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I say this as a professor at a top computer science department. I have _never_ felt limited in my ability to collaborate with the best folks in my area. Ever. I do! And it's great! And I also believe strongly it's important to make sure we are growing those next generations of amazing people, because the thing that makes research awesome is working with them.
Especially not when said administration has a track record of cancelling things because they Ctrl-Fed outgroups they considered to be the enemy and discovered a completely irrelevant Latin prefix in someone's abstract.
Trying to reframe them as "we didn't REALLY mean it!" (while also insulting a race and sex) doesn't help your case.
This is what the communist leads of universities did here in eastern europe and it was disgusting back then as well.
Honestly, if filling in those boxes with anything other than a diatribe against the suitability of women and minorities and poor people to do research is "following the politics of one party" now, that says more about the conformance demanded by the other party than the science. Good to hear you're much happier now they're in charge and introducing formal komissar roles to ensure that any studies whose results contradict RFK Lysenko Jr or reference transgenic mice or Transjordan or employ too many research assistants with funny foreign names are liable to be defunded before publication.
That's what happens when academia politicizes themselves - they become part of the game. And that means begging for scraps of who ever is currently on the top.
It's horrible... but you said yourself - you just need to fill some boxes correctly.
Nobody honestly believes the two are equivalent.
Ultimately an argument that an application question with option for researchers to state they have an equal opportunities policy is as much of an imposition as legislating for studies to be retrospectively defunded if the clinical outcomes don't align with the administrations' preferred pseudoscience says more about you than it does about past politicization of science...
People get upset as though this policy is dictating that a minority from the corner of the earth with no meaningful experience is going to be mandated into the role of heart surgeon or airplane pilot as well. That’s not how this works. However, those roles themselves stand to benefit from the diversified cultivation at the bottom of the stack, eventually.
Even very intelligent people seem to think inclusive policies mean that incompetent people will be promoted in private industry or government, but frankly, I never witnessed that to any abnormal degree until the people decrying it the most ended up in power. A game show host as president. A Fox News anchor as secretary of war. I can only keep a straight face because I’m so jaded by it.
And it's not even clear what issue they're supposed to be solving. Visit any STEM class, research lab - corporate or public, or so on even well before any of these sort of things began to be official guidelines and it was anything but homogeneous, even by the largely irrelevant characteristics that these guidelines target.
Not functionally identical. No grants were getting slow-rolled or cancelled.
Why are you having a hard time understanding this?
> And it's not even clear what issue they're supposed to be solving. Visit any STEM class, research lab - corporate or public, or so on even well before any of these sort of things began to be official guidelines and it was anything but homogeneous, even by the largely irrelevant characteristics that these guidelines target.
Hmm. Do you think it was an accident that these settings are not homogeneous today? Do you think these settings were different in the past? Did you spend any time trying to test your hypothesis before writing and posting it?
It was idiotic to squander the talent of the best and brightest Black people that way 75 years ago, and it’s just as idiotic to use race and gender as a factor in admissions or employment today.
The nice thing about regulated discrimination is that it can be an editable, transparent, public document that can be voted on and driven by data. This is better, even if imperfect, than the kind we have when we’re not honest about it.
I’m not saying it’s perfect or wholly good. Just, arguably better. I see a lot of problems with it. It’s a bandaid on deep social and systemic problems.
If anything I appreciate that it’s in the open.
Regardless, I’ve done well in my career at times someone else could have done better. I saw it when I managed hiring processes. Discrimination was everywhere. But I was there, I was white, I was male. That was good enough. I certainly wasn’t the best for the job. There’s something wrong with that in my opinion. I should have had to try harder at times. It would have been better for everyone. How do we fix that?
The punitive institutionalized discrimination being extended against Asians merely because they on average do better at school than other ethnic groups really drives home how unfair this is. I'd go so far as to claim that no structural/institutional factors have boosted Asian kids. They do better (better than the white kids) probably because their parents value education the most, due to a shared cultural value. Our society's response to that shouldn't be to treat those kids as surplus unneeded human capital because of where their ancestors were born.
> Discrimination was everywhere... I was white, I was male... I certainly wasn’t the best for the job.
Well, if that truly did happen to you (you interviewed all those competing for the positions and knew who was best?) then yeah, that's quite racist. The solution to racism isn't "More racism, but flipped against whoever's done better recently." We already had the actual solution figured out many years ago, and it's judging people only by their merits.
They immediately regretted it but the results were already printed in the newspapers. The rest as they say is history.
Are those mutually exclusive? I know that's a common argument, but it doesn't track to me. Finding the diamonds in the rough in underrepresented groups is part of finding the best of the best to collaborate with.
> Some examples that illustrate contributions in each of the five areas are given below. Proposals need not address all of these areas, and PIs are advised to focus on those areas in which they are well prepared to make meaningful contributions.
"Broadening participation of underrepresented groups" is only one of the five areas, and no proposal was required to use it. I had proposals funded that focused on workforce development, for example. I saw others focus on science communication to the public (now forbidden in the memo this post is about!).
Proposals that passed grant panels were first and foremost always those that would great science. At ~10:1 oversubscription rates or more, proposals don't pass without it. The BI component needed to be credible but could be handled lots of ways.
Fundamentally, Congress recognized when defining BI as a component for merit review in the NSF that fundamental science only pays off in the long term. BI is a pragmatic choice to ensure that grants also yield near-term benefits to society as well.
Irrespective of whatever was going on in academia I take issue with this. Everyone who has a) a double digit number of brain cells b) has ever dealt with government approval in any capacity c) is't just a straight up liar knows that if the requirements set forth by a panel with discretionary authority says to do items 1-5 that you will not be approved without doing all of them, (unless of course you have the right last name or connections).
If you don't believe me watch any local board's meetings for the next 6mo and research everyone who comes before it after finding what outcome they got.
This has nothing to do with academia, DEI or what the other items on the list of requirements were. This is just how the sausage is made. It's all the same steps even if some factories are a little dirtier than others. So yeah, I 100% believe that if someone unconnected didn't pay the right lip service to the right things in every single one of the items in the list they would not get the outcome they wanted even if theoretically their stuff could have been approved with only 4/5 boxes checked. The approvers are not going to stick their necks out like that with no reason.
I regularly submit workforce participation plans for government construction projects that have minority and women labor hour goals with 100% white male labor hours and receive approval to proceed. Things are not as black and white in reality as the media has led you to believe. I deal with state and local municipal and county governments regularly, my state’s Dept of Labor and Industry does not care what your last name or company is.
"The regulatory framework works fine", says man who works at BigCo. JFC
You really think your state's department of whatever doesn't turn the screws a little harder on the smaller companies that have to just take it?
I'm perfectly willing to believe that the demographic breakdown of labor isn't something they care much about but literally everyone with a set of functioning eyes and ears in the construction industry has endless stories about having to jump through some stupid hoop that a more favored player didn't have to because of a capricious government official or group of them. It's kinda sus that you think that doesn't happen.
A lot of research won't be profitable for years to come or is even unlikely to be profitable at all, so you funding sources are limited. The government, having no profit motive, can encourage this kind of research by funding it. Typically the hope is that it'll lead to increased productivity or innovation down the line.
You don't have to be a statistician to see that not all groups of the populace are represented equally among scholars. If you want all viewpoints covered from you populace, wouldn't that mean you want to try and push for inclusion there? That doesn't mean everything has to be inclusive but you sure can incentivize it
This is the core of the issue. We don’t actually want all viewpoints represented because that wouldn’t by itself produce any value.
You want someone to come up with the fundamental theorems of Calculus, linking the area of a curve with its anti-derivative, because that’s incredibly useful. Generically grabbing everyone’s view isn’t a competitive strategy. You need to be selective on things that are intrinsically useful and promote that.
The study you mention can be founded with pen and paper. No expensive trials or heavy equipment or team needed.
its apples and ebola
The best of the best involves people from underrepresented groups. These policies exist to counteract the cronyism and “doesn’t look like me”-ism inherent to the way people make choices. We know people don’t hire and collaborate with the best of the best, because when looking for the best they see it easiest in people with similar backgrounds and perspectives as themselves.
It’s a shame the culture war cooked your brain on this one.
In fact, we see this now in Silicon Valley where 80% of workers are foreign born. Not a representative group of Americans by any stretch, and we see a lot of negativity towards folks Silicon Valley will never interact with as a result. And who are the wealthy bigots? Not the richest people in the history of the world. No, those other bad folks in the poor states who deserve it. They aren't under-represented.
If there are no martian biologists because of systemic discrimination, why would the best if the best biologists include a martian.
The argument defeats itself. I don't understand why people keep repeating this lie instead of the truth.
The only way this makes sense is if you think the only way someone can be inspired by someone else is if they look the same.
Inspiring specific groups to follow a career path by showing them people on that path is “representation” not inclusivity. Representation matters because it’s easier (not impossible, as you suggest the argument is) to see yourself e.g. as a nurse or a teacher if you have seen male nurses or teachers succeeding.
Representation matters, but not nearly as much as the opposite side of things - who gets opportunities. Which is what I was talking about.
Btw one of the major groups that have benefitted from the dreaded “DEI” in universities has been white men. They are an under-represented group in many post-secondary settings.
You're acting like these things aren't intertwined.
You can't adjust the lever of representation without affecting who gets opportunities.
You can believe what you want about the merits of adjusting those levers but to pretend like you can limit your pool of people to a smaller group of people and not affect the apex of the talent pool is disengenous. Be honest and say you think it's worth it.
For sure they are intertwined. More inclusion = more representation, and vice versa. But you’re saying representation is pointless because people can enter fields they don’t see themselves represented in and I am saying i think representation is a (positive) side effect not the goal. You can argue that it’s pointless all you want but idgaf because to me it’s a side effect.
> limit your pool of people to a smaller group of people and not affect the apex of the talent pool is disengenous
I agree. Limiting your pool is a bad idea. That’s literally why inclusivity is a good thing. Because people self-limit the pool to people who look like them, and because other societal barriers limit the pool by excluding people. Actively acting to include people broadens the pool, it doesn’t limit it.
If you think on the scale of an individual hire or grant, i guess i can see how it would seem like limiting the pool - but zoom out like two steps and you’d see that’s not true.
What I actually think that I haven't said is that "representation" is a self defeating idea that encourages people to view themselves as different.
> I agree. Limiting your pool is a bad idea. That’s literally why inclusivity is a good thing. Because people self-limit the pool to people who look like them, and because other societal barriers limit the pool by excluding people. Actively acting to include people broadens the pool, it doesn’t limit it.
That's true, however, when the high end of the pool all looks a certain way because of systemic issues then the team built will tend to look that way and not be inclusive.
Thise creating the team could have the best of intentions the outcome could very likely be the same as if they were discriminatory.
People feel social and sometimes legal pressure to make sure it looks like they aren't discriminatory so, when they are choosing that last (few) member, they'll limit the pool of possibilities.
The other half of what you said is logical though, that inclusion probably leads to a more diverse future but at the cost of the present. The cost of the present is the part you're pretending doesn't exist.
> If you think on the scale of an individual hire or grant, i guess i can see how it would seem like limiting the pool - but zoom out like two steps and you’d see that’s not true.
Every single hire is an individual hire.
I didn’t say that. Idk what comment you read that said that, but it wasn’t mine.
> The cost of the present is the part you're pretending doesn't exist.
Even if there was a cost to the productivity of the present - a better present isn’t one where we’re the most “productive” or efficient - it’s one where the most people are able to grasp a good and fair life.
> Every single hire is an individual hire.
The dots on the screen form a picture.
The point is that each hire is an individual decision.
If I were painting a picture I might use a lot of different colors but if you ask me to pick my favorite color 5000 times, I'll say the same color 5000 times.
You can put in there standard things like “we will design new grad and undergrad courses that train new students in this tech that we will develop”.
You can put wider-impact things like “we will partner with local community colleges to integrate the results of this research in their XYZ course”, or “we will design summer research programs with recruitment from community colleges”.
And yes, you can (or used to be able to) include things like “we will partner with high schools with high populations of underrepresented demographics to do outreach and involve students in research”.
Clearly, there’s a large variety of things that fall under broader impact, and scientists weren’t required to pick only the “wokest” policies.
Please don’t comment on things you don’t know much about.