32 ms·

MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

• ssijak 2y ago
  Clicked through some links in the article. Really mind boggling material. How did such garbage end up in top universities is really weird.
  • leosanchez 2y ago
    I don't understand how this crap got into America of all countries
    • 6312783123 2y ago
      [flagged]
    • anonylizard 2y ago
      Certain people, discovered how easy it is, to change entire institutions, by applying targeted pressure towards individual managers of those institutions. No manager dares to refuse these initiatives because they'll be instantly named by the activist, with the help of journalist friends, and ensure they lose their job. Hence by going one at a time, a small group of activists can change far larger organisations. Of course, every action has a reaction. Enough resentment has built up, that made anti-woke a legitimate position to take in the public eye, with no longer much risk of losing the job. This makes all the previous tactics lose their power. Also, the 'anti-woke' crowd is learning these tactics too. From congressional grilling of university presidents, to gamers explicitly documenting the DEI consultancy involvements, its all targeting and absolutely destroying individuals to cause a chilling effect on the populace at large.
      • leosanchez 2y ago
        > No manager dares to refuse these initiatives because they'll be instantly named by the activist, with the help of journalist friends, and ensure they lose their job. Doesn't this feel very authoritarian ? Just replace manager with citizen and you have USSR.
        • lazide 2y ago
          Authoritarianism would be if it was top down. This is more a leftist version of McCarthyism. Aka intellectual purity testing and purges.
          • hallway_monitor 2y ago
            I don't know why you're getting down voted for this. It's a very precise description of what has been happening the last decade. Conform and declare your support or be ruined, even if you have valid criticisms and disagreements with the doctrine.
            • lazide 2y ago
              I would assume it’s precisely because it’s a precise and accurate description. Given the current climate.
          • marcosdumay 2y ago
            > Authoritarianism would be if it was top down. If a minority can impose their will into institutions, destroying the life of anybody that opposes them, you need a quite messed-up conception of power structures to place that minority "down".
            • hotdogscout 2y ago
              Because you can't put the power to influence behavior on a straight line. Each clique has it's own power structure. Charisma, rule of law, pity, revenge, resentment, morality, resources, it's all a part of it.
            • lazide 2y ago
              When said minority are just as likely to be peers or subordinates within the power structure, I don’t see how it could be ‘from the top’. Do you?
        • eastbound 2y ago
          Do you think every participant to Mao’s cultural revolution was consenting? No. People do whatever they can throughout history, and end up having to participate to larger changes. The only remedy we’ve found was Humanism, l’esprit critique, education for everyone, and raising awareness and allergy to all authoritarian acts, but see, in the last 50 years, I’ve seen younger people who aren’t even aware who Diderot is, let alone had enough literacy to read or write those books fluently if they spent the time, even in $130k jobs. Then we flooded each country with about 12% people who haven’t had those Humanism tenants taughts at school. I’ll from using a stronger metaphor because it will sound cheesy, but by losing the teachings of logic, rhetoric and history, our civilization is not able to hold the pillars of democracy anymore.
      • geraldwhen 2y ago
        I’ve been here. “We can’t hire any more white men” is probably an illegal stance, but what do I gain from fighting that? Nothing, and I suspect I’d be fired. I’m a tadpole in a huge lake. I have no influence over these likely illegal hiring decisions. And unless I’m just incredibly unlucky, these same conversations are happening everywhere at big companies.
    • pelorat 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • silverquiet 2y ago
        I often see the "complaint" (hard to find the right word here - it's discussed in somewhat coded/conspiratorial language for fear of sounding racist I'm sure) that when Indians are hired into a company, they'll then begin hiring more and more Indians. As you say, this is actually a rather natural human tendency and I doubt it's limited to Indians. Of course, many people here will also note that they get most of their jobs through their network (side note; it must be nice speaking as an introvert who just has to apply to jobs like a regular schlub). Well, if you're Indian, especially from India, I bet your network is going to be fairly Indian.
      • Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
        > DEI is meant to be a counter to this. If DEI was about removing barriers due to racial (both conscious and unconscious) biases, then it wouldn't be so controversial. For example, symphonies auditioning candidates behind a screen so they hiring people are only presented with the sound of their playing. But DEI is the opposite of that. It's about very explicitly identifying race/gender/etc up front and then using that as the primary basis for hiring decisions. Disqualifying someone because of their race is not only allowed but required by DEI policies.
      • inemesitaffia 2y ago
        How did we end up with it ending up as "no more white males", white people excluded from events and buildings, people talking about how they like their white free orgs in publicly traded companies, companies with no white people in a white majority city described as diverse, someone posting on HN with a full sense of righteousness about the Google Gemini racism scandal that he'd consider a request for a photo containing only white people to an LLM suspect but one of any other ethnicity perfectly fine. From me I'd like to ask where all the people from the Indian sub continent are in the Gemini Photos given they make a large percentage of developers at Google but are non existent in the output. Why the literal erasure of ~2 billion people?
    • fullshark 2y ago
      Cause few are brave enough to stick their neck out and stand up to it. Those who do are called nasty names and are forced to withstand a ideological purity trial that carries some potential of being fired. There is a lot risk for a minor reward, especially if you don't actually care about the institution you are defending.
    • YZF 2y ago
      American society is a bit messed up going back to slavery (and maybe the treatment of the indigenous people). That part (America of all countries) is not a surprise. It's also not new, random e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness Maybe this also has to do with the general idea that it's not up to a government to do things, it's up to individuals, which to me is how Americans think. I would think that dealing with inequalities in society, ensuring everyone has equal opportunity and has their basic needs provided for (health, education etc.) would be the function of a government. If the government isn't addressing that then you have a vacuum. To me it's obvious that e.g. hiring policies or university acceptance criteria are not the right place to fix society but rather issues should be addressed upstream from those. By the government. But having government do things seem to be something Americans dislike.
      • lazyeye 2y ago
        Just as a side point, approx 3-4% of slaves ended up in North America. Most went to the Carribbean and South America (Brazil mainly). Nobody ever seems to want to talk about those countries though for some reason. Nor do they seem particularly interested in the slave trade that exists now in many countries in one form or another. My guess is its because these other examples are not politically useful.
        • TMWNN 2y ago
          >Just as a side point, approx 3-4% of slaves ended up in North America. Most went to the Carribbean and South America (Brazil mainly). Nobody ever seems to want to talk about those countries though for some reason. The average SJW/Redditor/DEI advocate sincerely believes that slavery has existed in only one country in the world's history: In the United States, involving Africans. The etymology of the word "slav"? Brazil? Haiti? Guadeloupe? North Africans enslaving Europeans? Vikings taking thralls? Feudalism? Never heard of 'em.
        • thiagoharry 2y ago
          Here in Brazil, we care, and we try to make amends: there are quotas for black people in universities, and our law is rigorous against manifestation of racism in social media, or in real life. I think it is expected that any place that enslaved people make their amends for their past crimes. But I fail to understand how for American people this should mean talking about slavery in Brazil instead of in their own country.
    • primax 2y ago
      America is the most likely country for this to happen to, due to the unresolved issues surrounding slavery and the abandonment of reconstruction after the civil war. This is compounded when viewed through the USAs founding mythology. Other countries have done worse, but they haven't done so as hypocritically as the United States.
      • cooper_ganglia 2y ago
        >unresolved issues surrounding slavery >country was founded 248 years ago >the "issue" stopped happening 159 years ago I don't think an issue that lasted for barely 1/3 of our country's history and hasn't been legal for the entirety of this century, last century, or much of the century before that is the problem. I think people's addiction to being full-time victims is the issue, because if you're always a victim, you never have to be responsbile for anything in your life, you can always blame your imagined "oppressor". People do this, teach their children that they are also victims regardless of their actions, and maintain a long line of familial victimhood. DEI is a direct symptom of that.
        • primax 2y ago
          You were the last western country to deal with slavery, and it took a civil war to force the issue. Then reconstruction was ended due to a political backlash from the south. Don't pretend this is all over.
    • Izkata 2y ago
      It was too outrageous to be believed until it was too late. Remember the term "SJW" (social justice warrior) from around a decade ago? That was wokeism and DEI before it got its current branding. The people who saw this coming were dismissed as crazy.
  • LaurensBER 2y ago
    If you see yourself (or your group) as a victim it's easy to rationalize rather extreme measures to "fix" the world. The intentions behind a lot of these things are good but the sensitivity of the subject has made it hard(er) to have a healthy discussion about these issues.
    • drewcoo 2y ago
      But we're not talking about protected classes. They did not take "extreme measures." We're talking about large institutions adopting policies to shield themselves from potential lawsuits from protected classes.
      • Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
        > "extreme measures." What is this [0] then? [0] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/can-job-postings-in-canada-exclude-white-people-short-answer-yes https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/can-job-postings-in-can...
      • eastbound 2y ago
        They do censor research on the opposite of their viewpoint, though. Which further reinforces their impression that they are right. We’re back to 1590 in terms of civilizational evolution.
    • germinator 2y ago
      I don't think that's a good explanation. The vast majority of people behind such initiatives don't come from underprivileged or victimized backgrounds. It's more about this idea of being an advocate for the downtrodden - a good person fighting the racists on behalf of those without a voice. And because you're fighting the good fight, it's of course OK to make the oppressors uncomfortable or to bully them into submission. Depending on your priors, this is either messed up, or it's messed up not to act and accept the status quo. Pick your poison, I guess.
      • whythre 2y ago
  • Ekaros 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • bmitc 2y ago
    People might be surprised how dumb top universities can be. When everyone is biased to thinking they're the best, it pretty easily creates tunnel vision.
    • ethbr1 2y ago
      Tenure is also a blessing and a curse. It ensures academic freedom. But it also ensures someone has limited checks on their bullshit, until they retire.
      • throw-the-towel 2y ago
        Isn't mortality supposed to be check-and-balance on the bullshit in science?
        • userbinator 2y ago
          Did you really mean mortality as in "exercising the 2nd Amendment", or morality?
          • mhuffman 2y ago
            I think they meant mortality as in the old guard that have power and use it to protect their point of view die off and are replaced with a new guard that does the same.
            • ethbr1 2y ago
              Definitely mortality. For those unfamiliar with how org structures work in academia/tenure... (at least, assume this is still true) Once attaining tenure, your promotion track focuses on faculty leadership positions. These positions are selected by a combination of administration & faculty. It varies institute to institute, but strong candidates usually have backing from both. These positions are almost always held by tenured faculty, as non-tenure is looked down upon for historical/political reasons. Note: You only need to please 2 types of stakeholders: administration & faculty. Ergo, the path to promotion becomes: - Make tenure - Politick with faculty colleagues - Politick with administration - Wait for someone to die This leads to a weird bent where your bosses (faculty) are selected for their ability to navigate political winds and say the thing that most people agree with, moreso than being disagreeably brilliant.
  • andy99 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • nwoli 2y ago
      Cowardice selected for by ejecting the non cowards through filters that makes them not hired at these places
      • andy99 2y ago
        Universities typically have an old guard. They all cared too much about keeping their heads down and collecting their pay cheques too oppose this. It's not just new screening, it's active cowardice.
  • TrackerFF 2y ago
    Decades of institutional discrimination. I'm a white upper middle-class dude, and there used to be a time where it was only guys like me that got into prestigious schools, and had a chance at landing influential jobs - while others would either get silently rejected, scolded for trying, or simply laughed out of the office. So while the intentions for DEI were good, the reality might be that they've regressed back to initial problem. Should some people be rejected, simply because they're overrepresented? And must your workers write/sign a statement that basically says "I, [name], hereby agree that discrimination is good if it is for the greater good."
• LaurensBER 2y ago
  Although the intentions behind DEI are good such a top down approach doesn't seem to get the desired results (i.e optimal use of everyone's talent, irrespective of their colour, sex and/or identify). Unfortunately the name (and perhaps ideas?) are now tainted and I hope this doesn't impact the bottom up approaches (i.e support kids and young adults with extra classes, trainings, and in general just being chill and accepting about people) which probably should have been the focus from the start.
  • crooked-v 2y ago
    I think the more important question is: are the intentions to get actual results, or just to sidetrack anything that would take actual effort with 'but we have DEI statements'?
  • nsajko 2y ago
    Were the intentions behind colonialism good, too, in your opinion?
    • concordDance 2y ago
      Probably depends on the colonialist. I expect many were in it for money at the expense of the colonised population, but I expect just as many did it to "civilize and raise up the barbarians as good christians".
      • kanapala 2y ago
        Other thought “And clean our cities of the crooked nose vermin” so it’s all good?
        • defrost 2y ago
          In practice both paths were bad in varying ways, it's just that one was paved with a disregard for others, the second paved with good intentions. eg: Daisy Bates oozed good intentions https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bates-daisy-may-83 https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bates-daisy-may-83 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bates_(author) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bates_(author) and strongly put the case that: "As to the half-castes, however early they may be taken and trained, with very few exceptions, the only good half-caste is a dead one." and a number of other firm opinions that spawned a regime of hugging "the good ones" to death while abusing the "in betweens". But yeah, good intentions.
• Ambolia 2y ago
  [flagged]
• selfmodruntime 2y ago
  The American focus on race is a bit insane to outsiders. Putting such a big focus on race in university applications is just weird. Even worse, having top universities openly discriminate against people based on their race or heritage with affirmative action or similar policies, all in the name of equality, is unbelievable to Europeans like me. What the hell is wrong with the US if a person has a worse chance to be accepted into uni just because they happen to be born Asian? How is no one in DEI committees seeing the utter hypocrisy here? I firmly believe that the US is your best chance when you look for a country with equality and acceptance regarding race, religion, and culture. A lot of my US friends experienced a dire wake-up call when visiting and finding their belief that Europe is more accepting and less conservative than the US to be dead wrong.
  • blackhawkC17 2y ago
    Race is a distraction from the ultimate divide: class. IMO, every policy that wants to promote equality should revolve solely around class. In every place on earth, richer upper-class people are more advantaged than those from the lower classes. Every social policy should focus on lessening that gap (I recognize that the gap can't be closed entirely).
    • nojvek 2y ago
      100% ^. But then it ends up being tied to race since black folks are on average coming from a less wealthier class than white people. And class is hard to judge objectively. If you go by income tax, many wealthy people show very little income since they live on their family wealth. E.g a house fully paid off and only earning meager income from a side business, while their stocks they inherited are climbing millions in valuation. The rich are really good at hiding they are rich.
      • blackhawkC17 2y ago
        > And class is hard to judge objectively. Very simple, actually. $1 million+ in annual income or $10 million+ in assets is an objective starting point, all the way to mega billionaires like Musk and Bloomberg.
• crooked-v 2y ago
  So what are the actual statements being banned? The article gives zero useful details.
  • Leynos 2y ago
    Seconded. Futhermore, the counterexample cited, teaching adult literacy, seems like a good way of furthering equity and inclusion to me. This sounded like the author contradicting themselves.
    • returningfory2 2y ago
      The author agrees with you. The point is that teaching adult literacy is out of scope for DEI statements. You can't mention it in a DEI statement.
  • 000ooo000 2y ago
    Unless I'm misunderstanding your question, the very start of the article seems to cover it: >DEI statements are affirmations made when you’re applying for college admission, university jobs, or even science-society grants, recounting to the authorities your philosophy of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” your history of DEI activities, and how you will implement DEI initiatives if you get the admission/job/grant.
  • geor9e 2y ago
    The specific way you phrased that question makes me suspect you misinterpreted this as a banning of speech. Not at all. They're removing a class of required question from application forms. “The MIT administration has advised the departments that were requiring DEI statements to stop requiring them and to stop using this kind of information. This has just recently been disclosed to the faculty, but a general announcement to the students is not planned.” Or are you asking what a DEI statement is in academia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion#Mandatory_diversity_statements_within_academia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusi...
• blackhawkC17 2y ago
  DEI statements are culty. I see it no different than a religious fundamentalist college asking faculty to sign an oath of allegiance. At least in such a case, you can always know beforehand the BS you'll put up with, unlike secular universities that are adopting DEI statements.
  • MrSkelter 2y ago
    There is a huge difference between trying to counter institutional prejudice in order to improve the quality of the student body and work being done, and whatever you think a religious “pledge of allegiance” is. A pledge to God? The mishandling of DEI doesn’t invalidate the need to fix broken systems which fail to select the best people instead of those who score highest in easily gamed and inherently biased metrics.
    • 6312783123 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • MissTake 2y ago
        The article actually doesn’t say any such thing. It simply assumes that a Chinese propaganda machine is focused only on “wokeism”. Dog forbid that they should seek to use propaganda to attack both sides - which is far more effective at spreading division.
        • 6312783123 2y ago
          Here's a book about it: David M. Jones, The Strategy of Maoism in the West - Rage and the Radical Left: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strategy-Maoism-West-Rage-Radical/dp/180220945X https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strategy-Maoism-West-Rage-Radical/d... https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/bafykbzacedx5ta6zzpq2ix4km2x5sf23nzt6eqb5nhnark75zry23yc56zcao?filename=David%20M.%20Jones%2C%20M.%20L.R.%20Smith%20-%20The%20Strategy%20of%20Maoism%20in%20the%20West_%20Rage%20and%20the%20Radical%20Left-Edward%20Elgar%20Publishing%20%282022%29.pdf https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/bafykbzacedx5ta6zzpq2ix4km2x5sf... "This notwithstanding, the passionate fervour that informs contemporary anti-racist rhetoric, and that of environmental groups such as Extinction Rebellion, and the LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and other) movements that share its goals and feed off its righteous indignation, constitutes a calculated iconoclastic assault on the West’s history and culture." "Culture war was, after all, one of the People’s Republic’s earliest exports to the West. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has, for years, explicitly viewed it as its ‘magic weapon’. Why, then, this book asks, did a twentieth-century Chinese revolutionary ideology become so adaptable and spectacularly successful in the West?" By the way, I've been censored multiple times on this site, for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party and it's connections with the woke movement, by the way. It's awful. My submission is now the top Google result for "beijing woke" and "woke propaganda war" right now, and the HN censorship is plainly visible for everyone to see worldwide. It's the 7th result for the term "woke propaganda", by the way. 13:08 UTC: To any potential Chinese Communist Party trolls, the more you try to censor me, the more I'm going to be posting about you. Same for russian trolls. Your propaganda is destroying the lives of innocent people here in the West.
• bitwize 2y ago
  DEI policies are useful only inasmuch as they mask, rather than expose, the inequities of the system. Once people start taking it seriously and understanding the exploitative nature of capitalism, DEI gets dropped like a hot potato.
• _imnothere 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • happytoexplain 2y ago
    I think DEI/affirmative action is immoral, but I can also acknowledge that the topic tends to result in too much low-quality political spite in the comments.
    • 6312783123 2y ago
      But is there a wider problem if people stop discussing controversial but very important topics on the Internet in general? Can something be done to fence off the low quality comments, without removing them from public view? Instead of outright banning political controversy?
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• deleted 2y ago
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• dang 2y ago
  All: Please don't use HN for ideological battle. There are too many low-quality/predictable comments here. We want curious conversation, not sharp recitals. I know it's hard when the topic is itself an ideological battle, but that's a good time to review the site guidelines, including this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• lloydatkinson 2y ago
  [flagged]
• bozhark 2y ago
  Recently wrote a corporate DEI policy. Our policy is to not regard DEI as a metric of value. It’s absurd.
  • DontchaKnowit 2y ago
    We need you at every fortune 500 company. Our company for a while would recap promotions every quarter and breakdown promation rates by race... it was awakward and antithetical to what they were trying to accompish. Had a weird undertone of calling out races for underachieving lmao "Blacks are being promoted 20% less than whites. We are getting better but can do even more to promote the interests of blacks at the company"
  • nolongerthere 2y ago
    > Our policy is to not regard DEI as a metric of value can you expand on what this means practically and how it differs from others?
  • over_bridge 2y ago
    A profitable company that lacks DEI is still a success A company that loses money but has plenty of DEI is a failure. DEI is not the factor that determines success or failure. It is a tool that you can use but it makes no sense as a goal or target in itself. If your customer base has some attributes that aren't reflected in the staff, maybe hiring some will help you relate. The idea that your company must match the 'diversity' of the general public (in one country) is all backward.
    • AdrianB1 2y ago
      > If your customer base has some attributes that aren't reflected in the staff, maybe hiring some will help you relate. How does it work? If you hire them in customer research or marketing teams, yes, it brings value in understanding the customer. If you just hire them across all departments, like IT or facilities management, what do you get?
• wumeow 2y ago
  Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend.
  • oytis 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • logicchains 2y ago
      It's a natural consequence of the statistics that 1. people get more conservative on average as they get older, and the average age of most countries is steadily increasing, and 2. conservatives have more children on average, and political views are partially heritable.
      • transcriptase 2y ago
        Are you excluding the possibility that after seeing first hand over the past decade that these policies are often detrimental to an organization despite the popular narrative otherwise, people are no longer willing to play pretend for fear of being ostracized. My fiancé works for non-profits and an educational institution (Canada). In the former, every grant application or program has to involve some DEI component regardless of how little sense it makes. Applying for funding for replacing a failing HVAC system for a skating rink? Applying for new gutters for a shed that houses field maintenance equipment? Please write a brief essay on how these projects benefit and advance equity for minorities! In the latter, hiring and promotions have become nearly exclusively about race. Internal candidates have been explicitly told that they’re going to be passed over in favour of others because they’re not diverse. Under-qualified individuals are hired based on skin colour.
    • inglor_cz 2y ago
      DEI statements are so Soviet-like that even very mild centrism is far to the right from them. So, shift to the right ... very relative to the starting point, right?
      • 2y ago
• yareal 2y ago
  I value DEI as a critical part of addressing systemic injustice and building a strong, multifaceted organization. However, these statement requirements look like absolute trash. The sort of thing that is wholly performative. Frankly, it's good they are being dropped in my view. An intervention is only as good as the work needed to intervene. Saying, "spend ten minutes writing up a statement that no one will ever read and then discard" does zero actual lifting towards enabling inclusion.
• Devasta 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • 6312783123 2y ago
    The right wing conspiracists would talk about a "New World Order" and something they called "problem-reaction-solution", so they thought this Left authoritarian Woke movement, was designed deliberate by something (the elites?) to push society to voting right as a knee jerk reaction.. I wonder if those conspiracy theories themselves are Chinese propaganda of some kind, or maybe Russian, or are the propagandists themselves giving away the game plan in plain sight. Right in front of you, where the psychological blind spot is. As Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian regimes seem to like Trump and a having right-wing party in power. So is it a meta conspiracy??? And the real people behind it are China and Russia? That's likely too far fetched though.
    • dang 2y ago
      We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here—it's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for—and yes, this is the case regardless of which ideology an account is for or against: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38036251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38036251 was a perfectly good comment, for example.
  • dang 2y ago
    Please don't post ideological flamewar comments. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• rahimnathwani 2y ago
  How would academics react to mandates requiring them to declare their support for: - Ensuring open access to research - Committing to long-term, foundational research - Prioritizing high-quality teaching and mentorship - Embracing diverse viewpoints - Questioning established academic orthodoxy - Focusing research on public rather than personal gain - Openly sharing data and methodologies - Upholding research neutrality and objectivity against external influences
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • itronitron 2y ago
    A declaration of support for those line items would be more impactful if it came from the university administration.
  • lazide 2y ago
    If everything is a priority/mandate than nothing is.
  • snek_case 2y ago
    > Committing to long-term, foundational research Here I would respond that academics are prone to looking down on applied research, but it's also incredibly important. Think of new programming languages, new types of chips that will enable future computational workloads. New ways of using or optimizing existing technology... Or even empirical research to validate the effectiveness of current industrial practices (something people often don't do, or don't do rigorously enough). Not all research needs to be "foundational". Not all applied research needs to happen in industry. Many academics would actually benefit from climbing down from their ivory tower more often. As it is, a huge percentage of research happening in academic CS circles would probably call itself "foundational" but is actually very much divorced from reality and useless. Just people trying to increase their citation count with an incremental extension to some widely-accepted idea.
  • dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
    They don't do this already? Who would possibly object? Why would any student attend an institution that didn't require it? Obviously I'm not in academia, but to most outsiders this is really obvious stuff.
• 0xWTF 2y ago
  Pretty sure I didn't get a Stanford job in part because I didn't submit a DEI statement. It was optional, but clearly sort of like breathing is optional. I actually wrote one, had it reviewed, rewrote. As someone in federal government who made the mistake of being born white and male, but has worked their whole life on these issues (among many others) and made what I think are very defensibly equitable hiring and selection decisions that reflect the US in gender, race, and creed, the whole thing felt very ... icky.
  • cooper_ganglia 2y ago
    The problem is making the mistake of being born white and male! The best thing I've learned from all of this is that it's literally free to identify as whatever you'd like, whenever you'd like, so if opportunities are being taken from you on the basis of race or gender, you should take advantage of that. No one can deny that you identify as that thing, since identifying as something is the literal exact same thing as being that thing. That's how I became a non-binary black lesbian woman! Like when they opened up the "Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing" for non-binary and trans people... So men showed up and claimed to be non-binary to get access to something that was available to any other person except them. We need to continue seeing stuff like this until we fully choke out the idea of admittance based on anything other than "Is this person the best for the role?". https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-fair-men/ https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-...
• hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  In the spirit of trying to learn something from the community: while I can certainly understand the rationale and goals behind DEI programs (many of which I agree with, others not), I honestly can't understand these "DEI statements" at all. They always seemed very "1984" to me, and almost designed to engender resentment in a way that would ultimately backfire. So perhaps I'm in a like-minded echo chamber, but is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument, or can you point me to one online? If so, I'd honestly love to hear it, and I mean this quite genuinely. I did some googling beforehand and found loads of "how to write a good DEI statement" articles, but literally every single one of them just took it at face value that these were a good thing to begin with (or, perhaps in their defense, that "academic jobs require it", so you better learn how to write one in any case).
  • Fomite 2y ago
    I'll give you an answer for how we have used them - essentially, helping set context (indeed, we have context statements as well). DEI activities often take a lot of time, and are often undervalued by many traditional academic metrics - they don't produce papers, rarely produce grants outside perhaps the occasional diversity supplement, etc. As a small example, to ensure that undergraduate research experience isn't reserve for those without the need to take summer jobs, I ensure all the undergraduates in my lab are paid - and this costs my lab money I don't technically have to spend. Many of my colleagues do a great deal more. Having a required DEI statement both lets people who work in these areas highlight their work, and also makes it obvious those who don't. It's a way to do something beyond just saying "These activities are important" by moving them to the forefront. All that being said, they are often used in a very perfunctory fashion, and while I do somewhat agree with the idea of them, in practice they've not proved useful.
    • hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      Thank you for your response. But looking at your answer highlights even more to me why I think DEI statements are dumb. E.g. taking your example specifically, if the university is truly invested in DEI, simple solution: unpaid summer research internships should be forbidden; all summer research internships must be paid, and here are the guidelines around amounts, funding, etc... The above would be one real solution to increase diversity (while not necessarily being cheap/free), with the benefit of also one not likely to be opposed from either side of the political spectrum (a true rarity these days).
• deleted 2y ago
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• ethbr1 2y ago
  One thing I've found useful in parsing modern news is to remember: A pile of extreme occurrences does not an argument make. Because there's insane stuff happening somewhere, to someone, all the time. With the benefit of digitized news we've enabled lazy trawls to create a pile of "Look at how extreme and crazy ____ is!" to support any viewpoint on any topic. Anti-gun? Here's some insane gun owners. Pro-gun? Here's some horrific crimes. That's modern opinionated news in a nutshell -- here's a pile of extreme occurrences, look at how extreme they are, so you should agree that the other side is crazy. An actual argument involves more annoying to fudge (and admittedly, harder to compile) data like frequency, normalization against population or historical averages, geographic localization, etc. I've found arguing from questions rather than statements helps. What's the root question? And then what data would answer that question?
  • zdragnar 2y ago
    It isn't just modern news, people tend to be intellectually lazy on any topic they are emotionally invested in. Just look at the fallout from Harvard professor Roland Fryer publishing a study (after hiring a second set of grad students to review the data because he was himself surprised by the results). People didn't react logically, with proportionate arguments, reasoning or counter data. They reacted emotionally, forcing him to get police protection, suffering calls for his resignation, and worse.
    • resolutebat 2y ago
      Context for others who missed this particular storm in a teacup: https://freespeechunion.org/harvard-professor-needed-armed-protection-after-publishing-research-that-challenged-woke-orthodoxies/ https://freespeechunion.org/harvard-professor-needed-armed-p... On the question of non-lethal uses of force, the study found “sometimes quite large” racial differences in police use of force, even after accounting for “a large set of controls designed to account for important contextual and behavioural factors at the time of the police-civilian interaction”. In stark contrast to non-lethal uses of force, however, the study observed that when it came to the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – there were no racial differences “in either the raw data or when accounting for controls”. According to one case study of the Houston police department, black people were actually 23.5% less likely to be shot by police, relative to white people, in an interaction.
• kristianp 2y ago
  [flagged]
• jmyeet 2y ago
  So DEI is an obvious political hot-potato but that the idea that the group with all the money and power are somehow being discriminated against is just silly. Why? Because none of these discussions deals with the real bias in university admissions: legacy admissions. Harvard's undergraduate class hovers around 35% who are legacies. This is the very essence of anti-diversity and entrenching generational wealth and power. It should be front and center in any college DEI discussions. The problem is it doesn't end there. Having a Harvard undergraduate degree opens up so many doors for graduate school, residencies for doctors, academia, etc. So before you get worked up on the topic of DEI (on either side), please give a thought to legacy admissions.
  • yarg 2y ago
    Intelligence is largely hereditary (people's intelligence is generally unlikely to be significantly higher or lower than that of their parents). So if the parents were high quality academic students, there's a far higher than average likelihood that the same will be true of their children. (The same is true for athleticism, and no-one would be surprised or think it was unreasonable that LeBron's son was offered scholarships just for who his father is.)
    • jimbokun 2y ago
      That’s not the point. In addition to any inherent advantages for children of graduates from elite universities, there is an explicit bias in their favor for admissions decisions.
      • yarg 2y ago
        Yes, an explicit bias in favour of students more likely to be useful to the university.
    • jmyeet 2y ago
      An inbuilt assumption of what you say is that you believe in meritocracy, specifically that the powerful and wealthy are that way at least part by merit. The flipside of this assumption is that poverty is a personal moral failure. Personally i reject both of these assertions. So much of wealth can be attributed to imperialism, war, slavery, segregation, instituational discrimination and so on. But let's assume what you say is true: if the wealthy are that way out of merit and they have more ability, intelligence or whatever, why do they need an davantage in college admissions at all? Wouldn't their own merit shine through? Wealth already gives a host of advantages: opportunities, tutoring, access to people and not having to, say, work jobs to just survive. On top of all those advantages, why do they also need systemic bias in admissions? The system is unfair by design because it needs to be for those who benefit from it.
• userbinator 2y ago
  The sooner we realise that DEI is making us head towards a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron situation, the better off everyone will be.
  • zarathustreal 2y ago
    The notion that any of us could ever *be equal* has always annoyed me at how obviously absurd it is but I’m glad to see this has been written about before. It’s like we’ve already descended into 1984 territory and we’re all spouting about “equality” because it’s the “right thing to do” even though we all know it’s not physically possible. Equal opportunities are not enough, or so it would be said, because history! Well.. the historical period I care about! And then we all act shocked when someone turns to violence to force people to grapple with reality
    • shadowgovt 2y ago
      The Declaration declares people were "created equal," and even that phrase has historical context to answer "in what sense?" Nobody is born with divine right of kings. That's the point. Other senses of equality come later and with good reason.
      • zarathustreal 2y ago
        I disagree that “other senses of equality” come with “good reason.” In fact, I find it to be an insidious corruption of the meaning of the word to further the agenda of those in power. That’s exactly how evil works. Wolves in sheep’s clothing. “Standing for equality” while owning more wealth than 98% of the population.
        • shadowgovt 2y ago
          There have been, more or less, two major modifications to the Constitution. We are now on version 3, depending on how you slice it. There have also been modifications to our understanding of freedoms. The old comprehension of freedoms the government should safeguard evolved to freedom of speech (and expression), freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. It's okay for people to decide there are more equalities relevant than the simple protection against divine birthright mandates. Especially since we've had hundreds of years to witness the consequences of believing that kind of equality is all that matters. > “Standing for equality” while owning more wealth than 98% of the population. I'm afraid I'd have to know who you are thinking of as wolves in sheep's clothing to know what you mean here.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  DEI is a strange issue in that nearly everybody agrees that it's a good target to aim for yet any action taken to get there is discrimination. I frankly see it as a cheap shortcut that some very privileged people want to take to try to wash away the sins of our racist past, not to help people, but to make ourselves feel better- or attempt to.
  • AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • zarathustreal 2y ago
    I think the modern-day conflation of the philosophical notion of diversity with “diversity of skin color” / “racial diversity” is actually harmful. When we speak of diversity today we often imply a sort of supposed-deserved reparations toward the “minorities.” Obviously there are so many incorrect aspects of these assumptions, but many people in power, perhaps all, have accumulated guilt that needs an outlet. Diversity, the platonic form, is about diversity of thought, opinion, and experience. It is about improving our ability as a group to solve the problems we face by introducing alternative perspectives and viewpoints. It has nothing to do with race or gender necessarily but demand for diversity greatly outweighs the supply and as with all measured things, measuring the number of “diverse” hires has ceased to be a meaningful metric. Granted, it never was a meaningful metric as such, but it has become actively harmful in modern day.
    • rayiner 2y ago
      > think the modern-day conflation of the philosophical notion of diversity with “diversity of skin color” / “racial diversity” is actually harmful. I absolutely agree with this. To use myself as an example: as a Bangladeshi who grew up in the American south, I bring a super diverse viewpoint to a group of say white new englanders. But why does that matter in a professional setting? I’d love to hear someone precisely articulate how they think I’d behave differently from a white new englander in the same position, and why that “diversity” would make the team “stronger.”
• rayiner 2y ago
  I’m glad that MIT is standing up for an evidence based approach to all this, as they did with reinstating the SAT. Skin color differences don’t make organizations or schools better or worse: https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1296/GreenHandMar2024.pdf?mimetype=pdf https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1296/GreenHandMar2024.p.... (Lack of diversity, of course, may be evidence of underlying race-based discrimination.) It was an idea that was developed in response to Supreme Court cases that prohibited using express racial quotas to eliminate the effects of past discrimination. So there was a need to come up with a different rationale for racial rebalancing.
  • eapressoandcats 2y ago
    The SAT thing was wild. I have no idea why people thought making the admissions criteria more opaque and fudge-able would help prevent bias and racism. I saw the same thing at a company I worked at where they found at that Black people were getting lower performance ratings and there were people in the Diversity interest group advocating getting rid of numeric ratings so, you know, instead of knowing there was bias we would… not know? Like maybe it was a management psy-op or something but that was insane.
    • algorias 2y ago
      > instead of knowing there was bias Why do you automatically assume this? Might be related to why people wanted to hide these numbers.
      • eapressoandcats 2y ago
        I was surprised because the person suggesting it wanted to get rid of it even though it helped his case. His argument was literally that it would help Black employees advance to get rid of the numbers. I would have expected management to want to hide the numbers.
    • underlipton 2y ago
      This feels like the "defund/abolish the police" issue again. "Please retire this particular testing regime which seems to game-able via wealth and which further entrenches existing disparities," gets turned into and mischaracterized as, "Get rid of numeric ratings," because it's easier to argue against AND allows for an even more incumbent-advantageous solution to be implemented if it happens to be toppled. If we went with the actual recommendation (e.g., to complete the analogy sandwich, "dismantle the current institution and establish a new one with a fundamentally different structure which allows for security/investigation functions to be carried out without the baggage of the previous institution"), something might actually change for the better, and we can't have that.
• khana 2y ago
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• deleted 2y ago
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• civilrights 2y ago
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• wiseowise 2y ago
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• llm_trw 2y ago
  >DEI statements are important because they show individual awareness of historical inequities and current biases that form modern society. Only the currently approved ones. The perfect example: holocaust denial. Ask anyone in the US how many people died in the holocaust. The answer is 6 million and they are all Jews. The real number is 14 million with 8 million Slavs, 6 million Jews and 2 million misc of gays, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, the work shy, etc.. The double think is so strong that you can have two people from the same village, in the same camp, dead on the same day and have one be a victim of the holocaust, and the other not just because one was a Jew and the other a Communist.
  • macintux 2y ago
    Germany and Russia both committed daunting atrocities during the war, killed millions of people, but it's unsurprising that people associate "Holocaust" with 6 million Jewish dead, because the Jewish genocide is where the label originated.
  • vladgur 2y ago
    Wait so your definition of Holocaust denier is not the person that denies that 6 million Jews were systematically killed by the Nazi Germany machine, but the person who believes in the Holocaust of the Jews, but does not include other atrocities perpetrated by Nazis on the European population? Can you clarify? And in your opinion, did these DEI statements ever have Jews in mind?
  • Reasoning 2y ago
    Because the Holocaust can refer to either the Nazi's genocide of Jews or all the genocides carried out by Nazi Germany. Most often it is the former. So to reframe this, if you ask people how many people died in the Jewish genocide they'll probably give you the figure of how many Jews died, yes. They aren't ignoring all of the other victims, they're giving you the statistic of what they thought you asked for. This is no different than separating out the genocide of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire and the genocide of Greeks by the same regime.
    • llm_trw 2y ago
• photochemsyn 2y ago
  When recruiting students into science/technology-centric paths (which is what MIT is looking for), it's important to accept that the required mix of interest in the subject and a strong work ethic is just not all that common. It's also difficult to predict which students are going to have those characteristics based solely on high school grades, SAT scores, etc. Thus excluding anyone from the pool of applicants on the basis of things like gender, ethnicity, etc. means you end up with fewer students going into challenging math and science programs, which is really not a good outcome in terms of remaining competitive with China and other booming technological sectors. For example, Caltech used to be all-male until c.1970 and is now about 45% female at the undergraduate level - but the curriculum is still as rigorous as ever. P.S. STEAM is better than STEM; the arts these days have many tie-ins with technology and STEM students with no experience of any of the arts are missing out on many economic and personal growth opportunities.
  • YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
    We already have a word for "STEAM": "Academia". Unless you don't consider, say, History an art or a science, in which case, why do you hate historians so much that you'd make up an acronym that basically means "not you specifically"?
• pfdietz 2y ago
  I'm getting the impression a lot of Americans are now not just comfortable with systemic inequality, but are gravitating toward a position that it's actually desirable. In this environment, DEI bafflegab just pushes them in that direction.
  • slenocchio 2y ago
    That's a mischaracterization. No one is _for_ inequality. The opposition you speak of is _for_ race/gender blind meritocracy. Anyone with a little knowledge of economics understands that groups of people cut across any dimension will always have different outcomes; Russian Americans earn more than French Americans, Japanese Americans earn more than Fillipino Americans, taller people earn more than shorter people, etc. No one thinks inequality is desirable. The opposition you speak of think it's unavoidable. And bad public policy will have effects that make the situation worse for everyone.
    • pfdietz 2y ago
      > No one is _for_ inequality. I suggest that's an extraordinarily naive statement.
      • CoastalCoder 2y ago
        I assumed it was hyperbole on the GP's part.
      • slenocchio 2y ago
        Can you send me writing or video of any serious thinker advocating for this? The OP is a common straw-man characterization of the position I described.
        • pfdietz 2y ago
          > serious thinker No True Scotsman detected.
• theoldlove 2y ago
  Not a lot of actual details in the piece. Anyone have links to academic job ads before and after this alleged change in policy?
• smashah 2y ago
  [flagged]
• davidgerard 2y ago
  This looks very badly sourced.
  • dang 2y ago
    I agree. I'm assuming that https://unherd.com/newsroom/mit-becomes-first-elite-university-to-ban-diversity-statements/ https://unherd.com/newsroom/mit-becomes-first-elite-universi... is true because otherwise they'd be fabricating quotes and that seems unlikely, although the site does have an ideological slant. It's a little surprising that more publications haven't reported on it yet though.
    • davidgerard 2y ago
      I am assuming that there is vastly less to this than this particular cluster of publications, and too many of the commenters here, are getting themselves worked up about.
      • dang 2y ago
        I'm not sure if you're questioning whether the story was true or whether it was important or whether it was offtopic for HN. If it was untrue, then we will have made a bad moderation call and should have waited. However, today has brought more 3rd party reports on the story, albeit still from ideologically slanted publications (e.g. https://nypost.com/2024/05/06/us-news/mit-bans-controversial-diversity-statement-hiring-requirement-they-dont-work/ https://nypost.com/2024/05/06/us-news/mit-bans-controversial...), so I think the odds of it being true are getting a bit higher. If you mean it wasn't important, that's a matter of preference. There's no story on the front page that everyone thinks is important. It's enough if enough do. If you mean it was offtopic for HN, I've addressed that in a bunch of other places.
        • davidgerard 2y ago
          Sorry, I just meant to the story itself. NY Post and Unherd are low-quality sources given to beatups they think are in favour of their ideology. I am specifically sceptical that this is any sort of significant thing, let alone a huge deal. I'm not saying Unherd falsified quotes or anything, but I'm not at all convinced that this passes e.g. the Wikipedia "reliable sources" test of being worth mentioning in general (which Unherd probably wouldn't be and the NYP explicitly isn't). Has anything mainstream covered it? I had a look in Google News for "MIT DEI" and it was overwhelmingly trash-tier sources of the Unherd/NYP level.
• DebtDeflation 2y ago
  My approach whenever DEI comes up now is to not express a position or opinion supporting or opposing DEI itself but to simply cite statute and recent case law. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Section 703): >"It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer - (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." Duvall v. Novant Health, Inc. >"To be clear, employers may, if they so choose, utilize D&I-type programs. What they cannot do is take adverse employment actions against employees based on their race or gender to implement such a program." Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which applied specifically to higher educational institutions, gives a very good indication as to how SCOTUS is likely to rule when a case involving private employment inevitably lands on its docket in the near future. Taking race into account when making employment decisions will be prohibited. Full stop. That includes setting race based targets/quotas, tying bonuses to their achievement, and establishing set aside jobs. What will likely be permissible will be efforts to expand candidate pools and training initiatives that focus on eliminating biases.
• throwaway5959 2y ago
  Well now that that’s sorted, maybe we can start fixing real problems with higher Ed.
• _lvbh 2y ago
  Beyond the culture war, I find DEI uncomfortable. I’m not the most articulate and don’t keep up with modern trends. Ask me about computers or tell me to code, but writing about social subjects when I barely leave my room and even then only to exercise feels like a nightmare. I’ve been asked to optionally write something similar during university applications in the past but along with ethnicity and other private information, N/A is the best I can think of.
  • uejfiweun 2y ago
    I'm with you on this one. I take pride in being out of tune with pop culture, I much prefer to focus on my real-life relationships, tech, personal projects, etc. This DEI stuff seems to change so rapidly that I often have no clue whether something I said was OK or not OK in the eyes of the overlords. It's caused me quite a bit of anxiety, especially during the peak of it in June 2020.
  • tumetab1 2y ago
    Same and I keep up with some of subjects but the whole DEI feels like a minefield where any thing voiced can be used against you. Example: you notice that corporate culture is a bit aggressive on the feedback which causes some negatives effects. Someone says that everyone should do some training to give more neutral feedback but I notice that also gives room to less articulated people voice less concerns as they fear they could be badly perceived. Still, everyone around pretends that are no tradeoffs, just positive effects. I have no idea how to properly give that feedback to the organization as it will be probably be seen as odd/weird or even talking down HR work.
• londons_explore 2y ago
  And will we, in about 50 years after emails get released, find a sizable donation from Elon Musk a few days before this announcement?
• devaiops9001 2y ago
  [flagged]
• lazyeye 2y ago
  This is fantastic news. Requiring faculty staff to write what is essentially a short ideological treatise to be considered for employment is more in line with something I'd expect in Mao's China.
• ajsnigrutin 2y ago
  I never understood the american obsession with race (well, and sexuality). I live in a small EU country on the edge of the balkans... what the hell should I write if I wanted to get hired? I'm white... everyone here is white... but just by living here, I might have a more "diverse" worldview (compared to a white american is massachussets, with enouh knowledge and money to attend MIT) than someone of a different race (also living in massachussets, with enough money and kowledge to attend MIT). But as to "what i've done", I can only put "saw two black people this year, both were tourists, saw a couple of buses of chinese tourists, or maybe japanese, I don't know". Engineering schools should keep to engineering, killer robots won't care about your race, no matter if you're the one building them or the one making the weapons to fight against them.
  • transcriptase 2y ago
    Which sort of goes hand in hand with the idea of white privilege. If I grow up dirt poor, with uneducated parents, in a rural dirt poor region where there wasn’t anyone except other white people in a 100 mile radius for me to be favoured over, apparently I’ve still benefited from some sort of systemic or inherent bias in favour of myself on the basis of race. Which apparently needs to be corrected and puts me at a disadvantage when applying to certain schools or jobs.
    • axoltl 2y ago
      The term "white privilege" is a bit of a misnomer. What it's mean to convey is the fact that a white person is much less likely to get passed over for something than a person of color. It doesn't mean an actual privilege, more the lack of a hardship. That doesn't mean one didn't experience hardship, just that it's unlikely to have been due to the color of your skin.
      • llm_trw 2y ago
        Which may have been true in 1970s, today I get told in emails to pass over White and Asian candidates because we need more diversity. The sheer hubris of putting racism in writing makes me feel like I'm in a topsy turvy 1950s.
• ThinkBeat 2y ago
  You cannot base science on political declarations /qualifications instead of merit, if you wish for advancements in the fields. This is all the administrative class at universitets and government, declaring their raison d'etre and accumulated authority. They cant really understand science or do much about it, so you cannot base power on that, so they must work hard to construct a vehicle that is untouchable my sciences, that will be feared. Then you can cement your authority on the new construct and keep adding to it, to accumulate more importance and power. Quicky this vehicle will overtake science in relative importance for various institutions because this is about "justice and doing what is right and decent". Science is mundane and boring.
• deleted 2y ago
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• pygar 2y ago
  Most applicants for a desirable position are likely to come from the majority group of your region. So for a minority candidate to be selected they would not only have to be equal to the others - but better. That seems unfair to me. What does that mean over the long term regarding how you hire? That said, discussions about DEI tend to ignore that thing we are never meant to talk about: social class. Social class and money overrides everything.
  • samatman 2y ago
    > Applicants for a desirable position are likely to come from the majority group of your region. So for a minority candidate to be selected they would not only have to be equal to the others - but better. Your second sentence here doesn't actually follow from the first.
    • pygar 2y ago
      If you have 5 equally good candidates, 4 men and 1 woman that woman has a 1/5 chance of being selected. The others also have a 1/5 chance as individuals but the candidate selected has a 4/5 likelihood of being male. If you want to hire more women what do you do exactly?
      • gameman144 2y ago
        In this scenario, you should expect to have a representation of around 1 woman per 4 men, if the rate of qualified candidates is 1 woman per 4 men. If you want to hire more than that ratio, you have to be doing some discarding of otherwise qualified candidates on the basis only of being men.
        • pygar 2y ago
          Sure. But even if you want to hire at about 1 women per 4 men you would need to actively do so. I.E. create a hiring policy in which she would be selected instead of one of the other equally qualified men.
• Waterluvian 2y ago
  I’m a bit oppositionally defiant, so something like this, while I wholly believe in the core sentiment (of diversity, not the affirmations), would engender immediate resistance from me.
• prepend 2y ago
  ChatGPT is fantastic for writing DEI statements.
• arduanika 2y ago
  The hubbub began to subside slowly as Major – de Coverley paused in the doorway with a frown of puzzled disapproval, as though viewing something bizarre. He started forward in a straight line, and the wall of officers before him parted like the Red Sea. Glancing neither left nor right, he strode indomitably up to the steam counter and, in a clear, full-bodied voice that was gruff with age and resonant with ancient eminence and authority, said: ‘Gimme eat.’ Instead of eat, Corporal Snark gave Major – de Coverley a loyalty oath to sign. Major – de Coverley swept it away with mighty displeasure the moment he recognized what it was, his good eye flaring up blindingly with fiery disdain and his enormous old corrugated face darkening in mountainous wrath. ‘Gimme eat, I said,’ he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled ominously through the silent tent like claps of distant thunder. Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble. He glanced toward Milo pleadingly for guidance. For several terrible seconds there was not a sound. Then Milo nodded. ‘Give him eat,’ he said. Corporal Snark began giving Major – de Coverley eat. Major – de Coverley turned from the counter with his tray full and came to a stop. His eyes fell on the groups of other officers gazing at him in mute appeal, and, with righteous belligerence, he roared: ‘Give everybody eat!’ ‘Give everybody eat!’ Milo echoed with joyful relief, and the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade came to an end. (From Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Longer passage here: https://mathematicalcrap.com/2022/08/14/the-great-loyalty-oath-crusade/ https://mathematicalcrap.com/2022/08/14/the-great-loyalty-oa... )
• deleted 2y ago
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• jrflowers 2y ago
  [flagged]
• xyst 2y ago
  What the hell is a “DEI” statement anyways? The site is a bit light on what this means, only a bunch of satirical and sarcastic posts. Almost feels like it was generated by LLM. Is it something like this? “I helped a group of first generation, low income students apply to college and obtain $50,000 in grants” Not sure what’s wrong with this…
  • jballer 2y ago
    No, it’s a profession of ideological commitment. What you suggest would get a low to middling score. Here’s a rubric that’s representative of others I’ve seen: https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/Rubric%20for%20Evaluating%20Diversity%20Statements_FIRST%20FIIRRE.pdf https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/Rubric... Note how saying you’ll “treat everyone the same” will get you penalized. How doing the things they want isn’t enough to demonstrate your commitment to their cause. They want true believers, but will settle for people who are willing to let others control what they say and do.
    • charlieyu1 2y ago
      As an Asian, this is really scary, and reminds me of Communist times where people are often asked to write "self reflections".
  • juunpp 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • kristopolous 2y ago
      have any citations or specific examples?
      • nxicvyvy 2y ago
        Examples in the last paragraph not enough? https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/21/24079371/google-ai-gemini-generative-inaccurate-historical https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/21/24079371/google-ai-gemini...
• hilux 2y ago
  Note that this ban appears to be only for faculty hiring. Most MIT employees are staff. I don't know if MIT requires DEI statements from staff hires, but I know other universities do, e.g. UC Berkeley, where I used to work. And yet, (as one example of many) check out the 7/7 white faces in leadership at executive.berkeley.edu/our-team
  • jballer 2y ago
    You really took a turn there by calling attention to their skin color. The interesting thing here isn’t that they look the same, but that they think the same.
    • hilux 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • jballer 2y ago
        > Only a white person could come up with that. lol
      • jballer 2y ago
        “Taking a turn” means I think I understand where you’re going, but then you take your point someplace else. I agree with most of what you’re saying. The casual racial stereotyping is where you lose me.
        • hilux 2y ago
          > The casual racial stereotyping is where you lose me. Nothing "casual" about it. Very deliberate. White people completely unwilling to see blatant racism (e.g. in hiring) when it stares them in the face.
          • jballer 2y ago
            You are a parody of your own point and you don’t even see it. Truly remarkable.
• redder23 2y ago
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• steve_taylor 2y ago
  It's quite telling that the MIT president was too scared to announce this despite only 1 in 20 faculty supporting DEI statements.
  • karaterobot 2y ago
    Just want to note that, currently, this is the highest comment in the thread which makes any direct references to the article we're all nominally discussing, and it's about 100 comments down. Have an extra upvote.
  • kristopolous 2y ago
    Quoting: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mit-scraps-diversity-statements-in-faculty-hiring-process-after-discovering-they-don-t-work/ar-BB1lRFgL https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mit-scraps-diversity-state... The decision was made by MIT president Sally Kornbluth, with support from the school’s provost and six academic deans, a spokesperson told National Review on Sunday afternoon. “My goals are to tap into the full scope of human talent, to bring the very best to MIT, and to make sure they thrive once here,” Kornbluth said in a statement provided to NR. “We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”
    • TMWNN 2y ago
      steve_taylor's point is that had National Review not asked for a comment, MIT would never have formally announced this at all.
      • kristopolous 2y ago
        Do they generally put out announcements on Sunday afternoon? They made sure to be accessible for this. That's probably already an exception. Campuses are usually a M-F 9-5 kind of place. So I think that's pure speculation. There wasn't that much time, they're usually closed on the weekend and there's no expectation for them to swiftly contact the media for every single change in policy.
• lupire 2y ago
  This news is interesting (but is there even a legitimate source?) but this flame bait troll article is well below HN standards. Slightly better reporting: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mit-scraps-diversity-statements-in-faculty-hiring-process-after-discovering-they-dont-work/ https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mit-scraps-diversity-sta...
  • everybodyknows 2y ago
    Wondering why there's no leaked copy of the email -- or was it promulgated by phone calls and announcements in the regular meetings?
  • zamadatix 2y ago
    That National Review article seems to be a rehash of it's reference from https://unherd.com/newsroom/mit-becomes-first-elite-university-to-ban-diversity-statements/ https://unherd.com/newsroom/mit-becomes-first-elite-universi... which claims to actually have been in communication with the university.
• sensanaty 2y ago
  The western idea of DEI has always puzzled me ever since I first came across it (or at least the D portion of DEI, which in my mind is the most important one). I'm a Serb by blood and grew up in and have lived in Indonesia for the majority of my life, and I went to an international school with kids from quite literally every single corner of the earth, many of them being some exotic mix of various ethnicities. Despite that, many of us are actually amazingly similar in many ways - We have a very distinct int'l kid accent that we all share, we grew up with extremely similar experiences, listening to the same music, being exposed to all the same things. Despite the superficial differences, I actually wouldn't call us a very diverse group at all when you really look at us. Some years later when I was studying, I met an int'l girl from the Bahamas and I was amazed at how similar her and my life were in many ways, despite being a literal ocean apart in completely different islands/nations. I had infinitely more in common with her than any other Serb I've ever met, yet alone the Dutch people I've met in my move to the Netherlands. When I moved to NL, I instantly noticed that my friends and I were very different to the people there. Yet if some HR person would interview me, a white-skinned guy, and then my best friend, a black-skinned guy who has African/Japanese ancestry, I'd definitely be placed in the same "bucket" as the white Dutchies around me and my friend with the black Dutchies, despite him and I actually having identical experiences and mindsets and not really having anything in common with the Dutchies. This is, of course, understandable as an initial reaction, but my problem is that all the DEI shenanigans never get past that initial surface-level nonsense. I will probably never be labelled as anything other than "generic white guy" or perhaps at a stretch sometimes, the "eastern european guy". I guess what I'm trying to get at in this strange ramble is that ultimately DEI should be focused on diversity of thought, and not just superficial characteristics, yet it never works out that way. Often the exact opposite, in fact, where viewpoints that don't match the superficial characteristics are often swatted away since those situations are harder to navigate than the cookie-cutter approach.
  • throwaway22032 2y ago
    I identify very strongly with what you've written here. A guy who studied at Eton and a guy who grew up in a rural village in Uganda couldn't be any more different regardless of whether they can both tick a Black African box on an application form. The same is obviously true of a guy from a poor part of Glasgow vs. a guy who studied at Eton, regardless of whether both could tick a White British box. It's so far from any reasonable sense of truth that I feel like I'm in some sort of bad acid trip whenever the topic comes up. To me, the act of trying to categorise people in this way is in and of itself horribly racist.
• bastawhiz 2y ago
  Ignoring the pros and cons of these statements, I would bet money that the biggest (or perhaps "real") reason they're being axed is that nobody is reading them. It's one thing to all agree that something sounds great on paper, until you're forced to sit down and read page after page after page of drivel the authors didn't want to have to write while trying to say the things that you probably want to hear.
• underlipton 2y ago
  It seems like it's every day that I see signs that institutions are preparing for and aligning themselves with a prospective Trump presidency. Recent purges of media are another big one, especially of ones featuring marginalized groups, though thoughtful and challenging stories in general are targets - inclusive, ironically-though-quite-creatively, of something like Helldivers 2. You might not think that that example counts, but I do. It fits what is fast becoming the zeitgeist, one of monoliths flexing their ability to act with impunity, individuals left with nothing more than futile, quiet acts of resistance (which don't ultimately do much resisting). The guy at the top is doing it, after all, so for those at the top of their particular interest (market, field, etc.): why not? Who's going to stop you? Our democracy might be and remain intact, but our democratic values - particularly those of valuing forthright thought; of speaking up and across instead of down; and of not hiding our faults behind smug strength or stone walls of silence, but instead exposing them so that they may be cleansed and sutured - do seem to be in jeopardy. This is an example of choosing easy over rigorous, and that's sad, especially for MIT. We have ample evidence of how this happens in societies descending into radical nationalism, if not fascism. So, now I'm just wondering if we're the "learn from the past"-types or the "doomed to repeat it"-types. (Just as much as I'd like to know the answer to that, I'd love to hear from someone who understands what I'm trying to say here, even if they disagree.)
• qujine 2y ago
  > I have posted quite a bit about them (see collection here), and object to them because they are not only compelled speech and are often completely irrelevant to what you’re applying for, but also ignore the fact that there are many ways to make contributions to society beyond enacting DEI. (For example, what about a college applicant who has taught illiterate adults to read?) That is DEI. The writer is either confused or gaslighting for their own agenda.
• thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > Land acknowledgement statements are creeping into the US these days. What are the odds they make it to Israel?
  • eli_gottlieb 2y ago
    You want us to acknowledge whether we're on the traditional tribal lands of Dan, Binyamin, Menasseh, Yehudah, etc?
    • Natsu 2y ago
      They'd probably want to go back to the Canaanites.
    • thaumasiotes 2y ago
      > Binyamin This one is really interesting. I note that you don't list the counterpart at all, but here's a selection from Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: > In Syria in the early second millennium BCE, Amorite-speaking people grew up knowing if they belonged to the Banu-Yamina ("sons of the right" or "sons of the south") or the Banu-Sim'al ("sons of the left" or "sons of the north"). Benjamin is the only name I know of to memorialize an ethnic conflict that was apparently won long, long ago, so long ago that most people with an active interest in the time period have no idea it existed. As far as your question goes, just the form of your answer is pretty good at reinforcing the point of my question.
  • snapetom 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • dang 2y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40270596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40270596.
    • thaumasiotes 2y ago
      You think it's off topic? What would be an example of a reason land acknowledgments are a bad idea in Israel that wouldn't also make them a bad idea somewhere else?
• zephrx1111 2y ago
  My point: DEI is the result, not the mean. If you do “DEI”, you will result in something un-DEI. We you do things right, DEI will show itself eventually. You can't by controlling the thermometer to control the temperature.
• tejtm 2y ago
  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statments (DEI) For those previously blissfully ignorant; such as me.
• surume 2y ago
  Yes, but just like Stanford, you probably can't say the word "American" without getting summoned to a disciplinary hearing and asking your landlord to have you evicted ah la San Francisco's way of doing things...
• zzo38computer 2y ago
  I agree with then that it is better to not require DEI (due to the reasons they mention there (they are compelled speech and are irrelevant to what you are applying for, and that there are other contributions that are independent from DEI, as explained there), and others), but that does not necessarily mean that DEI should be banned; it only means that they should not be required, and that DEI statements alone are not a suitable criteria for admission. What is a suitable criteria is your competence at your work, if you have done it good. Wikipedia says "Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are organizational frameworks which seek to promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination on the basis of identity or disability." This is not inherently a bad thing, although bad things can be (and are) done with it (like bad things can be (and are) done with many things), such as the required DEI statements over everything else. Just because someone wrote a DEI statement does not necessarily mean that they are not qualified (or good at science or whatever it is they are applying for) nor does it necessary mean that they are qualified, and the same is true if they did not make a DEI statement. One article (apparently by the same author) mentions that the Canadian government denied Patanjali Kambhampati (a physical chemist who seems quite accomplished, and works on quantum dots, has published 132 papers, and has an h index of 37) grants because he refuses to write the kind of woke diversity statement that the Canadian grant authorities demand. It also says, "What's even worse than diversity statements, is evaluating them as the first step in the grant-giving process". Of course, a better evaluation should be by the scientific merit, not by diversity statements.
• KorematsuFredt 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • saagarjha 2y ago
    Not it's not lmao
    • KorematsuFredt 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • justinclift 2y ago
        Dude, insulting people is really not on. :(
      • saagarjha 2y ago
        \> Posts some Hinduvta nonsense as fact \> Everyone rightfully goes “bro wtf are you talking about” \> Guess the triggered snowflakes are really just proving my point
        • KorematsuFredt 2y ago
          Read responses to this tweet: https://twitter.com/USAndMumbai/status/1787772852084830251 https://twitter.com/USAndMumbai/status/1787772852084830251 May be in the HN bubble "South Asia" is an expected term, very likely because HN crowd might be subjected to far left academia. But it is offensive and racist for actual Indians.
      • dgfitz 2y ago
        You’re delusional.
  • HelloNurse 2y ago
    Calling "south Asia" the somewhat geographically and ethnically coherent region consisting of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan (excluding other parts of Asia that are located equally south because they are distinctly east or west) is a refreshingly objective naming. Maybe such a region is too large and diverse to be meaningful, but there's no reason to accuse anybody of confusing parts of the old British empire or of embracing silly nationalist newspeak.
• WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
  Again, Vaclav Havel's "Power of the Powerless" somehow comes to mind.
• doreenkevin825 2y ago
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• babra4151 2y ago
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