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by patagurbon 239 days ago
I am not in favor of mandated DEI statements outside of basic respect for students and colleagues, I’m not sure why that’s relevant or why you responded to me about it.

Most universities have moved away from those.

2 comments

>I’m not sure why that’s relevant or why you responded to me about it.

Because while I agree that

>The pursuit of truth is difficult and has its pitfalls but it naturally leads to the dominance of certain viewpoints

I'm certain that demanding essays from which you could perfectly predict voting patterns is not the mark of viewpoints that prioritize the pursuit of truth.

Again, I am not in favor of those things. I am perfectly happy for interviewees to be filtered for basic respect for people of all walks of life. I hope the reasoning there is obvious.

Regardless governments must let the natural academic process handle these institutional issues.

Is approval of affirmative action or DEI policies a mark of basic respect for people of all walks of life?
In the institutions I’m familiar with, DEI is basically a statement about respect for people from diverse backgrounds and the DEI committee is a couple of people who organize an annual cultural fair or something similar. It’s crazy to me how blown out of proportion that simple acronym has become over the last few years.
Everything gets judged by its worst members, you can't just say that it was fine were you are and then conclude it was fine everywhere.
> Most universities have moved away from those.

Whatever the mechanism, they remain echo chambers and continue to present, as the only truth, systems of thought that diverge from objective reality and that poison the public discourse.

> whatever the mechanism

Is straining to carry the rest of this sentence. I responded to an assertion that a policy by certain limited universities was attempted and deemed unfit by the natural process was still active. This is how institutions grow and evolve.

> echo chambers

Publish your papers, rebut the research. This is actively happening every day in every field of science. It is happening in everything from gender studies to particle physics.

> poison the public discourse

What on Earth are you talking about. What public discourse are you frequenting which is driven primarily by this boogeyman of the university system rather than the attention driven rat race of national fear politics.