24 ms·

Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

100 points by crhulls 4y ago

raxxorraxor 4y ago
I still don't understand how anyone can find such rules attractive. This is as strict as the catholic church. In the private sector it tells me that a company values show much more than their employees, which probably are treated badly and have to work in an extremely strict environment. If you have to say it... People that honestly fall for such statements are too naive to really fill out any leadership position in my opinion, but it really seems that is their expectation after they paid that much tuition?
- mistrial9 4y ago
  academics are contracting in an already competitive situation.. expect more "soft pressure" not less, and ugly fights bursting into the public view
- onepointsixC 4y ago
  Academia is such a brutal cutthroat battle for faculty positions, you have zero choice but to participate. An acquaintance was applying for faculty positions and every single position they were applying to required a DEI statement. It's only a matter of time till it starts bubbling out of academia to industry.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    This is one of the things that nudged me out of academia. Once I realized the odds of making a Feynman-class discovery were low, but that was the bar for tenure (and salary scales below tenure were... Uncompetitive), I started crunching the numbers and decided I'd likely be happier in industry applying discoveries than in academia making them. There's plenty of academics to go around. I need my hands dirty.
  - FormerBandmate 4y ago
    > It's only a matter of time till it starts bubbling out of academia to industry Hard disagree. This is the type of thing only colleges do, it’s the equivalent of an essay and also displays how different academia is from the professional world. No one cares about publications in industry, and people buy into this stuff much less sincerely than in academia
    - onepointsixC 4y ago
      This absolutely will leak into MBA programs and become "best practice". You don't want to hire a racist now, do you? No? Good, so mandatory DEI pledges for all!
    - HerbMcM 4y ago
      We're nearing a decade of academia spilling over to the real world, rocketing political polarisation at every level. "Industry" doesn't have any particulars that would render it immune.
      - l33t233372 4y ago
        Did you attend college? I’ve been in and around various colleges for years and I’ve yet to see anything worth getting upset about; let alone worth people outside of this space getting upset about.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - djkivi 4y ago
      Not in industry? Once neglected, DEI initiatives now present at all Fortune 100 companies: https://www.hrdive.com/news/2022-fortune-companies-dei/627651/ https://www.hrdive.com/news/2022-fortune-companies-dei/62765...
    - rhino369 4y ago
      A major tech company forces DEI statements on RFPs for outside vendors. They wanted stars by the names of the diverse people on the proposed team. This stuff have been in the private sector for years now.
  - colpabar 4y ago
    It's only a matter of time until it's required by law to be employed, which is pretty fucked up when you remember that health insurance is so closely tied to employment, in america at least.
    - MisterBastahrd 4y ago
      That could actually be a net benefit for society considering that the people who are most likely to hold views outside of the DEI norms are also the ones who are most likely to vote against candidates who support real healthcare reform.
  - throwawaysleep 4y ago
    Just lie about it when it does. Nobody verifies my impressive resume claims. Just my employment dates and degrees, if even those. So claim you ran a workshop for transgender black women. Nobody is going to dig deep enough in most cases to know if it is true.
    - HNAbusesUsers 4y ago
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  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    I think the artificial rules will increase, but the authority of academia as a whole will suffer from those that come out on top here. I think the progress already started when education become a very expensive product instead of a privilege. Academia does have to find a new place since the logistics of information and knowledge transferal became very cheap. You can acquire a lot of knowledge in today's world without a formal education. Not comparable to having a mentor, but neither is true for students in university.
- bannedbybros 4y ago
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- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Have you ever fought a war on symbolism before? Do you believe in free speech, personal liberty, and hard work? New epistemologies have taken root and from them, derived new values. Stamping out new ideas is a very very difficult task after they've reached enough people. The new guard sees the old rules as constraining as you find the new rules. Most revolutions happen in people's minds decades before social relations change. You have to realize that there is no repeating the thesis to the antithesis. If you want to get a step ahead of the antithesis, synthesis is one's only option.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    Do people share these values? They are implemented by authority. And some new values are old mistakes that are repeated ad nauseum. Kissing the scepter doesn't mean you love the scepter. Rejection is a strong possibility. Most ideas do die (dei?).
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      People share these values. The most dangerous unforced error is to fool oneself that true-believers don't exist. Deciding the because one must be forced to believe universalizes into other's being forced to believe is an empathy gap. If you wish to understand how how these ideas take root, don't fall into the "enemy is strong and weak" trap. Deciding that oneself believes because principles but others believe because they are forced to or are told to is a good way to fight the wrong fight. You cannot simply wield and old value against a new symbolic universe. You either have to derive it in the new universe or create an even newer symbolic universe which probably can't happen yet because the problems with the new symbolic universe have to be realized within itself, not within the old universe. Take free speech as an example. The DEI universe was created as a response to the symbolic universe free speech was forged in. In order to value free speech again, a post-DEI symbolic universe has to be developed as a response to the internal contradictions of the DEI universe - not the contradictions external to it. Trying to maintain a steady state symbolic universe is itself a contradiction - it's simply not possible. Evolve or die.
      - 4y ago
- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  Fairness is not a tenant of the new cultural revolution, nor are the revolutionaries responsive to human nature, individual rights, or even capable of rational and critical thought. The end always justifies the means, with little care given to the truth or reality of whatever means is co-opted and tortured to advance their end. You must adhere to the core beliefs, which will change depending on the red fool's soup de jour. Your beliefs are not important, as their beliefs are gospel without question. It is an old and very insidious religion, revitalized, that has no place in a free and civilized society. We've been down this road before. We know where it leads. Yet we go head-long into the abyss to the chants - the same Marxist slogans and ideology that heralded the starvation and torture of tens of millions of people, whose only 'crimes' were opposition to compelled speech and the desire for individual liberty. I'd like to think it will get better, that western civilization would reject cultural revolutionaries that produce nothing but misery and death under the banner of "equity" ...which means ownership, not exclusive equality... but I am not hopeful. The red guard is back, but this time, they are even more dangerous given the cornucopia of deceit, false promises, reach, and old but effective tactics that poison the minds of the young, so that they march lock-step with cheers & smiles into oblivion, dragging everyone and everything with them.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    TBF, fairness also wasn't a tenant of the old cultural revolution either. That's why these things keep happening. A free and civilized society has allowed the oppression, dispossession, and outright murder-without-consequence of far, far too many of its citizens to traipse along unquestioned.
    - HNAbusesUsers 4y ago
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    - krona 4y ago
      Fairness used to be about treating individuals equally. For example, blind hiring practices. The new 'fairness' is incompatible with blind hiring or individual merit, because its ultimate aim is to make what you are more important than what you have done. You might say 'that's a good thing' but to claim these aren't polar opposite concepts of fairness or justice is disingenuous.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  > This is as strict as the catholic church. Much stricter: they have a well-established mechanism for reconciliation and forgiveness! In fact, several!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
lom888 4y ago
https://archive.is/YLmuR https://archive.is/YLmuR
shadowgovt 4y ago
> Professor Halley believes these innovations are “forced speech and viewpoint discrimination in the First Amendment context” That's an interesting viewpoint and I'm not sure how it squares with a university's First Amendment right to freedom of association. After all, they're at liberty to grant tenure to whomever they think is worthy of it, by their own criteria. If they think that a tenured physics professor's views on getting more people of diverse backgrounds into physics are as important as their views on plasma confinement, who has authority to tell them otherwise? How does such a requirement differ from, say, a requirement that a tenure-track professor have teaching experience (because a prof who can't pass knowledge on is worthless to the university)?
- hguant 4y ago
  >I'm not sure how it squares with a university's First Amendment right to freedom of association. The short answer from the courts is - if you take money from the federal government, in any way, or have students who take money from the federal government, in any way, or distribute funds from the federal government, in any way, as a corporate entity you lose out on many of the rights entailed to a private citizen.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    No doubt, but I'm unaware of which right would fall under the category "Can't have DEI statements." If anything, government money tends to include more diversity entanglements, not fewer.
    - catiopatio 4y ago
      > I'm unaware of which right would fall under the category "Can't have DEI statements." The first amendment, as originally noted. This is most relevant at public universities, which effectively are the government.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        And yet the First Amendment doesn't protect a tenured professor from being fired for failing to disclose relevant information (https://www.dailynebraskan.com/news/breaking-news-board-of-regents-votes-to-fire-tenured-professor/article_6d1ef382-726a-11ed-ba8a-732abd5f601e.html https://www.dailynebraskan.com/news/breaking-news-board-of-r...), so I'm not sure where the "compelled speech" protection ends and the requirements of the public university begin. Sounds like one for the courts.
dtx1 4y ago
These Rules and Statements always remind me of the stories I heard from the GDR and USSR Days. To get your highschool diploma or PhD in the GDR you had to recite your commitment to Communist/Marxist ideas before a panel that often didn't care about it but everyone knew it was just easiest to go through the motions anyway.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  And you would probably be very on point with that. Also not too different that kissing the sceptre of your king.
- interactivecode 4y ago
  Reminds me of having to stand in a circle with all my classmates while one of us had the privilege of holding the national flag. We then in unison had to recite a pledge to that flag, the nation and god. just thinking about having to say the pledge of allegiance gives me chills.
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." It’s a pointless, anodyne and unobjectionable pledge that prescribes nothing. It’s stupid, but not remotely comparable to DEI statements, or commitment to much more specific political ideals.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Disregarding someone else's objection to forced speech and saying yours is more important isn't going to win a lot of people over. Just because you can't see why it's objectionable doesn't mean it isn't.
    - interactivecode 4y ago
      I did not get the liberty to decline participating. I am not religious so why should I pledge an oath to be ruled under a god. I am forced to recite a daily mantra filled with propaganda for a republic which is more concerned about arguing for liberty and justice than it is actually providing liberty and justice.
yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
This will draw people on either side of the argument on whether or not this is a constructive thing to do closer to having to define what diversity actually means in any given context. Discourse will need to crystallize around whether or not it is sufficient to define diversity in terms of a couple of specific racial and gender lines. Put another way, two people, A and B, may have this dialogue: A: Evidence for my contributions for DEI include <some examples> B: The <some examples> do not qualify, because the parties impacted do not qualify as "diverse" --- Regardless of which side of that argument you're on, it seems to me like this is generally a good thing.
- pookha 4y ago
  I like the word "crystallize". Generally speaking cults are big on that.
  - yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
    Well I think the issue currently is nobody can agree on what "diversity" means, so both sides of the argument are talking past each other. It's much easier to argue against DEI initiatives such as this when their proponents can't wield the Motte-and-bailey fallacy.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  But there is no dialogue. In this case B will just move on to the next application and send the "thanks for applying" email to A.
  - yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
    Do you suppose this would be grounds to litigate against ideological prejudice? I couldn't read much of the article as it is paywalled. I had assumed the applicant would have some recourse in the [frankly rather likely] scenario you outlined.
throwawaysleep 4y ago
Just lie. That is what corporate has always expected from this. Go find a Black woman to interview and then hire who you want. Or ask current team members to claim they are certain races. I am a straight white male. As far as my employer is concerned I am a mixed race sexual minority. My boss at one of my jobs gets credit for a 25% diverse team that is just white men + 1 Asian man (Asians do not count as diversity). Lying is extremely underrated as a way to get things done. It was a revelation for me when I realized that nobody follows up to check your claims for job applications in great detail, so little of it needs to be true.
- Dig1t 4y ago
  Absolutely this. I will also be encouraging my kids to lie about their race and identities on all applications as they grow up, especially college.
efficax 4y ago
DEI statements are just one factor in the hiring process for faculty. Generally they'll get scored by the hiring committee on some numeric scale (like everything else in the application). A low DEI score might not tank your application if you're in a field where everyone else has a low DEI score, or if you are absolutely outstanding in your field but have middling DEI because you're a white, male scientist from an affluent background who hasn't done much in that sense, you might still prevail. But it's a way of allowing the hiring committee to factor in diversity so that other things being equal (equal experience, equal credentials, equal letters of rec, teaching demo, etc) they can use diversity to distinguish candidates. The fuss about it is overblown.
- splitstud 4y ago
  The fuss? Discrimination is not ok.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  If you are absolutely outstanding in your field you should always prevail. Also, if you didn't know, hiring candidates based on race is explicitly forbidden by federal law (Title VII Civil Rights Act of 1964). The fuss is absolutely not overblown.
  - efficax 4y ago
    they're not hiring based on race, they're hiring based on the way they score a statement about one's commitment to, history with, and future plans for advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the university setting. you can be black and have a terrible dei statement. it just happens that minorities are more likely to have had involvement with these issues for most of their academic lives.
    - fallingknife 4y ago
      If the scoring on the DEI statement is correlated to race of the applicant, and I would bet every dollar I have that it is, then it is considered de facto racial discrimination by law. Google "disparate impact." Same issue as Harvard giving low "personality scores" to the Asian applicants. You can't get around anti-discrimination laws that easily.
wonderwonder 4y ago
This is the sort of thing that confounds me. It proports to be anti racist but it's the opposite, it treats minorities as a special lesser class that require protection from everyone else. It's the civil rights movement in reverse. It's already started bleeding into the workspace with mandatory training and verbiage that essentially says anything you do in your interactions with a minority if they accuse you of anything they are right and you must meekly accept it and bow your head in shame. The worst part of it is at most of the companies with strong DEI programs there are zero minorities in leadership. it's a dog and pony show that is only forced upon the non sr. leadership. You even have companies doing layoffs now intentionally focused on laying off non minorities. Another issue is that Asians while less in number than most other minorities are treated as white by DEI. I worry about my kids if this keeps escalating. I dislike Desantis for many reasons but ended up voting for him specifically for this reason and a couple of other cultural issues.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  >I worry about my kids if this keeps escalating. I dislike Desantis for many reasons but ended up voting for him specifically for this reason and a couple of other cultural issues. Considering the book banning he just enacted this seems like an extremely short sighted and poorly thought out reasoning.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Banning books from public school libraries has nearly zero effect on what students are exposed to. Did you ever check out a book from the school library? I never did, the actual municipal library had a much better selection. Harry Potter was banned from plenty of libraries for witchcraft, and it's sales demonstrate how futile it was.
    - lukeschlather 4y ago
      I read dozens (possibly hundreds?) of books in my school library as a student. We're not just talking about "the library" either. We're talking about the books that are made available to students during classroom free time in elementary school.
SilverBirch 4y ago
This is such a "ugh" topic. Of course it's kind of absurd to be like "Write me an essay on how Woke you are", but it's the inevitable result of pretty low quality individuals trying to solve a real problem. Academia has obviously been historically discriminatory, and due to the massive problems with the structure of US universities it still has all sorts of problems. The way to fix that is obviously to bring in senior leadership who have experience and understanding of the myriad complex issues facing academia today and who can create a series of changes to tackle some of the systemic underlying issues which have embedded a monoculture in most institutions. Actually doing that is really difficult though, and challenges a series of power structures that are well embedded and aren't going to change. Senior leadership at universities answer to donors, not junior staff. So there's a push to change, but it's not going to change? What do you do? You cover your ass by making sure you meticulously document just exactly how you are making changes so you can point to stuff when people realise that absolutely nothing is changing. You say to your woke alumni "look at the great initiatives" and you say to your non-woke alumni "Psstt... I think we've got a spare space for your 85 IQ grandson"
- ergonaught 4y ago
  I was asked to describe the diversity within my private life during a job interview last year. It was a relatively lower end position, not even vaguely academic, and neither the role nor the company have any particular applicability to "diversity".
  - psychlops 4y ago
    That seems like the greatest question to get. One could spin all sorts of fantasies and talk for hours...
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Is it illegal to lie on these sorts of questions? Like, you could say you're gay, married to an indigenous trans man raising 3 URM children you've adopted. All of these things are illegal to use in hiring decisions, so the veracity of your answers would only matter if the company was engaged in unlawful hiring practices.
sangnoir 4y ago
Begun, the culture war has (on HN)
- katscradle_1989 4y ago
  It almost seems inevitable at times. DEI is part of that and has leaked into tech (yea, you can say its been there awhile but eh). I know of someone that has actually lost a job opportunity because they weren't diverse enough. (SE Asian) They were interning and it leaked that the team lead wanted someone more diverse and the HM was all too eager to agree. The messages were deleted before he could take a screen shot. He came to me asking what to do about it and I really didn't know what to say. Unfortunately it just wasn't worth it IMO to fight a large tech company. I'm sure the messages could be recovered but it seemed like an insane uphill fight and who would want to even work at that company at that point. Hell, companies are "proud" to tell you that they would straight up do this too. The worst people imo are the types that try to make every justification and gaslight you into believing its "justice" or something.
kyleblarson 4y ago
What are the odds Dr Martin Luther King would have been hired at Berkeley? "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
- JustFigItOut 4y ago
  Probably pretty good. MLK was a smart man who understood that correcting injustice requires special treatment to the wronged. “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.” - MLK
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > What are the odds Dr Martin Luther King would have been hired at Berkeley? Zero, because his dedication to his objective of replacing the American system of capitalist oppression with a just economic system free not only from direct racial discrimination, but from economic and other oppression (which also crystallizes the effects of past racial discrimination) would not really compatible with university (or state more generally) employment. Have you read literally anything of King’s besides the Right’s favorite sentence to quote out of context?
katscradle_1989 4y ago
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guelo 4y ago
[flagged]
thwayunion 4y ago
This is the third or fourth front-page article on this topic in the last few days. I'm skeptical of basically everything about academic hiring, DEI included. But there's a concerted media blitz on this topic and the lack of quality conversation on HN reflects that the propaganda campaign is working. Here's some nuance that I hope cuts through the mass media narrative-building machine: First, it's not just stupid ideology. There are real economic incentives at play. I wrote a comment here on why Colleges and Universities view DEI as existentially important to their finances: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672053 Second, value statements are nothing new in Academia. Many religious institutions require Faith Statements, and there are event Title IX carve-outs for these institutions when they receive federal funds [2] Third, DEI statements are not all bad. Eg, when I applied to academic positions (none of which I took), my statement had everything to do with serving kids who arrived at college unprepared. Not a single mention or race, gender, etc. Instead of talking about starting "women in X" clubs or other BS [3], I talked about volunteering in public schools and gave anecdotes about how in my teaching I worked to keep kids in college who would've otherwise dropped out. Every place I applied said it was one of the best DEI statements they had seen. My personal opinion: I am fully aligned with the criticism of DEI statements. Most DEI statements are cringe-worthy at best, I have no doubt in the heights of incompetence that can be found in university administration, and the entire uni hiring process is broken. But these statements can be used in a reasonable and responsible way at colleges who, in order to survive financially, NEED to start recruiting and retaining students who aren't in the "dual income upper-middle class parents with a 3.8GPA" mold. And, as an aside, if we're going to go after Loyalty Oaths in non-public-university academic hiring, let's start by eliminating Title IX carve-outs for religiously affiliated institutions. --- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672053 [2] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-B/chapter-I/part-106#106.12 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-B/chapter-I/p... [3] BS because they are often the sort of "I started/joined a club" thing that for most people amounts to zero actual effort put into helping individual students succeed.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
alpineidyll3 4y ago
#latestageacademia
eat 4y ago
I wonder how much the appearance of these daily anti-DEI stories on the front page of HN has to do with this recession and workers' propensity to look for convenient scapegoats in the face of recent massive layoffs. Certainly looks to me that there's a lot of fear and anxiety out there that's being pointed in some... interesting directions. Don't direct that fear and anxiety upward in the org chart though, wouldn't want that :)
- l33t233372 4y ago
  I can’t believe getting upset about something as trivial as having to write a small essay atop of the regular rigorous rigmarole associated with entering a university (as a student or faculty member). This doesn’t make sense to me; let alone being upset on behalf of others!
  - defen 4y ago
    > something as trivial as having to write a small essay Do you think the essay itself is really why people are upset, or are you being glib? It's hard to tell.
    - l33t233372 4y ago
      I understand the essay represents some Very Bad Idea that they disagree with or something along those lines.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      I know that people posting here aren’t upset about the essays, because 99% of them haven’t read a single one. This is not exactly a community of educators, but technology industry insiders. The level of unfounded self-assuredness on display here about what goes on at e.g. a UC Berkeley faculty hiring committee rivals ChatGPT. Which brings us back to: if no one here has read any of these essays, what‘a with all the angry comments?
- x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
  In defense of HN, the audience has been staunchly "libertarian" and all that entails for years. So being anti- something that seems to threaten the social power hierarchy is the norm. Before the every-day-anti-DEI posts, it was an Elon-fest were folks would tout "free speech" and other stuff. After Elon got Twitter and his free-speech absolutism turned out to be a disposable talking point, the HN audience largely moved on.
gnarbarian 4y ago
[flagged]
lovecg 4y ago
This is your regular reminder that the front pages for VLDB and SIGMOD conferences have more space dedicated to their stance against racism than to less important things like databases. https://www.vldb.org/ https://www.vldb.org/ https://sigmod.org/ https://sigmod.org/
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  Idk if this is fair. Both of the anti racist stances include list format, which by default takes up way more space than the multi-paragraph explainations of who they are and what they do. The multi-paragraph introduction to the organizations are also the very first thing on the page. I don’t think they’re comparable…
hdesh 4y ago
> They say that any candidate who does not discuss gender or race must be awarded low marks. The same goes for any earnest classical liberal who “explicitly states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same’.” What is wrong with treating everyone the same? Isn't that anti-racist by definition?
- thwayunion 4y ago
  > They say that any candidate who does not discuss gender or race must be awarded low marks. For starters, explicitly not defending this. I think it's stupid. For race in particular, I've seen a lot more damage done by well-meaning but tone-deaf attempts at DEI than by people just being normal non-shitty humans. >> The same goes for any earnest classical liberal who “explicitly states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same’. > What is wrong with treating everyone the same? Isn't that anti-racist by definition? No, because "backgrounds" here can also mean "academic background" or "financial background" or a million other things that aren't race or gender. If I were at an institution with a sizable population of academically under-prepared students then I wouldn't hire a faculty member who said they have no plan for how to differentiate their instruction and support academically under-prepared students, or non-traditional (read: older working) student, etc.
hdesh 4y ago
Related: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/higher-ed-new-woke-loyalty-oaths-dei https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/higher-ed-n...

100 points by crhulls 4y ago

I still don't understand how anyone can find such rules attractive. This is as strict as the catholic church. In the private sector it tells me that a company values show much more than their employees, which probably are treated badly and have to work in an extremely strict environment. If you have to say it... People that honestly fall for such statements are too naive to really fill out any leadership position in my opinion, but it really seems that is their expectation after they paid that much tuition?

mistrial9 4y ago
academics are contracting in an already competitive situation.. expect more "soft pressure" not less, and ugly fights bursting into the public view
onepointsixC 4y ago
Academia is such a brutal cutthroat battle for faculty positions, you have zero choice but to participate. An acquaintance was applying for faculty positions and every single position they were applying to required a DEI statement. It's only a matter of time till it starts bubbling out of academia to industry.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  This is one of the things that nudged me out of academia. Once I realized the odds of making a Feynman-class discovery were low, but that was the bar for tenure (and salary scales below tenure were... Uncompetitive), I started crunching the numbers and decided I'd likely be happier in industry applying discoveries than in academia making them. There's plenty of academics to go around. I need my hands dirty.
- FormerBandmate 4y ago
  > It's only a matter of time till it starts bubbling out of academia to industry Hard disagree. This is the type of thing only colleges do, it’s the equivalent of an essay and also displays how different academia is from the professional world. No one cares about publications in industry, and people buy into this stuff much less sincerely than in academia
  - onepointsixC 4y ago
    This absolutely will leak into MBA programs and become "best practice". You don't want to hire a racist now, do you? No? Good, so mandatory DEI pledges for all!
  - HerbMcM 4y ago
    We're nearing a decade of academia spilling over to the real world, rocketing political polarisation at every level. "Industry" doesn't have any particulars that would render it immune.
    - l33t233372 4y ago
      Did you attend college? I’ve been in and around various colleges for years and I’ve yet to see anything worth getting upset about; let alone worth people outside of this space getting upset about.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - djkivi 4y ago
    Not in industry? Once neglected, DEI initiatives now present at all Fortune 100 companies: https://www.hrdive.com/news/2022-fortune-companies-dei/627651/ https://www.hrdive.com/news/2022-fortune-companies-dei/62765...
  - rhino369 4y ago
    A major tech company forces DEI statements on RFPs for outside vendors. They wanted stars by the names of the diverse people on the proposed team. This stuff have been in the private sector for years now.
- colpabar 4y ago
  It's only a matter of time until it's required by law to be employed, which is pretty fucked up when you remember that health insurance is so closely tied to employment, in america at least.
  - MisterBastahrd 4y ago
    That could actually be a net benefit for society considering that the people who are most likely to hold views outside of the DEI norms are also the ones who are most likely to vote against candidates who support real healthcare reform.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  Just lie about it when it does. Nobody verifies my impressive resume claims. Just my employment dates and degrees, if even those. So claim you ran a workshop for transgender black women. Nobody is going to dig deep enough in most cases to know if it is true.
  - HNAbusesUsers 4y ago
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- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  I think the artificial rules will increase, but the authority of academia as a whole will suffer from those that come out on top here. I think the progress already started when education become a very expensive product instead of a privilege. Academia does have to find a new place since the logistics of information and knowledge transferal became very cheap. You can acquire a lot of knowledge in today's world without a formal education. Not comparable to having a mentor, but neither is true for students in university.
bannedbybros 4y ago
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kelseyfrog 4y ago
Have you ever fought a war on symbolism before? Do you believe in free speech, personal liberty, and hard work? New epistemologies have taken root and from them, derived new values. Stamping out new ideas is a very very difficult task after they've reached enough people. The new guard sees the old rules as constraining as you find the new rules. Most revolutions happen in people's minds decades before social relations change. You have to realize that there is no repeating the thesis to the antithesis. If you want to get a step ahead of the antithesis, synthesis is one's only option.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  Do people share these values? They are implemented by authority. And some new values are old mistakes that are repeated ad nauseum. Kissing the scepter doesn't mean you love the scepter. Rejection is a strong possibility. Most ideas do die (dei?).
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    People share these values. The most dangerous unforced error is to fool oneself that true-believers don't exist. Deciding the because one must be forced to believe universalizes into other's being forced to believe is an empathy gap. If you wish to understand how how these ideas take root, don't fall into the "enemy is strong and weak" trap. Deciding that oneself believes because principles but others believe because they are forced to or are told to is a good way to fight the wrong fight. You cannot simply wield and old value against a new symbolic universe. You either have to derive it in the new universe or create an even newer symbolic universe which probably can't happen yet because the problems with the new symbolic universe have to be realized within itself, not within the old universe. Take free speech as an example. The DEI universe was created as a response to the symbolic universe free speech was forged in. In order to value free speech again, a post-DEI symbolic universe has to be developed as a response to the internal contradictions of the DEI universe - not the contradictions external to it. Trying to maintain a steady state symbolic universe is itself a contradiction - it's simply not possible. Evolve or die.
    - 4y ago
PM_me_your_math 4y ago
Fairness is not a tenant of the new cultural revolution, nor are the revolutionaries responsive to human nature, individual rights, or even capable of rational and critical thought. The end always justifies the means, with little care given to the truth or reality of whatever means is co-opted and tortured to advance their end. You must adhere to the core beliefs, which will change depending on the red fool's soup de jour. Your beliefs are not important, as their beliefs are gospel without question. It is an old and very insidious religion, revitalized, that has no place in a free and civilized society. We've been down this road before. We know where it leads. Yet we go head-long into the abyss to the chants - the same Marxist slogans and ideology that heralded the starvation and torture of tens of millions of people, whose only 'crimes' were opposition to compelled speech and the desire for individual liberty. I'd like to think it will get better, that western civilization would reject cultural revolutionaries that produce nothing but misery and death under the banner of "equity" ...which means ownership, not exclusive equality... but I am not hopeful. The red guard is back, but this time, they are even more dangerous given the cornucopia of deceit, false promises, reach, and old but effective tactics that poison the minds of the young, so that they march lock-step with cheers & smiles into oblivion, dragging everyone and everything with them.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  TBF, fairness also wasn't a tenant of the old cultural revolution either. That's why these things keep happening. A free and civilized society has allowed the oppression, dispossession, and outright murder-without-consequence of far, far too many of its citizens to traipse along unquestioned.
  - HNAbusesUsers 4y ago
    [dead]
  - krona 4y ago
    Fairness used to be about treating individuals equally. For example, blind hiring practices. The new 'fairness' is incompatible with blind hiring or individual merit, because its ultimate aim is to make what you are more important than what you have done. You might say 'that's a good thing' but to claim these aren't polar opposite concepts of fairness or justice is disingenuous.
hprotagonist 4y ago
> This is as strict as the catholic church. Much stricter: they have a well-established mechanism for reconciliation and forgiveness! In fact, several!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

lom888 4y ago

https://archive.is/YLmuR https://archive.is/YLmuR

shadowgovt 4y ago

> Professor Halley believes these innovations are “forced speech and viewpoint discrimination in the First Amendment context” That's an interesting viewpoint and I'm not sure how it squares with a university's First Amendment right to freedom of association. After all, they're at liberty to grant tenure to whomever they think is worthy of it, by their own criteria. If they think that a tenured physics professor's views on getting more people of diverse backgrounds into physics are as important as their views on plasma confinement, who has authority to tell them otherwise? How does such a requirement differ from, say, a requirement that a tenure-track professor have teaching experience (because a prof who can't pass knowledge on is worthless to the university)?

hguant 4y ago
>I'm not sure how it squares with a university's First Amendment right to freedom of association. The short answer from the courts is - if you take money from the federal government, in any way, or have students who take money from the federal government, in any way, or distribute funds from the federal government, in any way, as a corporate entity you lose out on many of the rights entailed to a private citizen.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  No doubt, but I'm unaware of which right would fall under the category "Can't have DEI statements." If anything, government money tends to include more diversity entanglements, not fewer.
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    > I'm unaware of which right would fall under the category "Can't have DEI statements." The first amendment, as originally noted. This is most relevant at public universities, which effectively are the government.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      And yet the First Amendment doesn't protect a tenured professor from being fired for failing to disclose relevant information (https://www.dailynebraskan.com/news/breaking-news-board-of-regents-votes-to-fire-tenured-professor/article_6d1ef382-726a-11ed-ba8a-732abd5f601e.html https://www.dailynebraskan.com/news/breaking-news-board-of-r...), so I'm not sure where the "compelled speech" protection ends and the requirements of the public university begin. Sounds like one for the courts.

dtx1 4y ago

These Rules and Statements always remind me of the stories I heard from the GDR and USSR Days. To get your highschool diploma or PhD in the GDR you had to recite your commitment to Communist/Marxist ideas before a panel that often didn't care about it but everyone knew it was just easiest to go through the motions anyway.

raxxorraxor 4y ago
And you would probably be very on point with that. Also not too different that kissing the sceptre of your king.
interactivecode 4y ago
Reminds me of having to stand in a circle with all my classmates while one of us had the privilege of holding the national flag. We then in unison had to recite a pledge to that flag, the nation and god. just thinking about having to say the pledge of allegiance gives me chills.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." It’s a pointless, anodyne and unobjectionable pledge that prescribes nothing. It’s stupid, but not remotely comparable to DEI statements, or commitment to much more specific political ideals.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Disregarding someone else's objection to forced speech and saying yours is more important isn't going to win a lot of people over. Just because you can't see why it's objectionable doesn't mean it isn't.
  - interactivecode 4y ago
    I did not get the liberty to decline participating. I am not religious so why should I pledge an oath to be ruled under a god. I am forced to recite a daily mantra filled with propaganda for a republic which is more concerned about arguing for liberty and justice than it is actually providing liberty and justice.

yakshaving_jgt 4y ago

This will draw people on either side of the argument on whether or not this is a constructive thing to do closer to having to define what diversity actually means in any given context. Discourse will need to crystallize around whether or not it is sufficient to define diversity in terms of a couple of specific racial and gender lines. Put another way, two people, A and B, may have this dialogue: A: Evidence for my contributions for DEI include <some examples> B: The <some examples> do not qualify, because the parties impacted do not qualify as "diverse" --- Regardless of which side of that argument you're on, it seems to me like this is generally a good thing.

pookha 4y ago
I like the word "crystallize". Generally speaking cults are big on that.
- yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
  Well I think the issue currently is nobody can agree on what "diversity" means, so both sides of the argument are talking past each other. It's much easier to argue against DEI initiatives such as this when their proponents can't wield the Motte-and-bailey fallacy.
fallingknife 4y ago
But there is no dialogue. In this case B will just move on to the next application and send the "thanks for applying" email to A.
- yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
  Do you suppose this would be grounds to litigate against ideological prejudice? I couldn't read much of the article as it is paywalled. I had assumed the applicant would have some recourse in the [frankly rather likely] scenario you outlined.

throwawaysleep 4y ago

Just lie. That is what corporate has always expected from this. Go find a Black woman to interview and then hire who you want. Or ask current team members to claim they are certain races. I am a straight white male. As far as my employer is concerned I am a mixed race sexual minority. My boss at one of my jobs gets credit for a 25% diverse team that is just white men + 1 Asian man (Asians do not count as diversity). Lying is extremely underrated as a way to get things done. It was a revelation for me when I realized that nobody follows up to check your claims for job applications in great detail, so little of it needs to be true.

Dig1t 4y ago
Absolutely this. I will also be encouraging my kids to lie about their race and identities on all applications as they grow up, especially college.

efficax 4y ago

DEI statements are just one factor in the hiring process for faculty. Generally they'll get scored by the hiring committee on some numeric scale (like everything else in the application). A low DEI score might not tank your application if you're in a field where everyone else has a low DEI score, or if you are absolutely outstanding in your field but have middling DEI because you're a white, male scientist from an affluent background who hasn't done much in that sense, you might still prevail. But it's a way of allowing the hiring committee to factor in diversity so that other things being equal (equal experience, equal credentials, equal letters of rec, teaching demo, etc) they can use diversity to distinguish candidates. The fuss about it is overblown.

splitstud 4y ago
The fuss? Discrimination is not ok.
fallingknife 4y ago
If you are absolutely outstanding in your field you should always prevail. Also, if you didn't know, hiring candidates based on race is explicitly forbidden by federal law (Title VII Civil Rights Act of 1964). The fuss is absolutely not overblown.
- efficax 4y ago
  they're not hiring based on race, they're hiring based on the way they score a statement about one's commitment to, history with, and future plans for advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the university setting. you can be black and have a terrible dei statement. it just happens that minorities are more likely to have had involvement with these issues for most of their academic lives.
  - fallingknife 4y ago
    If the scoring on the DEI statement is correlated to race of the applicant, and I would bet every dollar I have that it is, then it is considered de facto racial discrimination by law. Google "disparate impact." Same issue as Harvard giving low "personality scores" to the Asian applicants. You can't get around anti-discrimination laws that easily.

wonderwonder 4y ago

This is the sort of thing that confounds me. It proports to be anti racist but it's the opposite, it treats minorities as a special lesser class that require protection from everyone else. It's the civil rights movement in reverse. It's already started bleeding into the workspace with mandatory training and verbiage that essentially says anything you do in your interactions with a minority if they accuse you of anything they are right and you must meekly accept it and bow your head in shame. The worst part of it is at most of the companies with strong DEI programs there are zero minorities in leadership. it's a dog and pony show that is only forced upon the non sr. leadership. You even have companies doing layoffs now intentionally focused on laying off non minorities. Another issue is that Asians while less in number than most other minorities are treated as white by DEI. I worry about my kids if this keeps escalating. I dislike Desantis for many reasons but ended up voting for him specifically for this reason and a couple of other cultural issues.

adamsmith143 4y ago
>I worry about my kids if this keeps escalating. I dislike Desantis for many reasons but ended up voting for him specifically for this reason and a couple of other cultural issues. Considering the book banning he just enacted this seems like an extremely short sighted and poorly thought out reasoning.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Banning books from public school libraries has nearly zero effect on what students are exposed to. Did you ever check out a book from the school library? I never did, the actual municipal library had a much better selection. Harry Potter was banned from plenty of libraries for witchcraft, and it's sales demonstrate how futile it was.
  - lukeschlather 4y ago
    I read dozens (possibly hundreds?) of books in my school library as a student. We're not just talking about "the library" either. We're talking about the books that are made available to students during classroom free time in elementary school.

SilverBirch 4y ago

This is such a "ugh" topic. Of course it's kind of absurd to be like "Write me an essay on how Woke you are", but it's the inevitable result of pretty low quality individuals trying to solve a real problem. Academia has obviously been historically discriminatory, and due to the massive problems with the structure of US universities it still has all sorts of problems. The way to fix that is obviously to bring in senior leadership who have experience and understanding of the myriad complex issues facing academia today and who can create a series of changes to tackle some of the systemic underlying issues which have embedded a monoculture in most institutions. Actually doing that is really difficult though, and challenges a series of power structures that are well embedded and aren't going to change. Senior leadership at universities answer to donors, not junior staff. So there's a push to change, but it's not going to change? What do you do? You cover your ass by making sure you meticulously document just exactly how you are making changes so you can point to stuff when people realise that absolutely nothing is changing. You say to your woke alumni "look at the great initiatives" and you say to your non-woke alumni "Psstt... I think we've got a spare space for your 85 IQ grandson"

ergonaught 4y ago
I was asked to describe the diversity within my private life during a job interview last year. It was a relatively lower end position, not even vaguely academic, and neither the role nor the company have any particular applicability to "diversity".
- psychlops 4y ago
  That seems like the greatest question to get. One could spin all sorts of fantasies and talk for hours...
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Is it illegal to lie on these sorts of questions? Like, you could say you're gay, married to an indigenous trans man raising 3 URM children you've adopted. All of these things are illegal to use in hiring decisions, so the veracity of your answers would only matter if the company was engaged in unlawful hiring practices.

sangnoir 4y ago

Begun, the culture war has (on HN)

katscradle_1989 4y ago
It almost seems inevitable at times. DEI is part of that and has leaked into tech (yea, you can say its been there awhile but eh). I know of someone that has actually lost a job opportunity because they weren't diverse enough. (SE Asian) They were interning and it leaked that the team lead wanted someone more diverse and the HM was all too eager to agree. The messages were deleted before he could take a screen shot. He came to me asking what to do about it and I really didn't know what to say. Unfortunately it just wasn't worth it IMO to fight a large tech company. I'm sure the messages could be recovered but it seemed like an insane uphill fight and who would want to even work at that company at that point. Hell, companies are "proud" to tell you that they would straight up do this too. The worst people imo are the types that try to make every justification and gaslight you into believing its "justice" or something.

kyleblarson 4y ago

What are the odds Dr Martin Luther King would have been hired at Berkeley? "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

JustFigItOut 4y ago
Probably pretty good. MLK was a smart man who understood that correcting injustice requires special treatment to the wronged. “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.” - MLK
dragonwriter 4y ago
> What are the odds Dr Martin Luther King would have been hired at Berkeley? Zero, because his dedication to his objective of replacing the American system of capitalist oppression with a just economic system free not only from direct racial discrimination, but from economic and other oppression (which also crystallizes the effects of past racial discrimination) would not really compatible with university (or state more generally) employment. Have you read literally anything of King’s besides the Right’s favorite sentence to quote out of context?

katscradle_1989 4y ago

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guelo 4y ago

[flagged]

thwayunion 4y ago

This is the third or fourth front-page article on this topic in the last few days. I'm skeptical of basically everything about academic hiring, DEI included. But there's a concerted media blitz on this topic and the lack of quality conversation on HN reflects that the propaganda campaign is working. Here's some nuance that I hope cuts through the mass media narrative-building machine: First, it's not just stupid ideology. There are real economic incentives at play. I wrote a comment here on why Colleges and Universities view DEI as existentially important to their finances: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672053 Second, value statements are nothing new in Academia. Many religious institutions require Faith Statements, and there are event Title IX carve-outs for these institutions when they receive federal funds [2] Third, DEI statements are not all bad. Eg, when I applied to academic positions (none of which I took), my statement had everything to do with serving kids who arrived at college unprepared. Not a single mention or race, gender, etc. Instead of talking about starting "women in X" clubs or other BS [3], I talked about volunteering in public schools and gave anecdotes about how in my teaching I worked to keep kids in college who would've otherwise dropped out. Every place I applied said it was one of the best DEI statements they had seen. My personal opinion: I am fully aligned with the criticism of DEI statements. Most DEI statements are cringe-worthy at best, I have no doubt in the heights of incompetence that can be found in university administration, and the entire uni hiring process is broken. But these statements can be used in a reasonable and responsible way at colleges who, in order to survive financially, NEED to start recruiting and retaining students who aren't in the "dual income upper-middle class parents with a 3.8GPA" mold. And, as an aside, if we're going to go after Loyalty Oaths in non-public-university academic hiring, let's start by eliminating Title IX carve-outs for religiously affiliated institutions. --- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672053 [2] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-B/chapter-I/part-106#106.12 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-B/chapter-I/p... [3] BS because they are often the sort of "I started/joined a club" thing that for most people amounts to zero actual effort put into helping individual students succeed.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

alpineidyll3 4y ago

#latestageacademia

eat 4y ago

I wonder how much the appearance of these daily anti-DEI stories on the front page of HN has to do with this recession and workers' propensity to look for convenient scapegoats in the face of recent massive layoffs. Certainly looks to me that there's a lot of fear and anxiety out there that's being pointed in some... interesting directions. Don't direct that fear and anxiety upward in the org chart though, wouldn't want that :)

l33t233372 4y ago
I can’t believe getting upset about something as trivial as having to write a small essay atop of the regular rigorous rigmarole associated with entering a university (as a student or faculty member). This doesn’t make sense to me; let alone being upset on behalf of others!
- defen 4y ago
  > something as trivial as having to write a small essay Do you think the essay itself is really why people are upset, or are you being glib? It's hard to tell.
  - l33t233372 4y ago
    I understand the essay represents some Very Bad Idea that they disagree with or something along those lines.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    I know that people posting here aren’t upset about the essays, because 99% of them haven’t read a single one. This is not exactly a community of educators, but technology industry insiders. The level of unfounded self-assuredness on display here about what goes on at e.g. a UC Berkeley faculty hiring committee rivals ChatGPT. Which brings us back to: if no one here has read any of these essays, what‘a with all the angry comments?
x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
In defense of HN, the audience has been staunchly "libertarian" and all that entails for years. So being anti- something that seems to threaten the social power hierarchy is the norm. Before the every-day-anti-DEI posts, it was an Elon-fest were folks would tout "free speech" and other stuff. After Elon got Twitter and his free-speech absolutism turned out to be a disposable talking point, the HN audience largely moved on.

gnarbarian 4y ago

[flagged]

lovecg 4y ago

This is your regular reminder that the front pages for VLDB and SIGMOD conferences have more space dedicated to their stance against racism than to less important things like databases. https://www.vldb.org/ https://www.vldb.org/ https://sigmod.org/ https://sigmod.org/

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
Idk if this is fair. Both of the anti racist stances include list format, which by default takes up way more space than the multi-paragraph explainations of who they are and what they do. The multi-paragraph introduction to the organizations are also the very first thing on the page. I don’t think they’re comparable…

hdesh 4y ago

> They say that any candidate who does not discuss gender or race must be awarded low marks. The same goes for any earnest classical liberal who “explicitly states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same’.” What is wrong with treating everyone the same? Isn't that anti-racist by definition?

thwayunion 4y ago
> They say that any candidate who does not discuss gender or race must be awarded low marks. For starters, explicitly not defending this. I think it's stupid. For race in particular, I've seen a lot more damage done by well-meaning but tone-deaf attempts at DEI than by people just being normal non-shitty humans. >> The same goes for any earnest classical liberal who “explicitly states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same’. > What is wrong with treating everyone the same? Isn't that anti-racist by definition? No, because "backgrounds" here can also mean "academic background" or "financial background" or a million other things that aren't race or gender. If I were at an institution with a sizable population of academically under-prepared students then I wouldn't hire a faculty member who said they have no plan for how to differentiate their instruction and support academically under-prepared students, or non-traditional (read: older working) student, etc.

hdesh 4y ago

Related: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/higher-ed-new-woke-loyalty-oaths-dei https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/higher-ed-n...