While you are completely right about the impossible/conflicting legal standards here, this is not an unusual state of things. For example: it has been illegal to discriminate for a very long time, but it has also been de facto illegal to have demographic compositions substantially different from the general population. So, they've always been faced with the problem of needing to either discriminate to get the numbers to match, or not discriminating and risking the numbers falling out of line. The real law has always been, and always will be, prosecutorial discretion. Whatever party is in control will choose whether they go after you or not, and they can because you're always violating one side of something.

> de facto illegal to have demographic compositions substantially different from the general population

The Trump administration mid level staffing decisions are something like 70%+ white men! This seems laughable. Controversial maybe, certainly not "illegal" or they wouldn't have done it.

You need to read what I wrote more carefully. The entire point is that whoever is in power decides which law actually gets applied and to whom. Do you think for some reason that the Trump administration risks being prosecuted by the Trump administration?

This seems like an argument against the rule of law. When arguing for demographic compositions, at least for my personal admittedly limited experience, I see arguments for how policy X upholds the law, or maybe only the spirit of the law in Y ways.

I do not see that here for the current admins demands for diversity.

The executive branch is afforded some discretion, but the judicial system decides how law gets applied as directed by Congress when they write laws.

DAs of all kinds have enormous discretion. A significant part of our legal system is entrusted to them to act honorably, regardless of what judges and legislators say. DAs can't force outcomes that judges say are incorrect, but DAs can and do choose not to prosecute obvious crimes, and there are not great checks against that power beyond replacing them with the political process.

And even when cases are brought, the DoJ needs to defend them. See a number of cases that were very far along in the court system that the Biden administration was pursuing, that the Trump DoJ just quit defending. They simply no longer have a lawyer, and functionally cannot proceed.

> The entire point is that whoever is in power decides which law actually gets applied and to whom.

And that "entire point" is historically incorrect in the United States. There is a long, long, LONG history of the Department of Justice investigating and prosecuting members of the administration that technically runs it.

That your point seems to be correct now, in the most corrupt administration of the modern era, is something that is notable and worth discussing. It's certainly not something to sweep under the rug with a both-sides-ist dismissal.

We can quibble about the definition of "the administration", but the head of it a man who can pardon whomever he pleases for any federal crime he pleases. The very fact that any of these historical charges weren't instantaneously mooted with a pardon is self-evidence to me that all of these prosecutions were of former members of the administration who had fallen out if favor of the actual administration.

Classic No-True-Scotsman here: "Oh, well, sure, they were prosecuted in contravention of my point above. But that means they wanted to prosecute them."

(It's also tautological: I mean, of course they wanted to prosecute them. They were criminals and prosecutors prosecute criminals, definitionally!)

(And also also, it's an Occam's violation: the simpler explanation is that they were just treated like criminals and not that they were double-negative enforcement actions by a corrupt regime.)

Did that sound clever in your head? Again, the head of the executive branch can quash any charge he wants. You're the one contending that a person doing X is evidence that they support not-X.

I admire your willingness to argue that, because they didn't do the corrupt thing, they are in fact corrupt.

Using your constitutionally granted executive powers is pretty standard.

> it has also been de facto illegal to have demographic compositions substantially different from the general population

How so? To which law or case precedent?

Any law or policy that has a "disproportionate impact" on a protected class is subject to challenge, and will often lose in other public policy matters. I've not seen it happen in school demographics, though most, if not all, schools had some form of affirmative action policy until recently.

The "disparate impact" test applies mainly in civil rights act litigation, and it's extremely hard to make a case under that theory. It's a three-part test, and showing that a particular policy has a disparate impact on one race is just the first hurdle.

You also have to prove that the party acted with malice: either the policy exists for explicitly racist reasons, or the race-neutral justification is pretextual. If you can do that, you _also_ have to prove that there is a less-discriminatory alternative policy that achieves the same goal.

see, e.g., https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/T6Manual7#C'

It is definitely not de facto illegal to have a racially lopsided student body -- the school might be asked to justify the specific policy or practice that led to that outcome on race-neutral grounds, but saying "GPA and test scores" would be more than enough.

There is no disparate impact language in the civil rights title VI itself, but the language does appear in the enforcement regulatory frameworks issued by the federal agencies, including the department of education.

Title VI gives agencies authority to enforce Title VI, and many of those agencies added in disparate impact language into their own enforcement language (I think under the Obama administration, but I might be wrong about that).

Do you know what "de facto" means? I didn't say "de jure," and you're asking for de jure evidence.

It can only be "de facto" illegal if legal action was brought against some entity and succeeded, otherwise it'd be "de facto" nothing. GP also asked for an example case. TBH though I'm not how legal action would succeed without an accompanying law.

Any source at all here for your claim would be nice.

> It has been illegal to discriminate for a very long time, but it has also been de facto illegal to have demographic compositions substantially different from the general population.

> So, they've always been faced with the problem of needing to either discriminate to get the numbers to match, or not discriminating and risking the numbers falling out of line.

Not disagreeing with your larger point, but this sounds wrong (in a sense that, I don’t think that’s the case).

If what you claim was the case, how has CalTech been managing to have such a large percentage of Asian undergrad students (44% according to their Fall 2024-2025 enrollment data[0], with numbers from previous years not straying that far off either) without ever even a hint of getting in trouble over it (given that Asian people make up roughly 7% of the US population)?

I am sure there are similar examples of other schools, this was just the first major known one that came to my mind. Perchance you are correct, and there is simply something special that CalTech has (and Harvard doesn’t) that lets them not worry about this. But that seems unlikely.

0. https://registrar.caltech.edu/records/enrollment-statistics

Viewpoint diversity is not the same as diversity of opinion. When someone is seriously trying to justify DEI practices, viewpoint diversity is usually the first thing they talk about. They argue that having people from diverse backgrounds is important, as diverse experiences lead to diverse viewpoints, which may allow the organization notice and do things it could otherwise not do. They may even argue that if viewpoint diversity and diversity of opinion are in conflict, viewpoint diversity should prevail, as it contributes directly to the mission of the organization.

Or at least that's how it started, before DEI became a big controversial topic.

> What if people of merit skew towards certain viewpoints?

What if admissions is actually a cyborg alien race??? I am just asking questions!

Having the government dictate University level programs is bad, we should all agree to let Universities and colleges run themselves.

Was this pedantry really worthwhile? The current interpretation of "diversity" is of outward characteristics, not points of view. So, technically, you're right. Kudos.

It is far from universally accepted that 'the current interpretation of diversity is of outward characteristics, not points of view'. In fact, I would be surprised if anyone who favors DEI aggrees with that statement.

Moreover, the actual interpretation of most proponents of diversity is very much that we desire a diversity of views, which it wants to get through getting a diversity of backgrounds. That is, of course, not the only reason behind DEI. There is also the fact that it is fair to allow people of all backgrounds the same opportunity.

Wikipedia[1] says

>Diversity refers to the presence of variety within the organizational workforce in characteristics such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, culture, class, veteran status, or religion.

Brittanica[2] says

>Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs—meant to address historical and systemic disparities based on race, gender, age, ability, and sexual orientation in the workplace

CNN lists the following as examples of the title of this article[3] ("DEI programs benefit many groups, not just Black and brown communities"):

>White women

>LGBTQ+ people

>Families who need IVF

>Disabled people

>Veterans

This is the first three links I clicked on, so it seems to be broadly agreed upon. It's (obviously) not an exhaustive search of the literature, and I'd love to see your side of it.

I have heard ideological diversity used as a defense of DEI, but it doesn't seem to be central. I've never heard of a DEI push to get more conservatives in tech or academia, for example.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusi...

[2]https://www.britannica.com/topic/diversity-equity-and-inclus...

[3]https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/08/us/dei-programs-diversity-lis...

Try talking about race as a white man during a DEI seminar. Unless you very carefully follow the approved messaging, you will be in trouble.

I doubt you’ll be “in trouble”, whatever that means. But I do think that if you’re a white man attending a seminar about diversity, a great option is to just _listen_. Understanding that white men have done a lot of the talking on race for most of America’s history means it would behove him to listen.

Nah, you're just confusing the KPI with the desire.

You get different viewpoints by having people with different sets of experience.

Differing gender, race, and socioeconomic backgrounds are drivers of different experiences, and therefore viewpoints. You can't easily measure "did this company hire different experiences", but you can easily measure "did this company hire a bunch of different genders, races, etc", which doesn't guarantee differing viewpoints in individuals, but does strongly suggest it in aggregate/at the statistical level.

This is so hilariously reductive it reads like satire. As if someone’s life experience can be deduced from their immutable characteristics.

Yes, congratulations, you've understood why it's extremely difficult. Well done.

I suppose next you'll tell me that either you don't understand it so it shouldn't be done or that because it's hard people should give up.

Your argument dropped something - the self selecting applicant pool for Harvard.

> The current interpretation of "diversity" is of outward characteristics, not points of view.

Only, amusingly, to people one particular point of view. No, that's ridiculous. There is no woker impulse than listening carefully and respectfully to all points of view.

It's the points of view that people are after when they promote diversity. The outward characteristics are at best a convenient proxy. Monocultures fail, diversity is a hedge against that.

That is absolutely not the case even for a moment. No white leftist seeks out black conservatives like Thomas Sowell. Not even for a moment. Leftism is a monoculture that uses cancelling as a way to force ideological uniformity.

You may have had a point fifteen years go, but the right has recently leapfrogged the left in all of the dimensions you're concerned about.

This cultural uniformity of the left you speak of. What's it like? I mean, the right drives big trucks and puts American flags on everything and eats a lot of meat and is really enamored of loyalty and the military and the atomic family.

So what's it like for the left? Because as far as I can tell, the only element of uniformity among the left is that they agree that they shouldn't enable things that are a threat to their safety. The argument towards wokeness is pretty strong: if you're not aware of a threat, it might hurt you, so you should stay vigilant. That's not cultural uniformity, that's survival. Sure, many have run with it in a variety of weird directions, but there's no agreement on the left that those directions are good ones. It's precisely because the left isn't a monoculture that those elements are allowed to persist.

For further evidence that the left permits dissent among their ranks, note that they kind of suck at getting anything done because they're always debating each other about how it ought to be done and not doing it. Meanwhile it's the right that falls uniformly in line and goes off to do something that was poorly thought out (but hey at least they did something).

And taking this back to the article, it's precisely because the right can't tolerate disagreement that it wants to cancel academia and create a safe space where it doesn't have hear the truth about the consequences of its terrible policies. This is literally a letter about the Right cancelling something to enforce ideological uniformity.

The left wants to hold people accountable, even their own. It’s always a good chuckle to see people complain about the left doing “cancel culture” when it’s conservatives that tried to cancel Bud Light, it’s conservatives that shut down opposing viewpoints (listen to Ben Shapiro or Alex Jones answer tough questions), it’s conservatives that _literally tried to cancel a democratic election_.

DEI has led to anything but viewpoint diversity, fostering ideological conformity via practices such as DEI statements, DEI metrics, mandatory trainings, or cancel culture leading to censorship.

That the current administration is also purging viewpoints it doesn't like, adopting the same authoritarian mindset, but having it enforced by the government (which is worse, IMO), that goes to show horseshoe theory is true.

> DEI statements

Just going to point out that this is absolutely not the same thing as rescinding research grants using some lazy grepping of abstracts like the absolute clown show going on now.

> horseshoe theory is true.

Had to look this one up. Apparently the "far left" and "far right" are somehow the exact things we are dealing with here and now.

Nope, sorry. Not equivalent. Not at all.

> The points "Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring" and "Discontinuation of DEI" seem inconsistent. Enforcing "viewpoint diversity" is a DEI practice in all but name. Actually, it is even in the name. Also with the merit-based stuff, of course. What if people of merit skew towards certain viewpoints? Then hiring/admissions won't be merit based after all?

"Diversity" in the intersectional jargon means "less white 'cis' straight people", it has absolutely nothing to do with diversity of opinion, since it's the very implementation of intersectionality, a far left orthodoxy.

What is remarkable is that you don't even realize this, which is a perfect example of double speak. Same for "safe space", people want to be physically safe right? No, it just means spaces void of anything but intersectional orthodoxy.

I usually try to stay clear of 'culture war' issues on HN, however, I don't like being flagged for telling things they really are. These groups like to present a public front, but the moment they are between themselves the real stuff is going down. All that newspeak exists only for plausible deniability purposes and needs to be exposed.

> telling things (as) they really are

Lol, what reality do you live in?

You are using a throwaway.

Your own views are not valuable enough for you to risk your livelihood for.

Our founding fathers dressed as indians to throw tea into the Boston Harbor. You and your ilk demand the bank account information of anyone opposing your views.

Slashdot, the venerable ancient for tech discussions, allowed temp accounts under the term anonymous_cowards.

Their camouflage was tactics, not cowardice. Don't bring the courage of courageous men as a shield for someone lacking convictions.

For what its worth, I sympathize. I live in a country where I recognize that I am not as free as America used to be. That means I recognize the courage of those who take actual risks, and I also understand the weight of my words and the risks they may carry. I don't shoot from the hip.

Viewpoint diversity is that you want fsr right propagated more. Bonus points for open racism and sexism.

However, left of any kind is not part of diversity. No one arguing for Palestine, no one arguing for equality. I was tempted to say "no communists" but those kind of don't matter.

Cowards are now saying it was a mistake: "Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard" - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/business/trump-harvard-le...