Meanwhile, the University of California seems to have implemented a DEI litmus test on all applications for faculty positions and promotion. Does anyone know if this is actually true? Is this reasonable?
Damn, this is actually a lot worse than it sounds. Rather than requiring an arguably hollow oath like the infamous UC loyalty oath from the 50s, they actually grade each applicant against “DEI” rubrics and eliminate applicants based on that. You don’t get a job without demonstrating tangible contributions to DEI in the past (no, treating everyone equally doesn’t count) and plans to promote it in the future. According to UC Davis math chair Abigail Thompson:[0]
> Nearly all University of California campuses require that job applicants submit a “contributions to diversity” statement as a part of their application. The campuses evaluate such statements using rubrics, a detailed scoring system. Several UC programs have used these diversity statements to screen out candidates early in the search process.
> A typical rubric from UC Berkeley[1] specifies that a statement that “describes only activities that are already the expectation of Berkeley faculty (mentoring, treating all students the same regardless of background, etc)” (italics mine) merits a score of 1–2 out of a possible 5 (1 worst and 5 best) in the second section of the rubric, the “track record for advancing diversity” category.
> The diversity “score” is becoming central in the hiring process. Hiring committees are being urged to start the review process by using officially provided rubrics to score the required diversity statements and to eliminate applicants who don’t achieve a scoring cut-off.
> Edit: And I wonder if and when these will start to appear in PhD applications, as PhD students are employees in a sense and often need to teach, too.
I applied for CS PhDs last year and Stanford did indeed require a diversity statement.
I don't remember any of the other universities I applied to asking for this. MIT certainly did not.
> Stanford did indeed require a diversity statement.
If true (and similar to the “contributions to diversity” statements discussed here), that’s quite disappointing news about my alma mater. At least there was no such nonsense back when I applied to Stanford Physics, but that was ages ago.
What the hell happened to Die Luft der Freiheit weht?
> they actually grade each applicant against “DEI” rubrics and eliminate applicants based on that
Doesn't this explicitly incent applicants to lie by misrepresenting their views and past "contributions to DEI" as more pro-DEI than they actually are? I'm not sure how this requirement is compatible with rather basic norms of academic ethics.
Absolutely. Lying is always somewhat incentivized, but in most cases it doesn't work, because the candidate will be found out. If I interviewed at google, I could lie about my skills all I want, but I will be found out when asked to demonstrate them.
The DEI stuff really seems like as long as you say all the right words, you're fine. Which leads me to a scary thought - are we going to create some kind of "DEI social credit score" that employers can reference in the future?
Lying about one's identity is a social necessity. It's when people take the claims of others at face value to societal delusions can take hold from one bad actor.
It does but academia is already overrun with candidates lying about their past experiences to try and get in.
At some point PhDs issued after certain years are going to start being negatively attractive to employers, as they're going to be basically some sort of ideological purity awards rather than anything to do with merit. And you don't want people like that in an otherwise healthy organization, and more than you want to hire someone who has "20 years membership of the Lenin Appreciation Society" on their CV.
Why is this a bad thing? Part of a faculty’s job is to do community service and to manage a diverse classroom. Faculty who have a good handle on the issues that arise through teaching such a diverse classroom are better equipped to handle the job. It’s no different than judging them based on the their research or teaching experience, which are also part of the job. If an applicant doesn’t understand the salient DEI issues, they are literally unqualified.
Because they are supposed to be top researchers in their field. And I doubt you'll find a world-wide renowned scientist in biology who believes sex is merely a social construct. So these goals are at least partially incompatible. Universities should be about research, science, teaching and teaching students to educate themselves. Following the dogma of DEI is incompatible with teaching students to educate themselves.
I think you’ve misinterpreted the common meme. The common meme is that gender or race are social constructs. I haven’t heard the meme sex is a social construct.
Sex has multiple meanings, one of which is gender. I don't know if it's an American vs British English thing, but in many countries they use the word "sex" this way much more frequently than "gender".
The requirements are not limited to "understand[ing] the salient DEI issues" in an abstract, neutral sense; going by the scoring rubric, they're explicitly demanding a statement of ideological conformity-- as well as a personal commitment to an especially divisive, controversial, dubiously-effective approach to mitigating DEI challenges-- that goes further than what was previously "expected of all faculty". That's what makes it not OK.
Again, that's not about belief, that's about the reality that the student body is diverse, the school wants the student body to be diverse, and the classroom itself will accordingly be diverse. What specifically about the rubric is the most troubling to you?
By the way, as someone who hires faculty and reads many such statements (I have to ask, have you read any DEI statements? Do you have examples which you find especially troubling?), a discussion about how current efforts are dubiously effective would be welcome and would help your application at my institution. More often than not, what they are trying to do with these DEI statements is to weed-out applicants who have given no thought whatsoever to this part of the job. The most common failure here is to treat this job requirement as an afterthought and to focus 100% on the research portion. Someone who had genuine opinions about DEI education that run counter to the way things are done would be well received by the hiring committee at my institution.
> a discussion about how current efforts are dubiously effective would be a welcome and would help your application at my institution.
A required statement as part of applying for any faculty position or promotion is simply not the appropriate place for such a discussion. You're expecting what amounts to a serious research effort in social science. This kind of intervention in effective leverage points of a complex system (even if perhaps only a "system of oppression", as often described by those most concerned about DEI) is the stuff that research papers are made of, not short statements of conformity.
(Of course, this assumes that effective mitigation of DEI challenges is the actual goal of these requirements. It's not unreasonable to be rather skeptical about this, as the original professor who raised the issue - who is a social scientist - states in his blog post series.)
Why? We want to hire faculty who have experience managing a diverse classroom. We want a diverse classroom because our student body is diverse. Our student body is diverse because our applicants are diverse. Diversity is part of this whole thing, and experience as faculty teaching diverse classrooms tells us that it's not something that can be treated as an afterthought.
> You're expecting what amounts to a serious research effort in social science.
No, we are expecting a cogent discussion of the issues which one encounters through teaching diverse classrooms. It's a matter of experience, and yes sometimes it amounts to years of experience to understand the complex and subtle role that diversity plays in the classroom. But as I said in another post, the failure mode here isn't typically an inability to articulate a deep understanding of this area, it's an inability to articulate any understanding or thought whatsoever to these problems. Even just discussing the problems is more than enough to get you past any cutoff or filter I've encountered.
As a non-white male person who successfully navigated highly diverse top U.S. institutions as an international student without all the DEI bullshit a while back, I’d rather work with faculty and staff who don’t cater to my ethnicity, gender or whatever irrelevant traits, thanks.
> without all the DEI bullshit a while back, I’d rather work with faculty and staff who don’t cater to my ethnicity, gender or whatever irrelevant traits,
Let me give you an example of where one example where it might feel like bullshit and be perceived to be irrelevant to you, but makes a big deal when it comes to individual students in my classroom.
On the issue of pronouns, many people feel like it's a bullshit thing they don't want to deal with. They view the inclusion of pronouns in a signature as a waste of time. I've been told as much. It's fine to have this position in the abstract, but it comes with costs in contexts that confront the reality that transgendered students exist.
Consider the fact that every semester, I will have at least 1-2 transgendered students in my classroom. For 99% of the students there, their pronouns are conventionally obvious. However, some students might be registered as "Christopher" yet they may present as conventionally female, and go by "Chris".
A good DEI statement might talk about an experience one has with this kind of situation. It's a situation that happens commonly for educators. How did they handle this situation? How did the students respond? What did the applicant learn? Pretty much the only wrong answer here is to dismiss this as a bullshit nonissue that is irrelevant. Maybe it's irrelevant to you in your personal life, but it's not irrelevant to everyone, and in fact is quite relevant to the professional performance of a faculty member.
The job of a teacher at a university is not to simply answer questions, but to manage (this is a term of art) a classroom for tens to hundreds of students at a time. One aspect of classroom management is mediating interpersonal conflicts, which happen often at scale and can hinge on issues relating to gender, race, religion, and other sensitive personal matters.
If you just want someone to answer questions on a subject matter, then a tutor is what you’re looking for. If you want to be a part of a student body, then you want someone who is not just good at answering questions, but can also effectively manage a classroom. Otherwise you’re in store for 14 weeks of confusion and chaos.
DEI doesn't help you manage a diverse classroom. In fact it does the opposite by harping on racial divisions instead of just teaching the subject you're supposed to teach. No better way to foster animosity than to divide a group of people that is supposed to be equal and start enforcing different rules on the different groups.
> It is clear that they won’t hire anyone who doesn’t express beliefs identical to their own.
That's not really what's going on here. First of all, you're not really understanding the faculty hiring process. The DEI aspect is just one of many considered, and the people who have most direct impact on the hiring process are the department and college dean, not the DEI office who produced this website.
Secondly, to the extent that DEI statements/rubrics are considered as part of the application, they are done so because they relate specifically to the job. It's a faculty's explicit purpose to teach and manage a diverse classroom. If you look at the rubric, the low scoring results would indicate an applicant has no working knowledge or experience in diversity. This is a job requirement because the student body is diverse. This is not a purity test or an ideological test. Notice the rubric says nothing about beliefs. This is about knowledge and experience.
Experienced teachers will be able to speak cogently about DEI issues, and they will pass this with no problem. Applicants who never taught anything, and who believe the job is to do research and treat teaching as an afterthought will not to well. That's just how it is. But it's not a litmus test or a purity test or an ideological filter. It's about ability to do the job as it's advertised.
The DEI aspect is "one of many considered", but the scoring rubric says that applicants who do not score above a cutoff on DEI issues will not be considered. It's in fact not scoring neutral "knowledge" of posited DEI issues but ideological belief in their relevance, and it scores "experience" in furthering DEI by matching the adherence of said 'experience' to an especially divisive and controversial approach, and demanding impact on teaching and research activities that ought to be protected from ideological bias per well-known academic norms of neutrality. The requirements are worded in a misleading manner that makes them appear like they're not demanding anything more than the status quo, but they absolutely are.
Like I said, "the scoring rubric" is not the arbiter of the faculty hiring process. Neither is the DEI office. It's not just one of many things considered, it's quite minimal when stacked next to research experience.
That said, a cutoff here is entirely appropriate. Look at what the lowest scoring entries are on the rubric. They are characterized statements of this caliber as as "vague", "little expressed knowledge", "little demonstrated awareness", "seems to be not aware", "no specifics", "brief descriptions" etc. Why would a department want to accept a faculty member who communicates vaguely, with no specifics, and seem unaware of the salient issues? This isn't about "They don't believe the right things". It's about "They don't believe anything".
And anyway, you're giving the rubric more rigidity than it deserves just because it's presented as a rubric. It explicitly states this:
These examples are offered as illustrative suggestions; they are neither exhaustive nor ironclad. They can be modified to fit the academic and disciplinary backgrounds of applicants in a particular search. Faculty members in individual units should use their disciplinary expertise to understand what examples are likely most appropriate for their particular department or search.
So really, this whole document is just a fancy way to frame a suggestion that you should really think hard about DEI issues on your application.
> So really, this whole document is just a fancy way to frame a suggestion that you should really think hard about DEI issues on your application.
This is exactly what we mean by an ideological test. Ideological tests are useful in certain circumstances, but dangerous in others. Churches want to hire people with faith, especially in leadership positions, and they certainly should ask their applicants about their faith. Should a non–religious public institution such as the University of California be using them to exclude all candidates that don’t follow a particular political movement?
It is especially ironic that they are using an ideological test that claims to test for belief in diversity in order to weed out all non–conforming beliefs, because it ensures that the University of California will never be a truly diverse place.
> This is exactly what we mean by an ideological test.
No, because it's not prescribing any ideology. What is the actual test? Can you point to it? Can you define the ideology? How can this be an ideological test if the language on the so-called test essentially says "This is all just a suggestion, tailor this to your own departmental needs."
DEI issues are a reality for instructors who teach diverse classrooms. There's no getting around this reality. The question posed to applicants is: how do they deal with these issues, specifically, in practice? The answer to this question is not prescribed in any way. Not by this rubric. Not by hiring committees. Wide latitude is given toward applicants and I can tell the people who are most against this practice are those who have read the fewest DEI statements, know the least about how the academic hiring process actually works,
Also there seems to be an unstated belief among people who are against DEI statements that issues relating to diversity do not manifest themselves in the classroom. The "ideology" is actually that diversity and inclusion are important to think about at all! To this I would say whether or not you feel they are important or real, they impact the classroom nonetheless. Good instructors have a plan and the experience to deal with these issues.
It most definitely is - in that it plainly assumes that candidates are racist / sexist / binarist / faithist / shapeist / ablist / everything-ist trolls; ignorant of social issues, and completely unable to treat others with elementary respect and decency -- until and unless they swear and affirm otherwise.
Again, as I stated in some other responses here (not necessarily to you), the rubric notes several times that it's a suggestion and a template, and that the various criteria are non-exhaustive and not "ironclad". I've never heard of an ideological test that opens itself up to multiple interpretations.
> until and unless they swear and affirm otherwise.
Have you been in a position to read many (or any) DEI statements? Many barely show awareness that community service is a job requirement of being a professor. The worst of the worst are just a series of vague platitudes strung together e.g. "I strive to treat all students with respect and decency"... okay. How? To what effect? How do you refine this process?
Many candidates can't speak with any specificity about their views on social issues that impact the classroom, and struggle to have a cogent discussion relating to the salient issues that arise in a classroom. These candidates are often newly minted Ph.D.s or post-docs with no teaching experience, who want a full time tenure-track job but regard the teaching aspect as a nuisance.
Have you been in a position to read many (or any) DEI statements?
Thanks heavens, no.
I totally agree that you don't want to hire people for instructor roles who regard teaching as an afterthought or a nuisance. That's always been a "given" (even though obviously not always adhered to, in practice). And yes, in general you want to avoid the mostly mono- and bisyllabic types, and hire people who answer important questions with more than a single sentence fragment.
But to be clear: the practice of mandating diversity statements (with highly refined, and in places, what can only be described as ideologically charged evaluation criteria) is completely orthogonal to the simple matter of needing to hire teachers who actually can teach and want to to.
Okay, well what's your suggestion then? People are always very eager to say they treat everyone with respect and dignity, and they want to make everyone feel welcome and accepted in the classroom. But it seems like if we ask them "Okay, how do you make people feel welcome and accepted in your classroom? What specific practices have you put in place? How do you measure this impact? How specifically will you adapt in the future?" then that is very problematic for some people. They don't want to answer those questions. They'd prefer to leave it at "I treat everyone with respect" and leave it at that, which is a meaningless platitude.
> with highly refined, and in places, what can only be described as ideologically charged evaluation criteria
I will keep reiterating the point, but this again overstates the role the document released by the Berkeley DEIB office plays in the faculty hiring process. At all levels, individual departments and the college dean have full discretion on what searches are conducted and how applications are evaluated. Individual faculty members are free to fully disregard any and all DEI concerns when voting on a faculty hire.
Yes DEI statements are required in the application. No the DEIB office at Berekely doesn't have control over how that statement is evaluated. They have some thoughts, but they are just those -- impotent thoughts of the DEIB office to which you are ascribing far more weight than they deserve.
Just as a side note. The link to this post was flagged after being submitted to HN yesterday within a very short time frame.
You might want to consider your karma points and preemptively remove it and pay your dues to the community by apologizing for not adhering to group speak.
I very much stand on the left side of the political spectrum, while the linked blogpost clearly comes from the liberal to right spectrum. But I still think that the old Rosa Luxemburg quote should apply:
> Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter (Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit der Andersdenkenden)
I valued the posting yesterday as it provided differing views that made me think, evaluate and understand my own position better afterwards.
Edit:
Please excuse my sarcasm in the first paragraphs, but I was troubled yesterday that the link was flagged to death and that not a civil discussion was able to arise. I was only used to this way of dealing with dissenting opinions on other forums until then.
I think you're mistaking groupthink for people who are simply tired of seeing the same old culture war debate on HN repeated over and over again.
Plenty HN discussions about exactly this subject in the past have shown that:
1. Unlike some subjects, HN commenters have widely differing opinions here. The free speech hardliners and the anti disinformation/bigotry/*ism hardliners are both well represented, and many on both sides are capable of intelligent debate.
2. Nevertheless, the discussion never really gets anywhere. Nobody adds new information and nobody convinces anybody.
I might be projecting, but i can imagine that many people flagged it with a "here we go again" sigh and not with the "must suppress anti woke sentiments!!" thought you. I bet comparably inflammatory articles from the woke side of the debate are flagged equally much.
While I completely understand the need for why underrepresented groups should be given preference in certain application and hiring processes, I still carry a desire that this would not be necessary.
I do not judge people I interact with based on their gender, skin color, race, or such irrelevancies. I judge them by how they behave toward me. In the process, many stereotypical "old white men" come off very badly. Although I am almost an old white man myself.
I wish for a world where it doesn't matter what gender someone identifies by or what that person is doing in bed, on the couch, at the kitchen table, or anywhere else with anyone else.
And of course I know that this argument is misused to sweep systematic discrimination of social groups under the carpet. That's why I'm not in favor of judging members of such groups only on the basis of performance criteria that favor people who were born and raised in a privileged situation by a lucky coincidence.
Nevertheless, I find it important to deal with the argument that, in a better world, we should not judge anyone by such criteria. It should not play a role in an ideal world.
And I believe that with our ever increasing diversification we are playing into the hands of those who want a divided, disunited society/opposition.
Divide et impera has always been a very successful strategy and it has always been successful to play individual sub-groups off against each other, even though they have much more in common than what divides them.
So I personally consider it a gain to deal with dissenting opinions. And be it in the worst case only to sharpen and polish my own arguments.
I dont engage with others really to change the mind of the person I am engaging with. That is much to hard and a high bar.
No, I engage to ensure there is a dissenting view point read by observers to the debate, those people I can sway with my arguments, the people that simply read HN never commenting themselves. That is my target.
I want to ensure HN is not just an echo chamber of one political ideological take on a political topic
>>I bet comparably inflammatory articles from the woke side of the debate are flagged equally much.
That has not been my observation. HN is less Echo chambery than say Reddits political subs but there is still a clear political bent here
Absolutely not. This incentivises the worst characters and abuse of power. DIE is the most impotent advertising for social justice that I have ever seen. I support social justice in most cases, it a basic requirement for society and every society has some form of it implemented. But I also support humanism and enlightenment which DIE proponents very quickly leave behind.
DIE put me off of it pretty quickly. I believe California is selling entitlement instead of education here. And that entitlement firmly includes knowing better than anyone else and the justification is that they do it for the greater good. We had that countless times in human history and the result was always the same. If you want to see the result of underfunded education, it may very well be California. Maybe it should not be surprising to find it there since the contrast of wealth is pronounced.
It is hard not to become reactionary to DIE, they should just be ignored in the best case. It just behaves like religeous fundamentalism, they believe there are countless Nazis all around them and are themselves reactionaries.
DEI - the post is talking about the diversity, equity, and inclusion statement. Most departments (including at MIT) seem to be asking for one along with research and teaching statements these days, it’s not just the UC system.
Calling it a “litmus test” seems like a biased take though.
> Nearly all University of California campuses require that job applicants submit a “contributions to diversity” statement as a part of their application. The campuses evaluate such statements using rubrics, a detailed scoring system. Several UC programs have used these diversity statements to screen out candidates early in the search process.
> A typical rubric from UC Berkeley[1] specifies that a statement that “describes only activities that are already the expectation of Berkeley faculty (mentoring, treating all students the same regardless of background, etc)” (italics mine) merits a score of 1–2 out of a possible 5 (1 worst and 5 best) in the second section of the rubric, the “track record for advancing diversity” category.
> The diversity “score” is becoming central in the hiring process. Hiring committees are being urged to start the review process by using officially provided rubrics to score the required diversity statements and to eliminate applicants who don’t achieve a scoring cut-off.
[0] https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201911/rnoti-p1778.pdf
[1] https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...
Glad I’m no longer in the academic job market…
Edit: And I wonder if and when these will start to appear in PhD applications, as PhD students are employees in a sense and often need to teach, too.