Yep. There’s likely going to be a huge blowback to all of this and the supporters will write it off as the country being full of racists. At this point I no longer care. This is draconian stuff.
But DeSantis whole schtick is try and make you feel like stuff like DEI is oppression for white people. Voting for a Governor based on something like their opinion on DEI is wild to me. My main focus for Governor is their ability to lead the government and improve my quality of life.
It’s not just “white people.” DeSantis outright won Hispanic voters as well. According to the Associated Press/NORC studies, Youngkin also won Hispanics in Virginia and tied among Asians in 2021.
A critical function of state government is educating children, and that unavoidably invokes making choices about how kids are socialized and taught to view the world. (Nobody is banning books—they are curating what resources the government makes available in taxpayer-funded schools and libraries.) On that front, many minorities don’t want their kids socialized into the notion that they’re oppressed by white people and other left-wing ideas. Similarly, even if they’re sympathetic to sexual minorities, they are distrustful of materials that depict and seemingly encourage sexual exploration by teenagers. (My Muslim parents would have been freaked out by any of the books we are talking about even if everyone therein had been cis and hetero.)
A lot of this kerfuffle is the left foot-gunning itself. They’ve created a structure where any line drawing by the center left opens them up to devastating attacks of isms and phobias from the far left. If the left can’t open the door to teaching about the Tulsa massacre without allowing the Angels Davis sympathizers to walk through behind it that’s the left’s problem.
Everyone bans books. I am surprised this is such a meme because you probably won't find many supposed free speech activists also being in favor of putting Mein Kampf in the student library for the children or teachers teaching Creationist perspectives on science. I think there needs to be a question of merit about what is taught, no?
Let's start with - today, one of these has the words "felony" attached to it. The other does not.
What you’re suggesting is that unelected librarians have some sort of independent authority over deciding what books children should be exposed to that isn’t subject to review by elected officials. There’s an extremely short list of such roles in government—pretty much just government prosecutors and similar positions. Librarians, teachers, etc., are just employees hired to do what the elected government wants them to do.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. Desantis is banning books for political reasons that have nothing to do with the education of children.
> I think there needs to be a question of merit about what is taught, no?
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Experts on children's education are not calling for these politics-based book bannings.
I'm not arguing that Desantis is a bad politician. He understands how to create a boogeyman and then get people outraged over it better than any politician alive.
Well yeah, that's the whole point of their information machine.
>I look out at the political landscape and see that all the left is supporting this racist garbage, and I see the right is more concerned with oil pipelines and lowering taxes.
Who is now? The right only has the culture war to talk about. Tucker is on nightly raging about identity politics and whatever they want you to be upset about. I have two Democrat Senators and a Democrat rep I get emails from and they basically only talk about job creation, protecting the environment, and creating a fair tax system.
Your understanding of 'left' politics is just what right-wing media has told you it is.
Dude you're arguing with said he saw it happening at work and it concerned him. You pretended like that didn't happen. Why won't you acknowledge your fellow man's agency?
Where is this happening?
Education experts are delegated the authority to figure out the particulars of how to educate children. The decision of what kids learn is a political decision outside their domain.
Sorry, no. That's just "when I do it, it's good; but when they do it, it's evil." All these book decisions are for "political reasons," and they all have everything to do with the education of children.
Should be easy to show us some major examples on the left then. I can't think of a single governor moving the way Abbott and DeSantis are.
It is. How many books that are anathema to the left do you think you'd find in a school library (e.g. something skeptical about transgenderism)? If you look at library weeding criteria, you'll typically find language about removing books that are now politically incorrect (though they wouldn't use that term).
It's also a mistake to insist on exact symmetry. My understanding is the left is quite over-represented in the librarian profession as a whole, and "book ban" is misleadingly defined as overriding the choices of those public employees:
> It is important to recognize that books available in schools, whether in a school or classroom library, or as part of a curriculum, were selected by librarians and educators as part of the educational offerings to students. Book bans occur when those choices are overridden by school boards, administrators, teachers, or even politicians, on the basis of a particular book’s content (https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor...).
If a different situation were true (e.g. conservative Christians were quite over-represented in the librarian profession), I'm absolutely certain you'd see political responses from liberal government authorities.
> It is.
I notice you didn't actually supply a major example. Instead what you did was come up with a hypothetical that matched your rhetoric. Obviously that's easy for you, but you still didn't actually supply a major example. Usually an example would come from the real world and include a citation. Can you take another stab at it?
This is demonstrably not true by the fact that this is happening more against topics conservatives find distasteful or offensive (such as LGBT works), as per your own article. Look at that map and the subjects being banned.
So? Is it unreasonable? Do you really think you'd see a rousing fight from the left to defend books that discouraged or condemned gender transitions? Or would you see outrage and calls that "something must be done!" to protect kids from those ideas? Even the ACLU is backing off from defending people and ideas that offend their liberal supporters.
And the rest isn't conjecture.
You're missing my point completely, and misunderstanding how I was using the article I linked.
To put it really bluntly: a Democrat governor and a Republican governor are not going to respond identically to an abortion ban. Likewise, a Democrat governor isn't going to take any action to "ban books" if lower level government actors are already making book decisions according to his wishes. It would be unnecessary. Slot in a Republican governor into the same scenario, and he has to override those lower level government actors who are working in harmony with Democrat priorities.
It's foolish to look for or require total symmetry to see similarities. There are "book bans" coming from both ideological factions, they're just implemented differently.
It behooves you to show evidence that this is happening. So far you’re generalizing a fair bit while not citing, well, anything.
* Gov. Newsom banned remedial classes being taught at community colleges.
* Conversion Therapy has been banned and attempted to be banned by many states in particular in public schools.
* Bibles being banned by school districts.
This isn't a defense of Ron Desantis or any of those things. I'm not convinced Ron Desantis is the only governor that would ban books. If it's politically expedient to ban content, that's what happens in a democracy. I am not in favor of book bans but I very much doubt the defense of principles. The same people complaining about book bans would absolutely ban books if objectionable political content were being pushed on children from the other direction. Or alternatively what is the principled defense of things like the Dept. of Ed. promoting the discredited 1619 Project?
Conversion therapy is abuse.
> Gov. Newsom banned remedial classes being taught at community colleges.
You need to be more specific. Do you have a source?
This is exactly what a lot of supporters of Desantis would probably say about gender affirmation care for people with gender dysphoria. My point here is it just seems unlikely Desantis is the only governor that would ban books in schools. Conversion therapy is illegal in multiple states so putting those books in a student library would break the law so one might call that a ban. I would be shocked if you could convince me there is a governor who would always decline to sign bills that ban material from schools.
And? It's an ongoing debate that even I am unsure about and perhaps maybe they'll be vindicated one day. But conversion therapy is categorically abuse today. And for good reason.
>I would be shocked if you could convince me there is a governor who would always decline to sign bills that ban material from schools.
That's not really how it works. You need to provide evidence of Democrat governors banning books at the state level a la DeSantis and Abbott. I can't prove what they wouldn't do because the situation is theoretical.
This is all you wrote:
* Gov. Newsom banned remedial classes being taught at community colleges.
- not banned books and I explained the issues with your claim in another comment.
* Conversion Therapy has been banned and attempted to be banned by many states in particular in public schools.
- not about banned books
* Bibles being banned by school districts.
- I found one example of a technical battle in one school district in Texas which seems to be more about the larger message/battle over the written law in Texas. Besides this weird case I see no others. Do you have any sources or examples?
Aside from that one weird case I've found (which isn't a democrat or a governor banning books mind you it's a local matter over technicalities), I've seen no citations or specific claims of any kind.
There's a lot of states that have banned it besides that one. Do I care? no, not particularly. This is the Florida "book ban" law which is actually an "instructional material" ban. https://myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Documents/loaddoc.aspx?F... Not a general book ban which would likely be unconstitutional.
The original objection raised here was that the governor is taking powers he doesn't have was it not? Specifics of one state's constitution aside, if a governor of one state can decide what is taught, why can't a governor of another?
As I said, banning material or requiring material is something both parties do or would do.
I also remembered there is a california school district that banned "To Kill a Mockingbird" recently for racism.
No one ever said that. This is not a discussion of gubernatorial powers. Just what is right/wrong.
Re: to kill a mocking bird you are mistaken. That was parents complaining and forcing the school to remove it from the curriculum. It is still available for students to check out. Not the governor, not removed from the school. Do I think it’s stupid and shortsighted? Absolutely. But it is not what we are talking about.
Where are these bible bans you were talking about?
Seems you also abandoned your claims about Newsom banning remedial classes given real context.
Frankly it feels like you’re just throwing a bunch of claims at the wall until something sticks, despite still having not proven basically anything you claimed is happening. A lot of “I heard that…” type stuff. The closest you’ve come are out of context, not as you described, or straight up irrelevant.
Either way this has gone on long enough. I’m done. Have a good one.
https://edsource.org/updates/newsom-signs-bill-to-ban-most-r....
For starters, remedial courses don't transfer to 4 year universities. Which seemed to be a serious impediment for students. Here are some other interesting tidbits:
>AB 1705 builds off a 2017 law, Assembly Bill 705, that said colleges can’t place students in remedial classes unless they are deemed highly unlikely to succeed in transfer-level coursework. That bill was brought forward amid research showing that students who took remedial math and English classes often got stuck in those classes and were less likely to finish their degrees.
>The latest bill goes further by limiting colleges to enrolling only certain populations of students in remedial classes, such as English learners and students in some career and technical education programs. It also leaves room for colleges to enroll other students in remedial classes if the colleges can prove, based on a student’s high school grades, that the student is more likely to earn a degree or certificate by starting in the pre-transfer classes.
Sounds like we should be applauding an attempted overhaul of community colleges in california to me.
As for Creationism? It absolutely should be taught in science class to help students distinguish between what is science and what is pseudoscience. You may as well make sure they understand what a scientific theory is while you're at it.
I'd throw in the Satanic Bible too as it actually defines what humanism is. That's useful info for anybody living in a modern democratic society not founded on a religion.
Throw in some Camus and Nietzche and these kids will have the knowledge they need to take on this world head first!
But, those kind of people don't make for docile laborers who are content to work to fulfill the dreams of others. So we make sure they don't have access to these kinds of books.
Sorry, it does not. Many states focus on improving conditions for their poorest citizens, for historically marginalized citizens, and work to improve access to systems that make people's lives better.
>What my kids are taught in school is not a non issue for me, it's pretty much the issue.
Sure, and Florida is moving away from teaching useful things.
> I will always vote for things that put my kids first even if that regretfully negativity affects others
These policies don't put your children first, they put you first. They exist to make you feel better about the thing the right-wing media has convinced you to be outraged about.
"Sure, and Florida is moving away from teaching useful things."
This is news to me as I review my kids homework with them every night and it seems to be full of useful things like math, science, reading comprehension, geography, etc. Its almost as if you are being fed a false narrative from wherever you get your information from and then you believe it...
Florida is just moving away from teaching sexuality to young kids.
As far as blaming everything on right wing media, I have voted Dem my entire life prior to this, every single vote I've ever cast. I'm mid 40s. I voted Dem on the federal level while voting Rep at the state level this last election. I don't think I've ever watched a complete segment of right wing media on TV or online in my life. I arrived at my opinion by observing how California has endorsed schools lying to parents regarding their kids sexuality and am against that.
What if instead of assuming that everyone that votes differently than you do is a poor misguided easily influenced idiot and instead you actually try to understand that they just have different priorities than you do. Everyone is trying to just do right by their family and you will get much further and be happier if you focus on the 90% of things that most of us have in common rather than attacking and insulting over the 10% that we disagree on. This attacking and denigrating of different political parties is weakening the country.
Or you can continue to be smug and condescending. Whatever makes you feel good about yourself and superior to others. Your call. Based on your post history in this thread, I think we both know what you will choose.
Since the government have every right, and in fact in some cases a moral duty to ban certain materials from schools, the only question here is what materials exactly should children be encouraged to read, and, on the other hand, what will damage their lives and minds.
Individual parents, of course, are free to disagree, and they can show their children whatever they want. However, the whole point of democracy is that the elected officials have mandate on behalf of the majority of the voters to exercise control over state institutions. If voters do not like what DeSantis is doing, they can vote in his opponent during next election.
When it's entirely politically motivated, there is.
>No sane person would object from banning literal hardcore pornography from school libraries. I
Conflating Desantis culture war nonsense with actual pornography is a bad faith argument.
>ndividual parents, of course, are free to disagree, and they can show their children whatever they want. However, the whole point of democracy is that the elected officials have mandate on behalf of the majority of the voters to exercise control over state institutions. If voters do not like what DeSantis is doing, they can vote in his opponent during next election.
If Florida was still a democracy, I might agree with you. Desantis voter disenfranchisement and voter suppression programs have effectively ended that.
Banning books glorifying Nazism is also very much politically motivated. Do you think it would be wrong?
Anyway, doing politically motivated things is the whole point of democracy. The entire idea of it is that we elect the government to do things on our behalf. It is absurd to suggest that government shouldn’t take “politically motivated” actions: that’s what we elect them to do.
> If Florida was still a democracy, I might agree with you. Desantis voter disenfranchisement and voter suppression programs have effectively ended that.
Please stop with the election denialism. Yeah, DeSantis totally stole the election, man.
Come on man you sound like Trump.
The state's job is to set up and maintain a structure by which localities etc. can more-or-less self govern their methodology of education and handle things like content, and e.g. fire your hypothetical school person who's glorifying Nazism. And the actual state should only be getting involved in deeply extreme cases, if at all.
You are, of course, very much aware of this: indeed, this is seen clearly where you write “more or less”. You clearly agree that the state and federal governments have every right to interfere, and set up limits on what decisions the local government can make about its schools.
Moreover, you agree that the state should only be getting involved in “deeply extreme cases”. Well, guess what: there is no objective way to specify what is “deeply extreme”. In fact, DeSantis and his supporters will tell you that the books being curated away are, in fact, “deeply extreme”. You are of course free to disagree, but that’s the point: your objection is not at all about the right of the state government to do the thing it is doing (you believe that the government should totally be able to do exactly what DeSantis has done), only about the contents of the decision, which is to say, whose ox is being gored. Why don’t we discuss that, instead of engaging in silly discussions about the extent and limits of governance, which in today’s America have been, for better or worse, definitively settled with practically zero chances of being changed any time soon?
People can make their own choice if they think this is good content for nine year olds.
That is required by federal law. Same reason you have to attest to being over 18 on porn sites.
That framing is extremely misleading and tendentious. For instance: school boards making decisions about what to stock in their libraries is not "banning books," it's democracy. However, misrepresenting that as "book bans" cranks up the outrage, which is beneficial in partisan an ideological conflict.
It's also frequently hypocritical. For instance: the ACLU has been paying for big banner ads in the New York Times saying the oppose "book bans," while simultaneously employing a director who publicity advocates stopping the circulation of certain books and certain ideas.
When someone complains about "book bans," frequently their real position is "I want this book/idea in the library but that book/idea that I hate needs to be thrown out and burned."
That doesn't affect my overall point, though. I'm not "banning a book" if I refuse to purchase it or dispose if it after I've purchased it, likewise it's not a ban if some level of government does the same thing. If someone wants to read that book, they can buy it or borrow it from someone who chooses to lend it out. The "book ban" language is just tendentious outrage framing.
I mean, I would be surprised if literal pornography is available to be checked out from any school library in the US, even though it's frequently consumed by high-school aged kids, and no one can reasonable claim that's "banned."
Desantis is banning books. Yes, these culture wars are bad. Stupid. But it feels like there is drift into both-sidesism.
That side of the right is most certainly not for free speech any more than Elon Musk is when taking over Twitter.
We make those decisions sometimes hundreds of times a day when dealing face to face with people. We self-censor every day with our family and various social groups to avoid social and professional consequences. I don’t understand why that is so hard to translate when we go online.
Asian kids stand to be hurt the most by this. They want asian kids to view themselves as oppressed minorities (e.g. the California ethnic studies curriculum). They make thinly veiled accusations that our cultural traits (keeping our heads down and not complaining) is an effort to uphold white supremacy. But when the chips are down, they’ll categorize Asians as “white.”
“Asian” is even worse since it refers to a group of people who share neither ethnicity nor culture. It’s a label that is workable only because these unrelated groups share some common experiences in America due to immigration patterns. Even there, though, Indian immigrants and Vietnamese refugees have little in common.
But I really really really need for people, like you, who are annoyed by it and whatnot to really see the bigger picture here.
I have no problem turning the dial down on "DEI" as practiced if and only if we effectively address and recognize the ways in which these people actively do throw minorities under the bus in other ways; e.g. gerrymandering, reductions in public services, etc.
I know it's difficult to address these holistically, but the agenda of the guy you voted for is not to help any culture besides him and his cronies.
My kids happen to be white, heterosexual males, they should not be vilified for it and that's the route I see so many pushing for. Until that changes I am forced to vote for people like him.
Fear your fears about the future and your children; we all do. And if those fears lead you to endorse and support a white nationalist movement, own your actions. No one forced you to do that.
Us jews are notorious Nazi's and white nationalists.
This statement seems incredibly hyperbolic. Do you believe that DEI statements are simply "how intersectionally oppressed are you"? Have you had to answer any of these yourself? What were the exact questions?
That's really all I need to know. While I have much deeper opinions on the topic, I'm fine just stopping there, I don't want my kids to live in a world where that sort of instruction is the norm.
Here is what google returned on a quick search, a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 company actively encouraging what the other poster said:
https://www.mercer.us/content/dam/mercer/attachments/north-a...
It focuses on the executive level but is it hard to imagine that it has filtered down to the lower levels in some companies?
On more than one occasion I heard professors in our department talking about the boobs and asses of female undergraduate and graduate students, make weird remarks about homosexual faculty, and even one comment about how black people don't enjoy math anyways.
I think a lot of the super weird stuff is not so much that academia is radically free-speech or anything and more just that professors stay around until they're 80 and 80 year olds say crazy shit.
I am fairly confident I am one of the only straight white males in this comment section who has applied to faculty positions and received job offers, across a variety of institution types. I am almost certain I am the only one in this comment section who meets those criteria and isn't current in academia (I truly have no horse in this race, except annoyance that the discussion is so low-quality).
Most people commenting here have never written or reviewed a DEI statement, have never applied to faculty positions, and likely don't even have the minimal requisite education to quality for these positions.
What's worse is that there's a concerted effort by the political class to terrify parents. On right this manifests as "the wokes want your white boys to starve to death". It's all bullshit peddled by useless people need in order to extract money from the economy without doing anything useful, and you're the mark.
So, here's the actual truth about how university hiring DEI statements impact your white hetero sons:
At most colleges and universities, the concern about DEI has a lot more to do with finances than "woke ideology".
There's no interest in "replacing the white males". On the contrary, they'd love to have as many people of whatever background around as possible. But keeping their current enrollment numbers requires recruiting and retaining more diverse students because they are losing up to 20% of the total addressable market due to the post-2008 baby bust. They want to know faculty can serve a more diverse clientele, because they are pretty certain they cannot continue to exist if they are 80+% white. Especially from a retention perspective.
And, to be blunt: the colleges are correct to be concerned and prioritize DEI. The existing tenured faculty are terrible at working with students who aren't from a very traditional socio-economic demographic. That is why colleges lose more than half of their paying customers after the first year of enrollment.
Consider this: you are a business. Your TAM is decreasing by 20% in the next decade and there's competition closing in from every side. Not just that, but you lose loses HALF your customer base in their first year as customers. And it's clear the reason is that your faculty either DGAF or don't know how to help that demographic succeed (aka retain customers). Wouldn't you want to hire staff who have proven experience working with the portion of the customer base you keep losing -- center that in job interviews, even?
And, again, straight white males are fine. Faculty who do not give a fuck about retaining non-affluent students are not okay. Because the institution will go bankrupt if that's the attitude.
It's really that simple.
This doesn't describe every institution, but it does describe the vast majority of America's 4,000+ post-secondary institutions.
But in practice some of the most selective institutions (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth) have some of the strongest commitments to DEI. Maybe some institutions are motivated by market forces, but that cannot be the case in these elite institutions. There must be more to the story.
I do, however, know that I am pretty accurately describing how the other 4000+ colleges and universities work. Based on a sampling, yes, but I'm somewhat confident here.
To be a bit blunt: IDGAF about the top few dozen colleges and universities and I genuinely don't get why everyone else obsesses over them^1. Most of us will attend/work at the other 4K institutions. Let's focus on making those places good. (And, no, the ivy league and other elites aren't thought leaders in those orgs.)
--
[^1]: In my own life, I see a lot of the anti-DEI stuff about those institutions combing from parents of thoroughly mediocre kids who think that their special little snowflake didn't get into Harvard because of racism or whatever.
I have been both, and I would say your take is basically accurate, but it’s actually more fundamental than what you describe.
Diversity statements are needed because teaching a diverse classroom is part of the job today. Applicants must demonstrate that they’ve grappled with the issues that arise while teaching. Applicants who can’t articulate a salient position on real issues they will face on the job are rejected for being unqualified, not because they don’t adhere to some Marxist political agenda pushed by radical DEI administrators.
I agree with what you wrote in your other post, that a lot of the discourse here is from people who have neither read nor written a DEI statement. It makes the discourse frustrating, because it means people are getting worked up over what they imagine the process looks like - which is usually a caricature of the sort you see being portrayed in other comments. The dearth of actual experience on this topic means that these 800 comment threads that crop up here are low quality echo chambers.
What would change my view on this is to hear someone who has reasonably strong disagreement with present-day progressive stances on education, and nevertheless felt comfortable stating their true beliefs in a DEI statement and was still hired.
> Applicants who can’t articulate a salient position on real issues they will face on the job are rejected for being unqualified
But that is the whole question right there. What is a salient position? If only one world view is credited as being "salient", then it is a de facto political litmus test.
Once again, the purpose of a DEI statement is not to articulate how much you agree (or disagree) with progressive ideology. Doing either will sink your application.
The point of the essay is to describe how you handle on the job challenges related to diversity, because they are not abstract. Discussions of trans kids, sick people, blind people, wheelchair bound people, etc. are abstract to many here on HN, because meeting and serving the needs of such people is not part of the daily job description of the commentariat here. But it is part of the daily job of a professor, so it’s essentially addressed in the job application. Could you imagine giving your political views during a C++ coding interview? DEI statements are no different.
Just because the political parties have made diversity into a political issue, doesn’t mean it’s a political issue in our department during the hiring process. We never talk about candidates with any political colorings, only about their ideas and experience related to the job.
The key mistake many posters here are making (including you) is assuming this process is carried out by political actors looking to implement an agenda. Maybe you can find instances of that (as you can anywhere), but it’s mostly people just looking to hire a colleague, and trying to find the best one. It’s not political. Consider yourself lucky that political parties haven’t turned your hiring process at your job into a political football. I didn’t ask for this grief.
> What is a salient position? If only one world view is credited as being "salient", then it is a de facto political litmus test.
The salient position is that: the classroom is diverse, and that creates challenges in teaching. Any denial of that is to deny the reality of the job. That’s not a political litmus test, that is a job qualification test. Every member of the faculty knows this to be true from experience, from the famously conservative prof in the bio department, to the purple haired feminist in the sociology department. To deny this on your application is to telegraph you are willing to put your own political feelings ahead of the realities of the job.
Moreover, when an applicant parrots anodyne platitudes about how they treat every student equally, they neglect an opportunity to set oneself apart by highlighting experience in this area. For instance pronouns are a hot button issue. Some applicants will make some big deal about pronouns not being necessary, and we will have to reject that application because we all have our pronouns in our signatures. Not for political reasons, but because we have many trans students, and it makes things easier for everyone when pronouns are used upfront; when you have a Frank on your roster who is wearing a dress and lipstick and goes by Francine, having a protocol of pronoun visibility reduces friction in the classroom. It makes Francine feel welcomed and it helps her classmates as well. It’s a net win for everyone, and so political options about tans and pronouns are just not needed. You may feel political about pronouns, but our acceptance and usage of them is a practical matter for us because we have trans customers. Therefore arguments from a political position have no place in a DEI statement. You can argue that they aren’t practically needed, but that will go against our experience.
Feel free to hold whatever political opinion you want. Like I said, the bio prof is famously conservative. But you should keep your politics to yourself, especially during the application process. I believe that’s universally applicable advise.
Does it help female students, knowing that they have to accommodate this misogyny?
But I can guarantee that at least some of your female students are scoffing at the misogynistic idea that "woman = lipstick and dress and she/her pronouns".
I can tell you don't work with students. They are very vocal when you do something they don't agree with, to the point where they will anonymously send you their thoughts via a burner gmail account if they actually do feel for some reason they will suffer repercussions (which they never do). If the silent dissenters have thoughts, they will go unaddressed as long as they remain silent.
But to be clear you're arguing for a hypothetical person, correct? When you say "they stay quiet out of politeness", you are talking about students you invented that you assume exist, and not actual students you know personally who voiced this particular concern to you?
> "woman = lipstick and dress and she/her pronouns"
If you're trying to imply this is something I've said here or in the classroom, neither has occurred.
It feels like they'd be the ones violating the non-aggression principle here. They'd be offended at the idea that acknowledging the concept of gender as distinct from sex to ease trans students' dysphoria runs against their concept of gender as alloyed to sex (which isn't a thing that causes dysphoria to them; it's just a political stance). Dysphoria is a thing that causes people to hate, and sometimes kill, themselves. Political objections don't do that, to my knowledge.
You have just told me that putting pronouns in one's signature is an effective condition of employment, because it "makes things easier for everyone" if people comply with this policy. That is a remarkable statement.
Consider how asymmetric these affordances are. On one hand it is considered a top priority that trans students are not only accommodated in their desired pronouns, but that everybody participates in a shared pronoun protocol on an ongoing basis to make trans students feel more welcome. On the other hand the community cannot tolerate a faculty member who prefers not to put pronouns next to their name; it is so intolerant of this behavior that the institution will not even hire such a person, let alone attempt to make them feel welcomed or accepted.
It is right and admirable to expect faculty to treat students with respect, including using requested pronouns within reason. But why should a faculty member be expected to put pronouns next to their own name if they prefer not to? The choice of how to identify is a very personal thing; that is the entire reason why this topic is so charged. What if someone strongly does not identify with putting pronouns in every place their name appears? Shouldn't they get a chance to decide how they identify?
It is not the accommodation of student requests that makes this political, it is the highly asymmetric offering of affordances. You are describing a culture where some people's choice of how to identify is protected as sacrosanct, but other people's choice is rejected as unacceptable and disqualifying. That is picking winners and losers on a charged topic where both sides have strong and closely held beliefs.
I'm probably speaking out of turn here because I went back and checked, and some faculty don't have this in their signature. So it's optional after all. Even still, leadership has asked us to put our pronouns in our signatures, so my perception was that it wasn't optional.
> Consider how asymmetric these affordances are.
I would soften both sides of your argument. On the one hand, it is considered a priority that to accommodate all students. Normalizing pronoun usage isn't a huge ask for anyone, dissenters are apparently accommodated, and trans customers (I'll refer to them as customers here to highlight that these accommodations are in fact made in the context of a transaction where large sums of money are exchanged) feel more visible and welcomed.
On the other hand, while the employer can apparently tolerate an employee who prefers not to put pronouns next to their name, it aspires not to hire people who outwardly express their political opinions about our paying customers during working hours, or in a way that would negatively impact revenues. This is the prerogative of all businesses. I'm using the employer/employee dichotomy to highlight the fact that this is in fact a job, where the expectation is that the employee will leave their politics aside.
So yes, the affordances are asymmetric, because the relationship between these groups and the institution is not the same. One is a paying customer, the other is an employee. Customer concerns are treated as a priority because education is a person-centric business. It's all about personal service to the customer. If a school gets known for a bad customer experience, that impacts enrollment which drives down revenues.
Conversely employee concerns are brought to HR and handled through internal channels. Otherwise employees abide by the institution's rules and procedures and are compensated with a salary and benefits.
I'm sorry if that offends your political sensibilities or strong and closely held beliefs, but they should be kept closely held in the context of your employment. The personhood of our customers is not debatable, because at the end of the day they are paying a large sum of money to attend our institution, and there's a lot of heavy competition out there. If that's picking winners and losers so be it. They're voting with their wallets so that's why they're winning.
I find this explanation unconvincing. If we take you at your word, then your institution would follow the preferences of the students even if they went in the other direction. Suppose the next cohort of students was against this pronoun protocol: not only do they eschew pronouns, they prefer for nobody else to specify them either, and they vote accordingly with their feet. Are you saying that you and your department would be prepared to reverse course on this issue and ask any faculty (including trans faculty, if there were any) not to specify their pronouns anywhere? Or even to reject faculty applicants who specify their pronouns during the interview process, for being too "political"? I doubt that the morals of the faculty are truly this flexible, nor should they be.
Market forces are real and I have no doubt that a loud contingent of students demand the practices you are describing. It is undoubtedly a difficult position to be in, and it is one I do not envy. But there must be a limit to how far customer focus can or should go. What if all of the students demand to get As? What if they demand that a math professor teach 2+2=5 or that a biology professor teach that biological sex is not a concept that has any basis in reality? At some point the faculty need to stand up for what is right and what is true.
And if the faculty and staff are not willing to do this, then other market forces will come into play like the article that we are commenting on. Public universities take public funds and are therefore accountable to the public, while private universities depend on alumni and donors. All of these people are entitled to have an opinion about whether they want to support this kind of behavior. You see the press turning this into "political football" that is causing you grief, I see it as a much needed check on institutions who have abdicated their responsibility to resist illiberal trends within their walls.
For a long time that was the case; Women and black people weren't allowed on campus for over a hundred years after the University's founding, but that all changed as generations churned.
> Suppose the next cohort of students was against this pronoun protocol: not only do they eschew pronouns, they prefer for nobody else to specify them either, and they vote accordingly with their feet.
I think changes like these happen at a longer timescale than cohorts. More like generations. We millennials are now teaching gen Z, and so obviously things are going to be very different from when boomers were teaching us. It will probably change again when Gen Z start getting faculty positions and gen "Alpha" (I had to look it up, who comes up with these?) start taking college classes.
> Are you saying that you and your department would be prepared to reverse course on this issue and ask any faculty (including trans faculty, if there were any) not to specify their pronouns anywhere?
I could see this happening, sure. Likely what would happen is people would complain, students would complain louder, and in the end they would get their way. Faculty would grumble, and then probably let their contracts lapse, while others who wouldn't find the situation so vexing would take their places and do their jobs.
> But there must be a limit to how far customer focus can or should go. What if all of the students demand to get As?
Grade inflation is a thing, so this is a real concern. Fortunately it's semi-checked by competing interests from our customers who appreciate that we maintain standards so that an A means something. But we're not immune from it, that's for sure. Squeaky wheels do often get grease when it comes to grades.
> What if they demand that a math professor teach 2+2=5 or that a biology professor teach that biological sex is not a concept that has any basis in reality?
Tenure and academic freedom play an important role here. Lord knows there's all kind of nonsense being taught on college campuses across the country. People can have different opinions on what constitutes nonsense; I'm sure there are topics I wish they'd shut up about that other people want taught, and topics I want taught that others would prefer be defunded and shut down. But you know what, I shrug and don't pay too much mind. I certainly don't go on about the "conservative bias" I see in many departments here. If people want to teach nonsense that's fine. If it has any utility or merit, they will attract funding, and students, and it will make our community better. We have people teaching things here that I consider to be actually far less coherent than 2+2=5. But I say, whatever, go for it. Teach away.
> At some point the faculty need to stand up for what is right and what is true.
We all are. Every single one of us. But that's why we have a marketplace, because not all of us can be right and true.
> Public universities take public funds and are therefore accountable to the public, while private universities depend on alumni and donors.
Private universities rely on all kinds of public funding to operate, not the least being public grant money. None of us are immune from public scrutiny, but in general the public better know what they are talking about if they want to leverage a criticism. If they want to open a dialogue, that can happen, but so far it seems like political and media firebrands are leading the charge, so a dialogue doesn't seem to be possible in this climate.
> All of these people are entitled to have an opinion about whether they want to support this kind of behavior.
Sure, and if they want a louder opinion so that they may be heard, they can spend more dollars. In the meantime, there are thousands of schools out there, and especially among the top schools, we are competing for the top students. And as it turns out, you can find the top students from almost any background. So when word gets out that school X is a welcoming and diverse environment, then it becomes easier to recruit top talent. If state schools get a reputation for being political playgrounds for whatever state governors or political parties, they will fall behind because they will fail to attract top talent from the new generation.
> I see it as a much needed check on institutions who have abdicated their responsibility to resist illiberal trends within their walls.
Respectfully, you've made it pretty clear you don't really know what's going on in the walls, so any assessment on how illiberal or not the activities are must be incomplete. The level of discourse in this entire thread is generally stunted because the HN commentariat is talking out of its depth. Software developers, web devs, people who have never been in academia aside from being a student, or haven't been in decades, are voicing their thoughts on what they think is happening in academia. These opinions seem to be fueled mostly by chatter in the right-wing media sphere, especially Tucker Carlson in recent days.
Absent from the entire conversation here seems to be people with first-hand experience reading and evaluating these DEI statements. I think I've noticed 2 other posters in the thousands of comments generated in the past 3 or so HN threads that hit the front page, who I would say have an accurate read on what goes on within academic walls. Everyone else seems to have somehow made up their minds about how these statements are used and what's in them, without reading a single one or asking anyone how they are actually used in practice. Instead you get people claiming as confidently and baselessly as ChatGPT that the whole practice is abjectly racist, illegal, unconstitutional - I've heard it all. You yourself said that you are dismissive of positive first-hand accounts because you assume they are just politically biased. There is zero curious inquiry going on surrounding this topic, and that should sound warning bells that this is just a political tornado.
I don't listen to Tucker Carlson, but I have been listening to what you have been telling me in this thread. From your own first-hand testimony I have learned:
- You have first-hand knowledge of faculty applicants who have been rejected on the basis of their belief that universal pronoun protocols are not necessary, or that they personally prefer not to participate by volunteering their own pronouns.
- You do not count this as a political litmus test, instead you accuse the applicant of being political by having an opinion that is different from what students are demanding.
- You acknowledge that the institution is extending asymmetric affordances, and picking winners and losers on a charged topic, but rationalize this by citing market forces and a philosophy that the customer is always right.
Even if I had heard nothing else, that right there is the case for an illiberal trend. Some opinions are endorsed while others are policed, and this is not based on any appeal to fairness or equal protection, but rather the arbitrary demands of the customer.
Respectfully, the fact that you would tell me all of this openly, but then think that I need right-wing agitation to consider this an illiberal trend, just reinforces to me how much of an echo chamber academia must have become. I'm sorry, but no amount of condescension on your part will convince me that this is ok.
To be clear I already admitted I was wrong about this after checking the other faculty signatures. The call to put pronouns in signatures wasn't mandatory. I certainly look very poorly at statements that go on and on about pronouns and rate them at the bottom, because as I said, we've already had this debate as a community, and a job application/interview is not the time nor the place for that debate to be rekindled.
> - You do not count this as a political litmus test, instead you accuse the applicant of being political by having an opinion that is different from what students are demanding.
Yes, and I don't see why that's a problem, because it wouldn't be tolerable in any other workplace to bring your personal political opinion into the interview. Imagine if I had an interview at BigCo and started complaining about capitalism, and how the CEO owner didn't work for his money, and that I feel he should reorganize the entire corporation so that workers controlled everything. Would you call me political for bringing those opinions to the interview, or would you call the owner political because he's forcing his capitalistic economic model on me?
> You acknowledge that the institution is extending asymmetric affordances, and picking winners and losers on a charged topic
It's not charged in our community. Just because the political Twittersphere goes crazy over some topic doesn't mean it's a big deal for everyone. Some communities can arrive at a different norm than others, and it's not "picking winners and losers" if that community starts rejecting outsiders who violate the community's norms. Sure it may be sad for the outsiders who wanted to participate, but it's not up to the community to accommodate the outsider's political sensibilities. I'm sorry you feel this is illiberal, but if it makes you feel any better, these standards were the result of intense community debate, and were voted on. At some point, things need to move on. We can't be in a perpetual debate about pronouns forever.
> Respectfully, the fact that you would tell me all of this openly, but then think that I need right-wing agitation to consider this an illiberal trend, just reinforces to me how much of an echo chamber academia must have become.
I have no idea what motivates you specifically, but it's not a coincidence that a furor of a thousand+ comments bubbled up here about DEI statements in academia at the same exact time the right wing media sphere also was very concerned about DEI statements in academia.
> I told you that I would credit such accounts if they came from someone who had significant disagreements with the dominant thinking on these subjects, and was able to be hired without hiding this.
That's definitely not me, but at the same time I doubt you've tried hard to seek these people out. There are plenty of them, but they know not to bring their political opinions to a job interview. That always seemed like common sense to me, but it seems to now be a problem for some reason.
If you don't want to hear personal political opinion, don't require a personal statement on a contentious political issue as part of the application. It's as simple as that.
If you ask for a statement, but reject perspectives associated with the other side, then you have made it a political litmus test.
> Some communities can arrive at a different norm than others, and it's not "picking winners and losers" if that community starts rejecting outsiders who violate the community's norms.
If those norms are illiberal, then rejecting outsiders who violate those norms is also illiberal. Even if you debated and voted on them.
> it's not a coincidence that a furor of a thousand+ comments bubbled up here about DEI statements in academia at the same exact time the right wing media sphere also was very concerned about DEI statements in academia.
This is a site where people comment on current news stories. That said, diversity policy in business and academia is by no means a new or unusual topic of conversation here. In any case, it seems like some good evidence that this is actually a contentious issue that many people have genuinely strong feelings about.
I have no clue what the fuck this means, but I can tell you I think HR DEI training is a bunch of bullshit. I have to do it, of course, just like I have to do the AML training and the Insider Trading training and the Phishing training. It's all dumb bullshit. And the corporation has to require it because the risk of not requiring it is too large. So we all play the dumb game.
> and nevertheless felt comfortable stating their true beliefs in a DEI statement and was still hired.
LMAO. This would not get you hired. Like, "faculty make fun of your app on the hiring committee slack channel" levels of not getting hired >'D
MechE gives the reasons why -- people are asking if you can do the job and going on a political rant in your job application is a huge red flag regardless of your politics.
Believe me -- faculty, esp in STEM departments, are wary of hiring wacko leftists. It's not even about the political valence. You just don't want to work with someone who's obsessed with politics and feels the need to spout off about it in their job application. Those sorts of people fucking suck to spend time around.
When reading DEI statements, universities want to know that you can help increase the size of their total addressable market. The harsh cold logic of financial capitalism combined with demographics demands that they only hire sufficiently woke faculty. If you don't like it, time travel back to 2008 and pop out a bunch more white babies.
DEI that I have experienced in the work place is very aggressively anti white and anti male and openly advocates against giving women and minorities a step up over them. DEI teaches that white men are aggressive and old fashioned and essentially a detriment and should learn their place. White supremacy is positioned as the source of all wrongs in the world including the spate of anti asian violence perpetrated by other minorities a couple years ago. I am not presenting this opinion as something I have heard about rather I am presenting it as something I have experienced (openly, not inferred) over my last few jobs.
Then I'm honestly confused why you're posting on this article. Do you care at all about the topic or do you just pattern match on "DEI" and start spitting out next-tokens?
> telling kids about the gays
So what? I was told the gays are evil as a kid and I turned out okay.
The gays are okay. If telling the kids that the gays are okay is some sort of existential threat to you then I'm not sure what to say.
> DEI that I have experienced in the work place is very aggressively anti white
Not gonna lie, I see this a lot and "my HR training was dumb as shit" is a weird basis for political ideology. My anti-phishing training was patronizing as fuck and poorly executed, but I'm not about to use that as a basis for an argument to defund the DoD or whatever.
Also, sounds like you work in weird places. At the universities I worked at the older profs made occasional comments about the tits and asses of undergraduate students, talked about homosexual faculty in way that made even us white straight males uncomfortable, etc. Whatever woke nonsense you think is happening at universities, they're absolutely unregulated compared to most corporate environments and have nothing resembling the sanitary corporate training -- on DEI or a million other things -- that I have to do every year.
Because I want to. I mentioned nothing about college in the original comment that you replied to. I pattern matched :) Judging by the number of responses to my post, other people wanted to discuss it from my perspective as well. Thats one of the nice things about HN, the open, unrestricted flow of conversation
I know that gays are ok. I have absolutely nothing against gay people and am very pro gay marriage. I just dont think its an appropriate topic for elementary school. I very much do have an issue with transexuality being pushed as an option in schools though and I think that its dangerous and results in kids being confused and mistakenly thinking they may be trans. I feel for trans people and wish them nothing but happiness. I just dont want anyone telling my kids its an option as its a much harder life.
I've never understood what this means. Is talking about another student's two Daddies not okay? Teacher talking about their same-sex spouse? So people imagine they're passing out porn to second graders? Don't get it. Sounds like stupid bullshit. Literally worse than HR DEI training slide decks tbh.
> I very much do have an issue with transexuality being pushed as an option in schools
Your sons aren't going to be replaced by DEI essays. Schools "pushing transexuality" is also some stupid bullshit meant to make people feel scared and capture eyeballs.
Regarding the two daddies comment, I have no issue with my kids knowing child X has 2 dads or whatever. Its the pushing of gay pride events, etc. Its making it seem like its a desirable trait that perhaps a kid should experiment with that I don't like. If my kid is gay/trans then so be it, I love them the same. I just don't want them thinking they are based on in school propaganda.
Now you may posit that its all in my head but its also in the head of many many other people. In addition there are very real policies in states like California that indicate its not all in my head. End of the day the thing I am most against is schools conspiring to withhold information from parents.
OP’s point is these aims may be in opposition to one another. Pushing ideology-affirming DEI requirements in academia alienates allies who would have given support to electoral reform.
I admittedly haven’t seen joint polling on this. But competitive districts certainly show overlap, and joint increasing animosity, towards these elements. Speaking personally, corporate DEI always struck me as usual bureaucratic drudgery; gatekeeping academic positions with an ideological questionnaire makes me pause, particularly when those same institutions are proposing solutions to our inequality and electoral problems.
Did you sleep through 2020?
He's not going to do anything about it. He's going to start a few fights to get press attention, then give up on it as soon as they stop paying attention, since he's just running your state government as PR for a presidential campaign.
(You may remember he started a fight with Disney over being too woke or something and threatened to cancel their special powers over their parks, but the actual bill came out today and does approximately nothing. Although it does remove their unused rights to own an airport or a nuclear reactor.)
Youngkin in Virginia is part of the same backlash. The Democrats are in for it if they keep hitching themselves to this woke shit; regular people don't go for it
> He's not going to do anything about it. He's going to start a few fights to get press attention, then give up on it as soon as they stop paying attention, since he's just running your state government as PR for a presidential campaign.
So who will do something about it?
I ask because I often see arguments as yours as a tactic to encourage inaction or action against the other person's stated goals (e.g. "the people who seem to agree with you are only doing it for show[, so stay home or vote for the people who disagree with you]").
> Well, someone who isn't running for president.
Huh? The only person who will do something about it is someone who refuses to seek the power to do something about it?
(It's mainly foreign policy.)
A whole heck of a lot, actually.
> (It's mainly foreign policy.)
Don't be ridiculous. That's just an area where there are fewer checks.
Considering the book banning he just enacted this seems like an extremely short sighted and poorly thought out reasoning.
That's fascinating to me. I checked out books all the time. In fact, we were required to check out books for various assignments. We also had a program called AR (accelerated reading) where you would be able to take a quiz on a library book and gather points which let you get various prizes, up to principal for the day.
Constantly. It was the only library I could get to regularly and I had a voracious appetite for reading.
Uh, yeah. All the time actually.
And we're not talking about Mein Kampf or playboy, we're talking about To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn.
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-south/why-som...
No, "no books at all" is a result of them trying not to go to prison. The law is very unclear about what it requires.
[1] https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1467/BillText/er/...
The consequences of a felony charge make it so that clarity needs to be crystal, and as so many articles have already discussed, what's unclear is what books could result in that felony charge.
> b. Any material used in a classroom, made available in a school library, or included on a reading list contains content that is pornographic or prohibited under s. 847.012, is not suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented, or is inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used.
The first clause is very clear and gives cover to say "its just about pornography, whats the problem???" and the second and third clauses are astoundingly vague and provide ample confusion to effectively ban whatever books a single parent doesn't like until a review panel issues a decision. Even if the decisions can be made promptly, the law is so vague it provides cover for political operatives to make whatever decision they want.
fwiw I agree that there has been a very confusing conflation in the media about what violations consitute a felony.
I believe children have rights and autonomy and at appropriate ages should have access to information their parents may find objectionable. There should of course be limits and parents should have input, but the law as written is not attempting to find any reasonable balance in my opinion.
>The bill itself does not outline penalties for educators, but school officials have nonetheless suggested that felony charges are possible under a preëxisting law prohibiting the distribution of pornography to minors.
Why would these school officials do this, intentionally scare their teachers? I can venture a guess... It's not in the law, which NY Mag actually links to this time, and what law is referenced with regard to pornography is an old one, where yes if you give porn to minors you can be charged with a felony.[1]
[1] https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1467/BillText/er/...
Come on man, you know what "banned books" are. They are books that libraries are not allowed to carry/lend and schools cannot assign/carry/lend. It could be the result of local/state/federal law, or a school administration's decision, or a PTA, whatever. Why are you pretending you don't know this?
DeSantis has banned books at the state level with the GOP legislature in Florida. That is what we are talking about.
Is it?
Here's what MLK has written:
> “Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic.”
> “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.”
> “A section of the white population, perceiving Negro pressure for change, misconstrues it as a demand for privileges rather than as a desperate quest for existence. The ensuing white backlash intimidates government officials who are already too timorous.”
DEI initiatives, when executed correctly, show substantially and consistently superior outcomes for the people and organizations who implement them. You will see more, and more successful, DEI initiatives for the rest of your life, because they work. Companies who are successful will tend to be companies who execute DEI initiatives well (I can post many high quality sources if folks are interested).
It's completely fair to criticize bad implementations of DEI, and we all know there are a lot of those, but to throw the baby out with the bath water here would be a mistake, and not one corporations will make willingly. You'd have to be pretty militant and aggressive with the law in order to stop companies from pursuing a win/win like DEI.
This is a false statement, and considering you have no clue what studies I'm citing, completely speculative.
Here, I challenge you to be specific in your criticism:
> Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. [0]
> Increased diversity in the healthcare workforce helps reduce or eliminate racial health disparities, according to a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 studies. [1]
> A large-scale study of all Texas schools reveals diversity’s impact in public education systems. They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity, and a closer racial match (representation) between management and student. [2]
> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change. [3]
> Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a “social listening” analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. [4]
> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits. [5]
[0] https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend
[1] https://www.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider68/default-do...
[2] https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/15/4/615/991022
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765101/
[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...
[5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000312240907400203
> The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%.
Right, so any diversity of ethnicity - including Asians - was associated with this "diversity boost".
> They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity,
And again, what was the criteria used to measure diversity? Did it count Asians as diverse? You keep citing excerpts from these studies, but don't include anything relevant to my comment: are Asians considered diverse or not?
> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams.
And for the third time are Asians considered diverse? That's the crux of the question that you continuously fail to answer.
> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits.
And again, were Asians included in the definition of "racial diversity"?
> All of your links are either paywalled studies, or lead to 404 pages, except for the first one.
That's false.
> Right, so any diversity of ethnicity - including Asians - was associated with this "diversity boost".
Can you cite a specific reason a) why that matters or b) where it says what you're claiming specifically?
> And again, what was the criteria used to measure diversity? Did it count Asians as diverse? You keep citing excerpts from these studies, but don't include anything relevant to my comment: are Asians considered diverse or not?
Find it! You keep posing these questions, but refuse to do the work of arriving at the solution yourself, which you are entirely capable of doing. Go answer your own questions!
> And for the third time are Asians considered diverse? That's the crux of the question that you continuously fail to answer.
Why are you discriminating against Asians this blatantly and obviously? It's wild, how you think this is okay.
I can't find it because most of your links are either broken or paywalled. Go post the excerpts that say "we define racial diversity as...".
Here's an example of mismatch between one of your working links and our diversity policies:
> To draw an example from this study, if all of the teachers in a given district were white, the Blau index would be 0, indicating perfect homogeneity. If 25 percent of the teachers were white, 25 percent were black, 25 percent were Latino/a, and 25 percent were Asian or Native American (grouped as “other” for my purposes here), then the Blau index would be 0.75, indicating the highest level of heterogeneity achievable in a situation with four categories. As the number of categories increases, the highest possible Blau score increases.
By comparison, my company's diversity policies target equity. So Asian representation of 25% is not considered diverse, as they are only 6% of the population and thus 25% is nearly a 5x overrepresentation.
> Why are you discriminating against Asians this blatantly and obviously? It's wild, how you think this is okay.
I'm not! DEI policies are. But the research showing the benefits of diversity overwhelmingly do count Asians as diverse, hence the mismatch between the research and our DEI policies.
I didn't edit my comment to fix my links, what are you talking about?
And your company misimplementing DEI is not a reflection of DEI itself, just a reflection of how difficult it is to get these kinds of things right.
> And your company misimplementing DEI is not a reflection of DEI itself, just a reflection of how difficult it is to get these kinds of things right.
Exactly the point I was making all along. The criteria for "diversity" used in research does not match what's almost always used in company DEI discrimination.
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...
It worked earlier today, IDK what to tell you.
And it's fine to criticize specific DEI implementations, and to look at the research and call out issues. But that's not what you're doing; you're saying that DEI as a whole is ineffective, which is objectively false.
I also removed "https://" in addition to substituting (dot) to trick HN formatting.
This one works because it points to the full link: "www(dot)mckinsey(dot)com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters"
You can't just drag-select links on HN, since it truncates links. Do right-click, copy link address.
Anyway, the McKinsey study just examined the representation of "ethnic minorities" which would include Asians:
> Similarly, the representation of ethnic-minorities on UK and US executive teams stood at only 13 percent in 2019, up from just 7 percent in 2014. For our global data set, this proportion was 14 percent in 2019, up from 12 percent in 2017 (Exhibit 2).
Rgr that re: links. HN is a terrible, terrible platform implementation, for many reasons. It was not meant for this kind of discussion.
But what I'm still not getting here is any justifiable reason for why "this study includes Asian people" is a problem. Maybe DEI has a problem where Asian folks don't get evenly represented on both sides of the measurements, but you'll have to show that's specifically happening in each study I've cited, as well as any others I might cite, in order for that to be valid criticism. Further, you'd have to demonstrate that it totally negates the positive effects found, as that's not a given either.
Edit: UC Denver (and this one is a really good resource): https://www.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider68/default-do...
If science showed that DEI were bad for company outcomes, would you oppose it?
Yeah, probably. Would depend on what "bad" meant here, and what specifically "science" was showing.
The key thing though is that I want to help people, and I want others to want to help people. If DEI wasn't it, we'd find something else to help people with, but DEI is helping, so let's figure out how it works and put more effort into the effective aspects of DEI and less effort into the ineffective aspects of DEI.
Can you back that claim up by actually citing... literally anything?
Can you prove Asians were included-then-excluded from the studies I've cited, as you're claiming?
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
This is a false statement, and considering you have no clue what studies I'm citing, completely speculative.
Here, I challenge you to be specific in your criticism:
> Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. [0]
> Increased diversity in the healthcare workforce helps reduce or eliminate racial health disparities, according to a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 studies. [1]
> A large-scale study of all Texas schools reveals diversity’s impact in public education systems. They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity, and a closer racial match (representation) between management and student. [2]
> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change. [3]
> Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a “social listening” analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. [4]
> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits. [5]
[0] https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend
[1] https://www.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider68/default-do...
[2] https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/15/4/615/991022
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765101/
[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...
[5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000312240907400203
This is a false statement, and considering you have no clue what studies I'm citing, completely speculative.
Here, I challenge you to be specific in your criticism:
> Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. [0]
> Increased diversity in the healthcare workforce helps reduce or eliminate racial health disparities, according to a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 studies. [1]
> A large-scale study of all Texas schools reveals diversity’s impact in public education systems. They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity, and a closer racial match (representation) between management and student. [2]
> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change. [3]
> Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a “social listening” analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. [4]
> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits. [5]
[0] https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend
[1] https://www.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider68/default-do...
[2] https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/15/4/615/991022
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765101/
[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...
[5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000312240907400203
This is a false statement, and considering you have no clue what studies I'm citing, completely speculative.
Here, I challenge you to be specific in your criticism:
> Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. [0]
> Increased diversity in the healthcare workforce helps reduce or eliminate racial health disparities, according to a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 studies. [1]
> A large-scale study of all Texas schools reveals diversity’s impact in public education systems. They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity, and a closer racial match (representation) between management and student. [2]
> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change. [3]
> Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a “social listening” analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. [4]
> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits. [5]
[0] https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend
[1] https://www.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider68/default-do...
[2] https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/15/4/615/991022
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765101/
[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...
[5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000312240907400203
This is a false statement, and considering you have no clue what studies I'm citing, completely speculative.
Here, I challenge you to be specific in your criticism:
> Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. [0]
> Increased diversity in the healthcare workforce helps reduce or eliminate racial health disparities, according to a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 studies. [1]
> A large-scale study of all Texas schools reveals diversity’s impact in public education systems. They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity, and a closer racial match (representation) between management and student. [2]
> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change. [3]
> Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a “social listening” analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. [4]
> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits. [5]
[0] https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend
[1] https://www.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider68/default-do...
[2] https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/15/4/615/991022
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765101/
[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...
[5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000312240907400203
Here, I challenge you to be specific in your criticism:
> Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. [0]
> Increased diversity in the healthcare workforce helps reduce or eliminate racial health disparities, according to a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 studies. [1]
> A large-scale study of all Texas schools reveals diversity’s impact in public education systems. They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity, and a closer racial match (representation) between management and student. [2]
> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change. [3]
> Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a “social listening” analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. [4]
> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits. [5]
[0] https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend
[1] https://www.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider68/default-do...
[2] https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/15/4/615/991022
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765101/
[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...
[5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000312240907400203
DEI has been proven to benefit white woman the most. Not sure I’d call that a success for black American socio economic uplift.
No, my argument is that "Real DEI is tried successfully all the time and is effective."
Here's an equity implementation that seemed to work: https://www.corporatecomplianceinsights.com/how-successful-d...
> Schulman realized he had to do something about the large gap between the lower-paid employees and the rest of the company. “Imagine asking people to double down on serving customers when they’re more financially stressed than ever before, when they don’t even have healthcare benefits,” he told Insider. So PayPal raised wages for lower-level workers by about 7 percent – not a huge amount, but enough to ease money worries – and gave them restricted stock units so they could share in PayPal’s success. The company also covered more healthcare costs, cutting the amount lower-level employees contribute by around 58 percent.
> Employee turnover has been cut in half
Here is a diversity initiative enacted politically: https://www.hrdive.com/news/virginia-outlaws-hair-discrimina...
> Discrimination based on hair texture, type and hairstyles such as braids, locks and twists will be illegal in Virginia starting July 1. Gov. Ralph Northam signed a bill on March 4 that “clarifies” that when the law bans discrimination “on the basis of race,” that includes “traits historically associated with race, including hair texture, hair type, and protective hairstyles such as braids, locks, and twists.”
I'm sure I could fine more examples if I didn't have a meeting in 5 minutes.
Well, don't tease us like that?
Yeah, I hate the Republicans. But I vote for them now.
It's worse, you tell somebody they are a victim enough, and they begin to believe it, they even play the role of a victim. You are now starting to see a generation of young minorities that have become what they are told they are. You now have a permanent victim class.
> It's already started bleeding into the workspace with mandatory training and verbiage that essentially says anything you do in your interactions with a minority if they accuse you of anything they are right and you must meekly accept it and bow your head in shame.
The result in this will simply be that people avoid interactions with people who pose a risk to them. You already see for example men are very cautious of being alone with women, or teachers alone with students.
> You even have companies doing layoffs now intentionally focused on laying off non minorities.
Those who choose this policy over merit deserve the rotten companies they are creating. Ultimately you do end up with what you optimize for.
> Another issue is that Asians while less in number than most other minorities are treated as white by DEI.
White Asians are a problem for the ideology, because they are a minority that statistically does well. They have to treat them as white, otherwise the ideology falls apart.
> I worry about my kids if this keeps escalating.
You'll probably find they are already being indoctrinated. I have teacher friends working in younger education who admit on social media they purposefully neglect boys when picking students with their hands up, and similar scenarios. Statistically men before this movement were doing worse than their female counterparts, I hate to think where we are after another 10 years time.
Planning for the future
Delayed Gratification
Self Reliance
Adherence to the nuclear family
Objective, Rational thinking
Hard work being the key to success
I don't know how "right-wing" became a slur, but it's unhealthy for people to hold their opposition with such low regard.
Progressive politics (typically left-leaning) is the idea of making "progress" (read: change), so most issues raised if not implemented or occurring already, will occur in the near future.
Conservative politics (typically right-leaning) is the idea of conserving the current way of life, but they are rarely successful and only serve to slow down policies. Conservatism for the most part is a mostly liberal position. Most honest people would agree there is a great advantage to making change slowly and carefully - all the longest living institutions (up until recently) survived by doing this.
The problem in the US is that conservatism is also conflated with lots of other random ideas, like religion and right-wing policies (anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, etc). There's no way to vote for the parts you like without voting for the parts you don't like.
They're not conflated. They are stances held by large swatch of US conservatives.
I've worked with a number of young black adults for example that have said (paraphrasing) "this work is too hard, where I am from we do not work this hard". My response is always something like "the greater the work, the greater the reward".
According to DEI, what I should have done is made the work easier/irrelevant for them, and then balanced out the end result (probably by degrading the work of others).
But being a white supremacist, I made them work hard, and they got a great end result. Afterwards they thanked me for pushing them and they were (rightfully) proud of what they had achieved. It had value because it was not easy to obtain.
[1] https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiten...
I think these activists are to racism what SlimFast/WeightWatchers is to dieting. They have no interest in actually solving the problem, they instead would much rather you perpetually be a victim.
This happened, exactly as you describe, before my eyes at a well known education startup in Denver 2 years ago. HR representatives publicly humiliated someone for defending protestors on January 6th. Their take was entirely in bounds and amounted to "I think we're talking past one another with the heightened rhetoric, we should have more compassion for other perspectives." They later were forced to publicly apologize for their "short-sighted comments" that "harmed BIPOCs." It was insane.
Looking back, that place was a leftist echo chamber like I have never seen, and hope to never see again. Really sucks how much politics is still driving a "data-driven" world.
But I believe DEI proponents often insist on the effects instead of the motivation in the first place. Bad word is a bad word, regardless of the context and such arguments...
It's a right-wing bogeyman and they use it to scare people because it works. Just like it did with you.
The thing is racism, at least the racism that actually matters to people's quality of life, is systemic. You're black? Higher mortgage rate for you, even if all other factors are the same. You're Asian? Then you're probably the better student, even if all other factors are the same.
The point of DEI is for you to recognize prejudices exist, we're all prejudiced in some way, and what steps are you going to take to prevent your prejudices from clouding your judgement. It's not about minorities getting preferential treatment (outside of the context of reparations which is a highly controversial topic), but making sure minorities get a fair shot. And in case you're wondering, yes, I remember "the good old days" when minorities were targeted for mass layoffs.
I'd argue if we weren't such assholes then we wouldn't have most of the problems we have in society but we just can't help ourselves, can we?
Your right, I'm an idiot unable to think for myself. Me and everyone else that believes this. People who believe as you do are the only intelligent ones able to think for themselves.
Everything I have experienced related to DEI is not real and part of the massive collective hallucination experienced by anyone that doesn't 100% support it.
Being told to "sit in my shame" was good. The VP of DEI responding to Asians expressing fear during the rash of unwarranted attacks on them a year ago by other minorities by telling them white supremacy was to blame was good.
Thank you for showing me the light.
It is bold of you to admit this, but I commend you, even despite your apparent and admitted idiocy.
Wired Magazine: "A Glimpse of a Future Without White People"
https://www.wired.com/story/mohsin-hamid-the-last-white-man
It's the same one we're supposed to discriminate against in the workplace.
I keep seeing this statement but I never really get an explanation as to how it makes them a "special lesser class" or it's the "civil right movement in reverse." Could you elaborate?
>says anything you do in your interactions with a minority if they accuse you of anything they are right and you must meekly accept it and bow your head in shame.
I would like to see the language that says this.
No, mandatory DEI statements (statements about how a person has and/or plans to advance the institutions diversity goals through their work) do not treat minorities as lesser or needing “protection”.
It's already started bleeding into the workspace with mandatory training and verbiage that essentially says anything you do in your interactions with a minority if they accuse you of anything they are right and you must meekly accept it and bow your head in shame.
The worst part of it is at most of the companies with strong DEI programs there are zero minorities in leadership. it's a dog and pony show that is only forced upon the non sr. leadership.
You even have companies doing layoffs now intentionally focused on laying off non minorities.
Another issue is that Asians while less in number than most other minorities are treated as white by DEI.
I worry about my kids if this keeps escalating. I dislike Desantis for many reasons but ended up voting for him specifically for this reason and a couple of other cultural issues.