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> So why play the kabuki game at all if it's all so pointless. That's academia. I'm really, really serious. You also submit, as a 20-something who has only ev

> So why play the kabuki game at all if it's all so pointless. That's academia. I'm really, really serious. You also submit, as a 20-something who has only ever been a student: 1. a multi-page research statement summarizing a five year research agenda, 2. a multi-page teaching statement (in some cases the candidate has literally just been a grader for one course and stretches that out for 2.5 pages), 3. three letters of reference (multiple pages, must be glowing with lots of anecdotes, preferably from senior and respected people in your field), 4. 5 page CV summarizing your first six years of work (at least one of which was just taking classes; lol), and 5. A diversity statement and/or statement of faith. That's before your first phone interview. After the phone interview you have a 2 day on-site interview that involves an hour long talk, one-on-one interviews with dozens of people, and every meal with a different group of stakeholders. They sometimes even pick you up from the airport, drop you off at the airport, and have you sleep in a university house that you are "always on" from touch-down to take-off. No shit: I heard an anecdote about a candidate that didn't get an offer because he left the bedroom messy. That's the process for an entry-level position that might only pay $60K. Faculty hiring is straight up insane, and DEI/Faith statements don't even make the top 10 list of reasons why. > We're talking about the UC schools which have been top of the world generally and the DEI stuff seems to matter quite a lot there. Are we? The article starts with a discussion of Berkeley, but quickly generalizes to the rest of the industry. Very few of the comments here are about the UC system in particular. By institution count, CA's public system is a teeny tiny fraction of the US's 4000+ colleges and universities. But I get it. For a certain mark, California gets the cortisol goin'. > ...pushing this the most aggressively, Harvard, Yale, the UC's etc. LOL no they're not. The push is FAR stronger at no-name tuition-dependent corn row colleges in the midwest who have snow white undergrad populations and are literally existentially threatened by the coming decline in white 18 year old midwesterners. But the Big Elite Coastal Schools are only institutions that people who lose their god damned brains over stuff like this ever want to talk about.

ModernMech 4y ago
> You also submit, as a 20-something who has only ever been a student: Tbf the process is the same for senior candidate applications. It may seem like a lot for junior applicants but the bar is lowered significantly. But like you say, it’s competitive, so naturally the pageantry gets turned to 11.
adamsmith143 4y ago
>Faculty hiring is straight up insane, and DEI/Faith statements don't even make the top 10 list of reasons why. The idea that because there are other issues with hiring in Academia that these "Faith Statements" don't matter rings pretty hollow imo. >By institution count, CA's public system is a teeny tiny fraction of the US's 4000+ colleges and universities. But I get it. For a certain mark, California gets the cortisol goin'. I'm actually a fan of the UC's and California generally but I also think that the UC's are the gold standard for Public Education in the US and what happens there often spreads across the rest of the big State University systems. >LOL no they're not. The push is FAR stronger at no-name tuition-dependent corn row colleges in the midwest who have snow white undergrad populations and are literally existentially threatened by the coming decline in white 18 year old midwesterners. Not sure how you can say this with such assurance, given we can see countless examples of DEI gone wild at the Ivies or Stanford or Wellesley, etc. You did your undergrad/phd at multiple Ivies and have worked at a dozen of those corn row schools and know what's happening there?
- ModernMech 4y ago
  > Not sure how you can say this with such assurance I'm wondering if you're willing to tell us how many faculty DEI statements you've actually read. I'm very sure that if we forced the posters here to disclose the same, the median across this thread would be 0 or 1 (that one being the first hit that could be found searching Google). Personally I've read dozens upon dozens in my role as an educator, and thwayunion has been spot on in their assessment. As for this: > given we can see countless examples of DEI gone wild at the Ivies or Stanford or Wellesley There's always going to be examples of things going wrong in a chaotic and distributed process. Pointing them out doesn't prove much. That said, a lot of the "gone wild" examples that people can bring up are also based in the same ignorance as people complaining about DEI statement who haven't read a single DEI statement. The recent Stanford word list that you probably have in mind is just one example; in that case, the freakout was over some overzealous members of an IT department publishing their internal content guidelines. It was probably misguided, but the ensuing freakout on the internet was overblown and rooted in a deep ignorance at how organizations like Universities operate. So as far as this conversation goes, thwayunion's perception is properly calibrated. It seems to come from experience.

ModernMech 4y ago

> You also submit, as a 20-something who has only ever been a student: Tbf the process is the same for senior candidate applications. It may seem like a lot for junior applicants but the bar is lowered significantly. But like you say, it’s competitive, so naturally the pageantry gets turned to 11.

adamsmith143 4y ago

>Faculty hiring is straight up insane, and DEI/Faith statements don't even make the top 10 list of reasons why. The idea that because there are other issues with hiring in Academia that these "Faith Statements" don't matter rings pretty hollow imo. >By institution count, CA's public system is a teeny tiny fraction of the US's 4000+ colleges and universities. But I get it. For a certain mark, California gets the cortisol goin'. I'm actually a fan of the UC's and California generally but I also think that the UC's are the gold standard for Public Education in the US and what happens there often spreads across the rest of the big State University systems. >LOL no they're not. The push is FAR stronger at no-name tuition-dependent corn row colleges in the midwest who have snow white undergrad populations and are literally existentially threatened by the coming decline in white 18 year old midwesterners. Not sure how you can say this with such assurance, given we can see countless examples of DEI gone wild at the Ivies or Stanford or Wellesley, etc. You did your undergrad/phd at multiple Ivies and have worked at a dozen of those corn row schools and know what's happening there?

ModernMech 4y ago
> Not sure how you can say this with such assurance I'm wondering if you're willing to tell us how many faculty DEI statements you've actually read. I'm very sure that if we forced the posters here to disclose the same, the median across this thread would be 0 or 1 (that one being the first hit that could be found searching Google). Personally I've read dozens upon dozens in my role as an educator, and thwayunion has been spot on in their assessment. As for this: > given we can see countless examples of DEI gone wild at the Ivies or Stanford or Wellesley There's always going to be examples of things going wrong in a chaotic and distributed process. Pointing them out doesn't prove much. That said, a lot of the "gone wild" examples that people can bring up are also based in the same ignorance as people complaining about DEI statement who haven't read a single DEI statement. The recent Stanford word list that you probably have in mind is just one example; in that case, the freakout was over some overzealous members of an IT department publishing their internal content guidelines. It was probably misguided, but the ensuing freakout on the internet was overblown and rooted in a deep ignorance at how organizations like Universities operate. So as far as this conversation goes, thwayunion's perception is properly calibrated. It seems to come from experience.