[stevenbedrick]

Thank you for writing this- it aligns perfectly with what my own experience, as a white male in academia, has been with these issues.

When I talk to people outside academia about “DEI”, it’s clear to me that whatever they think that term means, it has no relationship to anything I’ve ever seen in my career (involving faculty searches, recruitment of students and staff, education, involvement in clinical trial design and recruitment, etc.).

[anonistheback]

I have personally hired less qualified candidates based on race and gender. I have made this choice from direct superior's comments as well as political requirements to climb the ladder of the organization I was in.

The truth is that if you are on the "left" your blind to what many are thinking. In person I will never tell you the bias or problems I see. I've learned doing so would make it nearly impossible to work with you.

Not saying you are "wrong" but the problem I an many like me face is that the softpower pressure to conform to left ideals mean I never do or say anything because I assume everyone around me would push back or push me out.

It's partly paranoia but it's also part of a factual experience I've had in highly liberal environments. They don't want to hear it and if they do you are damaged. Very different from the people we all know who are expounding and preaching liberal ideals in ever conversation they have.

[stevenbedrick]

I certainly can't (and wouldn't want to) dispute what your lived experience has been, and I am sorry that you've found yourself in those kinds of situations and interpersonal dynamics. That sucks and is not how things should be. All I can say is that, going on my own experience, that is very much not the norm, at least not as far as I have seen and been aware.

To your point about being blind to what many around me are thinking- by definition, I wouldn't know if I was, right? So I'm not going to try and argue one way or another about that. I will say, however, that I have worked with many colleagues with whom I disagreed about many different things, some of which fall under the general umbrella of what one might call "identity politics", and as a general rule have been able to have open and civilized conversations with them. One thing I have learned is to not make any assumptions about what somebody does or doesn't think about a given topic, as basically every time I've done that I have been surprised.

[anonistheback]

I too have had these "open" identity politics discussions.

I have blatantly lied.

For someone on the liberal side, these conversations mean nothing and there's literally no risk in discussing.

If you are not on that side it's a risk of career suicide to openly discuss it.

I always just thought I was an outsider but I am starting to think there are many who are just like me. I wonder how many conversations in Sillicon valley I have had where both of us were lying about our political beliefs worried the other may be liberal.

[jccalhoun]

> less qualified

Who gets to decide what "qualified" means? and what counts and what doesn't count as a qualification?

[anonistheback]

Me, I was hiring someone to be on my engineering team. Found someone with lots of technical experience. Was not so subtly told we cannot hire them and had to hire a female for the team. I could either push back but I was lucky I was even getting a hire. So we found a female engineer to bring on with a lot less experience.

I literally skipped dozens of men in the interview application pipeline just because it had to be a female hire.

It was a very bad feeling for me but I have no doubt HR is doing this constantly, to read a name and specifically pass them over because it didn't sound like a woman's name. For every female applicant there is easily 20+ male for a technical role.

Shortly after this I was no longer allowed to search or filter for my own applicants. It was an odd time where our HR was gone and I had to do it myself. Really giant eye opener to how this bias works in a real sense.

Still remember I told my manager: "I am not used to not hiring the most qualified"

Their response: "Work is not just about work but also about life"

Not sure what that meant (I believe he was pushed from his boss, same as I) but stuff like this is an every day occurrence in SV