MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/05/04/mit-abandons-use-of-dei-statements/I know it's hard when the topic is itself an ideological battle, but that's a good time to review the site guidelines, including this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
A pledge to God?
The mishandling of DEI doesn’t invalidate the need to fix broken systems which fail to select the best people instead of those who score highest in easily gamed and inherently biased metrics.
This is the Trojan Horse, just like the fundamentalists coming to spread peace and love in society of course.
Fortunately, people are judged by outcome and action, not stated intention, and we can see DEI has failed in this regard.
IQ tests are not easily gamed and suggesting otherwise is mostly lying. They might be too easy, or have too low a ceiling (SAT), or might have some mild response to coaching. But a very stupid person cannot come out the other side with the very high score, and a very smart person should be able to figure them out sufficiently that they prove their utility.
There is, but there's definitely some similarities too. Specifically that if you happen to believe in these things, advancement of their goals is one of the most important things you can do, which causes a big temptation to misappropriate institutional power to further the cause.
Regarding the pledges specifically, both require employees to take personal positions to advance at work, which I think is the part blackhawkC17 finds "culty".
In the eyes of the advocates for each, I actually don't know that there is.
Religious pledges likely are intended to say "we want faculty who will teach and represent the values this school holds and that students expect out of this institution", which feels pretty much exactly like the rationale for DEI pledges.
Even for banal acne treatments, proof of safety and efficiency through several stages of trials is required before people are actually subject to it.
With DEI, we are just expected to believe that it actually works and should be applied across the country because some smart people say so.
I've submitted that link to the HN front page by the way. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40263411
I'm a white upper middle-class dude, and there used to be a time where it was only guys like me that got into prestigious schools, and had a chance at landing influential jobs - while others would either get silently rejected, scolded for trying, or simply laughed out of the office.
So while the intentions for DEI were good, the reality might be that they've regressed back to initial problem. Should some people be rejected, simply because they're overrepresented? And must your workers write/sign a statement that basically says "I, [name], hereby agree that discrimination is good if it is for the greater good."
The intentions behind a lot of these things are good but the sensitivity of the subject has made it hard(er) to have a healthy discussion about these issues.
It's more about this idea of being an advocate for the downtrodden - a good person fighting the racists on behalf of those without a voice. And because you're fighting the good fight, it's of course OK to make the oppressors uncomfortable or to bully them into submission.
Depending on your priors, this is either messed up, or it's messed up not to act and accept the status quo. Pick your poison, I guess.
We're talking about large institutions adopting policies to shield themselves from potential lawsuits from protected classes.
What is this [0] then?
[0] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/can-job-postings-in-can...