[Manuel_D]

At UC Berkeley, 76% of applicants were rejected on the grounds of their diversity statement: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davi...

The suspicion is that inclusion of these diversity statements in the hiring process is a way to stealthily discriminate on the basis of race when it is ostensibly illegal to do so.

[wolongong942]

I'm unfamiliar with US colleges, but could this just be a scheme to allow wealthy or well connected people to get into positions without the grades part? It would otherwise be pretty easy to show unjust discrimination if it were only grades being considered, but an applicant's 'diversity score' could mean anything, and is arbitrary on purpose to justify approving just about anybody.

[Manuel_D]

Agreed, much like the "personality score" that Harvard notoriously used to the detriment of Asian applicants. It could very well also be that the children of wealthy donors just happen to have good personalities.

[pclmulqdq]

This is for faculty positions, which are employment. Ironically, that has stricter non-descrimination provisions than school admissions.

[Manuel_D]

Not in public California universities. Racial discrimination has been banned in California public university since Proposition 209 was passed in 1996.

[ucprof]

Prop 209 bans racial discrimination, but UC does it in hiring anyway through a number of means. For example, although Prop 209 bans taking race into account in the hiring decision, it doesn't ban taking it into account in earlier phases, like preparation of shortlists. If a department's shortlist for hiring a professor is found to have a bad proportion of under-represented minorities, the department can be punished by informal means such as being denied future hires. There are several other tricks that the administration does to promote race-based hiring and admissions, with the overall effect that Prop 209 is nullified through policies that are never put into writing.

[rayiner]

Which democrats tried to repeal in 2020.

[judge2020]

Because it was used to achieve diversity goals, and 209 prevents that. Like the point made here[0], it's de-facto reparations by advantaging those who were/have been affected by lost generational wealth (unequal schools and racist HOA & loan policies). Whether or not this is the right way to go about it is indeed a split issue evidenced by the 57/43 2020 vote and 55/45 vote that passed the original 96 proposition.

The proposition you failed to link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34673427

[rayiner]

> Like the point made here[0], it's de-facto reparations by advantaging those who were/have been affected by lost generational wealth (unequal schools and racist HOA & loan policies).

Reparations would at least be a coherent policy. But Prop 16 proponents also want the policies to favor Latinos, who given the demographics of California would by far be the primary beneficiary of such policies. But Latinos enjoy similar income mobility to whites. Favoring Latinos over whites isn’t “reparations” but just straight up racial discrimination. Ironically, Prop 16 was voted down in every single Latino-majority county in the state.

[xyzzyz]

> Like the point made here[0], it's de-facto reparations by advantaging those who were/have been affected by lost generational wealth (unequal schools and racist HOA & loan policies).

Does anyone actually check whether recipients of these de facto reparation actually have been affected by any of that? As far as I can tell, nobody does, because nobody cares, it’s literally just based on the skin color.

[fche]

> Racial discrimination has been banned in California

someone should send a memo to remind countless california institutions who nevertheless persist

[romwell]

>I'm unfamiliar with US colleges, but could this just be a scheme to allow wealthy or well connected people to get into positions without the grades part?

The "grades part"?

We are talking about academic positions here, not student applications.

[kova12]

It is not a suspicion, as suspicion would indicate there is a chance discrimination might not be happening; when d&i literally is discrimination, by definition.

[mock-possum]

reading the guidelines for 'grading' those submitted diversity statements... I'm not sure I see what's so objectionable about them:

> https://651d7eef-05d1-4785-8f04-93b49cc8d71f.filesusr.com/ug...

It seems like you are expected, as a staff member in a position to influence the diversity of your workplace and of the students whose educational experience you exercise power over, to do so in a manner consciences of issues of diversity, not even just in general, but in the specific context of your job.

I mean, just for instance, a low '1' rank is described as, among other things: (*my emphasis*)

> Defines diversity only in terms of different areas of study or different nationalities, but doesn’t discuss gender or ethnicity/race. Discusses diversity in vague terms or platitudes. Does not provide any evidence of having informed themselves about diversity. *May discount the importance of diversity.*

I mean - yeah, I wouldn't want someone who fits that description being in charge of my education, or my kid's education - I wouldn't even want to be around a coworker who fits that description. I'm not even sure how well it would work trying to be friends with someone like that - I mean, in this day and age? How could you possibly excuse being so irresponsibly underinformed of such an important issue?

Compare that to a high '5' rank: (again *my emphasis*)

> Clear knowledge of experience with, and interest in dimensions of diversity that result from having URM identities. This understanding can result from personal experiences *as well as an investment in learning about the URM experiences of those with identities different from their own* ... Comfort discussing diversity-related issues (including distinctions and connections between diversity, equity, and inclusion), both in writing, and in a job talk session and one-on-one meetings with students, staff, and faculty.

I mean - that sounds really good doesn't it? Why shouldn't that skill set make someone a more attractive candidate to hire? Isn't that all good stuff that we would all benefit from more people being well-versed in? Doesn't demonstrating that well-versedness indicate a willingness to put the work in, as required to help actively oppose systemic oppression and bigotry? (as opposed to merely paying lip service to an ideal?)

What would you rather see here?

[naravara]

> Comfort discussing diversity-related issues

I don't know a single person who has anything genuinely thoughtful or insightful to say on these topics that I would describe as "comfortable" discussing them in the current environment.

You'd have to be exceedingly naive to feel like you can include any amount of nuance into the prevailing narrative, let alone push back against it, without opening yourself up to a slew of mendacious attacks on your character. In many places you can, but within academia or certain corners of the media it's downright risky. There seems to be a rotating example of the day of poorly informed and hyper-reactive school administrators coming down hard on faculty based on nothing at all. Like most recently, the thing with the images of Muhammad being shown in an Islamic history seminar with warnings included in the syllabus and before the lecture being attacked as "Islamophobic."

Nobody is ever comfortable talking about this stuff unless they're up on the current jargon and issues and willing to parrot whatever the approved dogmas and shibboleths of the moment happen to be.

[mock-possum]

And yet plenty of people ranked high enough that they were hired. Just because you and the people you know wouldn’t have qualified, doesn’t meant that the qualification is unworthy.

I don’t personally know a single union master craftsman carpenter, but I have no problem acknowledging their existence, or their market value to employers. Why should this skill set be any different?

Yes all of the problems you mention are real - so why should an employer not specifically look to hire individuals who are equipped to face them? Like seriously, in what other industry would you protest the necessity of being conversant in applicable jargon? If I walk into a technical interview, and they ask me to use a ternary statement to assign an enum value to a constant based on whether the result of performing a spread operation on a collection of tuples yadda yadda yadda… do you really think my smug “I don’t keep up on shibboleths and dogma” is going to make me look like an appealing candidate?

They’re asking that applicants demonstrate their awareness of the current lay of the land when it comes to systemic oppression. Why should lack of awareness and lack of ability or willingness to engage with these issues be attractive when hiring? these are important issues, the handling of which are essential to the continued effort to reverse the effects of bigotry in our country. You might not want to do the work yourself, but that doesn’t mean the work doesn’t need to be done, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who are much better qualified than you and I to do it.

[naravara]

> They’re asking that applicants demonstrate their awareness of the current lay of the land when it comes to systemic oppression.

Because it's not the lay of the land when it comes to systemic oppression. It's the lay of the land as perceived by a clade of under-qualified and unaware administrative functionaries. These people are operating off vibes and public outcry, not any research or evidence backed understanding of history or sociology or policy analysis. The images of Muhammad example is a perfect case because that's exactly what happened. The DEI initiatives were used as a cudgel by the most extreme elements of Islamic movements to impinge on the academic freedom of the professor, and they just dressed up their highly conservative point of view in DEI jargon to manipulate the administration into taking action against her. But all the Muslims who did not agree with that perspective, as well as most scholars of Islamic history, had way more nuanced perspectives on the issue that agreed with the professor. This is basically just an instrument for the administration to erode worker power among an already beleaguered and exploited labor force.

It's also not really germane to most of their disciplines. It would be like asking a mathematician about their knowledge of epidemiology during the COVID pandemic. Why would I expect that of a mathematician? I expect them to do math and to follow whatever directives the public health experts tell them to.

I don't actually think conscripting random people whose core expertise is not policy or equity into doing bootleg equity initiatives are actually going to result in very good policies or a very accurate understanding of equity or diversity issues. I think what it actually ends up getting you is more people who operate off vibes and truthiness they picked up from social media instead.

The issue isn't that people care about diversity or equity, the issue is that this is done in such ham-fisted, lazy, and counterproductive ways. This all suggests they don't care enough about the thing in itself, they care about showing off that they're doing something so everything just revolves around optics instead of outcomes.

[mock-possum]

I've got opinions about the Muhamad picture incident, but just to check, we're talking about the one at Hamline University, right?

As to whether it's germane to their disciplines - my understanding is that it's germane because of the position they are in as educators, as employees of educational institutions, not because of their particular discipline. Of course you don't need to need to know anything about the modern concept of diversity to be a mathematician - you need that concept to be an effective teacher. Every one of those people in that class room is a whole person, with an entire life leading up to that day of attendance - "Why would I expect that of a mathematician?" - because you should expect that of everyone, but especially of people in positions of power, who have the ability to either reinforce or disrupt systems of oppression. That's the angle.

[baggy_trough]

You honestly sound like a Soviet political commissar.

[caskstrength]

Hmmm, I'm not from the US and I really can't tell whether your comment is serious or a parody.

[mock-possum]

I’m being serious - what about it sounds parodic to you?

[ehvatum]

> What would you rather see here?

Viewing race as a quaint and antiquated concept that is completely irrelevant to higher education.

[mock-possum]

Me too - but crucially, that isn’t the way the world is right now. That’s what this criteria is about - not just viewing race as irrelevant, but being aware of all the unjust ways in which race has been made to be relevant, specifically so you know how to work to reverse that racist element. The thing about systemic racism is that it persists even after the founding racists are long gone - it’s self-perpetuating. It requires hard work and determination to dismantle.

It’s essentially the argument against “I don’t see colour” - the problem is that modern racists and the legacy of racism persists whether you see colour or not, and the targets of systemic oppression continue to experience repercussions whether you personally target them or not.

In other words, they don’t want employees to simply opt out of racism - that’s comparatively easy. They want employees to actively work against racism. That’s harder, and more worthy, and in my opinion worth actively seeking in new hires, especially in areas like education, politics, health and social services, and real estate that have an outsized impact on the accessibility of the American dream.

It’s not asking employees to pass a test to prove they’re not racist - it’s asking employees to be actively equipped to fight racism as part of their job description. Think of it like being hired for a UX/UI position - are you educated on Dark Patterns in user flows, and can you show experience in identifying and reversing them?

[vmilner]

I’d be quite happy for my students to use the terms “tarball”, “git master branch”, and “American”. Am I getting a 5?

[mock-possum]

My feeling is the diversity statement would not be a good place to state your position on the controversy, so much as it would be a good place to demonstrate your understanding of the controversy itself. Your comment comes off as flippant dismissal, which I think we both know would not be received well.

[ModernMech]

I’m willing to bet 99% of the people commenting on this thread have never read a single diversity statement, let alone dozens. I’ve read many, and showing a basic understanding of the controversies and struggles is a good example of what you should do in a diversity statement. The high rate of rejections here come from people who don’t want to even think about diversity, and just want to do their research project. They write sarcastic, flippant, unserious and uninformed essays.

Unfortunately for them, the job includes teaching a diverse classroom, so applicants who don’t give serious consideration on how they will do a critical aspect of the job, or even what are the salient issues, are rejected. This is true of any job.

[vmilner]

I’m not getting a 5.

[seanmcdirmid]

Note the above article is referring to job applicants, not student applicants. It lowers the severity of the finding a bit, but just a bit.

[gamblor956]

The opinion piece you cited made the mistake of citing its source.

It misrepresents what happened at Cal. Candidates were not rejected on the basis of their statement, which was merely one factor in scoring the 800+ candidates they interviewed.

[Manuel_D]

From the cited sources [1]:

> A total of 993 applications were received, of which 893 met basic qualifications. The LSI Committee conducted a first review and evaluated candidates based solely on contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion. Only candidates that met a high standard in this area were advanced for further review, narrowing the pool down to 214 for serious consideration.

What was misrepresented? "Evaluated solely on contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion [sic]" is not quite the same as evaluated solely on their diversity statement, but it doesn't seem too far off the mark. Aside from the candidates' diversity statement, how would the bureaucrats evaluate their "contribution to diversity, equity, and inclusion"?

As far as the effect on applicant demographics, here's the stats before the diversity evaluation / After diversity evaluation:

Female: 41.7% / 60.3%

Male: 56.5% / 39.3%

African American: 2.8% / 6.1%

Hispanic: 13.2% / 22.9%

Native American: 0.4% / 1.4%

Asian: 25.7% / 18.7%

White: 53.7% / 48.1%

1. https://ofew.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/life_sciences_...

[msla]

I note nothing in there about Rich / Poor or anything similar.

It's interesting (by which I mean utterly unsurprising and completely typical but in a revealing way) that social class and money are not considered for "diversity" and are, in fact, rather pointedly ignored. This debunks the whole thing, but I'm sure the proponents will be incapable of understanding why.

[ModernMech]

All the applicants are Ph.D. academics, so they are a priori known to be poor.

[gamblor956]

The candidates were reviewed based on their "contributions to diversity, equity, etc." They were not reviewed based on their DEI statements.

This is a fancy way of saying that they used affirmative action to advanced African American, Hispanic, and Native American candidates.

[Manuel_D]

> The candidates were reviewed based on their "contributions to diversity, equity, etc." They were not reviewed based on their DEI statements.

And what does this mean, besides reviewing their DEI statements? We know that review of diversity statements are one component of this - you keep alluding to the notion that there's more to it than that, but neglect to actually provide any such example of how the universities measured this contribution besides their diversity statement.

> This is a fancy way of saying that they used affirmative action to advanced African American, Hispanic, and Native American candidates.

This is illegal in California. This is why people speculate that the review of diversity statements is a smokescreen for universities to illegally discriminate on the basis of protected classes.

[ModernMech]

> you keep alluding to the notion that there's more to it than that, but neglect to actually provide any such example of how the universities measured this contribution besides their diversity statement.

Many ways. For one there’s an interview where such topics can be probed. For another there are various talks given, where candidates can expand on their DEI activities. Finally there are grant applications and grant activities which relate to DEI that can be evaluated.

[gamblor956]

Affirmative action is not illegal in California with respect to hiring. It is only illegal with respect to college admissions...

[Manuel_D]

Affirmative action is illegal in hiring nation-wide. The only exemptions are bona-fide occupational qualification: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_quali...

[heygood]

Considering affirmative action is explicitly illegal in California, I would hope that it wouldn't be the case of candidates being advanced solely by race, and that the diversity statements are what is being considered the 'contribution' here, unless there are some loopholes in the law that I'm not aware of.

[crackercrews]

Not illegal everywhere. But it is illegal for CA govt hiring, so this would be illegal.

[gamblor956]

In California, affirmative action is only illegal with respect to university admissions (meaning students), not with respect to hiring.

Race-conscious hiring is allowed if it would increase under-represented minorities. Whether you agree, or disagree with this policy (which I think most of us do), it is nonetheless legal in California, and it is what happened at the UC schools mentioned in the opinion piece you cited.

Fun fact: Berkeley and UCLA each employ more conservative professors than most "conservative" schools do. But they employ real conservatives, not the modern snowflake conservatives that constantly portrays themselves as victims.

[throway33]

> their contributions to diversity

It sounds like a fancy way of saying "the sign says no Homerssss. We're allowed to have one."

(From the Simpsons:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwHGE7uhjco

[zone411]

No. In addition to what the sibling posts cited, this https://651d7eef-05d1-4785-8f04-93b49cc8d71f.filesusr.com/ug... says:

>...ways of using the statements by reading them _prior_ to any other components of the application, scoring them using a rubric of their choice, and deciding which applicants to consider further using the entirety of the application. Exercising their discretion, faculty on some committees elected to move most applicants forward, while others (especially from the large colleges) preferred to continue with less than 50% of the original applicant pool.

So based solely on the DEI statement, some have rejected over 50% of applicants without taking the rest of the application into consideration.

[anigbrowl]

In other words, UC Berkeley rejected 76 percent of qualified applicants without even considering their teaching skills, their publication history, their potential for academic excellence or their ability to contribute to their field. As far as the university knew, these applicants could well have been the next Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk, or they might have been outstanding and innovative educators who would make a significant difference in students’ lives.

Welcome to the historical experience of numerous underprivileged people who were excluded through no fault of their own. But since DEI statements can be rewritten at any time, applicants are not stuck with the prospect of permanent exclusion.

I am not a fan of college administrators in general, nor of the heavy-handed bureaucratic approach described here. But administrators are looking for faculty who can produce more distinguished grads in the future, who might be 'the next Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk'. You could be an outstanding brain in your field, but if you're not interested in maximizing the search for undiscovered talent, are you likely to attract it to your school?

[crackercrews]

> Welcome to the historical experience of numerous underprivileged people who were excluded through no fault of their own.

Emphasis on historical. You have to make sure not to swing the pendulum too far, otherwise you'll just end up creating a new generation of aggrieved people. Especially if your actions are themselves illegal.

[anigbrowl]

Maybe you should have read the rest of the comment, which addressed these concerns.

[crackercrews]

Maybe you should consider the possibility that I read your entire comment multiple times and found it unconvincing.

[anigbrowl]

I would have if you had made an effort to address it instead of cherry-picking a bit that was easy to react to.