Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

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> One of the demands [...] Is that a partisan political issue

That's called "cherry-picking", and not in the fun version-control way. There's a bunch more, and [0] ...

> The demands the Trump administration is placing on the university are internally contradictory. [...]

> Departments deemed lacking in viewpoint diversity [by the Trump administration] would be forced to hire and admit “a critical mass” of new faculty and students that would provide it. [...]

> Whether by design or accident, the imperative to screen for anti-Semitic beliefs and “ideological capture,” and to mandate viewpoint diversity, clearly contradict the dictates to reduce administrative activism and abolish the implementation of litmus tests in promotion and hiring.

_____

In other words, imagine: "You can not have target-minimums in hiring minorities... and you can only hire staff who know how to play golf."

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/demands-ha... , mirrored at https://archive.ph/BFgSi

The full letter is here. It only looks like internal contradictions when you quote partial clauses and sentence fragments.

https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...

> Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring

> By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.

and

> Discontinuation of DEI

> The University must immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name, and stop all DEI-based policies, including DEI-based disciplinary or speech control policies, under whatever name.

So, uh, we can't promote diversity but we have to promote viewpoint diversity, whatever that means? Is "viewpoint diversity" not DEI "under whatever name"?

I mean, the subtext is that DEI is supposed to promote racial equality so it's bad, but "viewpoint diversity" promotes ideological equality so it's good? Some kinds of equality are more equal than others?

Read broadly, the idea is absurd; does the biology department have to hire creationists to ensure "viewpoint diversity" among its faculty? Do we have to admit flat-earthers to the geology program to ensure "viewpoint diversity" in the student body? The "external party" here isn't even designated as being "independent" or "unbiased"; it's literally someone who the federal government gets to choose, and who will decide what viewpoints they want to include and which ones to not include.

I have never heard of DEI referring to diversity of viewpoints. Wikipedia for DEI defines diversity thusly: "Diversity refers to the presence of variety within the organizational workforce in characteristics such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, culture, class, veteran status, or religion."

> The "external party" here [is] literally someone who the federal government

Indeed, all those decades of certain people whining about "political correctness" when other people used their individual freedom to react with mean words have led us to the current day in 2025: Where Republicans are trying to insert USSR-style Political Commissars to punish people for opinions the government doesn't like.

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