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It's unfortunately tough to have a discussion about this too. Any criticism of justice/equity/diversity/inclusion (JEDI) bureaucracy gets strawmanned very quick

• dudul 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • mapierce2 4y ago
    It's more complicated than you describe. Like, these bureaucrat's hearts are in the right place, they just lack focus, and are ineffective and solving the problems that they see. They see large-scale social problems of inequity, but are trying to solve it with equity-focused policy at universities, which most folks would already consider "the top." They aren't just for show, but the optics of a well-funded diversity departments is irresistably good.
    • ryan93 4y ago
      Equity is not a social problem. Do you think African women with five children would rather work 60 hrs a week in a cubicle and have .8 kids like Korean women?
    • unsupp0rted 4y ago
      > these bureaucrat's hearts are in the right place I don't think they are, in most instances. I try never to attribute to malice, but it has been years of giving them undue, novel power. This is corruptive and they demonstrate this corruption in every case. Any normal person would be corrupted given the same power, all of a sudden, and a mandate to use it. To a diversity hammer everything looks like a seminar / written statement / fired for cause nail.
    • tenpies 4y ago
      > these bureaucrat's hearts are in the right place I disagree. While there are certainly some people with honestly good intentions in these departments, they are also lairs of Marxist-types that would gladly march others into death camps if given the chance to do so. We cannot be naive about this. For every social justice movement with good intentions, there are evil people willing to use it as a trojan horse to carry out an awful agenda.
    • fwungy 4y ago
      The First Law of Bureaucracy As a bureaucracy grows its purpose increasingly becomes its own preservation and growth. Whatever it was made to do becomes secondary. DEI is a program for handing out patronage jobs.
    • LarryMullins 4y ago
      > Like, these bureaucrat's hearts are in the right place That makes them even worse, even more dangerous. “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.” ― C. S. Lewis
      • Joker_vD 4y ago
        Off-topic, but I found this quote hilarious specifically because it's author is C. S. Lewis since apparently he didn't realise this quote applies to the Christian God too.
        • whythre 4y ago
          Except the Christian God ostensibly does allow for people to make their own choices, rather than be micromanaged for their own good? Jehovah apparently guides with such a gentle hand there is debate about whether he even exists.
          • Joker_vD 4y ago
            Epidemies, lightning strikes, floods, crop failures, sudden demolitions, unexpected illnesses — all that stuff has been described as "wrath of god/god's punishments" until very, very recent times. So yeah, he does allow people make their own choice but he also punishes wrong choices amply, not to mention putting people into all kinds of "trials and tribulations". And I am not making any of that stuff up, that used to be (and "the god tries you" still is) part of generally accepted theology; C. S. Lewis definitely subscribed to "the god sends you trials" part of it which does make that quote hilariously blind-spotted.
        • LarryMullins 4y ago
          Well I'm certainly not a christian but I find the quote poignant. If the man who said it had a blind-spot for his own ideology, that doesn't refute the sentiment. If anything, that reinforces his point.
• the_third_wave 4y ago
  > Any criticism of justice/equity/diversity/inclusion (JEDI) bureaucracy gets strawmanned very quickly, and the critic labelled as simply a bad person. Labelled as "A Witch" [1] > .. and she got roasted for it. Folks called for her resignation, and said the AMS shouldn't have published it. And what do you do with witches? BURN THEM! These D.I.E. apparatchiks are no better than the witch-hunters of yore. No better than those in the Monty Python clip [1] linked to here and a lot less entertaining at that. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2xlQaimsGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2xlQaimsGg
  • lordgroff 4y ago
    Those appratchicks are no better than Soviet appratchicks who had their own litmus tests of what was and was not acceptable. I'm not from Russia or the ex Soviet sphere but I did spend a large portion of childhood in a communist system in Eastern Europe and am still horrified that people don't seem to understand that this is exactly the kind of bullshit you had to deal with in that system. No, you didn't get shot for dissent. No you didn't disappear. It was all much more bland and insidious than that, you were accused of a thought crime and that might kill your career. Conformity was the name of the game and I see increasing evidence that we're very much following this trajectory in North America. And it has that insidious quality too that you can't speak out against it because if you do you're clearly a racist/misogynist/homophobe/insert-bad-thing-hereist.
    • the_third_wave 4y ago
      They are probably hoping to become a new Nomenklatura [1], a category of people ... who h[o]ld various key administrative positions in the bureaucracy, running all spheres: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions [a]re granted only with approval by the [modern equivalent of the communist party]. The nomenklatura formed a de facto elite of public powers in the former Eastern Bloc [comparable to] the Western establishment holding or controlling both private and public powers (for example, in media, finance, trade, industry, the state and institutions). That is what they seem to be aiming for: cushy jobs for them and ideological purity for their organisations. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura
• Manuel_D 4y ago
  At UC Berkeley, 76% of applicants were rejected on the grounds of their diversity statement: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davis-hiding-about-its-use-of-diversity-statements/ https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davi... The suspicion is that inclusion of these diversity statements in the hiring process is a way to stealthily discriminate on the basis of race when it is ostensibly illegal to do so.
  • gamblor956 4y ago
    The opinion piece you cited made the mistake of citing its source. It misrepresents what happened at Cal. Candidates were not rejected on the basis of their statement, which was merely one factor in scoring the 800+ candidates they interviewed.
    • Manuel_D 4y ago
      From the cited sources [1]: > A total of 993 applications were received, of which 893 met basic qualifications. The LSI Committee conducted a first review and evaluated candidates based solely on contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion. Only candidates that met a high standard in this area were advanced for further review, narrowing the pool down to 214 for serious consideration. What was misrepresented? "Evaluated solely on contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion [sic]" is not quite the same as evaluated solely on their diversity statement, but it doesn't seem too far off the mark. Aside from the candidates' diversity statement, how would the bureaucrats evaluate their "contribution to diversity, equity, and inclusion"? As far as the effect on applicant demographics, here's the stats before the diversity evaluation / After diversity evaluation: Female: 41.7% / 60.3% Male: 56.5% / 39.3% African American: 2.8% / 6.1% Hispanic: 13.2% / 22.9% Native American: 0.4% / 1.4% Asian: 25.7% / 18.7% White: 53.7% / 48.1% 1. https://ofew.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/life_sciences_inititatve.year_end_report_summary.pdf https://ofew.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/life_sciences_...
      • gamblor956 4y ago
        The candidates were reviewed based on their "contributions to diversity, equity, etc." They were not reviewed based on their DEI statements. This is a fancy way of saying that they used affirmative action to advanced African American, Hispanic, and Native American candidates.
• opportune 4y ago
  I think framing DEI policies and initiatives as unassailable is what scares people more than the policies and initiatives themselves. Of course, many people would react negatively to someone saying flat-out “diversity is bad”, especially because people with those opinions tend to be coming from a place where that’s a toned-down version of more abhorrent views. But, people with more measured criticisms of specific policies get lumped in with the first set. So because it’s very hard to say “there is a better way to do this” or “this may not have positive systemic effects” or “this does not seem relevant in the context it appears in”, there are few checks and balances, and you get these instances where it’s clumsily shoehorned into things because nobody dared disagree. I think for many people, this bothers them more than any specific thing.
  • Spooky23 4y ago
    It’s just a new old boys network, except you get different types of infighting. Movements like this aren’t new and always burn out. Once the tribe in charge gets in trouble, it will move on to the next fad. 1990s diversity gave way to late 90s run everything like a business. If you work in a huge bureaucracy like the University of California, if leaving isn’t practical, you just need to behave and hunker down and focus on what’s productive to you.
    • jasmer 4y ago
      I'm not nearly as optmistic. This is bureaucratic entrenchment across many systems and will take a 'movement' to unseat. The populist paradox is that most people probably disagree with this, but are not willing to stick their necks out, leaving it to those who have nothing left to loose aka the crazies who have populist leaders few of us want to support. It's a bit like border policy, the vast majority of Americans don't want willy nilly open borders, and recognize that 'it's complicated' but it seems 'one side' doesn't have the tenacity to do much about it and their more radical elements kind of want 'de facto' open borders, but the people screaming about the problem and wanting to 'build a wall' are themselves to angry and radical, not a movement regular people want to be supportive of. We need calmer heads to prevail. It may be more possible now that Trump is gone, whatever you think of him he was a least 'polarizing' and put people in a tizzy.
• itwontworkwo 4y ago
  How can you solve a distributed measurement problem when everyone trying to solve it has their own rulers with different scales? This is why this social issue is unsolvable. Everyone has a different version of what is fair.
  • asdf_snar 4y ago
    I like your formulation of this as a "distributed measurement problem", but I'm not sure I follow. Could you elaborate? Specifically, I'm not sure if you agree or disagree with the post you are replying to. Thanks in advance.
• akomtu 4y ago
  DEI bureaucrats are good at defending their turf. They've internalized the Lenin's playbook: never debate your opponents on public, as that may reveal flaws in your position and undermine your authority, instead silence your opponents, ridicule them and get rid of them later, when out of public sight. If you were a medieval knight, you wouldn't say "it's unfortunate that our opponents, occupying that castle, shout us down whenever we attempt to discuss their position." Of course they shout you down: they compete with you for authority.
• MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • llanowarelves 4y ago
    Big money was "smart" to divert the focus away from them after Occupy Wallstreet. Roll out all the DEI initiatives, ads, etc. and by extension shame those who didn't. And making big orgs go from being the villain to the hero.
• devwastaken 4y ago
  The very question of "are we taking some DEI ideas too far?" is now censored in well known university systems. You cannot even ask questions without persecution, you are treated as a threat to humanity. This is how I know this is about politics, power, and paychecks.
  • malandrew 4y ago
    The only solution is to aggressively defund until there is only budget left for teaching.
• rayiner 4y ago
  > Example: the VP of the American Mathematical Society wrote a short piece (op ed?) in 2019 describing the requirement that new university faculty hires write diversity statements, and the scoring of that statement according to a rubric, as a "political litmus test," and she got roasted for it. They are. And for the “diverse” people themselves they are a sort of minstrel show. The goal is to show off a superficial version of diversity in a way that’s pleasing to white people. For example if you’re Muslim, they want you to one of those Ilhan Omar intersectional Muslims, not one of those billion other Muslims who believes what Islam teaches to be true. Or if you’re Indian immigrant you’ll get a lot further writing about the need for “solidarity between black and brown people” than anything that maps onto how typical Indian immigrants view their experience as a minority.
  • crackercrews 4y ago
    Omar's colleague Ayanna Pressley made this explicit: "We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice" [1] 1: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/453007-pressley-democrats-need-any-more-black-voices-that-dont-want-to-be-a-black/ https://thehill.com/homenews/house/453007-pressley-democrats...
    • rayiner 4y ago
      The irony is that most of Pressley’s “brown voices” sound exactly like white people. It’s a bizarre sort of identity politics where the people who are selected to “represent” different groups don’t advance the views or positions of those groups, but instead lend their identity to advance the views and positions of white allies.
• Animats 4y ago
  Today you have to say the right things to keep the political commissars happy.
  • red-iron-pine 4y ago
    People used to hang for insulting the king. Now private, 3rd party websites decide to remove your vanity AI sitcom project? Clearly the same thing...
• lazyeye 4y ago
  Otherwise known as a kafka trap:- "A rhetorical device in which any denial by an accused person serves as evidence of guilt."
• inglor_cz 4y ago
  The situation makes sense once you start viewing DEI as a religious orthodoxy and its enforcers as the priestly class. Heresy and heretics are usually extirpated with extreme prejudice, at least if they threaten the interests of the establishment. Fortunately the DEI bureaucrats at the universities cannot condemn people to death, but the big question is if the Western civilization can survive if its own sources of knowledge and truth are slowly converted into a secular equivalent of Pakistani madrasas, where articles of faith are mindlessly chanted. Theocracies tend to become very ossified and ossified academy is worse than useless.