[db48x]

> 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.

[ModernMech]

> 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.

[MatteoFrigo]

> The "ideology" is actually that diversity and inclusion are important to think about at all!

(I appreciate you taking the time for this discussion.)

Yes, I fully agree that this is an ideology. This is where the problem is.

You presented (elsewhere) several examples of bad behavior that happens in a student body (racial slurs, sexual harassment, etc.) I think everybody agrees that this behavior needs to be "managed" and the professor needs to at the very least be prepared when this happens. One way to handle this situation is to offer incoming professors a pamphlet describing various situations likely to happen and suggestions on how to deal with them.

You cross the ideological boundary when you start labeling these issues as DEI, and this is where the animosity starts, including animosity from me.

What's so bad with using the DEI label? It's just a name, right? What's in a name? Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus, and all that.

The problem is that by now DEI is an industry that has convinced half the American public that the other half is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. Under the name of DEI, I have been subject to all sort of indoctrination claiming that I am inherently racist, that I am unconsciously believing that women suck at math and I need to do something to fix this problem, etc.

The effect of this nonsense on workplaces is disastrous. You have black people here on HN saying, "I was getting along with everybody and now everybody thinks I am a diversity hire". I have been called a racist for suggesting that we (a cloud provider) have no right to know what customers are doing with the services we sell them. (I am racist because customers may use such services for "racist" causes.) Companies have explicit DEI goals, and I have seen at least one VP committing to meet with two "minoritized" employees per quarter in order to meet his bar for support for DEI. I can hardly think of anything more offensive than effectively saying "you are a black woman, I don't give a crap about you, but I need to spend 30m with you to get my bonus". And don't get me started with the impact of all this nonsense on hiring.

The bullshit level around women in tech is particularly ridiculous. Everybody believes that "science" proves that there is a bias against hiring women, and the DEI training provided this paper by Zingales et al. as a proof: https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/12/4403.full.pdf From a bullshit toy example where a bunch of students are asked to simulate hiring women for a simple math task, everybody is now inferring nefarious behavior in the real world. What's really funny about this paper is how they choose the specific task: "Although there is some evidence of a sex difference in mathematics performance (5, 6), which is shrinking over time (7), there is no sex disparity in performance on an arithmetic task such as ours (8)." [See Discussion section] So what these guys are really saying is: women can't do complicated math [5, 6], so we pick the trivial task of adding a bunch of numbers, which [8] proves that even women can do. The very article that complains about bias is predicated upon the fact that the bias is, in fact, justified and grounded in science.

I don't think I have to say that I regard all of the above as complete bullshit, both the paper and all its references. In my professional experience, the women I have interacted with were on average better than the dudes. But this is the nonsense that is sold as DEI these days. It doesn't solve any problems, and it creates needless tensions.

You seem to be under the impression that DEI is just a way to learn to deal with difficult situations. If you really believe this, maybe look outside your department?

[ModernMech]

> If you really believe this, maybe look outside your department?

I will definitely admit that I don't have much visibility outside of academia on DEI issues. I have visibility in my department, in my college and university, other departments at other universities, but not really the private sector.

I could definitely see a case where the private sector is now cargo-culting DEI efforts that originated in universities. Or that the DEI office is exporting their work, because that's their raison d'être. I could imagine this effort is misguided in some ways, if just for the reason that compared to employees, students are so much younger and less developed emotionally. Often they grow out of some of their worst behaviors by the time we graduate them. If you think about it, some of my students are as young as 16, most are 17-18-19. They are away from home for the first time in their lives, they are drinking, engaging in risky behavior, and they are at an age where they are susceptible of falling victim to diseases of the mind. As I said in another post, many of them are still developing a sense of what it means to treat others with respect and dignity.

Also I would say in the private sector, it's probably not right to require a DEI statement a condition of employment, for the reason that community service probably isn't a requirement of the job. In academia, because of the condition that community service is a job requirement, so it's more appropriate to talk about during the interview process.

One more important difference between academia and corporate America is that most DEI efforts in academia are completely optional for individual faculty, especially if they have tenure. The DEI rubric from Berkeley is a great example of this: here the DEI office is presenting a rubric that everyone is taking as hiring gospel and Berkeley, but when it comes to the actual hiring, this "rubric" is just a suggestion. Departments have the final say over who they hire, and hiring decisions are made democratically in most departments. Individual faculty make up the hiring committee, and the chair of the committee (a colleague, not your boss) can set their hiring practices that the committee find agreeable. Rather than the authoritarian model you find in corporate America, the academic model is more egalitarian. If you don't want to engage in any of this stuff, you really don't have to. There's the matter of getting past the DEI aspect of the application, but as I said this shouldn't be a problem for any faculty who actually has a concrete track record of service.

> Under the name of DEI, I have been subject to all sort of indoctrination claiming that I am inherently racist, that I am unconsciously believing that women suck at math and I need to do something to fix this problem, etc.

I think this is very unfortunate, but even if you believe you are free from a bias that women are bad at math, are you claiming that you are free from all biases? I think that would be quite a stretch. DEI efforts aren't supposed to convince you that you are racist, and they aren't supposed to claim that you suffer from specific biases, but they are supposed to make you aware that biases do exist in all people, and that we can counteract them by being aware of them.

So even if you aren't biased against women in math (great!), you still may have other subtle biases that you should be aware of. Biases are particularly important when you are in a direct position of power over the future other people, and therefore it's doubly important for professors to be aware of them. For rank and file employees, maybe the impact of biases is muted, which is another way I would say DEI efforts don't translate well from academia into corporate America.

> Companies have explicit DEI goals, and I have seen at least one VP committing to meet with two "minoritized" employees per quarter in order to meet his bar for support for DEI.

I would say this is a good example of where DEI in corporate America and academia diverge. In academia, we don't have a concept like this because DEI issues are ambient in our work. Having 1-on-1 time with minorities to meet some quota is quite misguided, and I can definitely see how overzealous DEI efforts can lead to such policies.

> The bullshit level around women in tech is particularly ridiculous. Everybody believes that "science" proves that there is a bias against hiring women

One of the thing you hear often about hiring women in tech is "We'd love to hire more women but we don't have enough applicants in the pipeline. Tell the schools to graduate more qualified women applicants, and we'll hire more women." Okay, well that's what we're doing. We're trying to increase the number of women applicant to tech roles, and I think what we're doing is working. Whether or not there's a bias against hiring women, there's definitely a gender imbalance in my CS classroom, to the tune of 90% men, 10% women. Through our DEI efforts, we have increased enrollment of women in our courses, and their outcomes are better than they've ever been. In fact, there were a number of tensions that existed before, and we've worked to alleviate them. Now, when these practices are exported and taken out of an academic context, I could definitely see that it could lead to unfortunate situations where things can be made worse. But that doesn't change the fact that student outcomes across both genders are up, enrollment of women in our program is up, and there are more women than ever who are graduating from our CS program and applying to tech roles.

> One way to handle this situation is to offer incoming professors a pamphlet describing various situations likely to happen and suggestions on how to deal with them.

This would be a helpful resource, but I still don't think it's unreasonable to ask applicants how they actually dealt with these issues in the past. And for senior applicants, they should have more than enough to talk about regarding their service and outreach efforts.

Also, to be clear, there's a big question mark around the best way to deal with various situations. It's very hard to distill things down to a pamphlet because the best practices here are still in flux and being researched. There is plenty of room for innovation in teaching methods.

> You seem to be under the impression that DEI is just a way to learn to deal with difficult situations.

Well, I've also seen the results in my department. We can see it from students who tell us they appreciate the efforts we are making. We can see it in student outcomes of certain demographics that are better than they were from before we started these efforts. Enrollments from underrepresented groups are up.

> (I appreciate you taking the time for this discussion.)

Heh thanks, you may be the only one. My karma certainly took a hit :P