| HN Mirror

> 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