
So to reframe this, if you ask people how many people died in the Jewish genocide they'll probably give you the figure of how many Jews died, yes. They aren't ignoring all of the other victims, they're giving you the statistic of what they thought you asked for.
This is no different than separating out the genocide of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire and the genocide of Greeks by the same regime.
> Because the Holocaust can refer to either the Nazi's genocide of Jews or all the genocides carried out by Nazi Germany. Most often it is the former.
This is not counting all the genocides by the Nazis. This is just counting the people murdered in the extermination camps and on their way there.
If you count all the other Nazi genocides you get tens of millions, e.g. targeting of civilians during the Siege of Lenin Grad, the Dutch Famine, etc.
I was taught in high school that it was 6 million Jews.
Standard American public high school. Teacher was left-wing. We read Diary of Anne Frank, Night by Elie Weisel, Number the Stars, etc.
No holocaust denial going on.
Yes, the Soviets were excluded. So were the Prussians, who were the victims of both Nazi and Soviet genocides.
Nobody calls this holocaust denial.
« Nobody » may be too optimistic.
https://forward.com/culture/603271/jk-rowling-holocaust-stre...
>Yes, the Soviets were excluded.
>>The double think is so strong that you can have two people from the same village, in the same camp, dead on the same day and have one be a victim of the holocaust, and the other not just because one was a Jew and the other a Communist.
Or to put it another way. If Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were both captured by time traveling Nazis and sent to Treblinka Marx would count towards the holocaust and Engels would not in the Wests version of holocaust denial.
Are you just now learning that words have definitions? Do you know what a definition is? The Holocaust is defined, a priori, as the Nazi genocide of Jews, whether in gas chambers or in killing fields. It's a word with a definition. The Nazi killing of communists for being communist is a politicide, not a genocide. The Nazi killing of gypsies is also genocide, similar to the Holocaust, but it definitionally isn't the Holocaust.
Wait so your definition of Holocaust denier is not the person that denies that 6 million Jews were systematically killed by the Nazi Germany machine, but the person who believes in the Holocaust of the Jews, but does not include other atrocities perpetrated by Nazis on the European population?
Can you clarify?
And in your opinion, did these DEI statements ever have Jews in mind?
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40267725.
Germany and Russia both committed daunting atrocities during the war, killed millions of people, but it's unsurprising that people associate "Holocaust" with 6 million Jewish dead, because the Jewish genocide is where the label originated.
I'm getting the impression a lot of Americans are now not just comfortable with systemic inequality, but are gravitating toward a position that it's actually desirable. In this environment, DEI bafflegab just pushes them in that direction.
That's a mischaracterization. No one is _for_ inequality. The opposition you speak of is _for_ race/gender blind meritocracy. Anyone with a little knowledge of economics understands that groups of people cut across any dimension will always have different outcomes; Russian Americans earn more than French Americans, Japanese Americans earn more than Fillipino Americans, taller people earn more than shorter people, etc.
No one thinks inequality is desirable. The opposition you speak of think it's unavoidable. And bad public policy will have effects that make the situation worse for everyone.
Hi - as a counterpoint, I think that inequality is desirable.
In a world with limited resources I think it makes sense to allocate more resources towards people who perform acts for society which require rare skill sets, talent, etc. That might mean more money, it might mean land, it might mean status, or anything else really.
The idea being that those rewards both serve as motivation and also help those people to focus on the good work that they are doing.
You can apply this to basically anything - I think that a more beautiful person, all else being equal, should recieve favourable treatment over an ugly one.
The main downside of such an approach seems to be that, to put it simply, losers get less than winners and to some people that seems unfair. But it's only unfair if the rewards allocated aren't proportional to merit.
I don't really consider this to be controversial to be honest - I think someone who is twice as good as me as a programmer, or contributes twice as much value to the business, or hell, is twice as good at football as me - should receive at least twice as much. That's unequal, but it's also sane and right.
I think that you are arguing against equity not equality. Usually the latter means “equality of opportunity”. At least that’s typically the difference in most debates.
I don't consider there to be a difference.
A society in which the children of successful people are prioritised over the children of unsuccessful people is almost certain to lead to better outcomes for exactly the same reasons.
I came from an underprivileged background myself, if I were investing money with an aim to generating a return, I'd far sooner give it to a banker's son than someone from the estate I grew up on. I was the exception, not the rule, and the older I get the more I figure I must just be some sort of genetic freak, since the overwhelming opinion seems to be that our fate is predestined, nowadays.
Family wealth is probably an indicator for future success. I don't know the numbers, but I would expect family wealth to correlate positively with the earnings of the children. So if you want a return on investment, it makes sense to bet on the wealthy.
But I thought we were talking merit and opportunity? No, being a banker's son doesn't predestine you to being more skillful. You should already have enough counterexamples to demonstrate that fact.
Your comment is borderline bewildering. It's like corruption and nepotism don't exist.
> No one is _for_ inequality.
I suggest that's an extraordinarily naive statement.
Can you send me writing or video of any serious thinker advocating for this? The OP is a common straw-man characterization of the position I described.
> serious thinker
No True Scotsman detected.
I read the article you sent, it doesn't prove your point.
It's interesting how "no one is for inequality" is taken as a statement that doesn't require proof (my original statement was about my impression, not a clear statement that was the case.)
I suggest that categorical statement that, universally, everyone is against inequality, needs some justification. Historically it's certainly not true AT ALL.
Ok how about any thinker.
https://truthout.org/articles/the-far-right-regards-human-in...
It seems like this just assumes the conclusion?
“ As an imprecise working definition (not for all times and places but for the United States today), “far right” is used here to mean political forces that (a) regard human inequality as natural, ”
I assumed it was hyperbole on the GP's part.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40267817.
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Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40271871.
As an Indian-American, "South Asian" is a perfectly reasonable ethnic grouping in the United States. Collectively, that represents ~1% of the US population, too small a grouping to reasonably split out when talking about ethnicity in general terms.
All cultures are fractal. For my own ethnic heritage, for example, I could insist on splitting out:
* South Indian Dravidians from North Indian Arynans
* Kannadigas from other South Indians
* Lingayats from Vaishnavites
But that level of detail (absent special contexts where its relevant) would almost always confuse rather than clarify.
South Asian is not "reasonable" it is pretty much racist. We white people could not be bothered with actually noticing the difference between Pakistan and India is the reason.
> Lingayats from Vaishnavites
This tells me you are probably some kind of humanities graduate from some murican university ?
I'm Indian-American, as I stated above, and the list of subcategories are my own ethnic taxonomy.
I'm not sure what part of the Lingayat distinction bothers you. My grandparents would characterize it as "Lingayat" vs "Brahmina"; would you have preferred that framing?
I don't care about whatever you frame. South Asia = Pakistan.
Read replies to this: https://twitter.com/USAndMumbai/status/1787772852084830251
Calling "south Asia" the somewhat geographically and ethnically coherent region consisting of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan (excluding other parts of Asia that are located equally south because they are distinctly east or west) is a refreshingly objective naming.
Maybe such a region is too large and diverse to be meaningful, but there's no reason to accuse anybody of confusing parts of the old British empire or of embracing silly nationalist newspeak.
In the US, “south asian” is fine. In the UK, there’s enough of each group where I think you should distinguish Indian versus Pakistani versus Bangladeshi. It’s not a group of people who want to be lumped together, same with Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese. They're also far less closely related to each other than say British people and French people.
> I think you should distinguish Indian versus Pakistani versus Bangladeshi. It’s not a group of people who want to be lumped together, same with Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese.
It is a very different situation though. 100 years ago, there was just one country, India – with a great deal of internal ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity. And then, it was split into two over religion, and then one of those splits split again (due to a whole host of issues, although ethnicity and language were both significant factors). Whereas, China, Japan and Korea were distinct countries going back many centuries. You aren't comparing like and like here.
> They're also far less closely related to each other than say British people and French people.
In ethnic and linguistic terms, the majority populations of both Dhaka and Kolkata are basically the same people, the big difference is their religion (although Kolkata is 20% Muslim, and Dhaka around 3-4% Hindu). One can make similar points about the relationship between Lahore and Ludhiana. It is true that people in Dhaka and Lahore are not closely related, but the same is true between Kolkata and Ludhiana. The case of the British and French doesn't have any real parallels.
India was never one country until the modern incarnation. It was centrally administered under a series of empires, like the Austro-Hungarian empire. The groupings within the subcontinent are more different from each other than Western European countries. Even Bengalis, a distinctive ethnolinguistic group, are divided between India and Bangladesh based on religion, which is a major division—a much bigger one than the religious divisions that differentiate countries in Europe.
Many countries we identify as distinct in Western Europe are much more similar to each other than India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are. For example, France and Spain—both are Catholic, and their languages were considered merely different dialects of Vulgar Latin until the 1400s.
> India was never one country until the modern incarnation. It was centrally administered under a series of empires, like the Austro-Hungarian empire.
At the height of the Mughal Empire, it encompassed most of what would later be considered India, with the exception of the far south. You can argue that an empire is not a country, but if we argue in that way, well for most of European history, Europe didn't have countries either.
> Even Bengalis, a distinctive ethnolinguistic group, are divided between India and Bangladesh based on religion, which is a major division—a much bigger one than the religious divisions that differentiate countries in Europe.
There is a significant minority of Bengali Muslims in India, and a smaller minority of Bengali Hindus in Bangladesh. The Indian-Pakistan and India-Bangladesh divides have never neatly followed the religious divide, certainly never as neatly as religious nationalists on both sides would have it.
> For example, France and Spain—both are Catholic, and their languages were considered merely different dialects of Vulgar Latin until the 1400s.
Old French and Old Spanish were already identifiably distinct languages by the 9th century. Some argue (following Robert Wright) that a major impetus for them becoming identified as distinct languages was Charlemagne's Latin pronunciation reform. Prior to Charlemagne, Latin in Romance Europe was pronounced based on the local dialect – so the same Latin text would be read aloud using a French pronunciation in France, a Spanish pronunciation in Spain, an Italian pronunciation in Italy, etc. Monks from Britain and Ireland, having no indigenous tradition of Latin pronunciation, instead devised their own based on phonetic spelling. Charlemagne's advisors convinced him (however incorrectly) that the British/Irish tradition of pronouncing Latin was truer to the original, and so he imposed it on the Church–which suddenly made Latin and the vernacular seem like much more different languages. Now, that said, Wright's thesis is controversial – but even its academic critics, I don't think many of them would agree with you in putting the distinction between vulgar Latin and Old Romance so late.
And, while no denying the difference between Islam and Hinduism is bigger than difference between Catholicism and Protestantism, Europe shows parallel cases of countries with a common language and culture, where the major difference is the dominant religion – the primary difference between Austria and Germany, is the former has traditionally had a Catholic supermajority with a small Protestant minority, the latter was traditionally dominated by Protestants, albeit with a large Catholic minority.
The vulgar of different European places was already splintered into very different variants many centuries before the 1400s, it just matured from a continuum of random informal dialects, the further you travel the better linguist you have to be, to more consolidated and more recognized languages (plenty of different ones in "France" and "Spain").
One reason this American (me) says "South Asian" is because here "Indian" also means "indigenous North American".
If hypothetically the government of India were to declare that the name in English of the country shall in the future be "Bharat" or "Hindustan", Americans would rapidly switch to the new name, and I would no longer be tempted to say "South Asian" when I mean Indian.
This is the most ridiculous take I've seen all year. South Asia is an established geographical-cultural term that includes the two largest countries in Southern Asia - India and Pakistan.
It is not "established" at all. No one calls their restaurant "South Asian", it is always Indian/Pakistani.
"South Asian" = > Racist and Hindu-phobic is the established norm.
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Not it's not lmao
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\> Posts some Hinduvta nonsense as fact
\> Everyone rightfully goes “bro wtf are you talking about”
\> Guess the triggered snowflakes are really just proving my point
Read responses to this tweet: https://twitter.com/USAndMumbai/status/1787772852084830251
May be in the HN bubble "South Asia" is an expected term, very likely because HN crowd might be subjected to far left academia. But it is offensive and racist for actual Indians.
Dude, insulting people is really not on. :(
You’re delusional.
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I value DEI as a critical part of addressing systemic injustice and building a strong, multifaceted organization.
However, these statement requirements look like absolute trash. The sort of thing that is wholly performative. Frankly, it's good they are being dropped in my view.
An intervention is only as good as the work needed to intervene. Saying, "spend ten minutes writing up a statement that no one will ever read and then discard" does zero actual lifting towards enabling inclusion.
DEI policies are useful only inasmuch as they mask, rather than expose, the inequities of the system. Once people start taking it seriously and understanding the exploitative nature of capitalism, DEI gets dropped like a hot potato.
Ignoring the pros and cons of these statements, I would bet money that the biggest (or perhaps "real") reason they're being axed is that nobody is reading them. It's one thing to all agree that something sounds great on paper, until you're forced to sit down and read page after page after page of drivel the authors didn't want to have to write while trying to say the things that you probably want to hear.
It seems like it's every day that I see signs that institutions are preparing for and aligning themselves with a prospective Trump presidency. Recent purges of media are another big one, especially of ones featuring marginalized groups, though thoughtful and challenging stories in general are targets - inclusive, ironically-though-quite-creatively, of something like Helldivers 2. You might not think that that example counts, but I do. It fits what is fast becoming the zeitgeist, one of monoliths flexing their ability to act with impunity, individuals left with nothing more than futile, quiet acts of resistance (which don't ultimately do much resisting). The guy at the top is doing it, after all, so for those at the top of their particular interest (market, field, etc.): why not? Who's going to stop you?
Our democracy might be and remain intact, but our democratic values - particularly those of valuing forthright thought; of speaking up and across instead of down; and of not hiding our faults behind smug strength or stone walls of silence, but instead exposing them so that they may be cleansed and sutured - do seem to be in jeopardy. This is an example of choosing easy over rigorous, and that's sad, especially for MIT.
We have ample evidence of how this happens in societies descending into radical nationalism, if not fascism. So, now I'm just wondering if we're the "learn from the past"-types or the "doomed to repeat it"-types. (Just as much as I'd like to know the answer to that, I'd love to hear from someone who understands what I'm trying to say here, even if they disagree.)
So what are the actual statements being banned? The article gives zero useful details.
The specific way you phrased that question makes me suspect you misinterpreted this as a banning of speech. Not at all. They're removing a class of required question from application forms. “The MIT administration has advised the departments that were requiring DEI statements to stop requiring them and to stop using this kind of information. This has just recently been disclosed to the faculty, but a general announcement to the students is not planned.”
Or are you asking what a DEI statement is in academia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusi...
Unless I'm misunderstanding your question, the very start of the article seems to cover it:
>DEI statements are affirmations made when you’re applying for college admission, university jobs, or even science-society grants, recounting to the authorities your philosophy of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” your history of DEI activities, and how you will implement DEI initiatives if you get the admission/job/grant.
Seconded.
Futhermore, the counterexample cited, teaching adult literacy, seems like a good way of furthering equity and inclusion to me. This sounded like the author contradicting themselves.
The author agrees with you. The point is that teaching adult literacy is out of scope for DEI statements. You can't mention it in a DEI statement.
Most applicants for a desirable position are likely to come from the majority group of your region. So for a minority candidate to be selected they would not only have to be equal to the others - but better. That seems unfair to me. What does that mean over the long term regarding how you hire?
That said, discussions about DEI tend to ignore that thing we are never meant to talk about: social class. Social class and money overrides everything.
> Applicants for a desirable position are likely to come from the majority group of your region. So for a minority candidate to be selected they would not only have to be equal to the others - but better.
Your second sentence here doesn't actually follow from the first.
If you have 5 equally good candidates, 4 men and 1 woman that woman has a 1/5 chance of being selected. The others also have a 1/5 chance as individuals but the candidate selected has a 4/5 likelihood of being male.
If you want to hire more women what do you do exactly?
In this scenario, you should expect to have a representation of around 1 woman per 4 men, if the rate of qualified candidates is 1 woman per 4 men. If you want to hire more than that ratio, you have to be doing some discarding of otherwise qualified candidates on the basis only of being men.
Sure. But even if you want to hire at about 1 women per 4 men you would need to actively do so. I.E. create a hiring policy in which she would be selected instead of one of the other equally qualified men.
Not at all! Passively choosing from the equally-qualified-candidate distribution across the board will yield representation that's right in line with that distribution.
There may be some groups that are entirely men and some that are entirely women, but the aggregate result will approach the true population of qualified candidates.
Yes, it's true that if you want to hire some group of people above their percent rate in your applicant pool, you're going to have to put your thumb on the scale for that group of people.
But this has the opposite effect from what you were just claiming. It means you hire worse candidates merely on the basis of their immutable characteristics.
Or, equivalently, you discriminate against other candidates on the basis of their immutable characteristics. Which is illegal in the US.
When recruiting students into science/technology-centric paths (which is what MIT is looking for), it's important to accept that the required mix of interest in the subject and a strong work ethic is just not all that common. It's also difficult to predict which students are going to have those characteristics based solely on high school grades, SAT scores, etc.
Thus excluding anyone from the pool of applicants on the basis of things like gender, ethnicity, etc. means you end up with fewer students going into challenging math and science programs, which is really not a good outcome in terms of remaining competitive with China and other booming technological sectors. For example, Caltech used to be all-male until c.1970 and is now about 45% female at the undergraduate level - but the curriculum is still as rigorous as ever.
P.S. STEAM is better than STEM; the arts these days have many tie-ins with technology and STEM students with no experience of any of the arts are missing out on many economic and personal growth opportunities.
We already have a word for "STEAM": "Academia". Unless you don't consider, say, History an art or a science, in which case, why do you hate historians so much that you'd make up an acronym that basically means "not you specifically"?