6 ms·

This is the part that is so frustrating to me, and not just with regards to tariffs. It's that I see the extremes being so laughably bad (though not necessarily

This is the part that is so frustrating to me, and not just with regards to tariffs. It's that I see the extremes being so laughably bad (though not necessarily equally - I'm not "both sides"-ing this), and more ludicrously bad is that I've seen positions that don't follow these extremes as being derided now as "centrism". E.g. before the administration's attack on higher education, I do believe a lot of elite universities had completely jumped the shark with their ideological purity tests like required DEI statements. And importantly, there were thoughtful, measured criticisms of these things, e.g. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/02/10/jon-haidt-goes-after-dei/ https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/02/10/jon-haidt-goes-aft.... But the administration attack is so ridiculously egregious and demands an even worse, government-imposed ideological alignment, that making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless.

pjc50 2y ago
> making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless. Unfortunately this is the culmination of social media as a controversy machine, that promotes the worst arguments. > ideological purity tests like required DEI statements Example? There's a controversy industry that cherry picks the worst examples of student-politics excess in these regards and then carefully conflates it with university policy. As well as the sad truth that as soon as you take away "DEI" requirements the segregationists come back and purge the library, delete all the black Medal of Honor recipients from the website, etc.
- like_any_other 2y ago
  > Example? Diversity Statements Required for One-Fifth of Academic Jobs - https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-statements-required-for-one-fifth-of-academic-jobs/ https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-... More examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692945
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    20% isn't so bad; the way it's usually portrayed in the media it sounds more like 90% of posts require such statements
    - ImJamal 2y ago
      If a college allocated a minimum of 20% of their jobs to whites, would you still say it wasn't too bad?
      - insane_dreamer 2y ago
        If we'd enslaved whites and then turned them second class citizens with minimal rights and very few economic opportunities until fairly recently, putting them in conditions that make it very difficult for them to achieve equal opportunity, then yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with it.
        RoyalHenOil 2y ago
        You don't even have to go that far. I went to school in south Atlanta, where both student body and teaching staff tended to be overwhelmingly Black. The school had a policy of hiring a certain percentage of non-Black teachers, including white teachers, and it had programs designed specifically to attract students from white and Hispanic communities. The goal was not to give non-Black students and teachers a leg up; it was to promote diversity and ensure students graduated ready to meet all kinds of different people in the workplace. These policies were popular and uncontroversial, at least while I was there — though I dare say they would be deemed illegal now.
      - kenjackson 2y ago
        These are statements, not quotas. Basically these are statements where you note that you support teaching all kids, will make efforts to be inclusive and ensure your class has an inclusive environment, etc… There is no requirement on the race of the applicants.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  > Example? I literally linked an article in my comment that had an overview, but here is a more specific one that addresses diversity statements in particular: https://reason.com/2022/09/30/mandated-diversity-statement-drives-jonathan-haidt-to-quit-academic-society/ https://reason.com/2022/09/30/mandated-diversity-statement-d... > As well as the sad truth that as soon as you take away "DEI" requirements the segregationists come back and purge the library, delete all the black Medal of Honor recipients from the website, etc. This is literally my exact point. There absolutely should be a rational place that denounces both these diversity statement ideological requirements and the egregious memory-holing that the current administration is implementing.
  - moomin 2y ago
    So… an incident not involving a university in any way is your example of universities jumping the shark?
    - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      Fair enough, my bad. Here you go: 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... https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/05/07/massachusetts-institute-technology-diversity-statements https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/05/07/massachusetts-institute... https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/us/harvard-diversity-statements.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/us/harvard-diversity-stat... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/diversity-statements-university-of-california.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/diversity-statements-u... https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/diversity-statements-are-getting-cut-from-these-universities/ https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/diversity-statements-are-g...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  At UC Berkeley, over 75% of faculty applicants were rejected solely based on reviewing their diversity statements: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davis-hiding-about-its-use-of-diversity-statements/ https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davi... Rather conspicuously, Asians had the highest rate of rejection, followed by whites. Latin applicants had the second highest pass rate, Black applicants had the highest. The diversity statements were not anonymized (as in, the reviewers could see the ethnicity of each applicant when reviewing their diversity statement). Diversity statements were widely suspected of being a smokescreen for racial preferences. Much like the "personality score" Harvard used to curate its desired racial makeup in its student admissions.
  - vixen99 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - skywhopper 2y ago
      It’s an overhyped exaggeration at best, but very likely a complete misrepresentation of the policies and how they were used in reality. What you should be outraged by is that lazy hacks can make a living by stirring up fake controversies over intentionally misinterpreting this stuff.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
      > Doesn't anyone think is utterly appalling? Of course. The point of this kind of propaganda is to have you reacting so negatively and emotionally that you don't examine the claims calmly and rationally. Emotions > facts. If no-one appalled, then it isn't doing its job.
    - hylaride 2y ago
      For the schools that have them, I consider legacy admissions to be more appalling. Those are overwhelmingly white. The other issue is that many of these schools have not been expanding enrolment numbers to population growth. Less seats per-capita mean more exclusivity over time. Get rid of them both (DEI and legacy admissions) and the government should create a policy that those endowments need to be used to expand the size of the schools.
skywhopper 2y ago
You’ve been conned if you think overactive DEI was anything more than a minor annoyance in 99% of American universities. Did some people overdo it in a destructive way? Of course. But it wasn’t anything that was going to lead to major problems. The problems come from the folks who can’t just roll their eyes and move on but instead feel personally attacked and hold a permanent grudge instead of realizing that they themselves probably weren’t all that special.
- fleek 2y ago
  [flagged]
- zmgsabst 2y ago
  Harvard and UNC lost lawsuits about their DEI programs in admissions being illegal racism.
  - habinero 2y ago
    That doesn't counteract the point being made.
    - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      Uh, I think it does. A lot of people, myself included, have major problems when "overactive DEI" leads to race being a primary, if not the primary, factor in hiring and admissions decisions. This isn't something one should just "roll their eyes over" and move on. FWIW, that was my original approach, and I thought that the worst excesses of "wokeism" were just caricatures that the right was using to paint all on the left with a broad brush, so I was pretty dismayed when, over time, I felt that a lot of this "race first" thinking had infested many areas of elite universities. Many university professors (ones who would not have in any way identified with being "on the right") who I deeply respect have spoken out about this, sometimes at great professional cost.
RajT88 2y ago
> and more ludicrously bad is that I've seen positions that don't follow these extremes as being derided now as "centrism". You can't stake out a position without getting called some name somebody invented to denigrate that position. Welcome to modern politics on the internet.
bananalychee 2y ago
Tangential comment, but I now see people adding disclaimers reiterating their political affiliation to their posts regularly and I want to say that you shouldn't have to justify bilateral criticism. It doesn't imply equal magnitude, and it's only taken that way by bullies in dogmatic bubbles.
- Arkhadia 2y ago
  Your rationality here will surely be flagged. Over apologizing is the new norm to avoid being canceled for dissenting opinions.
  - HelloMcFly 2y ago
    The commenter is right that you shouldn't have to state those kinds of beliefs, but pragmatically this is a message board that invites all sorts of responses. Those additional notes are an attempt to head-off annoying and wrongly-based counter-responses built on assumptions that shouldn't have been made. But just because they shouldn't be doesn't mean they won't be. Your comment evoking a victim complex on the other hand I find a far more annoying element of online discourse.
    - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      Thank you, because this is exactly why I did it, and will continue to. So often when I write a comment I find responses either missing the point, laser focusing on something offhand/tangential I wrote, or imbuing my post with a viewpoint I didn't make. Sometimes the fault is mine, sometimes the fault of the responder. I state where I'm coming from not as some sort of "tribal identifier", but simply to add clarity, and to stave off misdirected responses that I can find annoying.
- justin66 2y ago
  I don't mind getting some extra clarity on where someone is coming from.
  - deleted 2y ago
rurp 2y ago
I couldn't agree more and worry that even if the country makes it out of this period in one piece the well will have been poisoned on a lot of these topics. We should have big initiatives to make government more efficient, and reduce the national debt, and get back to merit-based processes. But after so much bloviating and fake initiatives that claim to do those things, but actually do the opposite, it's going to be a tough sell to make a real push in the foreseeable future.

pjc50 2y ago

> making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless. Unfortunately this is the culmination of social media as a controversy machine, that promotes the worst arguments. > ideological purity tests like required DEI statements Example? There's a controversy industry that cherry picks the worst examples of student-politics excess in these regards and then carefully conflates it with university policy. As well as the sad truth that as soon as you take away "DEI" requirements the segregationists come back and purge the library, delete all the black Medal of Honor recipients from the website, etc.

like_any_other 2y ago
> Example? Diversity Statements Required for One-Fifth of Academic Jobs - https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-statements-required-for-one-fifth-of-academic-jobs/ https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-... More examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692945
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  20% isn't so bad; the way it's usually portrayed in the media it sounds more like 90% of posts require such statements
  - ImJamal 2y ago
    If a college allocated a minimum of 20% of their jobs to whites, would you still say it wasn't too bad?
    - insane_dreamer 2y ago
      If we'd enslaved whites and then turned them second class citizens with minimal rights and very few economic opportunities until fairly recently, putting them in conditions that make it very difficult for them to achieve equal opportunity, then yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with it.
      - RoyalHenOil 2y ago
        You don't even have to go that far. I went to school in south Atlanta, where both student body and teaching staff tended to be overwhelmingly Black. The school had a policy of hiring a certain percentage of non-Black teachers, including white teachers, and it had programs designed specifically to attract students from white and Hispanic communities. The goal was not to give non-Black students and teachers a leg up; it was to promote diversity and ensure students graduated ready to meet all kinds of different people in the workplace. These policies were popular and uncontroversial, at least while I was there — though I dare say they would be deemed illegal now.
    - kenjackson 2y ago
      These are statements, not quotas. Basically these are statements where you note that you support teaching all kids, will make efforts to be inclusive and ensure your class has an inclusive environment, etc… There is no requirement on the race of the applicants.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
> Example? I literally linked an article in my comment that had an overview, but here is a more specific one that addresses diversity statements in particular: https://reason.com/2022/09/30/mandated-diversity-statement-drives-jonathan-haidt-to-quit-academic-society/ https://reason.com/2022/09/30/mandated-diversity-statement-d... > As well as the sad truth that as soon as you take away "DEI" requirements the segregationists come back and purge the library, delete all the black Medal of Honor recipients from the website, etc. This is literally my exact point. There absolutely should be a rational place that denounces both these diversity statement ideological requirements and the egregious memory-holing that the current administration is implementing.
- moomin 2y ago
  So… an incident not involving a university in any way is your example of universities jumping the shark?
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    Fair enough, my bad. Here you go: 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... https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/05/07/massachusetts-institute-technology-diversity-statements https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/05/07/massachusetts-institute... https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/us/harvard-diversity-statements.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/us/harvard-diversity-stat... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/diversity-statements-university-of-california.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/diversity-statements-u... https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/diversity-statements-are-getting-cut-from-these-universities/ https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/diversity-statements-are-g...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Manuel_D 2y ago
At UC Berkeley, over 75% of faculty applicants were rejected solely based on reviewing their diversity statements: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davis-hiding-about-its-use-of-diversity-statements/ https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davi... Rather conspicuously, Asians had the highest rate of rejection, followed by whites. Latin applicants had the second highest pass rate, Black applicants had the highest. The diversity statements were not anonymized (as in, the reviewers could see the ethnicity of each applicant when reviewing their diversity statement). Diversity statements were widely suspected of being a smokescreen for racial preferences. Much like the "personality score" Harvard used to curate its desired racial makeup in its student admissions.
- vixen99 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - skywhopper 2y ago
    It’s an overhyped exaggeration at best, but very likely a complete misrepresentation of the policies and how they were used in reality. What you should be outraged by is that lazy hacks can make a living by stirring up fake controversies over intentionally misinterpreting this stuff.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
    > Doesn't anyone think is utterly appalling? Of course. The point of this kind of propaganda is to have you reacting so negatively and emotionally that you don't examine the claims calmly and rationally. Emotions > facts. If no-one appalled, then it isn't doing its job.
  - hylaride 2y ago
    For the schools that have them, I consider legacy admissions to be more appalling. Those are overwhelmingly white. The other issue is that many of these schools have not been expanding enrolment numbers to population growth. Less seats per-capita mean more exclusivity over time. Get rid of them both (DEI and legacy admissions) and the government should create a policy that those endowments need to be used to expand the size of the schools.

skywhopper 2y ago

You’ve been conned if you think overactive DEI was anything more than a minor annoyance in 99% of American universities. Did some people overdo it in a destructive way? Of course. But it wasn’t anything that was going to lead to major problems. The problems come from the folks who can’t just roll their eyes and move on but instead feel personally attacked and hold a permanent grudge instead of realizing that they themselves probably weren’t all that special.

fleek 2y ago
[flagged]
zmgsabst 2y ago
Harvard and UNC lost lawsuits about their DEI programs in admissions being illegal racism.
- habinero 2y ago
  That doesn't counteract the point being made.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    Uh, I think it does. A lot of people, myself included, have major problems when "overactive DEI" leads to race being a primary, if not the primary, factor in hiring and admissions decisions. This isn't something one should just "roll their eyes over" and move on. FWIW, that was my original approach, and I thought that the worst excesses of "wokeism" were just caricatures that the right was using to paint all on the left with a broad brush, so I was pretty dismayed when, over time, I felt that a lot of this "race first" thinking had infested many areas of elite universities. Many university professors (ones who would not have in any way identified with being "on the right") who I deeply respect have spoken out about this, sometimes at great professional cost.

RajT88 2y ago

> and more ludicrously bad is that I've seen positions that don't follow these extremes as being derided now as "centrism". You can't stake out a position without getting called some name somebody invented to denigrate that position. Welcome to modern politics on the internet.

bananalychee 2y ago

Tangential comment, but I now see people adding disclaimers reiterating their political affiliation to their posts regularly and I want to say that you shouldn't have to justify bilateral criticism. It doesn't imply equal magnitude, and it's only taken that way by bullies in dogmatic bubbles.

Arkhadia 2y ago
Your rationality here will surely be flagged. Over apologizing is the new norm to avoid being canceled for dissenting opinions.
- HelloMcFly 2y ago
  The commenter is right that you shouldn't have to state those kinds of beliefs, but pragmatically this is a message board that invites all sorts of responses. Those additional notes are an attempt to head-off annoying and wrongly-based counter-responses built on assumptions that shouldn't have been made. But just because they shouldn't be doesn't mean they won't be. Your comment evoking a victim complex on the other hand I find a far more annoying element of online discourse.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    Thank you, because this is exactly why I did it, and will continue to. So often when I write a comment I find responses either missing the point, laser focusing on something offhand/tangential I wrote, or imbuing my post with a viewpoint I didn't make. Sometimes the fault is mine, sometimes the fault of the responder. I state where I'm coming from not as some sort of "tribal identifier", but simply to add clarity, and to stave off misdirected responses that I can find annoying.
justin66 2y ago
I don't mind getting some extra clarity on where someone is coming from.
- deleted 2y ago

rurp 2y ago

I couldn't agree more and worry that even if the country makes it out of this period in one piece the well will have been poisoned on a lot of these topics. We should have big initiatives to make government more efficient, and reduce the national debt, and get back to merit-based processes. But after so much bloviating and fake initiatives that claim to do those things, but actually do the opposite, it's going to be a tough sell to make a real push in the foreseeable future.