Subtitle: "Demanding that everyone embrace the same values will inevitably narrow the pool of applicants who work and get hired in higher education."
Better subtitle: "The academic workforce's skills and values will shift yet further toward ideological argument, posturing and correctness. And willingness to lie about their values."
I don't appreciate this reasoning. Promotion of lying isn't wrong because of some strained "discrimination" connection, it's wrong because lying is immoral and deteriorates trust.
Could you tell us about the job where difficulties with discerning the lies that the boss currently wants to hear, or in telling him those lies, is not discriminated against?
A DEI statement can instead be about costing a lab environment compatible with people who have autism and other social disabilities. Especially as a professor who will be expected to mentor other students and conduct research, the professor can say they have first hand knowledge on how to foster a space friendly to the neurodivergent.
I'm not sure how much you know about this, but some neurodivergent/autism-friendly places absolutely shit on neurodivergent people. Especially when it involves not following unwritten rules, sadly. Expecting an autistic person to implicitly understand what not to say or what topics not to talk about is like expecting women not to be afraid at night. It is just very out of touch.
Well, that’s what the professor with autism can do though: in a statement establish that they will create a mentorship environment with explicit rule and clear boundaries such that will foster an environment for other autistics to succeed in the field.
Yes, but compulsory DEI statements achieve the opposite effect sadly - they water down true commitment to the issue by making everyone make them, which has the effect of making the pledge worthless.
This again disadvantages neurodivergent people because they often can't effectively filter between mandatory bullshit and genuine commitments, so they might be abused by people who were just forced to sign the DEI pledge but do not actually care about it to make proper accommodations like explicit rules and the such.
There’s no proof that making everyone make such statements waters them down. It might also just make everyone actually think about ways their labs and mentorship style might exclude people and adjust accordingly. I think an autistic professor who writes about making a genuine commitment into supporting other autistic students and actually following through with that is just as competitive as other professors who may lie about it, because autistic people are just as capable of success as neurotypical. In fact I’m willing to be that autistic professor will be even more so, because they are going to foster amazing students that other ableist professors overlook.
It creates pushback though... even when some people are generally sympathetic to inclusion and those general goals, a forced statement might make them push back and say "fuck it I hate this and I won't be taking it seriously".
I think the best way of promoting inclusivity is offering incentives for doing so (not necessarily financial by the way - even small things like events or postcards help!) and creating a healthy atmosphere. Trying to make a polarised and generally toxic atmosphere inclusive only furthers the divide and the polarisation.
>UC Santa Cruz publishes online to help guide prospective applicants.
>“To receive a high score under the terms set by the rubric,” the complaint alleges, “an applicant must express agreement with specific socio-political ideas, including the view that treating individuals differently based on their race or sex is desirable.”
Whoa this comment dunked and I don't even have an idea why - does HN actually oppose so heavily the idea of an employer establishing their own rules in the workplace, and communicating openly about those rules? And people having thus the possibility to vote with their feet right from the start?
This is a public university in California. The UC system decides, and that's presumably someone in the UC staff responsible for generating policy for DEI initiatives.
And since this is a public uni it has to comply with state and federal rules. UC can choose whatever it wants but if the laws shift on the state level it's moot; Texas is doing something along those lines now...
The country laws, the company leadership, the hiring manager. That are the people and mechanisms that define what is appropriate or not for a job. (More people and more levels of legality may be involved).
who employs the boss? The Investor. Who's the biggest investors? blackrock fidelity vanguard and state street use our pensions and 401ks to influence companies to do their bidding.
It’s stunning that the left fought for decades for racial equality and free speech, only to do an abrupt about face.
But to stick to the current topic: these required dei statements are definitely ideological litmus tests, and the people promoting these are not “on the right side of history”, but authoritarians.
It was never about "free speech" but rather "how can we justify what we say to gain influence". Once sufficient influence has been acquired it is necessary to prevent opposition from wielding the same tool that gave you power. The common man may have been convinced that "free speech" was an ideal but ultimately they were being used or manipulated.
It makes more sense when you realize it's not the same left. The old left was much more on the hopeful/practical side of marxist thought focused on the economy as the alleged pathway of oppression, which gave them a focus on unionization and equal rights. The new left is much more influenced by the butt hurt, due to the utter failure of the system in the face of free market, decedents of old school marxism that has generalized marxist thought processes (i.e. critical theory) to all sorts of different alleged pathways of oppression. The new left comes much more out of the university and the legal profession and many of the different versions don't really like each other because critical theory doesn't give you coherent results and as such things that form the foundation of one version are considered abhorrent in another (i.e. put a critical race theorist and a queer theorist in a room and compare and contrast what the same base idea and reasoning system manifests as). The moderate center left is much more alienated under the new regime and is increasingly homeless as well because the new left isn't as willing to compromise its vision in return for incremental improvement (I think that's because it's not as unified a thought process as it was when it wasn't generalized but that's just my opinion)
I've noticed this trend of changing the meaning of words in recent decades. How do we prevent corruption of meaning? I hear "language evolves over time!" quite a lot, as if it's a law of nature, but I've never heard anyone question the statement to determine whether it's true or why it would be true. "Diversity" is a good example but there are numerous ("racism", "bigotry", etc).
I suspect the reasons for change would be insufficient to sway a majority. I suspect this is why the reasons aren't examined.
Originally there was an idea that a group with completely homogenous thoughts and opinions would lack innovation and problem solving ability. Ironically, the meaning of "diversity" has been corrupted to the point that it now requires homogenous thoughts and opinions.
The "language evolves over time!" folks conveniently omit the fact that they think it should only apply when the new meaning is beneficial to them. Otherwise, they are perfectly happy to argue the opposite viewpoint.
This is prescriptive, not descriptive language analysis...
About your last paragraph, I find it quite telling that diversity notoriously does not include diversity of thought, it's all about immutable character traits. It is also sometimes no longer considered permissible to hide your immutable character traits anymore which I find sad.
In Orwells book 'Newspeak' is a controlled language designed to limit the individual person's ability to think critically or to articulate subversive concepts, such as personal identity, self-expression, and free will.
I do not think that language operations happen of their own. I see corporate messing with language. I see BlackRock enforcing diversity and other things. I see corporate ideological parades to show that they are with the common folk. In reality they are brainwashing people.
I do not see language change organically. I see organizations prohibiting certain words, suggesting certain words. All in the name of "X".
It all reminds me of religion. Reminds me of computer logic. If you say "X" you are a good person. If you do not say "X" you are a bad person. Language is a powerful thing. I feel as if one tampered with it.
Stop treating the astroturfed re-definition as serious. They should be laughed out of the room but corp media gloms on for the fight and then legitimizes it in some peoples minds.
> I've noticed this trend of changing the meaning of words in recent decades.
I think you're referring to words with political meaning, so I won't rant about the word "literally".
There are people who insist that some words must change their meanings, and that other words must be entirely abandoned, because they see language as shaping how people think, and so by changing language, they hope to steer the way that people think. Steering the way that people think is indistinguishable from political campaigning, as far as I can see; so I see the blacklisting etc. of words as a kind of political campaigning by the back door.
I find these word-games offensive. I don't want to offend people, so I try not to use terms that are considered offensive. But they don't give up; "negroe" became "black" became "african-american" and so on. I've lost patience.
And I have a strong sense that these word-games are a substitute for persuading people; like, persuasion seems to have failed, so let's manipulate them by changing the language. I hate the sense that I'm being manipulated.
I think it doesn’t require homogenous thoughts and opinions, that’s rather bad faith and obviously untrue on its face: you cannot have homogenous thoughts and opinions with a diverse background of people. However it does limit what kind of diversity is acceptable: an opinion that gay people should be given the death penalty might definitely be unique in the workplace but also I would argue not beneficial to a workplace setting.
One's background does not dictate one's thoughts and opinions, that's an argument for predestination and I reject it outright.
Hiring practices are not, cannot, be based on background, due to time constraints of the hiring process. It is not possible to know a person's background, though you could certainly get some idea of it given enough time, perspective alone would prevent you from understanding it as they do. In fact, hiring is based almost entirely on the prejudices of the person(s) making the hiring decision. These days, publicly traded companies are incentivized through market forces (blackrock, ESG scoring) to be prejudiced against certain groups.
If you're looking for a faith-based interpretation of the meaning of words, good, bad, or otherwise, you'll need to extend some faith in the existing meaning first.
I'm not going to defend an opinion that I haven't given, such as that the death penalty should be given to a person based on their sexual orientation. I will, however, defend the notion that every person's opinion holds valuable information and perspective. You cannot argue on principle that diversity is a good thing while simultaneously arguing that it can be a bad thing. This is an obvious contradiction. It changes the meaning of the argument from "we've discovered a fundamental truth" to "we'd like you to act a certain way" and that glosses over the outstanding implicit request, by the existence of a status quo, for you to act a certain way.
> You cannot argue on principle that diversity is a good thing while simultaneously arguing that it can be a bad thing. This is an obvious contradiction.
Moderation (in the sense of temperance) as a meta-ethical principle has an exceedingly long pedigree, starting with Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. Every virtue he describes is a mean between two extremes; courage lies between cowardice and recklessness, for example.
TL;DR: Every virtue has a “oops you went too far” failure mode, this doesn’t make it “self-contradictory”.
This is the paradox of tolerance; you cannot be tolerant of the intolerant if you hope to foster a tolerant society. I’m merely arguing that it’s entirely possible to have a diverse thought community that all value diversity. There’s people who believe communism sucks, and there’s communists. There’s people who believe unions good, and people with bad experiences with unions. Someone who is a veteran will by necessity have different opinions (based on lived experience) than someone who had never lifted a gun, or someone who is a refugee of war. It’s inevitable that such a group of people will not all have the same opinion on things.
If the demand is to act a certain way, it’s only that the demand is to accept others who are different in a way that doesn’t actually harm anyone and foster an environment where no one person is unreasonably limited based on factors like being black or being a parent through thoughtless setup of the working environment.
The diversity of thought thing is always strange to me because it implies the only diversity of thought that matters is the thought to discriminate against others or the thought to put one’s head in the sand and ignore implicit discriminatory factors. Notice you totally ignored that the professor could’ve just written about accessibility, but the professor implicitly apparently does not consider accessible labs to be merit-based or something, because he argues the only solution is to sue since DEI is so against his meritocracy position.
> This is the paradox of tolerance; you cannot be tolerant of the intolerant if you hope to foster a tolerant society.
The paradox is about unlimited tolerance, and the specific intolerance which aims to remove the liberty of thought. A society can (and should) harbor any kind of tolerance and intolerance, but must draw a line where forces grow which plan to remove this liberty, because then the tolerance ends anyway. But if you start becoming intolerant for any topic and reason, then you've already lost the tolerance.
You obviously need some amount of homogeneity. I could rattle off opinions that are incompatible with any sort of community all day. "It is best if everyone actively works to make the group fail" as a trivial example. So obviously within some bounds diversity of opinions, skills, and backgrounds is desirable, but it's not unbounded and this isn't a contradiction. Without being specific about what "diverse opinions" you think should be welcomed you're just being naively contrarian.
No, you don't need homogeneity of thought and opinion. There's an obvious difference between holding an opinion and taking an action. Thinking it would be best for a group to fail and actively trying to make said group fail are two different things. Furthermore, the value of different thoughts and opinions is in the difference of approach and perspective, not necessarily in the thoughts or opinions themselves. The value comes from the act of consideration of other opinions and thoughts, not from blindly doing whatever other people (who may happen to disagree with you) want.
> I hear "language evolves over time!" quite a lot, as if it's a law of nature, but I've never heard anyone question the statement to determine whether it's true or why it would be true.
Have you heard of linguistics? Language changes all the time. Languages changes constantly. The word silly once meant "blessed by God".
Like, this is so obvious and so well known that I just have to assume you're trolling here.
You'll get a lot further in life by assuming you don't understand than assuming others are trolling. Indeed, sometimes it's the only way to get information from data. In this case you don't seem to have understood the context in which the phrase in question is often uttered. The context is politics. Power dynamics. Changing the definitions of words to change what is possible to be expressed with language. Not the natural kind of language evolution that happens over generations due to misunderstandings or new inventions.
All the argument is "do not judge people by their politics", and then it dedicates a lot of words to judge people by their politics. It is not just ironic but nonsensical.
A political biased piece that tries to hide behind a wall of very faulty reasoning.
I would love everyone to just examine the specific situations as they arise instead of immediately jumping to Platonic discussions of merit and race and gender. Otherwise you're falling into a culture war trap that's completely unproductive.
The first problem is there's actually no injury here as far as I can tell. This person did not even submit the paperwork, and thus did not get scored, and thus did not get rejected. The entire thing is based around the assumption that he would get rejected.
But why would he assume that? Maybe it has less to do with his paperwork and more to do with his public activity.
For example, in this case, you have an individual who either tweets or retweets dozens of times daily (DAILY), frequently getting into online arguments. He's active in the conservative online outrage machine, retweeting and interacting with conservative personalities. He has a paid Substack where he opines about the cultural revolution ("Marxist" left unsaid, but obviously present), whether COVID was real, how "the Left" destabilizes society, and other conservative culture war issues. By any stretch of the imagination, this isn't a normal person. This is someone who is loud, addicted to Online Discourse, and who seems like they're looking to make trouble. If someone like this was a colleague, regardless of their political persuasion, I would steer clear of them. This type of person is often not pleasant to be around, and often fails to properly do their job.
Basically this is about a professor who believes in meritocracy and race blindness, and is angry that this isn’t considered acceptable for professorship.
It doesn’t really go into whether or not the professors opinion is a valid opinion based on factual evidence for the existence of meritocracy and the benefits of race-blindness. But he could also have gone into a statement advocating for accessibility or veterans access instead, such as saying he would ensure his lab and research location will be wheelchair accessible and that any trials component of his research will be available in formats compatible with deafness or blindness. Or does he not believe in those either? What about having flexible work hours so parents can raise children, or older students can live their adult lives (which will benefit veterans)?
This article is myopic and implies that DEI is thing. I actually think that belief is just as lacking in diverse thinking as it is accusing DEI to be.
> doesn’t really go into whether or not the professors opinion is a valid opinion based on factual evidence
It doesn’t matter.
If everyone is required to sign a statement saying the sky is blue, it is meaningless if there is “a valid opinion based on factual evidence” to the contrary. That there is a mandated view suppresses the inquiry that might generate factual evidence, whether in favour of the hypothesis or not.
Well first off, the focus shifts on identity, not productivity or merit. This "justifies" lower salaries based on equal pay. Most of DEI means equity (of outcome), not equality, which is often achieved by pushing higher-achievers down, not lifting everyone up. Needless to say how this affects compensation.
Second, if you are a DEI hire, you are made to feel that you only got the role for who you are, so you will most likely not ask for a raise due to the fear of reprisal or dismissal.
Third, weakens the belonging amongst coworkers since everyone is really careful in social interactions to not give the leadership a (mostly fabricated) opportunity to fire them for breaching DEI policies. Obviously, when coworkers are suspicious of each other, it's much easier to use divide-and-conquer tactics and underpay everyone.
Fourth, those companies recruit immigrants specifically, so they can underpay them under the threat of firing them (and making them lose their visa).
>Well first off, the focus shifts on identity, not productivity or merit. This "justifies" lower salaries based on equal pay. Most of DEI means equity (of outcome), not equality, which is often achieved by pushing higher-achievers down, not lifting everyone up. Needless to say how this affects compensation.
That sounds more like a scheme to standardise job levels. Been through it multiple times now and never saw anyone end up significantly worse off. If anything they might be bumped up a level.
>Third, weakens the belonging amongst coworkers since everyone is really careful in social interactions to not give the leadership a (mostly fabricated) opportunity to fire them for breaching DEI policies. Obviously, when coworkers are suspicious of each other, it's much easier to use divide-and-conquer tactics and underpay everyone.
I can understand that fear but to me it says more about the legal protections afforded to workers. In the US you might be marched right out the door by security, but in other countries there's a graduated process employers typically need to follow.
> Obviously, when coworkers are suspicious of each other, it's much easier to use divide-and-conquer tactics and underpay everyone.
OTOH because of aforementioned attitude, an employee could feel zero sense of loyalty or obligation to stay beyond the absolute minimum and just go to a different company
Personally, I’d rather feel that way. It would pay more long term
It’s the “pipeline problem”—by the time an employee enters the workforce, their skillset is the product of everything that came upstream (education, family circumstances, living conditions, etc.) If someone spent their childhood living in poverty (malnourished, inhaling pollution, in a house filled with lead paint, attending poor schools, etc.), by the time they enter the workforce, the resulting deficiency in cognitive achievement will be dramatic and unsurmountable relative to someone who spent their childhood sans toxins, well-fed, and attending good schools.
Suppose systematic discrimination against certain ethnic groups “X” has made them disproportionately more likely to grow up in poverty, which (along with many other systemic factors) causes a huge cognitive deficit relative to other ethnic groups “Y” who have not experienced systematic discrimination. Some jobs’ skillsets are predicated on cognitive ability, so ethnic groups X will be disproportionately underqualified (and thus naturally underrepresented) in those jobs relative to ethnic groups Y.
Many DEI initiatives prescribe that the ethnic makeup of a company/institution ought to perfectly reflect overall population demographics. This will, by definition, necessitate lowering hiring standards for ethnic groups X, since a much smaller proportion of them have the necessarily skillset relative to their peers in ethnic groups Y, who haven’t experienced systematic discrimination.
A company's primary goal is to optimize its profit. At first glance, willfully hiring underqualified people in the name of DEI would negatively impact profits, so OP surmises there must be some ulterior motive that actually makes it profitable. OP's proposed motives sound plausible, but it could also just be that companies are afraid that not having a DEI initiative would hurt their image relative to their peers that have DEI initiatives—a prisoner's dilemma.
No, I just made it up (sarcasm). Jokes aside, these are just my observations. While writing my comment, I tried to look for online sources backing up or disproving what I said, but I haven't found much.
I think this is just an area which is not really written about.
Qualification is also just a box. Of course will nobody be hired if they lack even the basic qualification. But the boxes can influence on whether you will hire the top-notch performer, or the just barely good enough dude who checks more DEI-boxes.
A lot of people angry here because they are not allowed to discriminate based in actually protected classes like gender. It seems that the hiring manager just wants to make sure that the potential employee is not going to discriminate against other employees. A very reasonable position.
I see many people arguing "to include racists is also diversity" a sentence that may be grammatically correct but it is meaningless when it comes to semantics.
