[alaxhn]

In the hiring process for these institutions, until recently you had to write a "Diversity Statement" which was evaluated as part of the hiring process. This was an attempt to keep people with the "wrong ideas" out of the hiring pool. Similarly the H1B process asks you a long list of questions that you are required to answer "correctly" in order to be admitted. If you fail, you are kicked out.

I think the question is which set of ideas are not ok (e.g. clearly "I want to commit violence" is not an ok idea) which set of ideas are a grey area ("I have attended a major event of a US designated terror organization such as a funeral of a leader from a a terror organization") and which set of ideas are ok ("I want to advocate for peacefully advocate for more bike lanes"). There are very strong party affiliations for what ideas are considered ok vs forbidden (e.g. trans rights in the sports world).

[ModernMech]

The point of a diversity statement for the candidate to ruminate on their teaching practices with respect to a diverse classroom, which is a fact of the job rather than a political or ideological matter.

Most people in the course of their job do not closely work with people of diverse backgrounds. People who work at universities will work with people of all backgrounds and abilities. It’s not just about race or gender, but language, mobility, mental disabilities, and so forth. People in roles that deal with so many diverse people need to be able to articulate how in a statement. That’s not unreasonable or political, but just a reality of the job.

[alaxhn]

To a gun advocate the point of a concealed carry would be self defense which is a reality of living in certain areas rather than a political or ideological matter. Nevertheless it is ok for a political parties to have opinions about whether concealed carry is right or wrong and some would say that "civilized" countries have made gun ownership very difficult because the pros may outweigh the cons.

Likewise the right does not agree with you that the diversity statement is a positive and non-ideological contribution to the hiring process and if your response is going to be "this is not up for discussion because it is not a political or ideological matter" well... they are going to disagree with you and if they are in charge might respond by cutting funding and support for your institution. That's just a reality of living in a democracy.

[ModernMech]

> the right does not agree with you that the diversity statement is a positive and non-ideological contribution to the hiring process

Most of these people haven't read a single "diversity statement" and cannot articulate what exactly the hiring process at a university is, and what actual role these statements play in the process. It's mostly ideological posturing about something that sounds scary to them. I'm not saying this isn't up for discussion, but the discussion better be around what the facts are and not the boogey man "the right" created.

At the end of the day the people who are being hired to teach in a classroom that will include a diverse group of students need to articulate and demonstrate that they can do this task. There are real language and cultural barriers, as well as disability barriers than an instructor needs to consider. How can this be done in a way that is acceptable to "the right"? They don't have an answer, all they know is they don't like the current process, even though they can't explain what it is.

[alaxhn]

> It's mostly ideological posturing about something that sounds scary to them. I think it's fair to be frustrated that a lot of political discourse is driven by appealing to fear rather than discussing facts in goodwill but I'm not sure that's isolated to only one particular party. I do think we tend to notice when people we don't like are not operating in good faith and tend to look the other way when people we do like are not operating in good faith so to someone firmly on one side of the spectrum it can definitely look like the opposition is particularly slimy.

> people who are being hired to teach in a classroom that will include a diverse group of students

I don't remotely understand how this is relevant to whether a particular instructor should be hired or not. If I need to learn math, then I want my instructor to be knowledgeable, personable, patient, good at explanations, and dedicated to their work. I don't care what equipment they have between their legs, what color it is, or who they want to use it with. We can take a look at example diversity statements online https://physicalsciences.ucsd.edu/_files/examples-submitted-... and we will notice people feel empowered to talk about their sexuality, race, gender etc but they never proudly mentioned things like "I am a white heterosexual man from the US" but if you swap words to a new value in the relevant categories i.e. "I am a Latinx queer woman from Mexico" this suddenly becomes relevant to the exercise. If changing the color, sexuality, gender, or place of origin for an applicant is relevant to the outcome then this seems like a discriminatory process (https://www.justice.gov/crt/nondiscrimination-basis-race-col...).

I do think it's perfectly ok for people to disagree with me here and I expect that if their representatives get in power we will see funding and priorities shift back towards more required diversity statements while also shifting to allow admissions processes to take into account things like race, sexuality, and gender etc which is just the reality of living in a democracy.

[ModernMech]

> I'm not sure that's isolated to only one particular party.

Of course, but I haven't brought up parties, you did. I'm taking an apolitical position from the perspective of an educator looking to just do their job free from interference of political parties. I'm not sure what you do, but I don't suppose you'd enjoy "the left" or "the right" barging in and micromanaging your hiring committee, thinking they know how to do your job better than you.

> I don't remotely understand how this is relevant

Exactly, and that's kind of my point. You are very eager to quote the law at me, but you aren't first willing to spend the time to actually understand the reason for the diversity statements, how they are used, and why they might be necessary at all.

I think that has to do with this:

> I want my instructor to be knowledgeable, personable, patient, good at explanations, and dedicated to their work. I don't care what equipment they have between their legs, what color it is, or who they want to use it with.

You are looking at this from the perspective of a student, who view the job of the instructor as to teach. But the job is not to just teach, it is actually to be a member of the faculty, which comes with may other. One of our primary directives is to build a community that is conducive to learning. And how we do this is by selecting top students for admittance based on scholastic achievement, regardless of background.

Turns out when you do this, and you cast a wide net, a lot of different people end up in your classroom. Get past the culture war nonsense and put yourself in the shoes of an instructor of a math class of 100 students...

85 are from the US, 15 are immigrants and speak English as a second language. For some of them it's the first time in another country.

3 of them have ADHD. 1 is autistic. 8 have a learning disability. 5 have a motor disability. 1 is undergoing treatment for a major medical issue. 20 of them are neurodivergent in some way. 30 of them are suffering symptoms of depression. 1 of them is a psychopath. 30 are first generation students. 35 are low income. 1 is trans.

Your job is to help all those people succeed at math. How might this affect a math instructor? Here are some ways:

- Have you chosen your course materials to take into account low income individuals that can't afford a $200 textbook? Are they accessible by people with disabilities, for example are they available in electronic form?

- Is your lecture style and content appropriate for people from various backgrounds? For example, if all of your material relates back to local anecdotes, are foreign students going to perform well? Does your use of sarcasm and idioms make your content inaccessible to students who do not speak English as a first language, or who do not readily recognize sarcasm?

- What are your course policies for students with learning disabilities? How do you handle the fact that some students need 2x time than others? How do you structure your exams so that students who can't take them during the test time are able to? How do you handle students who have permission to miss instruction to deal with medical treatments?

The classroom is where the culture war meets reality. Most online culture warriors are talking about people they'll never meet in hypothetical situations they will never find themselves in. But in the classroom, things get real. For example, when a trans student asks you to call them by their preferred pronoun, what do you do in that situation? For most professors it's not a hypothetical, it's just something that happens on the job. So you need to have a real answer for these things, and not a political answer or a talking point.

The diversity statement is a really good way to open up a dialogue about these topics. So let's look at the diversity statements you brought up, and what you had to say about them:

> they never proudly mentioned things like "I am a white heterosexual man from the US"

Because the purpose here isn't to recite some sort of identity credentials, but to articulate how one approaches diversity. Many people take the route of talking about how their experience as some sort of minority has given them a unique perspective. If a white male feels they have something similar to say, at least I know I would be happy to read that. Today men are a minority on many campuses and this is becoming an issue. Many faculty I know would love to hear more about that.

But I fail to see anything egregious in these examples. From these letters we learn that people have experience running programs for underserved youth, running a lab that people from all backgrounds join, starting programs that build community, etc. These are all good things that are articulated, and reading these statements makes me want to meet them and ask them more questions!

Anyway, you dodged this question:

  There are real language and cultural barriers, as well as disability barriers that an instructor needs to consider. How can this be done in a way that is acceptable to "the right"?

If diversity statements are wrongthink, then how do you vet candidates?

[southernplaces7]

>Is your lecture style and content appropriate for people from various backgrounds? For example, if all of your material relates back to local anecdotes, are foreign students going to perform well? Does your use of sarcasm and idioms make your content inaccessible to students who do not speak English as a first language, or who do not readily recognize sarcasm?

As someone who has twice had to completely switch their life from one country to another, entirely different one, I'd say that for one, you should give people more credit for being able to adapt and still get the gist of what's being communicated even if it's done through local cultural color, and secondly, that adapting is exactly what these people should have to do if they came to this new country and its schools.

One can appreciate and respect the foreign cultural roots of immigrant students (in this example) without having to bend over backwards to change one's own to suit their notions of the world.

Asking otherwise is no less absurd than having an American attend a school in China and expect local teachers to communicate with him in English, using humor and anecdotes of an expressly American sort.

[alaxhn]

I think we could nitpick each other's position but at the end of the day we just have philosophical differences so I won't dive into every detail before making my broader point.

> I'm taking an apolitical position We've been over this already.

Just because you do not wish that your position is political doesn't make it so.

> Your job is to help all those people succeed at math.

Yes. Well our job is at least to help some of them succeed at math because they won't all succeed statistically https://umbc.edu/stories/math-awareness-needed-to-raise-math... "For instance, in 2022, only 31% of graduating high school seniors were ready for college-level math – down from 39% in 2019.". We disagree on how best to accomplish this but metrics (e.g. PISA, NAEP or any way we have come up to evaluate this) indicate we have not achieved any incremental progress in decades even though cost per pupil has dramatically increased (e.g. student teacher ratio has declined dramatically). So I might humbly suggest that the approaches we have taken so far have not been successful.

> Most online culture warriors are talking about people they'll never meet in hypothetical situations

Are you trying to suggest that most of us who disagree with you and others like you haven't set foot in a classroom? This is unhinged.

> There are real language and cultural barriers, as well as disability barriers that an instructor needs to consider. How can this be done in a way that is acceptable to "the right"?

It's likely that many of your goals regarding language, cultural, and "disability" (I put this in quotes because some are real and other times people pretend to have a "disability" in order to turn in their homework late) cannot be met in a way that is acceptable to the right so you need to either drop these goals or accept that you are going to lose funding in support if you attempt to accomplish these goals.

"We" are asking you to drop things that "we" consider harmful. Initially "we" attempted to negotiate (https://president.columbia.edu/news/our-next-steps, https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...) but "we" were rebuffed. I believe the strategy now is a to make a few prominent examples of what will happen if "your" side is unwilling to budge on "your" position regarding things like diversity letters in the hiring process in the hopes that the next tier of institutions has a change of heart or at least pretend to for a few years. You and I have a difference of opinion much like I might have a difference of opinion with a fundamentalist christian who wants to use taxpayer money to teach about creationism. I and many others like me will happily vote for candidates who will take a sledgehammer to any institution that wishes to institute things like diversity statements. Now that "we" are in power the onus is on educators to decide if this is the hill they want to die on. I still find it very sad that we couldn't reach a compromise that left American institutions in a strong position to be scientific leaders in their space but unfortunately the levers available to political leadership are crude and time is short (I would also argue that "my" leadership is headed up by a geriatric unintelligent narcissist who does a lot of damage when he lashes out but I guess that can't be helped right now).

I hope you have a great rest of your day - I'm done here but I do wish you all the best!

[twoodfin]

I think it’s also reasonable to want to see some assurance that Harvard has reckoned with the frankly racist and discriminatory admissions policy that was well-documented in the filings for Students for Fair Admissions @ SCOTUS.