Diversity Statement Then Dossier | Hacker News Reader

Diversity Statement Then Dossier

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34 pointsbarry-cotter7 comments

Over the next decade, SFFA will dramatically pare back this sort of thing. While decided in the context of college admissions, that case strongly suggests that, in general, “diversity” is an inadequate justification for race conscious hiring and admissions decisions.

There’s an important cert petition in the Supreme Court about whether institutions can use putatively race neutral means to achieve impermissible racial rebalancing, where there is evidence that the race neutral criteria are a proxy for race: https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/do.... That’s already the general rule for discrimination law, but the Supreme Court may have to clarify that again here.

Some of these job postings may survive, if the evidence shows that the aim was really to get professors (of any race) to study in new, topical fields, rather than being a pretext for hiring more people of a particular race.

Race-conscious hiring decisions have never been legal. There was a carve-out explicitly for college admissions.

They are illegal in the law as written by Congress, but often mandatory in the law as applied by progressive bureaucrats and activist judges applying a "disparate impact" standard.

And just regular companies. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/business/economy/hiring-a...

The point is that "diversity statements" can be used as a smokescreen to obscure gender and racial discrimination. What makes one diversity statement better than another? Are they graded anonymously, with any racially or gender identifying info stripped out ("as a ________ I bring...")? Only vague answers are given.

Several people have told me of experiences where more or less the same Diversity statement was graded differently for different candidates. In other words, the graders were googling the candidate and making a separate judgement on the person.

I think it would be helpful if the believers in DEI statements start using anonymous readers.

Somebody please explain why every academic department in the western world does this, without assuming any motive other than pure financial self-interest.

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