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Despite all the hyperbole in this thread I will try to speak plainly. It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people

Despite all the hyperbole in this thread I will try to speak plainly. It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc. I'm sure most people choose to close their eyes to such things and move on and focus on the actual important work but there must be unimaginable waste going on in addition to unethical race based preferences.

deleted 2y ago
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tomlockwood 2y ago
Do you have any verifiable numbers to back up the impact?
- dnissley 2y ago
  "A 2021 American Enterprise Institute survey of academic job postings found that 19% required DEI statements, and elite institutions were more likely to require them." https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/fire-statement-use-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-criteria-faculty-hiring-and https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/fire-statement-use-di... "Speech First, a group advocating for First Amendment rights on US campuses, released an investigation on Thursday that found 165 of 248 selected institutions — from American University to Williams College — mandate DEI-related classes to meet general education requirements." https://nypost.com/2024/04/11/us-news/two-thirds-of-us-colleges-universities-require-dei-classes-to-graduate-report/ https://nypost.com/2024/04/11/us-news/two-thirds-of-us-colle...
  - relaxing 2y ago
    “DEI exists” isn’t an argument.
    - kortilla 2y ago
      That is quite literally what this thread is about.
      - relaxing 2y ago
        I don’t think they were asking to quantify the existence of DEI, that would be silly. DEI’s existence is a fact, that’s not under debate.
        kortilla 2y ago
        How much it exists in the hiring process is very much under debate.
        relaxing 2y ago
        Of course it exists in the hiring process. How is that question? Maybe the real issue is people don’t actually know what DEI is.
        kortilla 2y ago
        Do you understand the difference between “how much” and “does it”?
    - pizlonator 2y ago
      DEI is a good idea that has led to a catastrophic backlash. Imagine a world where us intellectual types hadn’t given the right this kind of talking point on a silver platter. Election might have gone differently.
      - relaxing 2y ago
        I like to imagine a world where the institutions that were supposed to protect us had done their jobs, and enforced the gentleman’s agreement we had, that worked so well these past 50 years.
  - tomlockwood 2y ago
    What does this prove?
    - dnissley 2y ago
      Look, there are multiple lawsuits against universities regarding their hiring practices going on right now. Outside of academia you have things like the FAA hiring scandal coming to light: https://substack.com/home/post/p-156166190 https://substack.com/home/post/p-156166190 The list goes on and on.
      - tomlockwood 2y ago
        What's the "unimaginable waste"? Can you put a comparative number on it?
        dnissley 2y ago
        Do you think that DEI is just some line item in a budget that can easily be produced? Without which we'll just have to shrug our shoulders and endlessly equivocate about how their might be some waste?
        tomlockwood 2y ago
        All I'm asking for is evidence of the problem you're saying exists.
- Gabriel54 2y ago
  > ...Faculty Diversity Action Plan, a special funding program for diversity-focused faculty hiring, which ran until 2023, when it was restructured and renamed. Created in 2020, the program played a significant role in dictating whom the university hired. In a 2022 faculty meeting, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences was asked how many professors were hired through the program since it began. He estimated that around 90% were either hired through the program or were spousal hires. [1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-dei-conquered-the-university-of-colorado-boulder-discrimination-hiring-professors-0c306a9e?st=fzjffE&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-dei-conquered-the-university...
  - tomlockwood 2y ago
    What was the impact?
    - Gareth321 2y ago
      Impact is irrelevant. Racist policy is immoral and indefensible.
      - tomlockwood 2y ago
        What's the "unimaginable waste" OP mentions?
relaxing 2y ago
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- scarab92 2y ago
  Academics should keep in mind that they rely on the generosity of taxpayers to fund their research. They don’t have an entitlement to other people’s money, and if they are perceived as wasting it or spending in discriminatorily then you should expect the public to become less willing to give it to you.
  - etrautmann 2y ago
    That's only true in a very myopic sense. You don't get the US economy (and all of the benefits that come from that) without science and technology and basic research funding.
    - Gabriel54 2y ago
      You are speaking on an intellectual level. The comment you replied to is speaking on a practical, political level. If voters do not like what is going on in universities, they will defund them. This is a political reality.
    - jandrewrogers 2y ago
      ~82% of all R&D funding in the US is non-Federal, and 75+% is industry. The total investment by companies on R&D is about the same as the US defense budget. Many people still think it is like the 1960s and 1970s, when US government funding of R&D was a large percentage of the total. Federal investment in R&D hasn't declined so much as industry massively increased their investment. The Federal government found a niche in basic research for a few decades and funded the vast majority of that. Per NSF, today even basic research is <40% funded by the Federal government, again not due to a decline in Federal funding but due to vast increases in industry investment. This shift toward industry investment in basic research was not overnight, it has been a monotonic trend for decades. Over the last century, the areas where Federal research funding is critical have dwindled greatly in scope because industry spends more money and is willing to take more risks. One of the more interesting stories here is why and how this change happened in the US, to the point where the vast majority of R&D is funded by industry even in areas historically dominated by Federal government funding.
chasing 2y ago
Unethical race-based preferences is what those policies have been trying to fix. Not sure you’re aware of this, but academia used to be basically off-limits to anyone not white and male.
- Gabriel54 2y ago
  > Unethical race-based preferences is what those policies have been trying to fix. I understand that that is the stated intention. I also believe they are racist and discriminatory. > Not sure you’re aware of this, but academia used to be basically off-limits to anyone not white and male. I also understand this. And now it is not. What is the point here?
  - tills13 2y ago
    My guy you aren't getting it. You were lied to. You bought it. You are just plain wrong and openly propagating a lie as fact and you seem to be doubling down.
    - Gabriel54 2y ago
      Is this also a lie? From psychology department at University of Washington [1]: > I advise deleting the statement below as it shows that URM [underrepresented minority] applications were singled out and evaluated differently than non-URM applications (which is not allowed as [redacted] noted) > At a faculty meeting, someone whose name is redacted “informed faculty that the Hiring Committee had three outstanding candidates and so they used DEI to distinguish and select a first offer" [1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity-equity/2023/11/03/u-washington-faculty-search-weighed-race https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity...
      - tills13 2y ago
        Nobody is saying it's not happening but the notion that it's systemic -- as the opposite is -- is categorically a lie and, again, as you've been told a few times in this thread, DEI's goal is to prevent even this scenario from happening as its intended goal is to foster merit-only hiring.
avs733 2y ago
I have written a version of this twice and deleted but just can't let this statement stand unopposed. This is, almost inherently at this point, a rant and my last contribution to this thread. This simply is not the case, I know it is something that you and many others believe is that case but you are being lied to by actual racists. I say that as a white man working in STEM academia. Academia had a long history and tradition of NOT doing meritocracy, but of claiming meritocracy and using bad markers of meritocracy to prove it. The 'DEI work' that people are so concerned about is about trying to make merit based decision making actually merit based. You think that is based on giving some preference, but it isn't - its based on acknowledging and working to eliminate actual prejudice. Its about hiring the best people instead of the person who's advisor is friends with our search chair. I'll give a concrete example: I ran a hiring search for three faculty members. We did a blind search. The hiring committee did not know the gender, race, ethnicity, or even institutional affiliation of any candidate. The candidates were ranked, the top invited for phone interviews, and then ranked again during the interviews with everyone blind to the first set of rankings. We repeated this for a smalled group of in person interviews The order of the rankings at all three phases matched. More relevant, we interviewed and hired the most diverse crop of faculty we have ever hired. Simply because of the appearance who we hired, two different candidates who were did not received interviews emailed me and my department chair to decry that we had used 'DEI' in our BLIND hiring process. One threatened a lawsuit. We blinded it to race, to gender, to all markers of 'diversity', but the gender and race of who we hired was all the proof that person needed they were less qualified than him. In other cases, this 'stuff' protects against asshole colleagues and bad science. (1) Diversity statements help us avoid getting sued by students and employees. The statements that wax philosophic about inclusion, that quote MLK, the ones people use to label this as some ideological test, SUCK to read and get applications ignored because they lack serious thought about being a colleague. The good ones, which get noticed, are about how people work effectively with other people, and how they make an effort to understand people as part of working with them. The context, whether its about being Green, Left-handed, or Neurodivergent tell us whether this person has thought about being a mentor to people unlike them, has a capacity to empathize with a student, or is going to be a self-righteous asshole that is going to make us hate faculty meetings even more. They help us know if their grad students are going to be in tears in the chairs office or the parents of an undergrad are calling the dean. (2) They actually tell us a lot about doing good science and getting grants. Theres a long history in medicine of fucking up because of who is in our participant pool. NIH now makes you articulate about how you will not do bad science through lazy recruitment[2]. We've asked questions about this requirement of candidates during interviews. The answers are fun and telling - using coded language to say you won't recruit Black people because they are 'less reliable' is just evidence you don't get it, not that you are some purist doing important work. That is the DEI you are being propagandized to be against - what it actually is not what you are told it is. It is not hyperbole and you are tired by design - because you are a victim of propaganda. The nonsense narrative that is being pushed is, without concern for the truth, entirely grounded in the assertion that certain groups are unqualified to do intellectual work (c.f.[3]). It is (by design) meant to establish that the mere appearance of a Black Women or a gay person on a faculty is only because they are unqualified. It is meant to exclude people who have always been excluded. It is not about pushing back on (nonexistant) out of control efforts to include them. What is changing is efforts to counteract the actual, long established, clearly evidenced, bias in favor of certain groups of candidates. That is not some ideological project to eliminate people like me because I'm not a minority, that is the thing you want. [1] https://mbb.yale.edu/news/mbb-radically-changing-how-we-search-new-colleagues https://mbb.yale.edu/news/mbb-radically-changing-how-we-sear... [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6053906/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6053906/ [3] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/darren-beattie-state-department-1235255529/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/darren-b...
jillyboel 2y ago
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- antigeox 2y ago
  [dead]
tstactplsignore 2y ago
This is simply a delusion detached from reality. I am a white man in STEM academia. I've never been discriminated against once. None of my white male colleagues have either. They are all successful in academia. And my colleagues who aren't white men are in no way inferior. Just let us vote and ask if we feel discriminated against or oppressed because of DEI. We'll vote no. It's simply a delusion that DEI is some unmeritocratic disaster. The reality is academia has its pick of top talent regardless of race or gender. I don't know any scientists who buy into this delusion irl. Diversity is a small factor in hiring because the field is already predominantly white men and it's no harder to pick top star talent when you diversify. Simply insane that you are promoting the destruction of US science, US foreign aid, and so much of the good stuff the US government does, all in the name of a deeply delusional witch hunt.
- bubblethink 2y ago
  It's an ideological disaster. Viewing this through a white v/s black lens is itself too simplistic. Look at the Harvard affirmative action lawsuit. Asians are in fact and provably being discriminated against. This is also the case in immigration policy. DEI/affirmative action policies were created by the executive and are being undone by the executive. >Just let us vote and ask if we feel discriminated against or oppressed because of DEI. A majority of the electorate did vote for ending this.
  - Xelynega 2y ago
    Shocker, a majority white country voted to end programs that identified biases which benefitted them... > Asians are in fact being discriminated against I have a feeling someone fed you some false information about this case. The judges ruled that Harvard's admission program violated the equal protections act, but never said once that Asian Americans were ever discriminated against. The programs that these decisions got rid of impacted minorities other than Asians a lot more, but for some reason you don't want to talk about that?
- jimkleiber 2y ago
  Even if it's a delusion, people believe it and I think we should take it seriously and help them see through that delusion. I'm not advocating for shutting down these departments at all, or slashing and burning research. I'm hoping that we can help people realize that people love them and care about them and support them more than they could ever imagine, even if they're a white man. I say this as a white man who has dated black women and had them say some really harsh things about me as a white man, only to realize that often it was an internal conflict that they had about being black but also liking some things from white culture. Some of them had been called white by their own black communities, and so feeling stuck between those worlds. I think the vast majority of us just need to learn how to deal with emotional attacks, to realize life is combat and everyone is trying to deal with innumerable conflicts at the same time, all the time.
oglop 2y ago
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jccalhoun 2y ago
"It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc." You mention in another comment diversity in admissions but that is not hiring or grants. Do you have any examples of hiring people based on race in academia?
- hashemian 2y ago
  This is one: https://x.com/JohnDSailer/status/1883648993974169641 https://x.com/JohnDSailer/status/1883648993974169641 I have friends in faculty positions at well-known universities who were very unhappy about these practices, but could not publicly discuss it fearing repercussion, prior to these events. TBC, I am not supporting any of the things happening. I do think the DEI thing went too far, but what the new admin. is doing can be much worse.
- Gabriel54 2y ago
  There are not countless examples. Instead of "hiring of people on the basis of race" I may more accurately say "using race as a decisive factor in the consideration of an application resulting in its acceptance or rejection" which also happens to be illegal. From the journalism department at CU [1]: > Our commitment, should we be successful with this application, is to hire someone from the BIPOC community From the geography department at CU [1]: > Our aim is specifically to hire a Black, Indigenous, or Latinx faculty member From ethnic studies at UC [1]: > We have an urgent and qualified need for BIPOC femme/women of color faculty in an Africana Studies focus who will contribute to the social science division thematic cluster hire in racism and racial inequality. From psychology dept. at U Washington [2]: > I advise deleting the statement below as it shows that URM [underrepresented minority] applications were singled out and evaluated differently than non-URM applications (which is not allowed as [redacted] noted) > At a faculty meeting, someone whose name is redacted “informed faculty that the Hiring Committee had three outstanding candidates and so they used DEI to distinguish and select a first offer" [1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-dei-conquered-the-university-of-colorado-boulder-discrimination-hiring-professors-0c306a9e?st=HnnsrN&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-dei-conquered-the-university... [2] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity-equity/2023/11/03/u-washington-faculty-search-weighed-race https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity...
nonethewiser 2y ago
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- dang 2y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - nonethewiser 2y ago
    [flagged]
cat_theorist 2y ago
Hiring people based on race (white) and gender (male) is what happened _before_ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. Do you know what is the original and ultimate identity politics? Enslaving people because you deem them inferior to your own race. The civil war, the civil rights movement, and modern social justice movements are a response to this, not the root of the conflict. I'm a white guy in academia - not tenured yet - and I cannot fathom the ignorance necessary to believe that white males are at an disadvantage because of university administrators being "woke". Give me a break!
- user3939382 2y ago
  How does it require ignorance to believe something that’s spelled out in black and white policies? It’s not even belief it’s just reading comprehension at that point.
- malwrar 2y ago
  > Enslaving people because you deem them inferior to your own race. This is irrelevant to the discussion of hiring in 2025, unless you believe your fellow “white” population harbors literal beliefs of a.) racial identity and b.) racial superiority, that c.) the “white” people making hiring decisions are actively excluding candidates based on these beliefs, and that d.) application of a nonwhite bias is just and measured in the face of a-c. I think all are incredible claims, and they’ve only lasted a decade because they have become rabidly-defended shibboleths for people who want to fix racism (and sexism and…). > I cannot fathom the ignorance necessary to believe that white males are at an disadvantage because of university administrators being "woke" If 1000 group A individuals and 10 group B individuals apply for a team, and both groups are accepted at ~50% due to a group B preference, then group B is ~100x as likely to be selected for the role due to that preference. Such observations are where my own perception of “disadvantage” comes from. Unless you’re claiming that no such preference exists, or that some prejudice you might have about group A justifies its individual members’ relatively unlikely chances of being selected, I can’t see how this preference doesn’t qualify as a disadvantage for such individuals.
  - 1832 2y ago
nonethewiser 2y ago
DEI is nominally good but its just racism. Not like reverse racism or indirect racism - just racism. There’s really no other way to slice intentionally discriminating based on race. Whats probably most egregious is the idea that its good because its racist against the right people.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

tomlockwood 2y ago

Do you have any verifiable numbers to back up the impact?

dnissley 2y ago
"A 2021 American Enterprise Institute survey of academic job postings found that 19% required DEI statements, and elite institutions were more likely to require them." https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/fire-statement-use-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-criteria-faculty-hiring-and https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/fire-statement-use-di... "Speech First, a group advocating for First Amendment rights on US campuses, released an investigation on Thursday that found 165 of 248 selected institutions — from American University to Williams College — mandate DEI-related classes to meet general education requirements." https://nypost.com/2024/04/11/us-news/two-thirds-of-us-colleges-universities-require-dei-classes-to-graduate-report/ https://nypost.com/2024/04/11/us-news/two-thirds-of-us-colle...
- relaxing 2y ago
  “DEI exists” isn’t an argument.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    That is quite literally what this thread is about.
    - relaxing 2y ago
      I don’t think they were asking to quantify the existence of DEI, that would be silly. DEI’s existence is a fact, that’s not under debate.
      - kortilla 2y ago
        How much it exists in the hiring process is very much under debate.
        relaxing 2y ago
        Of course it exists in the hiring process. How is that question? Maybe the real issue is people don’t actually know what DEI is.
        kortilla 2y ago
        Do you understand the difference between “how much” and “does it”?
  - pizlonator 2y ago
    DEI is a good idea that has led to a catastrophic backlash. Imagine a world where us intellectual types hadn’t given the right this kind of talking point on a silver platter. Election might have gone differently.
    - relaxing 2y ago
      I like to imagine a world where the institutions that were supposed to protect us had done their jobs, and enforced the gentleman’s agreement we had, that worked so well these past 50 years.
- tomlockwood 2y ago
  What does this prove?
  - dnissley 2y ago
    Look, there are multiple lawsuits against universities regarding their hiring practices going on right now. Outside of academia you have things like the FAA hiring scandal coming to light: https://substack.com/home/post/p-156166190 https://substack.com/home/post/p-156166190 The list goes on and on.
    - tomlockwood 2y ago
      What's the "unimaginable waste"? Can you put a comparative number on it?
      - dnissley 2y ago
        Do you think that DEI is just some line item in a budget that can easily be produced? Without which we'll just have to shrug our shoulders and endlessly equivocate about how their might be some waste?
        tomlockwood 2y ago
        All I'm asking for is evidence of the problem you're saying exists.
Gabriel54 2y ago
> ...Faculty Diversity Action Plan, a special funding program for diversity-focused faculty hiring, which ran until 2023, when it was restructured and renamed. Created in 2020, the program played a significant role in dictating whom the university hired. In a 2022 faculty meeting, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences was asked how many professors were hired through the program since it began. He estimated that around 90% were either hired through the program or were spousal hires. [1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-dei-conquered-the-university-of-colorado-boulder-discrimination-hiring-professors-0c306a9e?st=fzjffE&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-dei-conquered-the-university...
- tomlockwood 2y ago
  What was the impact?
  - Gareth321 2y ago
    Impact is irrelevant. Racist policy is immoral and indefensible.
    - tomlockwood 2y ago
      What's the "unimaginable waste" OP mentions?

relaxing 2y ago

[flagged]

scarab92 2y ago
Academics should keep in mind that they rely on the generosity of taxpayers to fund their research. They don’t have an entitlement to other people’s money, and if they are perceived as wasting it or spending in discriminatorily then you should expect the public to become less willing to give it to you.
- etrautmann 2y ago
  That's only true in a very myopic sense. You don't get the US economy (and all of the benefits that come from that) without science and technology and basic research funding.
  - Gabriel54 2y ago
    You are speaking on an intellectual level. The comment you replied to is speaking on a practical, political level. If voters do not like what is going on in universities, they will defund them. This is a political reality.
  - jandrewrogers 2y ago
    ~82% of all R&D funding in the US is non-Federal, and 75+% is industry. The total investment by companies on R&D is about the same as the US defense budget. Many people still think it is like the 1960s and 1970s, when US government funding of R&D was a large percentage of the total. Federal investment in R&D hasn't declined so much as industry massively increased their investment. The Federal government found a niche in basic research for a few decades and funded the vast majority of that. Per NSF, today even basic research is <40% funded by the Federal government, again not due to a decline in Federal funding but due to vast increases in industry investment. This shift toward industry investment in basic research was not overnight, it has been a monotonic trend for decades. Over the last century, the areas where Federal research funding is critical have dwindled greatly in scope because industry spends more money and is willing to take more risks. One of the more interesting stories here is why and how this change happened in the US, to the point where the vast majority of R&D is funded by industry even in areas historically dominated by Federal government funding.

chasing 2y ago

Unethical race-based preferences is what those policies have been trying to fix. Not sure you’re aware of this, but academia used to be basically off-limits to anyone not white and male.

Gabriel54 2y ago
> Unethical race-based preferences is what those policies have been trying to fix. I understand that that is the stated intention. I also believe they are racist and discriminatory. > Not sure you’re aware of this, but academia used to be basically off-limits to anyone not white and male. I also understand this. And now it is not. What is the point here?
- tills13 2y ago
  My guy you aren't getting it. You were lied to. You bought it. You are just plain wrong and openly propagating a lie as fact and you seem to be doubling down.
  - Gabriel54 2y ago
    Is this also a lie? From psychology department at University of Washington [1]: > I advise deleting the statement below as it shows that URM [underrepresented minority] applications were singled out and evaluated differently than non-URM applications (which is not allowed as [redacted] noted) > At a faculty meeting, someone whose name is redacted “informed faculty that the Hiring Committee had three outstanding candidates and so they used DEI to distinguish and select a first offer" [1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity-equity/2023/11/03/u-washington-faculty-search-weighed-race https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity...
    - tills13 2y ago
      Nobody is saying it's not happening but the notion that it's systemic -- as the opposite is -- is categorically a lie and, again, as you've been told a few times in this thread, DEI's goal is to prevent even this scenario from happening as its intended goal is to foster merit-only hiring.

avs733 2y ago

I have written a version of this twice and deleted but just can't let this statement stand unopposed. This is, almost inherently at this point, a rant and my last contribution to this thread. This simply is not the case, I know it is something that you and many others believe is that case but you are being lied to by actual racists. I say that as a white man working in STEM academia. Academia had a long history and tradition of NOT doing meritocracy, but of claiming meritocracy and using bad markers of meritocracy to prove it. The 'DEI work' that people are so concerned about is about trying to make merit based decision making actually merit based. You think that is based on giving some preference, but it isn't - its based on acknowledging and working to eliminate actual prejudice. Its about hiring the best people instead of the person who's advisor is friends with our search chair. I'll give a concrete example: I ran a hiring search for three faculty members. We did a blind search. The hiring committee did not know the gender, race, ethnicity, or even institutional affiliation of any candidate. The candidates were ranked, the top invited for phone interviews, and then ranked again during the interviews with everyone blind to the first set of rankings. We repeated this for a smalled group of in person interviews The order of the rankings at all three phases matched. More relevant, we interviewed and hired the most diverse crop of faculty we have ever hired. Simply because of the appearance who we hired, two different candidates who were did not received interviews emailed me and my department chair to decry that we had used 'DEI' in our BLIND hiring process. One threatened a lawsuit. We blinded it to race, to gender, to all markers of 'diversity', but the gender and race of who we hired was all the proof that person needed they were less qualified than him. In other cases, this 'stuff' protects against asshole colleagues and bad science. (1) Diversity statements help us avoid getting sued by students and employees. The statements that wax philosophic about inclusion, that quote MLK, the ones people use to label this as some ideological test, SUCK to read and get applications ignored because they lack serious thought about being a colleague. The good ones, which get noticed, are about how people work effectively with other people, and how they make an effort to understand people as part of working with them. The context, whether its about being Green, Left-handed, or Neurodivergent tell us whether this person has thought about being a mentor to people unlike them, has a capacity to empathize with a student, or is going to be a self-righteous asshole that is going to make us hate faculty meetings even more. They help us know if their grad students are going to be in tears in the chairs office or the parents of an undergrad are calling the dean. (2) They actually tell us a lot about doing good science and getting grants. Theres a long history in medicine of fucking up because of who is in our participant pool. NIH now makes you articulate about how you will not do bad science through lazy recruitment[2]. We've asked questions about this requirement of candidates during interviews. The answers are fun and telling - using coded language to say you won't recruit Black people because they are 'less reliable' is just evidence you don't get it, not that you are some purist doing important work. That is the DEI you are being propagandized to be against - what it actually is not what you are told it is. It is not hyperbole and you are tired by design - because you are a victim of propaganda. The nonsense narrative that is being pushed is, without concern for the truth, entirely grounded in the assertion that certain groups are unqualified to do intellectual work (c.f.[3]). It is (by design) meant to establish that the mere appearance of a Black Women or a gay person on a faculty is only because they are unqualified. It is meant to exclude people who have always been excluded. It is not about pushing back on (nonexistant) out of control efforts to include them. What is changing is efforts to counteract the actual, long established, clearly evidenced, bias in favor of certain groups of candidates. That is not some ideological project to eliminate people like me because I'm not a minority, that is the thing you want. [1] https://mbb.yale.edu/news/mbb-radically-changing-how-we-search-new-colleagues https://mbb.yale.edu/news/mbb-radically-changing-how-we-sear... [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6053906/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6053906/ [3] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/darren-beattie-state-department-1235255529/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/darren-b...

jillyboel 2y ago

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antigeox 2y ago
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tstactplsignore 2y ago

This is simply a delusion detached from reality. I am a white man in STEM academia. I've never been discriminated against once. None of my white male colleagues have either. They are all successful in academia. And my colleagues who aren't white men are in no way inferior. Just let us vote and ask if we feel discriminated against or oppressed because of DEI. We'll vote no. It's simply a delusion that DEI is some unmeritocratic disaster. The reality is academia has its pick of top talent regardless of race or gender. I don't know any scientists who buy into this delusion irl. Diversity is a small factor in hiring because the field is already predominantly white men and it's no harder to pick top star talent when you diversify. Simply insane that you are promoting the destruction of US science, US foreign aid, and so much of the good stuff the US government does, all in the name of a deeply delusional witch hunt.

bubblethink 2y ago
It's an ideological disaster. Viewing this through a white v/s black lens is itself too simplistic. Look at the Harvard affirmative action lawsuit. Asians are in fact and provably being discriminated against. This is also the case in immigration policy. DEI/affirmative action policies were created by the executive and are being undone by the executive. >Just let us vote and ask if we feel discriminated against or oppressed because of DEI. A majority of the electorate did vote for ending this.
- Xelynega 2y ago
  Shocker, a majority white country voted to end programs that identified biases which benefitted them... > Asians are in fact being discriminated against I have a feeling someone fed you some false information about this case. The judges ruled that Harvard's admission program violated the equal protections act, but never said once that Asian Americans were ever discriminated against. The programs that these decisions got rid of impacted minorities other than Asians a lot more, but for some reason you don't want to talk about that?
jimkleiber 2y ago
Even if it's a delusion, people believe it and I think we should take it seriously and help them see through that delusion. I'm not advocating for shutting down these departments at all, or slashing and burning research. I'm hoping that we can help people realize that people love them and care about them and support them more than they could ever imagine, even if they're a white man. I say this as a white man who has dated black women and had them say some really harsh things about me as a white man, only to realize that often it was an internal conflict that they had about being black but also liking some things from white culture. Some of them had been called white by their own black communities, and so feeling stuck between those worlds. I think the vast majority of us just need to learn how to deal with emotional attacks, to realize life is combat and everyone is trying to deal with innumerable conflicts at the same time, all the time.

oglop 2y ago

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jccalhoun 2y ago

"It has become tiring to see how DEI has affected all aspects of academia. Hiring people based on race, awarding grants to work exclusively with members of a particular set of minorities, etc." You mention in another comment diversity in admissions but that is not hiring or grants. Do you have any examples of hiring people based on race in academia?

hashemian 2y ago
This is one: https://x.com/JohnDSailer/status/1883648993974169641 https://x.com/JohnDSailer/status/1883648993974169641 I have friends in faculty positions at well-known universities who were very unhappy about these practices, but could not publicly discuss it fearing repercussion, prior to these events. TBC, I am not supporting any of the things happening. I do think the DEI thing went too far, but what the new admin. is doing can be much worse.
Gabriel54 2y ago
There are not countless examples. Instead of "hiring of people on the basis of race" I may more accurately say "using race as a decisive factor in the consideration of an application resulting in its acceptance or rejection" which also happens to be illegal. From the journalism department at CU [1]: > Our commitment, should we be successful with this application, is to hire someone from the BIPOC community From the geography department at CU [1]: > Our aim is specifically to hire a Black, Indigenous, or Latinx faculty member From ethnic studies at UC [1]: > We have an urgent and qualified need for BIPOC femme/women of color faculty in an Africana Studies focus who will contribute to the social science division thematic cluster hire in racism and racial inequality. From psychology dept. at U Washington [2]: > I advise deleting the statement below as it shows that URM [underrepresented minority] applications were singled out and evaluated differently than non-URM applications (which is not allowed as [redacted] noted) > At a faculty meeting, someone whose name is redacted “informed faculty that the Hiring Committee had three outstanding candidates and so they used DEI to distinguish and select a first offer" [1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-dei-conquered-the-university-of-colorado-boulder-discrimination-hiring-professors-0c306a9e?st=HnnsrN&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-dei-conquered-the-university... [2] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity-equity/2023/11/03/u-washington-faculty-search-weighed-race https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/diversity...

nonethewiser 2y ago

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dang 2y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- nonethewiser 2y ago
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cat_theorist 2y ago

Hiring people based on race (white) and gender (male) is what happened _before_ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. Do you know what is the original and ultimate identity politics? Enslaving people because you deem them inferior to your own race. The civil war, the civil rights movement, and modern social justice movements are a response to this, not the root of the conflict. I'm a white guy in academia - not tenured yet - and I cannot fathom the ignorance necessary to believe that white males are at an disadvantage because of university administrators being "woke". Give me a break!

user3939382 2y ago
How does it require ignorance to believe something that’s spelled out in black and white policies? It’s not even belief it’s just reading comprehension at that point.
malwrar 2y ago
> Enslaving people because you deem them inferior to your own race. This is irrelevant to the discussion of hiring in 2025, unless you believe your fellow “white” population harbors literal beliefs of a.) racial identity and b.) racial superiority, that c.) the “white” people making hiring decisions are actively excluding candidates based on these beliefs, and that d.) application of a nonwhite bias is just and measured in the face of a-c. I think all are incredible claims, and they’ve only lasted a decade because they have become rabidly-defended shibboleths for people who want to fix racism (and sexism and…). > I cannot fathom the ignorance necessary to believe that white males are at an disadvantage because of university administrators being "woke" If 1000 group A individuals and 10 group B individuals apply for a team, and both groups are accepted at ~50% due to a group B preference, then group B is ~100x as likely to be selected for the role due to that preference. Such observations are where my own perception of “disadvantage” comes from. Unless you’re claiming that no such preference exists, or that some prejudice you might have about group A justifies its individual members’ relatively unlikely chances of being selected, I can’t see how this preference doesn’t qualify as a disadvantage for such individuals.
- 1832 2y ago

nonethewiser 2y ago

DEI is nominally good but its just racism. Not like reverse racism or indirect racism - just racism. There’s really no other way to slice intentionally discriminating based on race. Whats probably most egregious is the idea that its good because its racist against the right people.