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Again, that's not about belief, that's about the reality that the student body is diverse, the school wants the student body to be diverse, and the classroom it

Again, that's not about belief, that's about the reality that the student body is diverse, the school wants the student body to be diverse, and the classroom itself will accordingly be diverse. What specifically about the rubric is the most troubling to you? By the way, as someone who hires faculty and reads many such statements (I have to ask, have you read any DEI statements? Do you have examples which you find especially troubling?), a discussion about how current efforts are dubiously effective would be welcome and would help your application at my institution. More often than not, what they are trying to do with these DEI statements is to weed-out applicants who have given no thought whatsoever to this part of the job. The most common failure here is to treat this job requirement as an afterthought and to focus 100% on the research portion. Someone who had genuine opinions about DEI education that run counter to the way things are done would be well received by the hiring committee at my institution.

zozbot234 5y ago
> a discussion about how current efforts are dubiously effective would be a welcome and would help your application at my institution. A required statement as part of applying for any faculty position or promotion is simply not the appropriate place for such a discussion. You're expecting what amounts to a serious research effort in social science. This kind of intervention in effective leverage points of a complex system (even if perhaps only a "system of oppression", as often described by those most concerned about DEI) is the stuff that research papers are made of, not short statements of conformity. (Of course, this assumes that effective mitigation of DEI challenges is the actual goal of these requirements. It's not unreasonable to be rather skeptical about this, as the original professor who raised the issue - who is a social scientist - states in his blog post series.)
- ModernMech 5y ago
  > not the appropriate place for such a discussion Why? We want to hire faculty who have experience managing a diverse classroom. We want a diverse classroom because our student body is diverse. Our student body is diverse because our applicants are diverse. Diversity is part of this whole thing, and experience as faculty teaching diverse classrooms tells us that it's not something that can be treated as an afterthought. > You're expecting what amounts to a serious research effort in social science. No, we are expecting a cogent discussion of the issues which one encounters through teaching diverse classrooms. It's a matter of experience, and yes sometimes it amounts to years of experience to understand the complex and subtle role that diversity plays in the classroom. But as I said in another post, the failure mode here isn't typically an inability to articulate a deep understanding of this area, it's an inability to articulate any understanding or thought whatsoever to these problems. Even just discussing the problems is more than enough to get you past any cutoff or filter I've encountered.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    > Even just discussing the problems is more than enough to get you past any cutoff or filter I've encountered. Even assuming that this were true, the clear implication is merely that the scoring rubric for that part of the application is being disregarded, since it very explicitly says otherwise. The linked blog post series actually discusses the issue at length, so I'm not going to repeat what it says. Regardless, having scoring rubrics that explicitly demand ideological conformity to a specific point of view is still a recipe for significant problems in the future.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      You're still not pointing out how this rubric is demanding ideological conformity. The wording of the rubric and the context in which it's presented have explicit language about how this is not in fact demanding ideological conformity. It's presented as a "sample", a "template", a "guide", "illustrative", and "recommended". It implores faculty search committees to tailor the rubric to the norms particulars of the academic discipline. Nowhere is it stated that this mandated and required. I think one of the main issues here is that you are looking at the DEI component of the hiring process through the lens of the DEI office, which is not necessarily the view of the faculty search committee, who are the actual gatekeepers in the process. But even if we consider the rubric as presented, I still fail to see where it's demanding ideological conformity. The rubric states it is evaluating: knowledge and understanding (section 1), track record of activities to date (section 2), and plans for contributing at Berkeley (section 3). - For Section 1, requiring knowledge of a topic is not the same as requiring ideological conformity to a topic. I think we can all agree on that. - Section 2 asks about a track record of activities. This is just asking about a candidate's service record, and an appropriate response here would be to talk about any community service experience one has. - Section 3 asks about future plans. This is an opportunity for a candidate to talk about plans for incorporating community service and outreach with their research and teaching, which is usually a prerequisite to getting funding from top government funding agencies. A detailed service plan is an important part of any faculty candidate's application package, and the DEI letter is a great place to include it. I don't see how any of that is onerous or demanding of ideological purity and conformity. It seems rather reasonable to me.
MatteoFrigo 5y ago
Would you mind stating which institution you work for, so I can recommend that my kids avoid it like the plague? I want teachers who can answer questions about Fourier transforms, not teachers who can "manage a diverse classroom". Really, "manage"?
- ModernMech 5y ago
  The job of a teacher at a university is not to simply answer questions, but to manage (this is a term of art) a classroom for tens to hundreds of students at a time. One aspect of classroom management is mediating interpersonal conflicts, which happen often at scale and can hinge on issues relating to gender, race, religion, and other sensitive personal matters. If you just want someone to answer questions on a subject matter, then a tutor is what you’re looking for. If you want to be a part of a student body, then you want someone who is not just good at answering questions, but can also effectively manage a classroom. Otherwise you’re in store for 14 weeks of confusion and chaos.
  - vanusa 5y ago
    "Often happen at scale"? What on earth are you talking about? The schools I went to very much "politically aware" -- and there was no shortage of drama and controversy in the student newspapers, online and all over campus, in fact. But in the classroom? I literally cannot think of a single instance of "interpersonal conflict" that would have required special "management" skills of any kind (beyond simple decency and common sense). Everyone got along, and it was all pretty mellow and chill, actually.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      > "Often happen at scale"? What on earth are you talking about? What I mean is that things that are rare for most people in everyday life become commonplace when you deal with batches of 100s of humans at a time. For example, bipolar disorder occurs at a frequency of about 1% in the general population. Statistically in my classroom of 100 students, there's at least 1 who suffers from bipolar disorder, and therefore is in serious danger of for the first time undergoing an acute mental health crisis at some point during the semester. Therefore in my profession, issues related to mental health are not a rare or abstract occurrence, but are ever-present in the classroom semester after semester. Indeed, in almost all of my classes there will be a student who undergoes such a crisis, and so it's best to have a policy for dealing with these issues when they arise. > I literally cannot think of a single instance of "interpersonal conflict" that would have required special "management" skills of any kind (beyond simple decency and common sense). Everyone got along, and it was all pretty mellow and chill, actually. By "schools I went to", do you mean as a student? If so, then it's not surprising you wouldn't have been exposed to any of these things; very sensitive matters are brought to instructors in confidence and are handled discretely. In a well-managed classroom, the issues of other students should be transparent to you. Some examples that I experienced recently: - Student had racial slurs spray painted on their residence, wanted to discuss an extension of his project due to emotional distress. - Female student overheard other male students making lewd and harassing comments about her, made her feel unwelcome in the classroom and was affecting her performance. - Student was bullying other students in his group to the point that they came to me in tears about how he was treating them. Having taken classes you may feel you understand what it takes to run a classroom, but I assure you there's an endless stream of these kinds of issues that occur in the background that you have no idea your instructors are dealing with.
oefrha 5y ago
As a non-white male person who successfully navigated highly diverse top U.S. institutions as an international student without all the DEI bullshit a while back, I’d rather work with faculty and staff who don’t cater to my ethnicity, gender or whatever irrelevant traits, thanks.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  > without all the DEI bullshit a while back, I’d rather work with faculty and staff who don’t cater to my ethnicity, gender or whatever irrelevant traits, Let me give you an example of where one example where it might feel like bullshit and be perceived to be irrelevant to you, but makes a big deal when it comes to individual students in my classroom. On the issue of pronouns, many people feel like it's a bullshit thing they don't want to deal with. They view the inclusion of pronouns in a signature as a waste of time. I've been told as much. It's fine to have this position in the abstract, but it comes with costs in contexts that confront the reality that transgendered students exist. Consider the fact that every semester, I will have at least 1-2 transgendered students in my classroom. For 99% of the students there, their pronouns are conventionally obvious. However, some students might be registered as "Christopher" yet they may present as conventionally female, and go by "Chris". A good DEI statement might talk about an experience one has with this kind of situation. It's a situation that happens commonly for educators. How did they handle this situation? How did the students respond? What did the applicant learn? Pretty much the only wrong answer here is to dismiss this as a bullshit nonissue that is irrelevant. Maybe it's irrelevant to you in your personal life, but it's not irrelevant to everyone, and in fact is quite relevant to the professional performance of a faculty member.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    > Pretty much the only wrong answer here is to dismiss this as a bullshit nonissue that is irrelevant. Who's to say that there's any "right" or "wrong" answer to the issue? What if one were to fell back to basic norms of professional courtesy, that ask of us to treat others with tact and diplomacy so as to make them feel as comfortable as possible? One might then privately regard the whole matter as quite trifling, while nonetheless humoring the student's unconventional identity and presentation as merely the latest of many such possible eccentricities. This is clearly not the "accepted" answer in DEI offices, but it might be quite compatible with one's duties as an educator.

zozbot234 5y ago

> a discussion about how current efforts are dubiously effective would be a welcome and would help your application at my institution. A required statement as part of applying for any faculty position or promotion is simply not the appropriate place for such a discussion. You're expecting what amounts to a serious research effort in social science. This kind of intervention in effective leverage points of a complex system (even if perhaps only a "system of oppression", as often described by those most concerned about DEI) is the stuff that research papers are made of, not short statements of conformity. (Of course, this assumes that effective mitigation of DEI challenges is the actual goal of these requirements. It's not unreasonable to be rather skeptical about this, as the original professor who raised the issue - who is a social scientist - states in his blog post series.)

ModernMech 5y ago
> not the appropriate place for such a discussion Why? We want to hire faculty who have experience managing a diverse classroom. We want a diverse classroom because our student body is diverse. Our student body is diverse because our applicants are diverse. Diversity is part of this whole thing, and experience as faculty teaching diverse classrooms tells us that it's not something that can be treated as an afterthought. > You're expecting what amounts to a serious research effort in social science. No, we are expecting a cogent discussion of the issues which one encounters through teaching diverse classrooms. It's a matter of experience, and yes sometimes it amounts to years of experience to understand the complex and subtle role that diversity plays in the classroom. But as I said in another post, the failure mode here isn't typically an inability to articulate a deep understanding of this area, it's an inability to articulate any understanding or thought whatsoever to these problems. Even just discussing the problems is more than enough to get you past any cutoff or filter I've encountered.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > Even just discussing the problems is more than enough to get you past any cutoff or filter I've encountered. Even assuming that this were true, the clear implication is merely that the scoring rubric for that part of the application is being disregarded, since it very explicitly says otherwise. The linked blog post series actually discusses the issue at length, so I'm not going to repeat what it says. Regardless, having scoring rubrics that explicitly demand ideological conformity to a specific point of view is still a recipe for significant problems in the future.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    You're still not pointing out how this rubric is demanding ideological conformity. The wording of the rubric and the context in which it's presented have explicit language about how this is not in fact demanding ideological conformity. It's presented as a "sample", a "template", a "guide", "illustrative", and "recommended". It implores faculty search committees to tailor the rubric to the norms particulars of the academic discipline. Nowhere is it stated that this mandated and required. I think one of the main issues here is that you are looking at the DEI component of the hiring process through the lens of the DEI office, which is not necessarily the view of the faculty search committee, who are the actual gatekeepers in the process. But even if we consider the rubric as presented, I still fail to see where it's demanding ideological conformity. The rubric states it is evaluating: knowledge and understanding (section 1), track record of activities to date (section 2), and plans for contributing at Berkeley (section 3). - For Section 1, requiring knowledge of a topic is not the same as requiring ideological conformity to a topic. I think we can all agree on that. - Section 2 asks about a track record of activities. This is just asking about a candidate's service record, and an appropriate response here would be to talk about any community service experience one has. - Section 3 asks about future plans. This is an opportunity for a candidate to talk about plans for incorporating community service and outreach with their research and teaching, which is usually a prerequisite to getting funding from top government funding agencies. A detailed service plan is an important part of any faculty candidate's application package, and the DEI letter is a great place to include it. I don't see how any of that is onerous or demanding of ideological purity and conformity. It seems rather reasonable to me.

MatteoFrigo 5y ago

Would you mind stating which institution you work for, so I can recommend that my kids avoid it like the plague? I want teachers who can answer questions about Fourier transforms, not teachers who can "manage a diverse classroom". Really, "manage"?

ModernMech 5y ago
The job of a teacher at a university is not to simply answer questions, but to manage (this is a term of art) a classroom for tens to hundreds of students at a time. One aspect of classroom management is mediating interpersonal conflicts, which happen often at scale and can hinge on issues relating to gender, race, religion, and other sensitive personal matters. If you just want someone to answer questions on a subject matter, then a tutor is what you’re looking for. If you want to be a part of a student body, then you want someone who is not just good at answering questions, but can also effectively manage a classroom. Otherwise you’re in store for 14 weeks of confusion and chaos.
- vanusa 5y ago
  "Often happen at scale"? What on earth are you talking about? The schools I went to very much "politically aware" -- and there was no shortage of drama and controversy in the student newspapers, online and all over campus, in fact. But in the classroom? I literally cannot think of a single instance of "interpersonal conflict" that would have required special "management" skills of any kind (beyond simple decency and common sense). Everyone got along, and it was all pretty mellow and chill, actually.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    > "Often happen at scale"? What on earth are you talking about? What I mean is that things that are rare for most people in everyday life become commonplace when you deal with batches of 100s of humans at a time. For example, bipolar disorder occurs at a frequency of about 1% in the general population. Statistically in my classroom of 100 students, there's at least 1 who suffers from bipolar disorder, and therefore is in serious danger of for the first time undergoing an acute mental health crisis at some point during the semester. Therefore in my profession, issues related to mental health are not a rare or abstract occurrence, but are ever-present in the classroom semester after semester. Indeed, in almost all of my classes there will be a student who undergoes such a crisis, and so it's best to have a policy for dealing with these issues when they arise. > I literally cannot think of a single instance of "interpersonal conflict" that would have required special "management" skills of any kind (beyond simple decency and common sense). Everyone got along, and it was all pretty mellow and chill, actually. By "schools I went to", do you mean as a student? If so, then it's not surprising you wouldn't have been exposed to any of these things; very sensitive matters are brought to instructors in confidence and are handled discretely. In a well-managed classroom, the issues of other students should be transparent to you. Some examples that I experienced recently: - Student had racial slurs spray painted on their residence, wanted to discuss an extension of his project due to emotional distress. - Female student overheard other male students making lewd and harassing comments about her, made her feel unwelcome in the classroom and was affecting her performance. - Student was bullying other students in his group to the point that they came to me in tears about how he was treating them. Having taken classes you may feel you understand what it takes to run a classroom, but I assure you there's an endless stream of these kinds of issues that occur in the background that you have no idea your instructors are dealing with.

oefrha 5y ago

As a non-white male person who successfully navigated highly diverse top U.S. institutions as an international student without all the DEI bullshit a while back, I’d rather work with faculty and staff who don’t cater to my ethnicity, gender or whatever irrelevant traits, thanks.

ModernMech 5y ago
> without all the DEI bullshit a while back, I’d rather work with faculty and staff who don’t cater to my ethnicity, gender or whatever irrelevant traits, Let me give you an example of where one example where it might feel like bullshit and be perceived to be irrelevant to you, but makes a big deal when it comes to individual students in my classroom. On the issue of pronouns, many people feel like it's a bullshit thing they don't want to deal with. They view the inclusion of pronouns in a signature as a waste of time. I've been told as much. It's fine to have this position in the abstract, but it comes with costs in contexts that confront the reality that transgendered students exist. Consider the fact that every semester, I will have at least 1-2 transgendered students in my classroom. For 99% of the students there, their pronouns are conventionally obvious. However, some students might be registered as "Christopher" yet they may present as conventionally female, and go by "Chris". A good DEI statement might talk about an experience one has with this kind of situation. It's a situation that happens commonly for educators. How did they handle this situation? How did the students respond? What did the applicant learn? Pretty much the only wrong answer here is to dismiss this as a bullshit nonissue that is irrelevant. Maybe it's irrelevant to you in your personal life, but it's not irrelevant to everyone, and in fact is quite relevant to the professional performance of a faculty member.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > Pretty much the only wrong answer here is to dismiss this as a bullshit nonissue that is irrelevant. Who's to say that there's any "right" or "wrong" answer to the issue? What if one were to fell back to basic norms of professional courtesy, that ask of us to treat others with tact and diplomacy so as to make them feel as comfortable as possible? One might then privately regard the whole matter as quite trifling, while nonetheless humoring the student's unconventional identity and presentation as merely the latest of many such possible eccentricities. This is clearly not the "accepted" answer in DEI offices, but it might be quite compatible with one's duties as an educator.