I do hope you realize that your initial comment was the actual straw man here. You misrepresented the argument as being “diversity over quality” (and calling it

I do hope you realize that your initial comment was the actual straw man here. You misrepresented the argument as being “diversity over quality” (and calling it “premature optimization”), when that was never the argument. Additionally, your comment reveals that you enjoy a fair amount of privilege; you say you don’t care who presents, meaning you are fine with the status quo amongst conference speakers. Yes, we would all like to live in a meritocracy, but please don’t claim that we do. Any comment that doesn’t acknowledge that the status quo is unfairly balanced to favor white men at the cost of all other demographics, is a comment arguing in favor of the status quo, and thus, unhelpful if not downright harmful. I know people like you mean well, but please stop saying “I don’t care WHO presents, I just want quality” because every time you say that, you send the message that you don’t care to improve the sexism and racism in our community. I DO care who presents: I want it to be a lineup of both quality AND diversity (because I don’t like homogenous perspectives), and I am 100% convinced that this is absolutely possible to achieve. It just requires hard work and smart thinking.