[garden_hermit]

I have written what you would likely call "DEI" statements for grants and job applications, and I have reviewed them as well.

The absolutely worst statements are the people who believe that the statement is an ideological litmus test. It never was, and it isn't.

These statements, to a one, are basic HR stuff: discuss your strategies and experiences to not be an asshole and ensure that the diverse people you manage (and they almost certainly are diverse) will be able to get along and work effectively under your management. Boring stuff.

People think its some sort of ideological purity test, write it as such, and get surprised when the statement is evaluated poorly.

[whatshisface]

The requests are worded in a way that makes people think they're ideological because (as far as I can tell) the people who added it to the requirements were heavily influenced by their ideological commitments. The statements are then reviewed by volunteers taken from the broader community, who aren't going to rate "contributions to diversity" too highly if they're described with an extreme degree of force.

If the people writing the calls wanted the same things as the people reviewing the submissions, they would say, "tell us about your experiences with normal HR tasks."

[garden_hermit]

In almost every case I've seen, the statements are in fact worded in terms of specific contributions. The most general terminology I've seen is requesting the candidate to explain their role "advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion"—to which the best statements respond with (1) their experiences with diverse classrooms/staff, and (2) their specific strategies for approaching these issues.

I have not really encountered instructions that I would misconstrue to be an ideological litmus test, and the majority of submissions that I have reviewed do not in fact talk about the candidate's ideological priors.

[whatshisface]

Calling it diversity is a huge ideological presupposition. Two white guys can create a hostile work environment for a third, there's nothing diversity specific about it. This is reflected in the way everyone thinks about it - you're not checking to see whether the experiences they're describing crossed the right identity boundaries, you're judging it according to the wrongs dealt and the submitter's sense of balance.

[garden_hermit]

Institutions tend to define diversity broadly, including diversity in terms of race, nationality, gender, socioeconomic status, and so on. I don't talk much about race or gender in my own statements, instead focusing on first-generation students and socio-economic status. This seems not to have hurt me.

I get that the way people think about these statements is different than the way they actually are; I just think people are wrong and that their impression is informed by social media. If it helps, I would be happy to rebrand "DEI Statement" to "Don't be an asshole and also try to keep the peace with everyone Statement".

[whatshisface]

I think we agree although there's a slight miscommunication, you're not actually including socioeconomic status in your rephrased statement. Like we would both say, if there were three identical twins and two of them were picking on the other, that would merit the exact same intervention as if they weren't identical twins.

[greentxt]

So you defend it on the grounds, specifically, correct me if I am misinterpreting, that it is nothong beyond a rebranding of typical HR legal speak? You either think it is important and meaningful or you don't-- ie it is a litmus test. I think it is useful as such frankly, but could be minimized. I am totally happy to pledge allegiance to non-racism or something like that. Some arcane limus test where only people like you can evaluate the true merit of a DEI statement is likely to be unfair, widely abused and ironically probably reinforces institutional racism more than it ameliotates it. Not calling you a hard racist, just saying you are contributing to it and sustaining it rather than reducing it.

[garden_hermit]

I defend it on the grounds that it is basic human management. The scientific workforce is diverse, and this diversity introduces potential conflicts. Money spent on researchers who cannot effectively keep the peace among their students and staff—whether through negligence, naiveté, or outright malice—is likely to go to waste. It is not entirely a re-tooling of HR legal speak, but rather an extension given what we know about how to manage a diverse workforce.

The rubric I use to judge diversity statements, and which is often formalized in rubrics, is: "has the applicant thought about this at all to the point that they have specific experiences and strategies that lead us to trust that they could effectively manage a diverse population of students and staff".

There is nothing arcane about this. To the extent that diversity statements even factor in review, this is the same criteria that everyone I know follows.

In my own applications, I, as a white guy, have been very successful in getting jobs and funding. This is despite never making ideological commitments and barely talking about gender or race, and instead focusing on first-generation students. Just showing that I have put in a minimal amount of thought into working with diverse students and colleagues seems to be enough.

[nxobject]

Having been on a few hiring committees, both in academia, industry, and state: no, it is not arcane; scoring people fairly and literally against interview questions, that form a fraction of the whole candidate ranking process, are literally exactly what “DEI initiatives” in HR were meant to do.

I have had mandatory trainings about this ad nauseam before I have been allowed to sit on hiring committees. One of the biases “DEI initiatives” warn against is being impressed by people who spew jargon without having done the work, and supporting people who have done the work (and give examples) without spewing jargon.

If the interpretation is “arcane”, that’s an institutional problem that goes far beyond interpreting an interview question that forms a fraction of the interview process. But claiming that’s inherent to organizations that mention diversity in an interview question is setting up a strawman, and HR will have it ground into your head that it is “inequitable”.

[Manuel_D]

> scoring people fairly and literally against interview questions, that form a fraction of the whole candidate ranking process, are literally exactly what “DEI initiatives” in HR were meant to do.

I don't doubt your lived experience, but in 3 out of 4 companies DEI initiatives took the form of explicitly discriminating on the basis of candidates' protected class. Practices like giving "diverse" candidates multiple chances go pass interviews where white and Asian men got one. Another straight up created a reservation system for diverse candidates.

I acknowledge that some people have had better experience DEI, but I'd encourage you to consider the possibility that many have witnessed explicit discrimination under the banner of DEI.

[nxobject]

Can you say more about where the "3 out of 4" comes from? I'll admit that I've worked on hiring committees in exactly four places, so it's been a straight 0 out of 4 for me. (One at a small liberal arts college; one at a tech consultancy; one at a state agency; another one at at govtech consultancy.)

We can haggle over how many is enough to make a sweeping generalization, if you'd like. But I don't think that's productive for any of us if we want to debate whether loyalty tests actually existed, or whether "DEI" reduces to religion, as the parents have claimed.

[Manuel_D]

One company outright designated a segment of engineering headcount as exclusive to women and URM candidates. Managers were prohibited from fulfilling this headcount with Asian and white men. This was done despite having an overrepresentation of women in engineering roles relative to their representation in the field. Another allowed diverse candidates multiple attempts to pass technical interviews where white and Asian men got one chance. A third company set a quota of 40% women in engineering hires in OKRs (contrast this with ~20% of software developers and ~10% of electrical engineers that are women, those two fields made up almost all engineering roles at the company).