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Comment by evancoop | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

> 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.

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