[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.