Improving MIT’s written commitment to freedom of expression | Hacker News Reader

Improving MIT’s written commitment to freedom of expression

freespeech.mit.edu

182 pointsondrejzabojnik181 comments

We have reached a point where it has been a mainstream position to view the idea of defending free speech as disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. This statement is so weak that it is necessary to consider this climate to even understand how this can be published as a statement.

After explicitly saying that illegal speech is not free speech, it lists 6 exceptions for things that are not free speech either, including speech "that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute". Which is even written twice, while being clearly a catch-all. And it mentions "In addition, MIT may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the Institute." Why not have "free speech safe spaces", which would be small individual-sized sound-proof rooms where you are allowed to say what you think? If you also pad the walls, you could find many uses for these rooms.

With principles so weakly held, why have principles at all?

There's always the tennis court.

> We have reached a point where it has been a mainstream position to view the idea of defending free speech as disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.

I disagree.

There is a very vocal, very small minority that's ruining it for everyone else.

Certainly not mainstream.

I have to ask, which side are you taking,

because I honestly do not know, and I dont think it is "small minority" on either side.

There are ALOT of people that oppose free speech as a concept, hiding behind statements like "hate speech is not free speech" or "words are violence"

So while think you are attempting to defend free speech, I can also see how your statement would be "free speech absolutist are ruining everything"

> There is a very vocal, very small minority that's ruining it for everyone else.

You're both right. Unfortunately, that very small minority is culturally dominant, so it is the case that:

1) >> We have reached a point where it has been a mainstream position to view the idea of defending free speech as disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. And;

2) > There is a very vocal, very small minority that's ruining it for everyone else.

In the same way a relatively small but well-organized group like the Taliban can control an entire country despite lacking enthusiastic support from the majority of the population, a small but well-organized subculture can dominate and dictate what is/is not acceptable in mainstream American culture.

For a better and more nuanced explanation, see "The Minority Rule" by Nassim Taleb. https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship...

Yes, that's my experience. Everyone in my circles is perfectly happy with the idea that everyone entitled to have opinions and express them politely. It's only a radical few that are pushing the cancel culture hard.

Well, it seems that the very vocal, very small minority are the gatekeepers to what can be widely disseminated enough to become mainstream.

By "very small minority", do you mean "one of the two only viable political parties in the United States"?

There's no magic bullet for free speech thanks to the Paradox of Tolerance. Allowing all speech, completely unrestricted, is a recipe for creating a completely unworkable environment.

In the "Paradox of Tolerance" Popper argues that despite the apparent paradox, defending free speech and having a tolerant society is the only way to go. People use the paradox of tolerance argument often, but leave out the part where popper resolves the paradox.

Yes, Marcuse's 1965 essay "Repressive Tolerance" is actually closer to what most people understand Popper's work to be saying.

Where does he resolve the paradox?

He says you should claim the right to suppress the intolerant and that preaching intolerance is outside the law.

Popper essentially takes the same position as Thomas Jefferson. Popper says: "I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise." Emphasis on the unwise -- for some unknown reason, there's this idea floating around that Popper thought it was wise to suppress intolerant philosophies. That's Marcuse's position, not Popper's (and Marcuse also is candid that his own position may be incompatible with democracy).

What Popper does agree is that societies should retain the right to act if civil discourse fails, which is again basically Jefferson's position.

More briefly: When the intolerant reach for a gun, the tolerant don't have to tolerate that. Not when the intolerant speak - when they proceed past speech into violence. Then the tolerant don't have to tolerate it (and, in fact, kind of have to not tolerate it.)

This is why you now how people claiming "Speech is violence" and even "Silence is Violence"

They want to expand the definition of violence just like they have many many many other terms

I'm going to assume that you've read the meme cartoon that goes around instead of actually reading Popper's actual words because that is not what Popper suggested at all.

It's only a couple of pages long, it's even free to read on archive.org.

Here is the 'Paradox of Tolerance':

>Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.

>But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

>We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

The one thing one may claim is that it is not immediately clear is what he means by intolerance or intolerant groups, yet he leaves little ambiguity in the second section above.

This is never not been a mainstream position. I can't easily get news from the Chinese government or Iranian patriots, but the Falun Gong have three OTA TV stations in Chicago. The same people complaining about the woke mob are also fired up about "critical race theory."

If you care about people being fired for being canceled, work for labor rights. If you support at-will employment but also worry about people being fired for being canceled, work to make racists, sexists, and homophobes a protected employment class. If you've successfully passed special rights for racists, sexists, and homophobes, specifically protecting their employment, but you're still upset because people can still call you shitty, protest you and drown out your voice in public, and not invite you to their parties - add racists, sexists and homophobes to hate crime legislation, and start rounding up the people who are oppressing you by speaking.

Labor rights are a patchwork. If you believe in them you should probably engage with strange bedfellows to accomplish the most feasible. Then, maybe when you get to the harder issues you might have shown more people why expanding labor rights is an attractive political goal.

Right now you're just coming across as someone who's going to be miffed to find out what's in California Labor Code § 1101.

The whole idea of "free speech" is misleading and should be abolished. There is no such thing in practice. No government wants information that is damaging, whether the information is true or not, to be leaked out to the enemy, external or internal. Same applies to every organization. They will create whatever structures/laws to make sure that they limit this. They should be expected to.

There may be some value in telling people that they have free speech so as to identify people's intent and take them out if they speak against the establishment... but then the really smart ones (who are the actual threats to the establishment in question) will also most likely figure it out.

See, that's exactly why we need a right to free speech. The government doesn't like it. The next government won't, either. So we need the principle that the government cannot stop speech, and we need people to rigorously police that right, because the government will always try to encroach on it.

I don't think there is such a thing and keeping the illusion is also bad for everyone.

Ask yourself "what part of this allows them to prevent rock concerts during exams in the exam halls", it's only the parts that you seem to wish they would remove. I think we can both agree, that MIT does need the power to prevent rock concerts during exams in the exam halls.

Either there's some obscure news I'm not up to speed on, or this is one of the most bananas straw men I've run across.

The exact scenario was inspired by a "prank" the engineers pull off on new students at the university I went to every year (more along the lines of a spontaneous musical than a rock concert, but same effect). The broader point was that there's tons of "expression" that you need time/place/manner restrictions against for completely content legitimate, the exact example wasn't important.

It's not a straw man at all... a straw man argument is arguing against something that someone else didn't said, I'm directly arguing that the terms the person I responded to suggested aren't needed, are in fact needed. It is sort of an argumentum ad absurdum, but that's a valid form of argument, and the absurdness of the example isn't necessary so it's only sort of one.

If you want less absurd examples, they need to be able to regulate the expression of telling people answers during tests (time/place), the expression of making loud noises all night in dorm rooms (place/manner), the "expression" of plagarizing someone else's paper and calling it your own (directly incompatible with...), etc.

Edit: Found a video for y'all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lyHQLyZUuM

MIT's equivalent was and may still be "freshman shower night," where students would be forcibly abducted from their dorm rooms and thrown into a running shower the night before the first mid-term exams were held for core math and physics courses.

That sounds absolutely batshit - "don’t you dare say any wrongthink, but battery is a-okay if it’s a time honored tradition".

Saying "fuck the president" is a time honored tradition that doesn’t batter anybody, but I doubt that will be protected.

It is a strawman. A rock concert is not expressing an idea, on the contrary it limits the ability for others to express themselves.

> I think we can both agree, that MIT does need the power to prevent rock concerts during exams in the exam halls.

Sure, maybe at party schools.

The culture around MIT might surprise you. They take exams and learning quite seriously.

Catch-alls are necessary so that clever rules lawyers can get dunked on. Without them, someone will find a loophole and then proceed to abuse it to be disruptive.

Having spent the last 8 years suing governmental entities, I promise you that this bullshit:

>After explicitly saying that illegal speech is not free speech, it lists 6 exceptions for things that are not free speech either, including speech "that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute"

Is their future get-out clause for anything and everything.

These types of bullshit clauses are everywhere in the law.

> while being clearly a catch-all.

That's the whole point. This is straight from the Ethics playbook. It's a set of vague guidelines that wouldn't pass the stricter bar of being tested in court (like the first amendment has). It's basically anyone with a sliver of power playing judge and legislator. The catch-all clause simply makes it possible for the ethics mob to shut every form of speech they don't deem acceptable (again, this wouldn't stand in a real court of law).

Keep in mind the point of ethics is to shame people or practices you don't like via some kind of cancel culture of peer pressure. You'll also see the same thing with Codes of Conducts that basically allow anyone to exclude anyone for vague or no reason at all.

Did the West actually win the Cold War? The parallels with the Soviets are getting more real by the day. With those exceptions the commitments like that would be right at home in Putin's Russia and whatever is left of their universities.

Based. Abelson and Sussman, of SICP fame, are among the signatories. So is Ronald Rivest, the R in RSA (and CLRS). Chomsky too.

Some speech issues that come to mind which, I sometimes wonder, how they would have gone down today:

* The 6.001 porn

* The ghetto party

* The Reg Day porn (particularly Deep Throat, but many)

* The Visualizing Cultures display (with CSSA opposition)

* Some 10% of the day to day traffic on senior-house@, bexley-minus-fascists@, and ec-discuss@

Norms around speech have evolved a lot even as the fundamentals of ethics and laws on the electronic frontier have stayed the same. I often think that folks in the 80s and 90s enjoyed, for better or worse, considerable latitude in their speech which wouldn't fly today.

Uhm what was the 001 porn?

http://tech.mit.edu/V118/N8/aporn.8n.html

Prof. Abelson wanted to hammer home the point porn was a problem on the internet back in 1998 and thought putting up a porn site for the first slide of a lecture would make his point.

It was pretty shocking when it happened.

Was his flashing the room like that a free speech issue - or a thoughtless dickhead issue?

Independent of his legal "right" to conduct a class in that manner - it's basically kind of asinine to assume your students need to have their buttons expressly pushed in order to appreciate the basically obvious point he felt he needed to make. Or that if people object his resorting to such a stunt - that means they're "offended" by it.

>The Reg Day porn (particularly Deep Throat, but many)

Today? Clearly not.

But you don't need to fast forward that far. They were discontinued in I think 1980 or 1981 when things went from "we don't think you should do this" to "this is no longer a polite request."

I love the explicitness of “they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe.”

However, they negate it with this caveat:

> "The Institute may restrict expression that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests, or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute."

Which is vague enough that an enterprising and determined individual or group could use to stifle discussion about things like gender, race, etc (all the hot/touchy topics atm).

As an aside, the "violates the law", is a trojan horse that (I understand covers them legally) but also enables laws that violate free speech. Here is a list that speaks to just that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country#So...

They use the word "hate" speech, but it might be very far from what we'd see as hateful.

> an enterprising and determined individual or group could use to stifle discussion…

This is true.

Ultimately no manifesto or written commitment can constrain a people into freedom. The best we can do is strive to say what we intend, see reality clearly, change structures that stand in the way, and then trust ourselves to act with courage.

"violates the law" in this context would naturally have to comply with 1st amendment US protections which would bar any "hate speech" laws like the ones you linked to since 1st amendment to the US Constitution prohibits hate speech laws of that type

No declaration, code or whatnot stands alone. We can always loophole or interpret our way around constitutions and things. Look at religion. Even an absolute, no exception statement doesn't guarantee anything absolutely. It needs more. Culture, history, a base of support, etc.

That said, declarations can be meaningful within a greater overall context.

At some point there has to be trust in people to be reasonable in their interpretation. If that trust isn't possible, the only available strategy is to try and purge the entire administrative apparatus and replace it rather than attempting to play word games. Word games are there to be lost.

This statement is pretty clear that the intent is to allow speech that some people find offensive.

Problem is that there can be no trust since this statement is coming from a group that disinvited a lecturer on climate science because he opposed DEI initiatives https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/06/mit-controver.... Actions speak louder than words.

Purging and rebuilding the entire administrative apparatus of the US university system is actually a great idea, and for more reasons than just freedom of expression.

I see here a climate scientist advocating for public education policy without seeming educated himself on the subject (advocating for trial runs of charter schools and voucher programs as if they haven’t already been tested and studies borne out). I don’t really see the canceling here, it sounds like his talk are moved from one audience to another audience still at MIT, his public advocacy in a field he doesn’t study was published in a national paper, and somehow he’s “cancelled”?

>The sponsoring department chair at MIT “called to tell me that they would be cancelling the Carlson lecture this year in order to avoid controversy.”

I think this is what's being referred to. Surely he wasn't made to retract his statements or fired but it does seem weird. After all said statements have little to do with his lecture. Also whilst i also disagree with the bits you mentioned i don't think they're what started this controversy or made up most of his standpoint to begin with.

With all due respect, I think you are misreading the situation. Some people at MIT disinvited Prof. Abbot. The authors of the article are those who opposed this action and are trying to establish rules to prevent the situation from happening again.

You are free to trust whomever you want, of course. FWIW, I am on your side, I know some of the people who signed the doc, and I don't see anything nefarious going on.

I think it is mostly a reasonable constraint. But I think it needs to be said that it is prudent to err on the side of freedom. Not prosecution of twitter comments and youtube videos. Everyone that was part of that should be deeply ashamed.

In my (backward) country a disturbance of the public order is illegal. Some old vices are hard to get rid off.

Mostly. But "otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute" could be construed to be anything.

Those all sound like pretty reasonable caveats that clearly don't, in their spirit, stifle discussion. Could they be twisted by someone who doesn't actually believe in the spirit of this declaration? Sure, but it's not like the declaration itself is a legal document, so it doesn't make sense to overly lawyer the precise language.

The "violates the law" thing is a different story, but the South African law you linked to has no parallel in the United States, so I think we can give them the benefit of the doubt until such law exists.

They all sound to me like reasonable caveats except the last one; which is vague and subjective enough to cover just about anything they don't like.

Hm yeah, that last catchall slipped by my read. Whatever that's meant to refer to, it should have been enumerated specifically. It sounds like a catchall added to appease the "moderate" supporters of freedom of expression.

In the US, thanks to the first Amendment and its interpretation by SCOTUS, what is legal is very broad.

Thats why elites have outsourced the censorship to private entities. Ironically most universities, since they are public, violate the law when they deplatform someone they don't like and have lost numerous court cases.

Of course they keep doing it because litigation is an insignificant cost for rich non-profits, theres no personal risk for the administration and it makes them feel virtuous.

These are well established legal boundaries to free speech.

Most responses to this will be positive, and they should be. Typically, the real evaluation is the market (will more students and professors be drawn to MIT?). However, there is already a tremendous demand for admission (from students) and competitive hiring processes (for professors).

So...how many other comparable institutions will follow suit? Will universities in California adopt, oppose, or ignore?

>> Typically, the real evaluation is the market.

Typically in what sense? I don't think there's much history of success from consumer/student "action." Market discipline exists where and when it exists. It's not always, or even often, a major factor.

>> Typically, the real evaluation is the market

Last years experience tell us that the perception on Media is the driving factor not the market. No-one is waiting for market effects to be visible. They are just reacting to anything that makes enough noise.

Universities in California are going in precisely the other direction by mandating ideological purity tests aka "diversity statements" for staff.

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/11/24/uc-davis-math-prof...

>mandating ideological purity tests

Are we saying that its bad? I mean, I think it's bad, but it is in fact "progressive" so I dunno what the consensus is.

Who's to say what ideology is the "pure" ideology? If everyone is striving for one way of thinking, where is the diversity of viewpoints?

> Now clearly “diversity” here means “ethnic diversity”, but I don’t think they say that explicitly. But those applicants who propose to increase political viewpoint diversity by, say, trying to promote conservative values and accept more conservative students, are simply not going to be hired!

I never thought about that before but that is an interesting point. It is not truly diversive if you can't include certain philosophies and ideologies.

It's the good old paradox of open societies: can they actually tolerate the intolerant, or letting them operate will bring about their end?

Open societies are constantly walking a fine line in practice.

It is an ideology that is sustained through censorship, faith, loyalty tests, and suppression.

It is particularly amusing when it pretends to be a science and makes recommendations on how to manage your company, hiring, or engineering teams. Don't hire smart people or good engineers, they say.

Get any individual that appears to be a zealot of this religion publicly to meet privately, away from microphones, and they will typically acknowledge the absurdity of it all. People are often happy to brag, gloat, and acknowledge they are just gaming the system for maximum benefit. Their willingness to disclose this to you does require trust.

So, when does this end? How much damage will this do? Is this a strategy designed to divide the lower classes during a period of runaway neofuedalist inequality?

> Typically, the real evaluation is the market (will more students and professors be drawn to MIT?).

Or even better, students with the right attitude towards this issue will flock to MIT, creating the right long term culture for the institution.

They should make applicant write a compulsory essay on the topic of free speech.

Promotion and making venues available are unaddressed issues here. The power of the institution is not just that of 'hard' censorship but of the 'soft' censorship we experience so often in the online tech world. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.

This is likely in response to the recent Dorian Abbot cancellation:

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/620352/

(Sorry about the AMP link, I couldn't figure out how to get a normal link.)

If you remove the "amp" fragments in that url (https://theatlantic.com/article/620352/), it seems to work and redirects to this:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/why-latest...

That's funny. So what does this change actually mean? Next time this won't happen?

> Sorry about the AMP link, I couldn't figure out how to get a normal link

I suggest the Redirect AMP to HTML browser extension:

https://www.daniel.priv.no/web-extensions/amp2html.html

Could be. I can attest that as of the late 1970s MIT and some of these professors did not care about free speech. My source on the state of the campus has since retired and is not looking back at all, but told me in the middle of the last decade the most rightward a student could be was libertarian, and I have to wonder if that's still allowed.

More likely these professors, having done their part to turn MIT into "an oasis of totalitarianism in a desert of freedom" are now worried the monster they helped create is going to cancel them. Which is how holiness spirals have worked throughout history.

sounds great! Does this mean that fuck-the-skull-of-jesus.mit.edu will, finally, be back? It was an important--I would say, constituent--part of the internet for many years.

Meanwhile, the University of California seems to have implemented a DEI litmus test on all applications for faculty positions and promotion. Does anyone know if this is actually true? Is this reasonable?

https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/01/wokeademia.html?m...

Just as a side note. The link to this post was flagged after being submitted to HN yesterday within a very short time frame.

You might want to consider your karma points and preemptively remove it and pay your dues to the community by apologizing for not adhering to group speak.

I very much stand on the left side of the political spectrum, while the linked blogpost clearly comes from the liberal to right spectrum. But I still think that the old Rosa Luxemburg quote should apply:

> Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter (Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit der Andersdenkenden)

I valued the posting yesterday as it provided differing views that made me think, evaluate and understand my own position better afterwards.

Edit:

Please excuse my sarcasm in the first paragraphs, but I was troubled yesterday that the link was flagged to death and that not a civil discussion was able to arise. I was only used to this way of dealing with dissenting opinions on other forums until then.

I think you're mistaking groupthink for people who are simply tired of seeing the same old culture war debate on HN repeated over and over again.

Plenty HN discussions about exactly this subject in the past have shown that:

1. Unlike some subjects, HN commenters have widely differing opinions here. The free speech hardliners and the anti disinformation/bigotry/*ism hardliners are both well represented, and many on both sides are capable of intelligent debate.

2. Nevertheless, the discussion never really gets anywhere. Nobody adds new information and nobody convinces anybody.

I might be projecting, but i can imagine that many people flagged it with a "here we go again" sigh and not with the "must suppress anti woke sentiments!!" thought you. I bet comparably inflammatory articles from the woke side of the debate are flagged equally much.

On #2,

I dont engage with others really to change the mind of the person I am engaging with. That is much to hard and a high bar.

No, I engage to ensure there is a dissenting view point read by observers to the debate, those people I can sway with my arguments, the people that simply read HN never commenting themselves. That is my target.

I want to ensure HN is not just an echo chamber of one political ideological take on a political topic

>>I bet comparably inflammatory articles from the woke side of the debate are flagged equally much.

That has not been my observation. HN is less Echo chambery than say Reddits political subs but there is still a clear political bent here

While I completely understand the need for why underrepresented groups should be given preference in certain application and hiring processes, I still carry a desire that this would not be necessary.

I do not judge people I interact with based on their gender, skin color, race, or such irrelevancies. I judge them by how they behave toward me. In the process, many stereotypical "old white men" come off very badly. Although I am almost an old white man myself. I wish for a world where it doesn't matter what gender someone identifies by or what that person is doing in bed, on the couch, at the kitchen table, or anywhere else with anyone else.

And of course I know that this argument is misused to sweep systematic discrimination of social groups under the carpet. That's why I'm not in favor of judging members of such groups only on the basis of performance criteria that favor people who were born and raised in a privileged situation by a lucky coincidence.

Nevertheless, I find it important to deal with the argument that, in a better world, we should not judge anyone by such criteria. It should not play a role in an ideal world.

And I believe that with our ever increasing diversification we are playing into the hands of those who want a divided, disunited society/opposition.

Divide et impera has always been a very successful strategy and it has always been successful to play individual sub-groups off against each other, even though they have much more in common than what divides them.

So I personally consider it a gain to deal with dissenting opinions. And be it in the worst case only to sharpen and polish my own arguments.

> You might want to consider your karma points

Karma points are worth less than skee-ball tickets.

I wholeheartedly agree. That's the reason I used the term in the sarcastic part.

> Is this reasonable?

Absolutely not. This incentivises the worst characters and abuse of power. DIE is the most impotent advertising for social justice that I have ever seen. I support social justice in most cases, it a basic requirement for society and every society has some form of it implemented. But I also support humanism and enlightenment which DIE proponents very quickly leave behind.

DIE put me off of it pretty quickly. I believe California is selling entitlement instead of education here. And that entitlement firmly includes knowing better than anyone else and the justification is that they do it for the greater good. We had that countless times in human history and the result was always the same. If you want to see the result of underfunded education, it may very well be California. Maybe it should not be surprising to find it there since the contrast of wealth is pronounced.

It is hard not to become reactionary to DIE, they should just be ignored in the best case. It just behaves like religeous fundamentalism, they believe there are countless Nazis all around them and are themselves reactionaries.

How can it not be true? Berkely posts a detailed rubric for grading DEI statements on their own website, for all to see: https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...

It is clear that they won’t hire anyone who doesn’t express beliefs identical to their own.

> It is clear that they won’t hire anyone who doesn’t express beliefs identical to their own.

That's not really what's going on here. First of all, you're not really understanding the faculty hiring process. The DEI aspect is just one of many considered, and the people who have most direct impact on the hiring process are the department and college dean, not the DEI office who produced this website.

Secondly, to the extent that DEI statements/rubrics are considered as part of the application, they are done so because they relate specifically to the job. It's a faculty's explicit purpose to teach and manage a diverse classroom. If you look at the rubric, the low scoring results would indicate an applicant has no working knowledge or experience in diversity. This is a job requirement because the student body is diverse. This is not a purity test or an ideological test. Notice the rubric says nothing about beliefs. This is about knowledge and experience.

Experienced teachers will be able to speak cogently about DEI issues, and they will pass this with no problem. Applicants who never taught anything, and who believe the job is to do research and treat teaching as an afterthought will not to well. That's just how it is. But it's not a litmus test or a purity test or an ideological filter. It's about ability to do the job as it's advertised.

The DEI aspect is "one of many considered", but the scoring rubric says that applicants who do not score above a cutoff on DEI issues will not be considered. It's in fact not scoring neutral "knowledge" of posited DEI issues but ideological belief in their relevance, and it scores "experience" in furthering DEI by matching the adherence of said 'experience' to an especially divisive and controversial approach, and demanding impact on teaching and research activities that ought to be protected from ideological bias per well-known academic norms of neutrality. The requirements are worded in a misleading manner that makes them appear like they're not demanding anything more than the status quo, but they absolutely are.

> but the scoring rubric says that applicants

Like I said, "the scoring rubric" is not the arbiter of the faculty hiring process. Neither is the DEI office. It's not just one of many things considered, it's quite minimal when stacked next to research experience.

That said, a cutoff here is entirely appropriate. Look at what the lowest scoring entries are on the rubric. They are characterized statements of this caliber as as "vague", "little expressed knowledge", "little demonstrated awareness", "seems to be not aware", "no specifics", "brief descriptions" etc. Why would a department want to accept a faculty member who communicates vaguely, with no specifics, and seem unaware of the salient issues? This isn't about "They don't believe the right things". It's about "They don't believe anything".

And anyway, you're giving the rubric more rigidity than it deserves just because it's presented as a rubric. It explicitly states this:

  These examples are offered as illustrative suggestions; they are neither exhaustive nor ironclad. They can be modified to fit the academic and disciplinary backgrounds of applicants in a particular search. Faculty members in individual units should use their disciplinary expertise to understand what examples are likely most appropriate for their particular department or search.

So really, this whole document is just a fancy way to frame a suggestion that you should really think hard about DEI issues on your application.

> So really, this whole document is just a fancy way to frame a suggestion that you should really think hard about DEI issues on your application.

This is exactly what we mean by an ideological test. Ideological tests are useful in certain circumstances, but dangerous in others. Churches want to hire people with faith, especially in leadership positions, and they certainly should ask their applicants about their faith. Should a non–religious public institution such as the University of California be using them to exclude all candidates that don’t follow a particular political movement?

It is especially ironic that they are using an ideological test that claims to test for belief in diversity in order to weed out all non–conforming beliefs, because it ensures that the University of California will never be a truly diverse place.

> This is exactly what we mean by an ideological test.

No, because it's not prescribing any ideology. What is the actual test? Can you point to it? Can you define the ideology? How can this be an ideological test if the language on the so-called test essentially says "This is all just a suggestion, tailor this to your own departmental needs."

DEI issues are a reality for instructors who teach diverse classrooms. There's no getting around this reality. The question posed to applicants is: how do they deal with these issues, specifically, in practice? The answer to this question is not prescribed in any way. Not by this rubric. Not by hiring committees. Wide latitude is given toward applicants and I can tell the people who are most against this practice are those who have read the fewest DEI statements, know the least about how the academic hiring process actually works,

Also there seems to be an unstated belief among people who are against DEI statements that issues relating to diversity do not manifest themselves in the classroom. The "ideology" is actually that diversity and inclusion are important to think about at all! To this I would say whether or not you feel they are important or real, they impact the classroom nonetheless. Good instructors have a plan and the experience to deal with these issues.

> The "ideology" is actually that diversity and inclusion are important to think about at all!

(I appreciate you taking the time for this discussion.)

Yes, I fully agree that this is an ideology. This is where the problem is.

You presented (elsewhere) several examples of bad behavior that happens in a student body (racial slurs, sexual harassment, etc.) I think everybody agrees that this behavior needs to be "managed" and the professor needs to at the very least be prepared when this happens. One way to handle this situation is to offer incoming professors a pamphlet describing various situations likely to happen and suggestions on how to deal with them.

You cross the ideological boundary when you start labeling these issues as DEI, and this is where the animosity starts, including animosity from me.

What's so bad with using the DEI label? It's just a name, right? What's in a name? Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus, and all that.

The problem is that by now DEI is an industry that has convinced half the American public that the other half is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. Under the name of DEI, I have been subject to all sort of indoctrination claiming that I am inherently racist, that I am unconsciously believing that women suck at math and I need to do something to fix this problem, etc.

The effect of this nonsense on workplaces is disastrous. You have black people here on HN saying, "I was getting along with everybody and now everybody thinks I am a diversity hire". I have been called a racist for suggesting that we (a cloud provider) have no right to know what customers are doing with the services we sell them. (I am racist because customers may use such services for "racist" causes.) Companies have explicit DEI goals, and I have seen at least one VP committing to meet with two "minoritized" employees per quarter in order to meet his bar for support for DEI. I can hardly think of anything more offensive than effectively saying "you are a black woman, I don't give a crap about you, but I need to spend 30m with you to get my bonus". And don't get me started with the impact of all this nonsense on hiring.

The bullshit level around women in tech is particularly ridiculous. Everybody believes that "science" proves that there is a bias against hiring women, and the DEI training provided this paper by Zingales et al. as a proof: https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/12/4403.full.pdf From a bullshit toy example where a bunch of students are asked to simulate hiring women for a simple math task, everybody is now inferring nefarious behavior in the real world. What's really funny about this paper is how they choose the specific task: "Although there is some evidence of a sex difference in mathematics performance (5, 6), which is shrinking over time (7), there is no sex disparity in performance on an arithmetic task such as ours (8)." [See Discussion section] So what these guys are really saying is: women can't do complicated math [5, 6], so we pick the trivial task of adding a bunch of numbers, which [8] proves that even women can do. The very article that complains about bias is predicated upon the fact that the bias is, in fact, justified and grounded in science.

I don't think I have to say that I regard all of the above as complete bullshit, both the paper and all its references. In my professional experience, the women I have interacted with were on average better than the dudes. But this is the nonsense that is sold as DEI these days. It doesn't solve any problems, and it creates needless tensions.

You seem to be under the impression that DEI is just a way to learn to deal with difficult situations. If you really believe this, maybe look outside your department?

> If you really believe this, maybe look outside your department?

I will definitely admit that I don't have much visibility outside of academia on DEI issues. I have visibility in my department, in my college and university, other departments at other universities, but not really the private sector.

I could definitely see a case where the private sector is now cargo-culting DEI efforts that originated in universities. Or that the DEI office is exporting their work, because that's their raison d'être. I could imagine this effort is misguided in some ways, if just for the reason that compared to employees, students are so much younger and less developed emotionally. Often they grow out of some of their worst behaviors by the time we graduate them. If you think about it, some of my students are as young as 16, most are 17-18-19. They are away from home for the first time in their lives, they are drinking, engaging in risky behavior, and they are at an age where they are susceptible of falling victim to diseases of the mind. As I said in another post, many of them are still developing a sense of what it means to treat others with respect and dignity.

Also I would say in the private sector, it's probably not right to require a DEI statement a condition of employment, for the reason that community service probably isn't a requirement of the job. In academia, because of the condition that community service is a job requirement, so it's more appropriate to talk about during the interview process.

One more important difference between academia and corporate America is that most DEI efforts in academia are completely optional for individual faculty, especially if they have tenure. The DEI rubric from Berkeley is a great example of this: here the DEI office is presenting a rubric that everyone is taking as hiring gospel and Berkeley, but when it comes to the actual hiring, this "rubric" is just a suggestion. Departments have the final say over who they hire, and hiring decisions are made democratically in most departments. Individual faculty make up the hiring committee, and the chair of the committee (a colleague, not your boss) can set their hiring practices that the committee find agreeable. Rather than the authoritarian model you find in corporate America, the academic model is more egalitarian. If you don't want to engage in any of this stuff, you really don't have to. There's the matter of getting past the DEI aspect of the application, but as I said this shouldn't be a problem for any faculty who actually has a concrete track record of service.

> Under the name of DEI, I have been subject to all sort of indoctrination claiming that I am inherently racist, that I am unconsciously believing that women suck at math and I need to do something to fix this problem, etc.

I think this is very unfortunate, but even if you believe you are free from a bias that women are bad at math, are you claiming that you are free from all biases? I think that would be quite a stretch. DEI efforts aren't supposed to convince you that you are racist, and they aren't supposed to claim that you suffer from specific biases, but they are supposed to make you aware that biases do exist in all people, and that we can counteract them by being aware of them.

So even if you aren't biased against women in math (great!), you still may have other subtle biases that you should be aware of. Biases are particularly important when you are in a direct position of power over the future other people, and therefore it's doubly important for professors to be aware of them. For rank and file employees, maybe the impact of biases is muted, which is another way I would say DEI efforts don't translate well from academia into corporate America.

> Companies have explicit DEI goals, and I have seen at least one VP committing to meet with two "minoritized" employees per quarter in order to meet his bar for support for DEI.

I would say this is a good example of where DEI in corporate America and academia diverge. In academia, we don't have a concept like this because DEI issues are ambient in our work. Having 1-on-1 time with minorities to meet some quota is quite misguided, and I can definitely see how overzealous DEI efforts can lead to such policies.

> The bullshit level around women in tech is particularly ridiculous. Everybody believes that "science" proves that there is a bias against hiring women

One of the thing you hear often about hiring women in tech is "We'd love to hire more women but we don't have enough applicants in the pipeline. Tell the schools to graduate more qualified women applicants, and we'll hire more women." Okay, well that's what we're doing. We're trying to increase the number of women applicant to tech roles, and I think what we're doing is working. Whether or not there's a bias against hiring women, there's definitely a gender imbalance in my CS classroom, to the tune of 90% men, 10% women. Through our DEI efforts, we have increased enrollment of women in our courses, and their outcomes are better than they've ever been. In fact, there were a number of tensions that existed before, and we've worked to alleviate them. Now, when these practices are exported and taken out of an academic context, I could definitely see that it could lead to unfortunate situations where things can be made worse. But that doesn't change the fact that student outcomes across both genders are up, enrollment of women in our program is up, and there are more women than ever who are graduating from our CS program and applying to tech roles.

> One way to handle this situation is to offer incoming professors a pamphlet describing various situations likely to happen and suggestions on how to deal with them.

This would be a helpful resource, but I still don't think it's unreasonable to ask applicants how they actually dealt with these issues in the past. And for senior applicants, they should have more than enough to talk about regarding their service and outreach efforts.

Also, to be clear, there's a big question mark around the best way to deal with various situations. It's very hard to distill things down to a pamphlet because the best practices here are still in flux and being researched. There is plenty of room for innovation in teaching methods.

> You seem to be under the impression that DEI is just a way to learn to deal with difficult situations.

Well, I've also seen the results in my department. We can see it from students who tell us they appreciate the efforts we are making. We can see it in student outcomes of certain demographics that are better than they were from before we started these efforts. Enrollments from underrepresented groups are up.

> (I appreciate you taking the time for this discussion.)

Heh thanks, you may be the only one. My karma certainly took a hit :P

This is not a purity test or an ideological test.

It most definitely is - in that it plainly assumes that candidates are racist / sexist / binarist / faithist / shapeist / ablist / everything-ist trolls; ignorant of social issues, and completely unable to treat others with elementary respect and decency -- until and unless they swear and affirm otherwise.

> it plainly assumes that candidates are...

Again, as I stated in some other responses here (not necessarily to you), the rubric notes several times that it's a suggestion and a template, and that the various criteria are non-exhaustive and not "ironclad". I've never heard of an ideological test that opens itself up to multiple interpretations.

> until and unless they swear and affirm otherwise.

Have you been in a position to read many (or any) DEI statements? Many barely show awareness that community service is a job requirement of being a professor. The worst of the worst are just a series of vague platitudes strung together e.g. "I strive to treat all students with respect and decency"... okay. How? To what effect? How do you refine this process?

Many candidates can't speak with any specificity about their views on social issues that impact the classroom, and struggle to have a cogent discussion relating to the salient issues that arise in a classroom. These candidates are often newly minted Ph.D.s or post-docs with no teaching experience, who want a full time tenure-track job but regard the teaching aspect as a nuisance.

Have you been in a position to read many (or any) DEI statements?

Thanks heavens, no.

I totally agree that you don't want to hire people for instructor roles who regard teaching as an afterthought or a nuisance. That's always been a "given" (even though obviously not always adhered to, in practice). And yes, in general you want to avoid the mostly mono- and bisyllabic types, and hire people who answer important questions with more than a single sentence fragment.

But to be clear: the practice of mandating diversity statements (with highly refined, and in places, what can only be described as ideologically charged evaluation criteria) is completely orthogonal to the simple matter of needing to hire teachers who actually can teach and want to to.

Okay, well what's your suggestion then? People are always very eager to say they treat everyone with respect and dignity, and they want to make everyone feel welcome and accepted in the classroom. But it seems like if we ask them "Okay, how do you make people feel welcome and accepted in your classroom? What specific practices have you put in place? How do you measure this impact? How specifically will you adapt in the future?" then that is very problematic for some people. They don't want to answer those questions. They'd prefer to leave it at "I treat everyone with respect" and leave it at that, which is a meaningless platitude.

> with highly refined, and in places, what can only be described as ideologically charged evaluation criteria

I will keep reiterating the point, but this again overstates the role the document released by the Berkeley DEIB office plays in the faculty hiring process. At all levels, individual departments and the college dean have full discretion on what searches are conducted and how applications are evaluated. Individual faculty members are free to fully disregard any and all DEI concerns when voting on a faculty hire.

Yes DEI statements are required in the application. No the DEIB office at Berekely doesn't have control over how that statement is evaluated. They have some thoughts, but they are just those -- impotent thoughts of the DEIB office to which you are ascribing far more weight than they deserve.

I think you have answered your own question. If you want to know "how do you make people feel welcome and accepted in your classroom", just ask that. Tell people to write a statement of pedagogy or something, where they discuss the things you care about.

Your problem is the DEI label. Your DEI office is working hard to convince the world that all whites are racists, which leads to pearls like this one which just came out today: https://alex-hanna.medium.com/on-racialized-tech-organizatio... I was not on the receiving end of the rants of this particular person, but similar expressions of deluded ontology happened all the time. You appreciate that calling one's colleagues racist all the time is not conducive to a good working relationship.

Maybe DEI was a good thing in academia years back. That horse has sailed. In the same way as people have redefined racism from KKK to "anything that leads to unequal outcomes", DEI is now associated with "the world is racist", "everybody is a white supremacist", "white fragility", and all this stuff. The message that your DEI office sends is pretty clear.

I wish you to be able to retain control over the choice of your colleagues forever.

> Tell people to write a statement of pedagogy or something

We do in fact ask them to write a teaching statement, and they focus on pedagogy there. But we want them to address issues of diversity specifically (I think I made it clear in my other posts why), because we found if we don't, then they won't address the topic at all. If we ask a question during the interview like "How do you handle a situation where a student reports sexual harassment to you?", we don't want it to be the first time in their life a candidate has ever even considered the question. Requiring an DEI essay is a way of elevating the profile of a job requirement during the interview process; if a candidate has to spend some time writing a DEI statement before a phone screen, it makes focuses their thoughts and makes in-person discussions much more productive.

> Your DEI office is working hard to convince the world that all whites are racists, which leads to pearls like this one which just came out today

The article you link is quite a pearl, but you have to admit this is probably one of the more extreme positions, and I would say it doesn't really represent what we're talking about here (the Berkeley rubric). This is a post by a blue-haired sociologist about DEI efforts in corporate America, which doesn't really reflect hiring practices in academic departments (except maybe the Sociology department). I know that academia has a reputation as being a bastion of leftism, but it might surprise a lot of people to know that there is a degree of political beliefs across the university, and that not all departments are as left leaning as e.g. the Sociology department.

> DEI is now associated with "the world is racist", "everybody is a white supremacist", "white fragility", and all this stuff. The message that your DEI office sends is pretty clear.

At the same time messages sent by DEI offices are misread and misrepresented. Look no further than the Berkeley rubric in question. It clearly presents itself as a suggestion, a template, non-exhaustive, not ironclad, open for interpretation, available to be used (or not) by any departments. Despite this very clear and unambiguous language, some people interpreted it as "You don’t get a job without demonstrating tangible contributions to DEI in the past." No, that's just not what is happening in reality. We have hired plenty of new faculty who have very weak DEI statements. It's very rare for new faculty to have much of a track record of tangible DEI contributions. But they get hired anyway, because as I said, the perception of this document does not match reality.

Nonetheless, what you get is a bunch of people who have never read a single DEI statement in their life, have never been a part of a faculty search, have never applied to a faculty position, all talking about and repeating how awful and corrupted the process is by DEI statements. All the while no one can point to a practice of this DEI rubric being used in the way they fear.

So when you say that academic DEI offices are convicting the world that "all whites are racists" or "everybody is a white supremacist", I have to take a step back and pause. These are some pretty extreme, absolutist statements, so I have to ask are these hyperbole? Or do you have examples of academic DEI offices trying to convince the world that "all white are racist". Because I've seen a lot of communications from academics DEI offices, and it's not something they are likely to say. I know people in those offices and I'm sure they would disagree with the statement "everybody is a white supremacist". It's worth pointing out that the Berkeley rubric doesn't mention the words "racist", "racism", "white", or "supremacy" at all.

I will say that there's a lot of nuance in these issues. It's quite easy to go from a nuanced, qualified, well-reasoned, sourced statement to incendiary hyperbole by removing a few well-placed words. Often times you can take an outrageous statement that is taken as "everybody is a white supremacist", and trace its provenance back to something that is much more reasonable in context, that doesn't even closely resemble where it ended up (ever play whisper down the lane?)

> I wish you to be able to retain control over the choice of your colleagues forever.

We will. The economics work out that way.

> Or do you have examples of academic DEI offices trying to convince the world that "all white are racist".

Not that explicitly, of course, but let's go to https://diversity.berkeley.edu/rwle-books and click on "Anti-racism resources". We get to a google doc with a bunch of links, mostly broken or paywalled (so don't blame me for cherry picking).

Let's look at the first "Articles to read" https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/americas-r... From that document I learn that there is a "racial contract" in America "rendered in invisible ink", which everybody tacitly agrees with (or at least all whites).

"The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal; the racial contract limits this to white men with property. The law says murder is illegal; the racial contract says it’s fine for white people to chase and murder black people if they have decided that those black people scare them. “The terms of the Racial Contract,” Mills wrote, “mean that nonwhite subpersonhood is enshrined simultaneously with white personhood.”"

But don't worry, "the racial contract is not partisan". Still, we can always blame Trump: "“We can’t keep our country closed down for years,” Trump said Wednesday. But that was no one’s plan. The plan was to buy time to take the necessary steps to open the country safely. But the Trump administration did not do that, because it did not consider the lives of the people dying worth the effort or money required to save them." (The people dying are understood to be nonwhite from the context.) You can read the rest of this delusional tripe.

Let's move to another article https://thebolditalic.com/where-do-i-donate-why-is-the-upris... America is full of white supremacists: "There is also evidence that much of the destruction has actually been instigated by white supremacists. This is not new. White Americans have a long, storied history of violence and destruction in this country." The rest of the article is actually somewhat reasonable, except for the occasional incendiary statement: "That white people, for all of our heartbreak and solidarity in public, often still operate in this way under even the smallest private pressure, so calculated and with such total disregard for Black lives."

Look, I get it. There is a history of horrible things, in the USA and really everywhere in the world. It's good that activists are drawing attention to the problems of historically oppressed groups. And for sure I'll defend their right to say whatever they want. I like to think I have even helped a little bit to make the situation better. I can live with the rhetoric, and in fact I would love to be in a world where people speak more directly, because it is easier to reach agreement if people spit out all their concerns quickly. But this kind of rhetoric is divisive and the fact that DEI office promotes it does not help the problem that they (and me and you) are trying to fix. What impression does the applicant get after being asked to write a diversity statement and going to the diversity website?

Then people take this stuff literally and you get the "pearl" that I linked. I easily admit that the example is extreme, but not as extreme and as uncommon as you may think. I'll leave it at that.

Good luck. I'll stop replying since this thread is way past its expiration date.

> let's go to https://diversity.berkeley.edu/rwle-books and click on "Anti-racism resources"

One of the repeated oversights in these discussions is taking resources out of context. Just because something is available on the public web, doesn't mean it was designed for a public audience. The Berkeley rubric we've been talking about is the first example of that.

Here you're taking a reading list on the Berkeley diversity site which is described as:

  Read, Watch, Listen, Engage is a space where students, staff, and faculty can share books, podcasts, conferences, and more on E&I-related topics.

So what we're looking at is a reading list Berkeley students and faculty use to share interesting books with each other. This is made doubly clear since as you noted, most of the links are internal Berkeley library links.

I think it bears noting that Berkeley is regarded as one of the most left leaning institutions in the country and maybe even world. I'm certainly not going to put myself in the position of arguing that some of the content you've linked to and quoted isn't divisive, or that Berkeley of all places isn't left leaning. But at the same time I would say the leftmost department at the leftmost university in the country should be as bad as it gets, right? I just don't see how a reading list is really convincing the world that "everybody is a white supremacist".

Honestly I know what you're talking about as far as this kind of perception that is spread, but I really don't think it's academic DEI offices that are the main culprit, although I think they're associated with it. And the reason I think that is because academic DEI offices can't make faculty buy into any of what they do, and our tolerance for having to do extra work is exactly zero. So the efforts they come up with don't go very far unless we actually want to do them. Like, if you're on a hiring committee and you think DEI statements are bullshit, you don't have to read a single one. You don't have to give any DEI aspect as single moment of consideration. You don't have to ask a single DEI related question. No one is going to force you to do anything.

But the more I think about it, the more I believe the problem is the move of DEI initiatives into corporate America. HR has far more power over employees than DEI departments do over faculty. I could definitely see them taking something that worked well in the academic model, and turning it into a Frankenstein in the corporate world. It also would explain the quite divergent point of view we both have of the same topic -- you're in the corporate world and have experienced all the worst aspects of DEI initiatives, I'm in the academic world and it's worked out quite well for us because it makes more sense here.

> What impression does the applicant get after being asked to write a diversity statement and going to the diversity website?

We can look at an actual Berkeley job posting and see what applicants see. Here's an advertisement for an assistant professor in physics:

https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF03085

The DEI letter is described as follows to the applicant:

  Statement on Contributions to Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - Statement on your contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion, including information about your understanding of these topics, your record of activities to date, and your specific plans and goals for advancing equity and inclusion if hired at Berkeley (for additional information go to https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversity).

If we follow the link to additional information, we find:

  Advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are responsibilities of all Berkeley faculty through their research, teaching, and/or service. As a public institution we expect all new hires to meet our equity and inclusion standards for excellence. These responsibilities are codified in both the UC Berkeley Principles of Community(link is external), and The University of California Regents Policy 4400(link is external)

The actual UC diversity policy is here:

https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/governance/polici...

And it's pretty anodyne, but it makes the case I've been making here: California has a diverse populations, Berkeley exists to serve Californians, therefore Berkeley must work to accommodate a diverse student body. Pretty straight forward.

The other link has the Principles of Community:

https://diversity.berkeley.edu/principles-community

These are the documents that the search committees would use as the basis for any DEI related decisions, as they have far more weight institutionally.

Okay, so let's bring it full circle. The job advertisement asks for a DEI letter. The DEI letter is supposed to address how the applicant will abide by Policy 4400 and the Principle of Community. I think the principles as listed above are quite different from the Berkeley diversity reading list, and I don't see why any candidate should have a hard time addressing these topics.

Let me ask you this: I don't presume to know what you believe, but would you find it objectionable to write a DEI statement arguing that freedom of expression and allowing diverse viewpoints on campus is important to diversity and a healthy ecosystem of ideas? I don't know how you feel abut that, but this would be a perfectly acceptable DEI statement according to all of the language laid out in the job advertisement and its linked content (as long as you also discuss how you work to advance freedom of expression).

> Good luck. I'll stop replying since this thread is way past its expiration date.

You too! :)

If we ask a question during the interview like "How do you handle a situation where a student reports sexual harassment to you?", we don't want it to be the first time in their life a candidate has ever even considered the question.

So - how often do sexual harassment incidents occur such that the obvious line of report is to the instructor (as opposed to say, the department chair or an administrator)? Are you literally saying that, literally, every post doc should have (with 99 percent probability) been the recipient of such a report (on the basis of the handful of likely very small classes they've taught by that stage)?

And if the students did go to some other responsible contact person at the university, aside from the instructor (which is perfectly reasonable of course - maybe they don't want the instructor to know, because would distract from their ability to focus on their studies) -- I guess that post-doc shit out luck when applying for a position by your DEI board, because they have no sexual harassment reports under their belt?

Sounds patently unrealistic, of course. But this seems to be exactly what you are saying.

> So - how often do sexual harassment incidents occur such that the obvious line of report is to the instructor (as opposed to say, the department chair or an administrator)?

If incidents like this are reported at all, they are most often reported to instructors first. The reason is that the issues are quite sensitive, and often times students have a well-developed relationship with their instructors (in some cases it may be the only relationship with an adult on campus). They often do not know the chair or administrators, so the instructor takes the role of guiding the student though the process. Usually it means handing the issue off to someone who is more qualified, but it's important to be ready for when those students come to you.

> Are you literally saying that, literally, every post doc should have (with 99 percent probability) been the recipient of such a report (on the basis of the handful of likely very small classes they've taught by that stage)?

No, but a post doc should be aware of the high probability that something along these lines could happen with regularity when they become an actual professor. A post doc shouldn't sit there wide-eyed and slack-jawed when we ask them about these issues during an interview.

> I guess that post-doc shit out luck when applying for a position by your DEI board, because they have no sexual harassment reports under their belt?

No, expectations are calibrated based on the experience of the applicant. If we go by the Berkeley rubric, a candidate could score very well by:

- Comfort discussing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging related issues

- gives some detail about specific strategies for effective mentoring

- Mentions plans or ideas but more is expected for their career stage.

So if you can comfortably talk about salient issues, have some experience mentoring students, and have some plans but maybe not concrete ones, you are in a solid position. I don't see this as unrealistic.

Damn, this is actually a lot worse than it sounds. Rather than requiring an arguably hollow oath like the infamous UC loyalty oath from the 50s, they actually grade each applicant against “DEI” rubrics and eliminate applicants based on that. You don’t get a job without demonstrating tangible contributions to DEI in the past (no, treating everyone equally doesn’t count) and plans to promote it in the future. According to UC Davis math chair Abigail Thompson:[0]

> Nearly all University of California campuses require that job applicants submit a “contributions to diversity” statement as a part of their application. The campuses evaluate such statements using rubrics, a detailed scoring system. Several UC programs have used these diversity statements to screen out candidates early in the search process.

> A typical rubric from UC Berkeley[1] specifies that a statement that “describes only activities that are already the expectation of Berkeley faculty (mentoring, treating all students the same regardless of background, etc)” (italics mine) merits a score of 1–2 out of a possible 5 (1 worst and 5 best) in the second section of the rubric, the “track record for advancing diversity” category.

> The diversity “score” is becoming central in the hiring process. Hiring committees are being urged to start the review process by using officially provided rubrics to score the required diversity statements and to eliminate applicants who don’t achieve a scoring cut-off.

[0] https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201911/rnoti-p1778.pdf

[1] https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...

Glad I’m no longer in the academic job market…

Edit: And I wonder if and when these will start to appear in PhD applications, as PhD students are employees in a sense and often need to teach, too.

> they actually grade each applicant against “DEI” rubrics and eliminate applicants based on that

Doesn't this explicitly incent applicants to lie by misrepresenting their views and past "contributions to DEI" as more pro-DEI than they actually are? I'm not sure how this requirement is compatible with rather basic norms of academic ethics.

Absolutely. Lying is always somewhat incentivized, but in most cases it doesn't work, because the candidate will be found out. If I interviewed at google, I could lie about my skills all I want, but I will be found out when asked to demonstrate them.

The DEI stuff really seems like as long as you say all the right words, you're fine. Which leads me to a scary thought - are we going to create some kind of "DEI social credit score" that employers can reference in the future?

Lying about one's identity is a social necessity. It's when people take the claims of others at face value to societal delusions can take hold from one bad actor.

It does but academia is already overrun with candidates lying about their past experiences to try and get in.

At some point PhDs issued after certain years are going to start being negatively attractive to employers, as they're going to be basically some sort of ideological purity awards rather than anything to do with merit. And you don't want people like that in an otherwise healthy organization, and more than you want to hire someone who has "20 years membership of the Lenin Appreciation Society" on their CV.

Why is this a bad thing? Part of a faculty’s job is to do community service and to manage a diverse classroom. Faculty who have a good handle on the issues that arise through teaching such a diverse classroom are better equipped to handle the job. It’s no different than judging them based on the their research or teaching experience, which are also part of the job. If an applicant doesn’t understand the salient DEI issues, they are literally unqualified.

The requirements are not limited to "understand[ing] the salient DEI issues" in an abstract, neutral sense; going by the scoring rubric, they're explicitly demanding a statement of ideological conformity-- as well as a personal commitment to an especially divisive, controversial, dubiously-effective approach to mitigating DEI challenges-- that goes further than what was previously "expected of all faculty". That's what makes it not OK.

Again, that's not about belief, that's about the reality that the student body is diverse, the school wants the student body to be diverse, and the classroom itself will accordingly be diverse. What specifically about the rubric is the most troubling to you?

By the way, as someone who hires faculty and reads many such statements (I have to ask, have you read any DEI statements? Do you have examples which you find especially troubling?), a discussion about how current efforts are dubiously effective would be welcome and would help your application at my institution. More often than not, what they are trying to do with these DEI statements is to weed-out applicants who have given no thought whatsoever to this part of the job. The most common failure here is to treat this job requirement as an afterthought and to focus 100% on the research portion. Someone who had genuine opinions about DEI education that run counter to the way things are done would be well received by the hiring committee at my institution.

> a discussion about how current efforts are dubiously effective would be a welcome and would help your application at my institution.

A required statement as part of applying for any faculty position or promotion is simply not the appropriate place for such a discussion. You're expecting what amounts to a serious research effort in social science. This kind of intervention in effective leverage points of a complex system (even if perhaps only a "system of oppression", as often described by those most concerned about DEI) is the stuff that research papers are made of, not short statements of conformity.

(Of course, this assumes that effective mitigation of DEI challenges is the actual goal of these requirements. It's not unreasonable to be rather skeptical about this, as the original professor who raised the issue - who is a social scientist - states in his blog post series.)

> not the appropriate place for such a discussion

Why? We want to hire faculty who have experience managing a diverse classroom. We want a diverse classroom because our student body is diverse. Our student body is diverse because our applicants are diverse. Diversity is part of this whole thing, and experience as faculty teaching diverse classrooms tells us that it's not something that can be treated as an afterthought.

> You're expecting what amounts to a serious research effort in social science.

No, we are expecting a cogent discussion of the issues which one encounters through teaching diverse classrooms. It's a matter of experience, and yes sometimes it amounts to years of experience to understand the complex and subtle role that diversity plays in the classroom. But as I said in another post, the failure mode here isn't typically an inability to articulate a deep understanding of this area, it's an inability to articulate any understanding or thought whatsoever to these problems. Even just discussing the problems is more than enough to get you past any cutoff or filter I've encountered.

> Even just discussing the problems is more than enough to get you past any cutoff or filter I've encountered.

Even assuming that this were true, the clear implication is merely that the scoring rubric for that part of the application is being disregarded, since it very explicitly says otherwise. The linked blog post series actually discusses the issue at length, so I'm not going to repeat what it says. Regardless, having scoring rubrics that explicitly demand ideological conformity to a specific point of view is still a recipe for significant problems in the future.

You're still not pointing out how this rubric is demanding ideological conformity. The wording of the rubric and the context in which it's presented have explicit language about how this is not in fact demanding ideological conformity. It's presented as a "sample", a "template", a "guide", "illustrative", and "recommended". It implores faculty search committees to tailor the rubric to the norms particulars of the academic discipline. Nowhere is it stated that this mandated and required.

I think one of the main issues here is that you are looking at the DEI component of the hiring process through the lens of the DEI office, which is not necessarily the view of the faculty search committee, who are the actual gatekeepers in the process.

But even if we consider the rubric as presented, I still fail to see where it's demanding ideological conformity. The rubric states it is evaluating:

  knowledge and understanding (section 1), track record of activities to date (section 2), and plans for contributing at Berkeley (section 3).

- For Section 1, requiring knowledge of a topic is not the same as requiring ideological conformity to a topic. I think we can all agree on that.

- Section 2 asks about a track record of activities. This is just asking about a candidate's service record, and an appropriate response here would be to talk about any community service experience one has.

- Section 3 asks about future plans. This is an opportunity for a candidate to talk about plans for incorporating community service and outreach with their research and teaching, which is usually a prerequisite to getting funding from top government funding agencies. A detailed service plan is an important part of any faculty candidate's application package, and the DEI letter is a great place to include it.

I don't see how any of that is onerous or demanding of ideological purity and conformity. It seems rather reasonable to me.

> I think we can all agree on that

The OP (viz. economist John H. Cochrane) clearly disagrees, so I can only point to his blog post series. The "understanding" requirement especially can be twisted to argue that disagreeing with the common, ideologically slanted outlook of DEI offices equates to a lack of "understanding". Section 2 and 3 have similar issues, where the requirement for a "track record" and future "plans" could be construed to imply that "service" to an increasingly expansive DEI administrative bureaucracy must henceforth be part of one's duties as faculty.

You're effectively saying that everything is OK so long as faculty, and not the DEI offices that, by all indications, actually drafted these scoring rubrics, are ultimately in control of the process. There's likely quite a bit of truth to what you're saying, but this nonetheless strikes me as a rather weak argument.

John H. Cochrane makes the same mistake in his blog post that you are making here: treating this rubric as prescriptive and determinative in the hiring process rather than taking it for what it says it is: a sample, template, guideline, suggestion, etc.

For example, Cochrane offers a point-by-point analysis of each element and points out where he thinks they are lacking e.g.

  "doesn't discuss gender or ethnicity/race." Only specific kinds of diversity need apply.

No, this is not what the rubric says. It does not say that one may only talk about specific kinds of diversity. It presents itself as a suggestion through and through, and explicitly says its not exhaustive or "ironclad". He makes the same mistake throughout.

> The "understanding" requirement especially can be twisted to argue that disagreeing with the common, ideologically slanted outlook of DEI offices equates to a lack of "understanding".

The continual framing of this document as prescriptive of hiring practices is the thing that is being twisted here. Let's be clear about what this document is: it's a communication from the DEI office intended to aid faculty search committees. It bears repeating that concrete issues of diversity and inclusion are experienced almost daily by faculty members. Students who are bullied and marginalized because of their race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc. are in every class I've taught, and these issue impact the learning environment and outcomes for students. Things that may seem theoretical to you or which you do not often confront are daily realities of the job for faculty, who can teach hundreds of students a year from around the world.

And so faculty do want applicants who show an understanding of these issues. What I've tried to say several times now is that many applicants do not consider DEI issues at all when applying for a faculty job. Not even a single thought. They think the job is research, which others in this thread have echoed. But that is emphatically not the job of a professor -- it may be a big part of it, but teaching and service are also very important as well.

As faculty, we understand DEI issues abound and are part of the job, and so I don't think it's unreasonable to make it part of the application process to explain how you would handle these issues in the classroom. Can you make an argument for the opposite position? That despite the fact that issues of diversity impact the classroom environment, it's not appropriate to ask a candidate how they would handle those issues.

> You're effectively saying that everything is OK so long as faculty, and not the DEI offices that, by all indications, actually drafted these scoring rubrics, are ultimately in control of the process. There's likely quite a bit of truth to what you're saying, but this nonetheless strikes me as a rather weak argument.

Why is this a weak argument? Your primary worry seems to be that these rubrics will be used as an ideological purity test. But in the context of how the process works, I've shown that it's not given the kind of consideration you believe it is given. Even when it's used to maximum effect, what it serves to do is weed out people who aren't willing to give even a modicum of consideration to issues related directly to the duties of the job.

I really have to ask again, how many DEI statements have you read? I'd really like if you could provide an example of one you felt is okay, but was rejected as insufficient by faculty. I'm trying to get a better idea of the specific objections you have.

Would you mind stating which institution you work for, so I can recommend that my kids avoid it like the plague?

I want teachers who can answer questions about Fourier transforms, not teachers who can "manage a diverse classroom". Really, "manage"?

The job of a teacher at a university is not to simply answer questions, but to manage (this is a term of art) a classroom for tens to hundreds of students at a time. One aspect of classroom management is mediating interpersonal conflicts, which happen often at scale and can hinge on issues relating to gender, race, religion, and other sensitive personal matters.

If you just want someone to answer questions on a subject matter, then a tutor is what you’re looking for. If you want to be a part of a student body, then you want someone who is not just good at answering questions, but can also effectively manage a classroom. Otherwise you’re in store for 14 weeks of confusion and chaos.

"Often happen at scale"? What on earth are you talking about?

The schools I went to very much "politically aware" -- and there was no shortage of drama and controversy in the student newspapers, online and all over campus, in fact. But in the classroom? I literally cannot think of a single instance of "interpersonal conflict" that would have required special "management" skills of any kind (beyond simple decency and common sense). Everyone got along, and it was all pretty mellow and chill, actually.

> "Often happen at scale"? What on earth are you talking about?

What I mean is that things that are rare for most people in everyday life become commonplace when you deal with batches of 100s of humans at a time.

For example, bipolar disorder occurs at a frequency of about 1% in the general population. Statistically in my classroom of 100 students, there's at least 1 who suffers from bipolar disorder, and therefore is in serious danger of for the first time undergoing an acute mental health crisis at some point during the semester. Therefore in my profession, issues related to mental health are not a rare or abstract occurrence, but are ever-present in the classroom semester after semester. Indeed, in almost all of my classes there will be a student who undergoes such a crisis, and so it's best to have a policy for dealing with these issues when they arise.

> I literally cannot think of a single instance of "interpersonal conflict" that would have required special "management" skills of any kind (beyond simple decency and common sense). Everyone got along, and it was all pretty mellow and chill, actually.

By "schools I went to", do you mean as a student? If so, then it's not surprising you wouldn't have been exposed to any of these things; very sensitive matters are brought to instructors in confidence and are handled discretely. In a well-managed classroom, the issues of other students should be transparent to you.

Some examples that I experienced recently:

- Student had racial slurs spray painted on their residence, wanted to discuss an extension of his project due to emotional distress.

- Female student overheard other male students making lewd and harassing comments about her, made her feel unwelcome in the classroom and was affecting her performance.

- Student was bullying other students in his group to the point that they came to me in tears about how he was treating them.

Having taken classes you may feel you understand what it takes to run a classroom, but I assure you there's an endless stream of these kinds of issues that occur in the background that you have no idea your instructors are dealing with.

I get the point instructors need to have above-average empathy, and be able to deal with stuff that happens that occasionally happens in group settings. That's always been a given in higher education. And yes, students did have personal crises and occasionally untoward interactions did happen. (Outright bullying does seem kind of strange, but I distinctly recall how relieved I was that had completely disappeared when I hit campus for my freshman year. Really, that's HS and junior high level stuff -- and the selection process for a reasonably serious school seems to be quite effective at weeding out that kind of behavior. But no matter, that's a side topic).

But you know what? Stuff happened and the instructors, provosts and other staff were able to deal with it based, again -- on their capacities for empathy, common sense and elementary decency. Without having to produce a lengthy statement of their "understanding of the dimensions of diversity", "organizing and speaking at workshops" ... and all the other positive signals candidates are supposed to generate to avoid coming under suspicion of being either deficient in their capacities for treating other people decently (or worse, perhaps secretly harboring bigoted attitudes).

So this all gets back to the original question: Why are these DEI statements necessary? Why is it simply presumed that instructors are deficient in their understanding of "ethnic, socioeconomic, racial, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and cultural differences" (quoting from the UC rubric) ... until they produce a carefully constructed attestation of their ... I know you're going to hate this term, but there's really no other term to use: virtuous awareness of the importance of these issues?

BTW I didn't drop the "v-" word just to tap in to the current hot-button debate about the pros and cons of virtue signaling. There really is something about the some of expectations in the UC rubric that is just ... weird, very weird, and in controlling, authoritarian way. For example the part where it gives as an example of a "wrong" answer to one of its sections (where a "wrong" answer can easily derail your candidacy, and hence, depending on the job you're applying for, effectively hobble our career):

    Explicitly states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and “treat everyone the same.”

This is perfectly decent position for someone to have, in my view. In fact, until very recently, it would been seen as a very enlightened, principled position to take.

But in the current climate -- it is of course absolutely unacceptable to "treat everyone the same". You have to be aware of their presumed "difference" as based on observed characteristics and (inferred or presumed) group identity -- and factor this into your interactions with them at all times. Otherwise, you are clearly lacking in empathy, and completely incapable of understanding the fact that other people have different backgrounds and different perspectives than your own.

And any class you teach will be "14 weeks of chaos and confusion", waiting to happen.

"I get the point that ...", "hobble your career"

> Stuff happened and the instructors, provosts and other staff were able to deal with it based, again -- on their capacities for empathy, common sense and elementary decency. Without having to produce a lengthy statement of their "understanding of the dimensions of diversity", "organizing and speaking at workshops"

Do you really know this to be true, though? Faculty and admin are always organizing and speaking at workshops on these topics, they're always holding seminars for one another about best practices and new ideas. They've most certainly had pointed discussions in faculty meetings about these issues and how to handle them. And they've been doing these things well before "DEI" became a thing.

Also, unstated in your comment is the presumption that dedicated reflection and intentional effort can't improve one's empathy and decency. That a baseline, instinctual level is enough, even though you admit earlier you believe it's a given that instructors need to have above-average empathy. Okay well if that's true, how does one develop above-average empathy? How does one demonstrate above-average empathy?

> all the other positive signals candidates are supposed to generate to avoid coming under suspicion of being either deficient in their capacities for treating other people decently (or worse, perhaps secretly harboring bigoted attitudes).

I think this is an important point you make here. Because we agree that the job of professor requires above-average empathy. I believe that anyone can improve their empathy through practice and intentionality. I also believe that although everyone considers themself to be empathetic and decent, everyone also has the capacity to make mistakes. I believe intentional practice and reflection are the best way to use these mistakes to maximize one's empathetic ability.

In that light, a DEI statement should be seen as an opportunity for an applicant to demonstrate their practice of developing an above-average empathy. Then the statement is not about identifying deficient capacities or bigoted attitudes. Rather, it's about identifying candidates who have recognized that empathy is a skill that can be honed like any other, and who have developed and implemented an explicit practice for honing their own empathy.

> I know you're going to hate this term, but there's really no other term to use: virtuous awareness of the importance of these issues?

I have no feelings about this term.

> There really is something about the some of expectations in the UC rubric that is just ... weird, very weird

I will say again that the Berkeley rubric is the product of the Berkeley DEIB office, which is probably staffed by people who are very far from your position in the political spectrum. Most of what they say may seem quite weird to you. So the entire document has to be viewed through this lens, with the clear understanding that hiring committees, who I will state again are the ones with the power to derail your candidacy (not the DEI office), don't understand or agree with everything written in this document.

As far as the criterion you highlighted, it is a perfectly decent position for someone to have. The reason why it's seen as "wrong" by the DEIB office at Berkeley is because from experience we as a profession have found it leads to instructors with attitudes like "I don't care that Timmy has a learning disability, he has to take the test for the same 45 minutes as the other students!"

The idea isn't really to factor an individual's background into all of your interactions with them at all times, that would be exhausting. Instead, the idea is to recognize that someone's background can profoundly impact the way they experience your classroom, and sometimes that manifests itself in ways where you as an instructor have the opportunity to make conditions materially better. Sometimes these changes are very small and subtle, but can have a huge impact on students. The difficulty isn't making the change, it's in recognizing the need for one in the first place (this is really where the empathy skill is put to work).

Another way you can think about it is, it's less about particular students and individuals, and really more about the fact that there isn't one single archetypical student X that you can design a course around. Instead, there are different kinds of students -- X, Y, and Z -- and they all have competing and sometimes conflicting demands.

Let me give you some examples:

- Some instructors have a no laptops during class rule. But some students have trouble taking notes on paper due to any number of issues. A policy of treating everyone the same would lead to these students doing poorly in the class. Taking into account their needs can result in a policy that can be crafted to work for everyone.

- Most of my students are teenagers, but others are working parents. One of these parent-students had a sick child, and couldn't afford a sitter so that they could come to class. Some instructors would say this parent-student gets a zero and has to make up the work, because that's the policy for all students. On the other hand, I've already factored this reality into my course design, and the parent-student was able to take care of their child and also didn't miss a single minute of class. Experienced instructors do this as a matter of course and will be able to write about it in a DEI statement without a problem. Novice instructors don't even recognize the issue until it comes at them mid semester, where ad hoc changes to course policies can be problematic.

- I used to require some pretty involved software installation for one of my courses. Everyone has a laptop, so what's the big deal? Well, then I learned just how tenuous "having a laptop" can be. While some students had a brand new, state-of-the-art 16" Macbook Pro, others were using a 5 year-old family laptop shared between 4 siblings, and didn't have permission to install the required course material. Thus I adjusted my requirements here so that the software could be used from a browser, and required no installation at all.

> Otherwise, you are clearly lacking in empathy, and completely incapable of understanding the fact that other people have different backgrounds and different perspectives than your own.

Right, so if you say that you will "treat everyone the same", you have to square that with the "fact that other people have different backgrounds and different perspectives than your own." What follows from different backgrounds and perspectives is different needs and expectations. That's why "treat everyone the same" is problematic -- because it's hard to do that and also admit that you can fulfil all student needs and meet every expectation.

Finally I will say that I believe what the Berkeley DEIB office is really doing here with this particular criterion is cutting to the chase: "treat everyone the same" is one of those banal meaningless platitudes you will find in statements that are written as an afterthought. It's not often you will read a phrase that amounts to "treat everyone the same", and then what follows is a detailed, nuanced, well-reasoned discussion as to why this policy works in practice. Such a statement would be welcomed, although I think if you came to interview you may be challenged on your point of view.

Rather, it's typically just one platitude in a string of platitudes, which amount to a vague and ultimately meaningless DEI statement.

> And any class you teach will be "14 weeks of chaos and confusion", waiting to happen

Heh, I will say my students certainly are perpetually confused.

Do you really know this to be true, though?

Well yeah, because the concept of a "diversity statement", let alone of a DEIB, did not exist at the time.

And that's the topic of discussion here -- whether these mandatory affirmative statements are necessary, or even helpful. Not "discussions in faculty meetings" (which of can be effective). But these precious mandatory affirmative statements, as judged and scored by these boards with their (as you seem to acknowledge) apparently unknowable criteria.

I'm just going to address one more snippet of what you said, then I'm going to have to bail:

The reason why it's seen as "wrong" by the DEIB office at Berkeley is because from experience we as a profession have found it leads to instructors with attitudes like "I don't care that Timmy has a learning disability, he has to take the test for the same 45 minutes as the other students!"

We keep going back in circles, here. You seem to just assume, prima facie, the effectiveness of these statements: that candidates with "weak" affirmative diversity statements -- as judged their spouting what you deem to be "empty platitudes", and for their failure to emit who knows what positive signals you or whoever is sitting on the DEI board that year is looking for -- are basically childish, self-centered jerks (who wouldn't already be revealing these traits by other means). And that that requiring "strong" affirmative statements somehow protects the university community against the encroachment of these childish, self-centered jerks. Who might just not immediately agree with whatever accessibility guidelines come down the pipe (in regard to students with disabilities) -- but would become become obstructionist, and start to pout and stomp their feet, as you hyberbolize: "I don't care what guidelines say! I'm going to run my class the way I see fit!"

I don't know what higher plane of reality you inhabit such that you feel confident you can draw a causative association between a candidate's making a statement like "I treat everyone equally" -- and their being disposed of that kind of behavior.

But I maintain that is, at best... a gut-level association -- kind of like "I know their kind", "I know them when I see them". That is to say: at best, a very tenuous association -- and at worst, a stereotype. And an ideologically-driven one at that. Which indicates, ironically, a lack of depth of understanding of cognitive ... diversity.

That's how I see it. You can see it otherwise of course, and that's perfectly fine. I do need to move on though, and call it a day with this thread. You are extremely even-tempered and civil (much more so than I), but as the other commenter pointed out, this thread has gotten way too long, and is now way past its expiration date.

> Well yeah, because the concept of a "diversity statement", let alone of a DEIB, did not exist at the time.

What I was saying is that diversity initiatives, training, seminars, workshops, and all the various activities that are now concentrated in the DEIB office have been going on for quite some time at different levels in the University. Offices of diversity haven't always been around, but similar efforts have always existed. Maybe your instructors haven't written a DEI statement, but surely they have engaged in the activities one would write about in a DEI statement. Every member of the faculty has.

> You seem to just assume, prima facie, the effectiveness of these statements

The statements are most effective in focusing candidates to answer questions about diversity during the interview.

> their failure to emit who knows what positive signals you or whoever is sitting on the DEI board that year is looking for

The "positive signals" we are looking for are specificity. We just want examples. What have you done specifically? What do you plan to do specifically? Otherwise, yeah, they're platitudes.

> are basically childish, self-centered jerks

I'm sorry I probably overstated Berkeley's intention with their rubric, as I'm not a part of Berkeley and had no hand in writing it, but I just had some specific instances in mind when I that this. I will say I've read a lot of statements that say something to the effect of "I treat everyone equally" and I've had a lot of discussions with those candidates. It usually turns out that after a probing discussion, their actual position is much more measured. The "I treat everyone equally" absolutists I've come across have actually ended their careers in self immolation. And I mean, they were hired in the first place, so their statement didn't even affect their candidacy, but I will say their attitude lead to problems.

> You are extremely even-tempered and civil

It comes from dealing with teenagers all day. Cheers!

As a non-white male person who successfully navigated highly diverse top U.S. institutions as an international student without all the DEI bullshit a while back, I’d rather work with faculty and staff who don’t cater to my ethnicity, gender or whatever irrelevant traits, thanks.

> without all the DEI bullshit a while back, I’d rather work with faculty and staff who don’t cater to my ethnicity, gender or whatever irrelevant traits,

Let me give you an example of where one example where it might feel like bullshit and be perceived to be irrelevant to you, but makes a big deal when it comes to individual students in my classroom.

On the issue of pronouns, many people feel like it's a bullshit thing they don't want to deal with. They view the inclusion of pronouns in a signature as a waste of time. I've been told as much. It's fine to have this position in the abstract, but it comes with costs in contexts that confront the reality that transgendered students exist.

Consider the fact that every semester, I will have at least 1-2 transgendered students in my classroom. For 99% of the students there, their pronouns are conventionally obvious. However, some students might be registered as "Christopher" yet they may present as conventionally female, and go by "Chris".

A good DEI statement might talk about an experience one has with this kind of situation. It's a situation that happens commonly for educators. How did they handle this situation? How did the students respond? What did the applicant learn? Pretty much the only wrong answer here is to dismiss this as a bullshit nonissue that is irrelevant. Maybe it's irrelevant to you in your personal life, but it's not irrelevant to everyone, and in fact is quite relevant to the professional performance of a faculty member.

> Pretty much the only wrong answer here is to dismiss this as a bullshit nonissue that is irrelevant.

Who's to say that there's any "right" or "wrong" answer to the issue? What if one were to fell back to basic norms of professional courtesy, that ask of us to treat others with tact and diplomacy so as to make them feel as comfortable as possible? One might then privately regard the whole matter as quite trifling, while nonetheless humoring the student's unconventional identity and presentation as merely the latest of many such possible eccentricities. This is clearly not the "accepted" answer in DEI offices, but it might be quite compatible with one's duties as an educator.

> Who's to say that there's any "right" or "wrong" answer to the issue?

Ultimately the faculty doing the search will decide what's an acceptable answer.

> What if one were to fell back to basic norms of professional courtesy, that ask of us to treat others with tact and diplomacy so as to make them feel as comfortable as possible?

You can absolutely go this route but I'll just remind you that it's a highly competitive job search for one of the top universities in the world. The applicant pool is going to be highly competitive. Remember, community service is part of the job of being a faculty member. Berkeley is looking for leaders in all areas of the profession, this includes community service in the past and solid plans for the future.

It's one thing to say that you will abide by professional norms and make students feel as comfortable as possible. But those are just platitudes. How have you done so in the past? What specific examples can you use? How did you resolve a conflict related to DEI issues? What specific practices do you integrate into your teaching that serve to make students feel as comfortable as possible? How have you demonstrated tact in the past handling of a situation? Or where you weren't tactful and you learned the hard way why tact is important? What is a diplomatic way you've resolved an issue in the classroom? The answers to these questions make an excellent DEI statement, and they serve to do nothing more than elaborate with specificity on what you said you'll do. That shouldn't be a problem, right? That's all a DEI statement is really asking for.

I have a name English speakers can’t pronounce. Many people can’t pronounce it even after correction; some are a bit off, others are wildly off. How do I deal with it? I’m mature enough to recognize that people don’t intentionally butcher my name to insult me, and it is almost entirely irrelevant to why I’m in a university, as long as I know when other people are addressing me. See, objectively relevant to me, actually bullshit nonissue to mature adults with a basic sense of mutual respect. “Quite relevant to her professional performance of a faculty member”, yeah, it’s relevant because you made it so.

I understand that's how you deal with this situation as a mature adult, but to be clear not all of my students are adults, certainly very few of them are mature, and many are still developing what it means to mutually respect one another. The reality of teaching 100+ new students every semester, is that you get to meet people from all walks of life, at different levels of maturity and development. Some of them are very mature like you. Others are very emotionally immature, and that manifests in a variety of ways in the classroom. And to be clear, I'm not equating trans people with a lack or presence of emotional maturity, I'm just saying that not everyone in my classroom has the same degree of emotional maturity as you.

The point is that an experienced teacher knows this and knows how to manage these issues in their classroom. If you think these things are non-issues in the classroom, I'd really like to probe your experience teaching, specifically to learn how you deal with DEI issues that I encounter daily in the classroom.

I've been told as much. It's fine to have this position in the abstract, but it comes with costs in contexts that confront the reality that transgendered students exist.

So not in the abstract, but in the concrete, please: if someone is asked to state their pronouns (either in their email signatures, or at a meeting) -- are they allowed to opt-out? Or will there be "consequences" for doing so?

> if someone is asked to state their pronouns (either in their email signatures, or at a meeting) -- are they allowed to opt-out? Or will there be "consequences" for doing so?

In my department it was suggested by a colleague (not a mandate from on high) that we do precisely this, and after a discussion of the merits of the idea most of us decided we would, but not all. No negative consequences befell those who didn't. We have gotten feedback from students that this was a welcome move from their perspective. No students have complained.

Thanks, that sounds reassuring. I appreciate your thoughtful responses to my other questions, as well - I may give these another pass (if I find time) tomorrow.

DEI doesn't help you manage a diverse classroom. In fact it does the opposite by harping on racial divisions instead of just teaching the subject you're supposed to teach. No better way to foster animosity than to divide a group of people that is supposed to be equal and start enforcing different rules on the different groups.

Because they are supposed to be top researchers in their field. And I doubt you'll find a world-wide renowned scientist in biology who believes sex is merely a social construct. So these goals are at least partially incompatible. Universities should be about research, science, teaching and teaching students to educate themselves. Following the dogma of DEI is incompatible with teaching students to educate themselves.

I think you’ve misinterpreted the common meme. The common meme is that gender or race are social constructs. I haven’t heard the meme sex is a social construct.

Just my last encounter with the so called meme, that sex is a social construct: [1]. It was just 12 hours ago.

[1]: https://twitter.com/x_mass/status/1488329923471319043

Sex has multiple meanings, one of which is gender. I don't know if it's an American vs British English thing, but in many countries they use the word "sex" this way much more frequently than "gender".

> Edit: And I wonder if and when these will start to appear in PhD applications, as PhD students are employees in a sense and often need to teach, too.

I applied for CS PhDs last year and Stanford did indeed require a diversity statement.

I don't remember any of the other universities I applied to asking for this. MIT certainly did not.

> Stanford did indeed require a diversity statement.

If true (and similar to the “contributions to diversity” statements discussed here), that’s quite disappointing news about my alma mater. At least there was no such nonsense back when I applied to Stanford Physics, but that was ages ago.

What the hell happened to Die Luft der Freiheit weht?

DEI - the post is talking about the diversity, equity, and inclusion statement. Most departments (including at MIT) seem to be asking for one along with research and teaching statements these days, it’s not just the UC system.

Calling it a “litmus test” seems like a biased take though.

Here’s some context from UT on that search Connie’ committees are looking for https://facultyinnovate.utexas.edu/drafting-diversity-equity...

Is this really needed? I'm not trying to be obstinate. But in the north european country where I reside, while we have hate speech laws etc., my speech is protected by the law - both from the state and my employer (a university).

This commitment seems very bombastic for what feels like a work environment policy to me. Am I misunderstanding something cultural here?

EDIT: thx for the comments, it makes it more sense to me now.

In the US, your speech is largely protected by law from the state. But while there's a strong tradition of free speech in a university environment--arguably eroded in recent years, hence this letter--that is certainly not the case in most companies, especially if it's public speech.

There's some concern in some circles in the United States that universities have gotten into the habit of stifling speech on controversial topics.

The reality is a bit more complicated, but MIT is choosing to go out of its way to confirm that such stifling is not part of its principles.

The proof will be in the pudding... At the end of the day, a declaration of this sort only has value in so much as it shapes what the school practically chooses to do when one group on campus hosts a speaker and another group sets up a picket line to shut them down.

> my speech is protected by the law - both from the state and my employer (a university).

Can you elaborate what it means that your speech is protected by your employer? Because that seems like something that doesn't happen here in the US - you can lose work over disagreeing with political ideologies, especially at universities.

If I made public speech and I was terminated over that (or even if it could be proven that it possibly had an influence) that termination would be unlawful.

> you can lose work over disagreeing with political ideologies, especially at universities.

Admittedly, it's been a while since I was enrolled in a college. Are there examples of this happening? Are people losing their jobs because they e.g. go to church or advocate for fewer ecological regulations or believe in lower taxes or the like?

At least in the US, there have always been two places where freedom of expression is taken to its most extreme: libraries and universities.

Libraries tend to take the view that even bad and hateful ideas are worth preserving simply to record how bad they are. The idea should live on in its horrific badness, an example to all of the idiocy of humanity. In my experience, you'll never meet anyone as dedicated to privacy and openness as a librarian.

Universities take the view that every idea should be up for debate. It's the only way, the argument goes, to suss out the bad ideas and to harden good ideas against poor arguments. After all, if your idea is right then it should not be such a burden to examine it. The best ideas are those that survive the strictest scrutiny, so all ideas should be subject to it.

In both cases, the ideal should trump the social norms of avoiding certain topics due to social pressure or how offensive they are. Not studying history, medicine, or science due to societal norms is a questionable choice on the academic search for truth, and institutions of learning and knowledge should be dedicated to that search for truth.

Both these institutions, then, tend towards the philosophical ideal of free expression, not the legal reality of protected speech. When they say "freedom of expression," they're more interested in John Stuart Mill than the Constitution. Places of ideals judge themselves by ideals.

It's one reason people get annoyed when there are those stories about professors expressing bad ideas and asking students to think about them critically, and students respond by attacking the professor or asking for their removal. Bad ideas are great practice for learning critical thinking skills.

That said, I'm sure there are cases where the professors are sanctimonious jerks, too.

I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but this is completely wrong and comically naïve. It is not representative of academic libraries at elite US universities. I work at an academic library at an Ivy League school, and am familiar enough with our peer institutions to provide some context. What you describe is a very rosy and idealistic view of libraries and especially librarians.

The truth is, academic libraries are extremely politicized institutions which censor information they view as ideologically inappropriate ALL THE TIME, both explicitly by culling books and implicitly through social coercion and other political maneuvers (setting up ideologically slanted committees which must approve new book purchases, etc). The examples are endless.

The idea that librarians are dedicated to “privacy” and “openness” — I’m still not sure what that means tbh — is absurd. Some are, but the vast majority of PL’s are highly ideological and rigid in their thinking, will absolutely not tolerate certain views on certain subjects (fairly mainstream views, btw), and depending on the political context, have varying commitments to anything resembling privacy or openness.

I’m happy to answer any questions or provide more detailed examples if anyone is interested. And this is specific to the Ivy League + schools in its orbit (Williams, Amherst Swarthmore, etc.)

Agreed.

The way the profession presents itself and the way librarians actually act are very at odds.

Academic librarians are in full on social justice mode, to the point where I wouldn't be comfortable writing the paper I wrote in 2015 on the ethics of archival neutrality today because my rejection of post-modernism archival theory just wouldn't be acceptable now. I've also been chased out of a library discussion group because in discussing the lack of POC who get MLISes, I mentioned we should also check the socio-economic status of the white students to determine if it was racism or classism keeping POC out of the programs (since many groups of POC are more likely to be poor, if poor people don't get MLISes, then yeah, you'll see fewer POC). This was unacceptable.

The public libraries are full of people with, honestly, a white savior complex who are convinced it's their job to let the poor, belabored proles have access to some crumbs of (properly selected) educational material or to act as heroes on behalf of the marginalized. You can find this out really quickly if you ask questions like, "What if someone needed INSERT BAD BOOK because they're studying the rhetoric of evil?" The idea that their public patrons might have equal (or even superior) intellectual needs to their own is completely anathema to them.

The profession is very credentialist and elitist. Very off-putting, personally, as someone from a complicated class background. I'd also use a throwaway, but I got MS as I finished my MLIS and so I'm useless to the profession and don't care.

Agreed. I admire your candor and wish I could speak as freely as you, but like you said, this field is an ideological minefield where publicly voicing a dissenting opinion can cost you your job, or at the very least your social credibility.

The most difficult part is watching people you know and respect say things that you know they don’t believe to appease a group of people who are salivating for any opportunity to absolutely destroy them if they slip up.

You’re right about the class dynamics as well. I have coworkers who are descendants of multi-millionaire families yet have a palpable contempt for the working class while simultaneously claiming to speak in its interests.

It’s all rather dispiriting and frustrating.

Yeah, one of the few benefits to getting MS is like... what are they going to do, ruin my library career? My body did that when it decided to chew holes in my nervous system.

It's very hard, sometimes I kind of feel like I'm watching my former classmates be brainwashed. I try to only speak to people privately, unless they're being bold and expressing an unorthodox opinion, in which case I usually give public encouragement.

Oh man, I could go ON about the class dynamics. If you want the real dirt, talk to library staff. I was staff for over a decade before getting my MLIS.

>post-modernism archival theory

I guess it makes sense such a thing would exist, but I wasn't expecting to hear that phrase.

Who chooses library science while wanting to be a bookburner? Seems like a recipe for absolutely miserable existence and life.

In context, post-modern archival theory makes sense. You just have to read it in context (that of the archival profession wrestling with their moral complicity in supporting some terrible governments in the mid 20th century) and contrast it with other views. Too many people don't do that.

It's more insidious than people going into the field hoping to censor. There's a large cohort that enters the field because they like helping people (as opposed to liking to organize information); those are the ones that end up here. They think they're helping or protecting people. They're also the loudest because the librarians working on things like open source repository tools prefer to bury their heads and ignore politics. Librarians are also really passive-aggressive and conflict-averse. It produces weird dynamics.

That may be your experience, but it does not reflect mine. My personal experience on the subject is working about a year at a modest municipal public library around 2005-2006 as their part-time IT administrator. It was around the time those librarians from New England sued the FBI over the PATRIOT Act, because that story broke while I was there. I'm basing my claim on my interactions on how those librarians tried to operate, and on how the other librarians at the nearby colleges seemed to operate. They were very concerned with privacy and openness exhibited by the Ranganathan laws of library science. Honestly, if you're confused by what I meant by privacy and openness I kind of question your claim. They had that "every book a reader/every reader a book" stuff up everywhere. Maybe there's been a generational shift.

The neighboring libraries they worked with were mostly community colleges or small regional universities, so I imagine they were likely not nearly as concerned with the prestige of their archives as an Ivy would be. My limited interactions with them didn't seem much different. It wouldn't surprise me if the more prestigious libraries were more politicized, however.

The point, however, was to discuss the ideals, and not the reality. I should think that was obvious given that MIT's commitment is similarly about ideals.

There's been a huge culture shift since 05-06. I started working in libraries in 2004, and what you're describing is more or less accurate until the mid-10s. That's when things started to shift. There's still a cohort that adheres to those ideals, but it's difficult to openly wade into contentious areas with that position unless one has the status to not be fired over it. A lot of it is that librarians, especially academic ones, are, as a group, very insecure because they often lack the credentials of other faculty, so they like to glom onto whatever the 'in' views in academia are in order to validate their presence in the academy.

Small, less prestigious libraries can go either way. On one hand, you're more likely to run into heterodox viewpoints, but on the other, a lot of progressives use those small libraries as career stepping stones and they're terrible about it. I still remember when the director of the community college library I worked in told me she was surprised I was a first-generation college graduate because I didn't seem like 'one of those people'. (Aka our students - this was in Flint, MI).

So a university library is more university than library in this regard.

For sure it is needed, and you know it. You won't be protected by law from being "canceled" if you say something against what is understood as the "norm". Specially in the university world, we were reaching a situation where we couldn't scientifically study/discuss any controversial theme.

If you have hate speech laws, then your speech is not protected.

Thats my point. Even with hate speech laws the protection is apparently still better than in the US.

> Thats my point. Even with hate speech laws the protection is apparently still better than in the US.

Free speech protection from government sanction is as strong as ever, but the culture of free speech is losing force in the US. Partisans seem unable to understand how it benefits them to allow speech that they find reprehensible. There have been many, many incidences of college administrators caving to complaints and sanctioning and threatening teachers and students over the past several years; not to mention de-platforming even of invited speakers.

Taking this with a grain of salt after what they have done to rms.

Or Aaron Swartz...

RMS brought it on himself. Although, yes, MIT turned a blind eye to his behavior until his comments about Epstein.

If you read what RMS actually wrote, it's kind of hard to disagree with the line of argument:

"It is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17".

Of course, it was incredibly tone deaf to write this out in a thread about Epstein no less, and promptly got twisted into "RMS advocates raping little children".

What he was really guilty of was sharing his opinions on a dangerous subject when he really had nothing interesting or original to add. He might as well complain about the speed limit on a particular road being 65 instead of 75. We set standards and conventions to keep order.

And while I completely approve of RMS, that argument works just as well for 10 year olds and has often been made. Listen to screaming Gajdusek about his right (or even duty) to have sex with consenting children at the end of The Genius and the Boys.[0] Maybe when RMS said it, he set an age in his mind of some precocious post-pubescent teenager. Whatever his mental imagery was, it was just as arbitrary as the law.

We set a standard to give kids a bit of runway before they are a legitimate object of the desires and efforts of adult men (and women.) 18 is fine, it gives them a little time. 17 would probably be fine, too. I don't see any reason why it couldn't be 19. But it is what it is.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OxppDxzSww

A fair number of people also had significant issues with RMS behavior going back a long time. So when he indelicately stuck himself into the radioactive Epstein situation it was just the last straw for many.

Or to phrase it another way: Some people who wanted RMS gone for a long time abused the opportunity to rally the mob against him.

> Maybe when RMS said it, he set an age in his mind of some precocious post-pubescent teenager.

As somebody who recently had to go back and reread a lot of rms related discourse after several years not thinking about him, I think it's also worth pointing out that he was, in fact, echoing what precocious post-pubescent teenagers were saying and that those are both a.) the only children rms is likely to have encountered routinely and b.) they are edge cases that rms is (due to his own history) likely to over-identify with.

I was one of those kids, and it was actually highly uncomfortable to read his words years later and recognize arguments I made online as a child/teenager.

I will also say that, from my end, most of those conversations were less about my wanting to engage in sexual activity with adults as a teenager (or vice versa), and it was more about sex being the default example of why it was okay to shut children out of certain activities. As the web became monetized + part of the legal world (COPPA), people and projects were less willing to work with minors/allow minors to contribute. This produced tension with some of the minors who had been around for a while, and one of the groups that was the kindest to the kids (in the sense of letting us stick around in chats/etc. and contribute as long as we comported ourselves appropriately) were the FOSS/libre software + piracy communities since they already had a 'eh, whatever' attitude towards the law.

When we would argue that we had the knowledge, history, and agency to participate, forbidding sex was often the go-to counter-example of preventing children from doing what they wanted to do with adults for their own good. So being motivated, spiteful, intelligent children, we argued back and some adults (like apparently rms) agreed with us.

I only mention it because there is a difference between bringing up those arguments/statements unprompted and weighing in on an already on-going argument.

Here is the original hit piece leading to RMS' cancellation, which includes a full copy of the "offending" email: https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...

The media then twisted that into "Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'" [0], which is not something that RMS claimed in that email. To this day there has been no redactin, apology or anything else to atone for this deliberate character assasination - but sure, keep blaming the victim.

[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scient...

This is the same institution that railroaded Aaron Swartz and accepted donations from Jeffrey Epstein on behalf of Bill Gates (pedophile arrested at Gates' house). Anyone looking to these self serving institutes for morality or upholding the Constitution is in for a rude awakening.

whataboutism 101.

arrested at Gates' house

Which arrest are you referring to here?

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