The Hypocrisy of Mandatory Diversity Statements
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Better subtitle: "The academic workforce's skills and values will shift yet further toward ideological argument, posturing and correctness. And willingness to lie about their values."
This again disadvantages neurodivergent people because they often can't effectively filter between mandatory bullshit and genuine commitments, so they might be abused by people who were just forced to sign the DEI pledge but do not actually care about it to make proper accommodations like explicit rules and the such.
I think the best way of promoting inclusivity is offering incentives for doing so (not necessarily financial by the way - even small things like events or postcards help!) and creating a healthy atmosphere. Trying to make a polarised and generally toxic atmosphere inclusive only furthers the divide and the polarisation.
some women that I am afraid of would like a word :)
>“To receive a high score under the terms set by the rubric,” the complaint alleges, “an applicant must express agreement with specific socio-political ideas, including the view that treating individuals differently based on their race or sex is desirable.”
In what universe is being patronising desirable?
The boss.
The country laws, the company leadership, the hiring manager. That are the people and mechanisms that define what is appropriate or not for a job. (More people and more levels of legality may be involved).
And since this is a public uni it has to comply with state and federal rules. UC can choose whatever it wants but if the laws shift on the state level it's moot; Texas is doing something along those lines now...
But to stick to the current topic: these required dei statements are definitely ideological litmus tests, and the people promoting these are not “on the right side of history”, but authoritarians.
I suspect the reasons for change would be insufficient to sway a majority. I suspect this is why the reasons aren't examined.
Originally there was an idea that a group with completely homogenous thoughts and opinions would lack innovation and problem solving ability. Ironically, the meaning of "diversity" has been corrupted to the point that it now requires homogenous thoughts and opinions.
Hiring practices are not, cannot, be based on background, due to time constraints of the hiring process. It is not possible to know a person's background, though you could certainly get some idea of it given enough time, perspective alone would prevent you from understanding it as they do. In fact, hiring is based almost entirely on the prejudices of the person(s) making the hiring decision. These days, publicly traded companies are incentivized through market forces (blackrock, ESG scoring) to be prejudiced against certain groups.
If you're looking for a faith-based interpretation of the meaning of words, good, bad, or otherwise, you'll need to extend some faith in the existing meaning first.
I'm not going to defend an opinion that I haven't given, such as that the death penalty should be given to a person based on their sexual orientation. I will, however, defend the notion that every person's opinion holds valuable information and perspective. You cannot argue on principle that diversity is a good thing while simultaneously arguing that it can be a bad thing. This is an obvious contradiction. It changes the meaning of the argument from "we've discovered a fundamental truth" to "we'd like you to act a certain way" and that glosses over the outstanding implicit request, by the existence of a status quo, for you to act a certain way.
If the demand is to act a certain way, it’s only that the demand is to accept others who are different in a way that doesn’t actually harm anyone and foster an environment where no one person is unreasonably limited based on factors like being black or being a parent through thoughtless setup of the working environment.
The diversity of thought thing is always strange to me because it implies the only diversity of thought that matters is the thought to discriminate against others or the thought to put one’s head in the sand and ignore implicit discriminatory factors. Notice you totally ignored that the professor could’ve just written about accessibility, but the professor implicitly apparently does not consider accessible labs to be merit-based or something, because he argues the only solution is to sue since DEI is so against his meritocracy position.
The paradox is about unlimited tolerance, and the specific intolerance which aims to remove the liberty of thought. A society can (and should) harbor any kind of tolerance and intolerance, but must draw a line where forces grow which plan to remove this liberty, because then the tolerance ends anyway. But if you start becoming intolerant for any topic and reason, then you've already lost the tolerance.
Moderation (in the sense of temperance) as a meta-ethical principle has an exceedingly long pedigree, starting with Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. Every virtue he describes is a mean between two extremes; courage lies between cowardice and recklessness, for example.
TL;DR: Every virtue has a “oops you went too far” failure mode, this doesn’t make it “self-contradictory”.
About your last paragraph, I find it quite telling that diversity notoriously does not include diversity of thought, it's all about immutable character traits. It is also sometimes no longer considered permissible to hide your immutable character traits anymore which I find sad.
Have you heard of linguistics? Language changes all the time. Languages changes constantly. The word silly once meant "blessed by God".
Like, this is so obvious and so well known that I just have to assume you're trolling here.
I do not think that language operations happen of their own. I see corporate messing with language. I see BlackRock enforcing diversity and other things. I see corporate ideological parades to show that they are with the common folk. In reality they are brainwashing people.
I do not see language change organically. I see organizations prohibiting certain words, suggesting certain words. All in the name of "X".
It all reminds me of religion. Reminds me of computer logic. If you say "X" you are a good person. If you do not say "X" you are a bad person. Language is a powerful thing. I feel as if one tampered with it.
I think you're referring to words with political meaning, so I won't rant about the word "literally".
There are people who insist that some words must change their meanings, and that other words must be entirely abandoned, because they see language as shaping how people think, and so by changing language, they hope to steer the way that people think. Steering the way that people think is indistinguishable from political campaigning, as far as I can see; so I see the blacklisting etc. of words as a kind of political campaigning by the back door.
I find these word-games offensive. I don't want to offend people, so I try not to use terms that are considered offensive. But they don't give up; "negroe" became "black" became "african-american" and so on. I've lost patience.
And I have a strong sense that these word-games are a substitute for persuading people; like, persuasion seems to have failed, so let's manipulate them by changing the language. I hate the sense that I'm being manipulated.
A political biased piece that tries to hide behind a wall of very faulty reasoning.
The first problem is there's actually no injury here as far as I can tell. This person did not even submit the paperwork, and thus did not get scored, and thus did not get rejected. The entire thing is based around the assumption that he would get rejected.
But why would he assume that? Maybe it has less to do with his paperwork and more to do with his public activity.
For example, in this case, you have an individual who either tweets or retweets dozens of times daily (DAILY), frequently getting into online arguments. He's active in the conservative online outrage machine, retweeting and interacting with conservative personalities. He has a paid Substack where he opines about the cultural revolution ("Marxist" left unsaid, but obviously present), whether COVID was real, how "the Left" destabilizes society, and other conservative culture war issues. By any stretch of the imagination, this isn't a normal person. This is someone who is loud, addicted to Online Discourse, and who seems like they're looking to make trouble. If someone like this was a colleague, regardless of their political persuasion, I would steer clear of them. This type of person is often not pleasant to be around, and often fails to properly do their job.
It doesn’t really go into whether or not the professors opinion is a valid opinion based on factual evidence for the existence of meritocracy and the benefits of race-blindness. But he could also have gone into a statement advocating for accessibility or veterans access instead, such as saying he would ensure his lab and research location will be wheelchair accessible and that any trials component of his research will be available in formats compatible with deafness or blindness. Or does he not believe in those either? What about having flexible work hours so parents can raise children, or older students can live their adult lives (which will benefit veterans)?
This article is myopic and implies that DEI is thing. I actually think that belief is just as lacking in diverse thinking as it is accusing DEI to be.
It doesn’t matter.
If everyone is required to sign a statement saying the sky is blue, it is meaningless if there is “a valid opinion based on factual evidence” to the contrary. That there is a mandated view suppresses the inquiry that might generate factual evidence, whether in favour of the hypothesis or not.
Second, if you are a DEI hire, you are made to feel that you only got the role for who you are, so you will most likely not ask for a raise due to the fear of reprisal or dismissal.
Third, weakens the belonging amongst coworkers since everyone is really careful in social interactions to not give the leadership a (mostly fabricated) opportunity to fire them for breaching DEI policies. Obviously, when coworkers are suspicious of each other, it's much easier to use divide-and-conquer tactics and underpay everyone.
Fourth, those companies recruit immigrants specifically, so they can underpay them under the threat of firing them (and making them lose their visa).
That sounds more like a scheme to standardise job levels. Been through it multiple times now and never saw anyone end up significantly worse off. If anything they might be bumped up a level.
>Third, weakens the belonging amongst coworkers since everyone is really careful in social interactions to not give the leadership a (mostly fabricated) opportunity to fire them for breaching DEI policies. Obviously, when coworkers are suspicious of each other, it's much easier to use divide-and-conquer tactics and underpay everyone.
I can understand that fear but to me it says more about the legal protections afforded to workers. In the US you might be marched right out the door by security, but in other countries there's a graduated process employers typically need to follow.
I think this is just an area which is not really written about.
Suppose systematic discrimination against certain ethnic groups “X” has made them disproportionately more likely to grow up in poverty, which (along with many other systemic factors) causes a huge cognitive deficit relative to other ethnic groups “Y” who have not experienced systematic discrimination. Some jobs’ skillsets are predicated on cognitive ability, so ethnic groups X will be disproportionately underqualified (and thus naturally underrepresented) in those jobs relative to ethnic groups Y.
Many DEI initiatives prescribe that the ethnic makeup of a company/institution ought to perfectly reflect overall population demographics. This will, by definition, necessitate lowering hiring standards for ethnic groups X, since a much smaller proportion of them have the necessarily skillset relative to their peers in ethnic groups Y, who haven’t experienced systematic discrimination.
A company's primary goal is to optimize its profit. At first glance, willfully hiring underqualified people in the name of DEI would negatively impact profits, so OP surmises there must be some ulterior motive that actually makes it profitable. OP's proposed motives sound plausible, but it could also just be that companies are afraid that not having a DEI initiative would hurt their image relative to their peers that have DEI initiatives—a prisoner's dilemma.
OTOH because of aforementioned attitude, an employee could feel zero sense of loyalty or obligation to stay beyond the absolute minimum and just go to a different company
Personally, I’d rather feel that way. It would pay more long term
True diversity comes from people who look different.
I see many people arguing "to include racists is also diversity" a sentence that may be grammatically correct but it is meaningless when it comes to semantics.