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After lecture is canceled, free speech debate roils science academia

mensetmanusman 5y ago
In the elite milieu it is apparently hurtful to talk of a meritocracy. To imagine this as a scarlet letter even a decade ago would have been laughable, but here we are.
- eesmith 5y ago
  I was curious so I did a Google Scholar search for the topic. It really does not appear like it was laughable 10 years ago, at least, not in the scholarly sense, given how easy it was to found counter-examples. For example, "The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations" from 2011 at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2189/asqu.2010.55.4.543?casa_token=1hVFasnFB7IAAAAA:NsD-U7nkZz-yQGkSplWjG9lferpWOqjC_0bFuqpuPe14ozqk-KOtnUDqUdyrn0t6kS_ifxb48uBE https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2189/asqu.2010.55.4.... says: > In this article, we develop and empirically test the theoretical argument that when an organizational culture promotes meritocracy (compared with when it does not), managers in that organization may ironically show greater bias in favor of men over equally performing women in translating employee performance evaluations into rewards and other key career outcomes; we call this the “paradox of meritocracy.” ... > The main finding is consistent across the three studies: when an organization is explicitly presented as meritocratic, individuals in managerial positions favor a male employee over an equally qualified female employee by awarding him a larger monetary reward. This finding demonstrates that the pursuit of meritocracy at the workplace may be more difficult than it first appears and that there may be unrecognized risks behind certain organizational efforts used to reward merit. > ... It may also be the case that not only merit-based practices but also meritocracy as a cultural value can serve as an “environmental trigger” (DiMaggio, 1997: 279) or be part of a “tool kit” of habits (Swidler, 1986: 273) that unleashes individual cognitive biases. Because employment decisions are made by managers embedded in organizational cultures, unintended adverse effects may result from employers’ efforts to reward merit or other practices meant to increase fairness in the workplace. Or, "Unraveling the myth of meritocracy within the context of US higher education" from 2011 at https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10734-010-9394-7.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10734-010-939... : > A troubling effect of an uncritical view of meritocracy is that by not acknowledging there are greater structural social inequalities at play, there may be a tendency to view students who do not reach higher levels of educational attainment as having failed on their own terms (Karabel 2005; McNamee and Miller 2004; Young 2001). Perhaps it's just taken this long for the conclusions of this field to become solid enough to influence the popular culture that you are more attuned to?
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    This is true in technology development too. E.g. the mobile handheld was described in essence in writings 100 years ago. Ideas usually propagate slowly, some reach the masses. The argument is mostly people talking past each other because algorithms are tuned to incite irrational engagement. People arguing against meritocracy are (usually/hopefully) not arguing that the concept itself is broken, more about the implementation (there is a small group that argues the concept is broken, but that group also overlaps with those that don’t believe in free will).

In the elite milieu it is apparently hurtful to talk of a meritocracy. To imagine this as a scarlet letter even a decade ago would have been laughable, but here we are.

eesmith 5y ago
I was curious so I did a Google Scholar search for the topic. It really does not appear like it was laughable 10 years ago, at least, not in the scholarly sense, given how easy it was to found counter-examples. For example, "The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations" from 2011 at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2189/asqu.2010.55.4.543?casa_token=1hVFasnFB7IAAAAA:NsD-U7nkZz-yQGkSplWjG9lferpWOqjC_0bFuqpuPe14ozqk-KOtnUDqUdyrn0t6kS_ifxb48uBE https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2189/asqu.2010.55.4.... says: > In this article, we develop and empirically test the theoretical argument that when an organizational culture promotes meritocracy (compared with when it does not), managers in that organization may ironically show greater bias in favor of men over equally performing women in translating employee performance evaluations into rewards and other key career outcomes; we call this the “paradox of meritocracy.” ... > The main finding is consistent across the three studies: when an organization is explicitly presented as meritocratic, individuals in managerial positions favor a male employee over an equally qualified female employee by awarding him a larger monetary reward. This finding demonstrates that the pursuit of meritocracy at the workplace may be more difficult than it first appears and that there may be unrecognized risks behind certain organizational efforts used to reward merit. > ... It may also be the case that not only merit-based practices but also meritocracy as a cultural value can serve as an “environmental trigger” (DiMaggio, 1997: 279) or be part of a “tool kit” of habits (Swidler, 1986: 273) that unleashes individual cognitive biases. Because employment decisions are made by managers embedded in organizational cultures, unintended adverse effects may result from employers’ efforts to reward merit or other practices meant to increase fairness in the workplace. Or, "Unraveling the myth of meritocracy within the context of US higher education" from 2011 at https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10734-010-9394-7.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10734-010-939... : > A troubling effect of an uncritical view of meritocracy is that by not acknowledging there are greater structural social inequalities at play, there may be a tendency to view students who do not reach higher levels of educational attainment as having failed on their own terms (Karabel 2005; McNamee and Miller 2004; Young 2001). Perhaps it's just taken this long for the conclusions of this field to become solid enough to influence the popular culture that you are more attuned to?
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  This is true in technology development too. E.g. the mobile handheld was described in essence in writings 100 years ago. Ideas usually propagate slowly, some reach the masses. The argument is mostly people talking past each other because algorithms are tuned to incite irrational engagement. People arguing against meritocracy are (usually/hopefully) not arguing that the concept itself is broken, more about the implementation (there is a small group that argues the concept is broken, but that group also overlaps with those that don’t believe in free will).