DEI that I have experienced in the work place is very aggressively anti white and anti male and openly advocates against giving women and minorities a step up over them. DEI teaches that white men are aggressive and old fashioned and essentially a detriment and should learn their place. White supremacy is positioned as the source of all wrongs in the world including the spate of anti asian violence perpetrated by other minorities a couple years ago. I am not presenting this opinion as something I have heard about rather I am presenting it as something I have experienced (openly, not inferred) over my last few jobs.

Because I want to. I mentioned nothing about college in the original comment that you replied to. I pattern matched :) Judging by the number of responses to my post, other people wanted to discuss it from my perspective as well. Thats one of the nice things about HN, the open, unrestricted flow of conversation

I know that gays are ok. I have absolutely nothing against gay people and am very pro gay marriage. I just dont think its an appropriate topic for elementary school. I very much do have an issue with transexuality being pushed as an option in schools though and I think that its dangerous and results in kids being confused and mistakenly thinking they may be trans. I feel for trans people and wish them nothing but happiness. I just dont want anyone telling my kids its an option as its a much harder life.

"Not gonna lie, I see this a lot and "my HR training was dumb as shit" is a weird basis for political ideology"

I think it goes a little deeper than that and I think you are intentionally downplaying it. Work is one of the cornerstones of most peoples lives. Many people spend more time there than with their kids. If they work in a place where they are told they are the problem thats going to lead to some issues.

I've never understood what this means. Is talking about another student's two Daddies not okay? Teacher talking about their same-sex spouse? Do people imagine they're passing out porn to second graders? Don't get it. Sounds like stupid bullshit. Literally worse than HR DEI training slide decks tbh.

> I very much do have an issue with transexuality being pushed as an option in schools

Your sons aren't going to be unemployed because of DEI essays. Schools "pushing transexuality" is also some stupid bullshit meant to make people feel scared and capture eyeballs.

Regarding the two daddies comment, I have no issue with my kids knowing child X has 2 dads or whatever. Its the pushing of gay pride events, etc. Its making it seem like its a desirable trait that perhaps a kid should experiment with that I don't like. If my kid is gay/trans then so be it, I love them the same. I just don't want them thinking they are based on in school propaganda.

Now you may posit that its all in my head but its also in the head of many many other people. In addition there are very real policies in states like California that indicate its not all in my head. End of the day the thing I am most against is schools conspiring to withhold information from parents.

But in practice some of the most selective institutions (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth) have some of the strongest commitments to DEI. Maybe some institutions are motivated by market forces, but that cannot be the case in these elite institutions. There must be more to the story.

I do, however, know that I am pretty accurately describing how the other 4000+ colleges and universities work. Based on a sampling, yes, but I'm somewhat confident here.

To be a bit blunt: IDGAF about the top few dozen colleges and universities and I genuinely don't get why everyone else obsesses over them^1. Most of us will attend/work at the other 4K institutions. Let's focus on making those places good. (And, no, the ivy league and other elites aren't thought leaders in those orgs.)

--

[^1]: In my own life, I see a lot of the anti-DEI stuff about those institutions combing from parents of thoroughly mediocre kids who think that their special little snowflake didn't get into Harvard because of racism or whatever. To the point where I wonder if this entire genre of reporting, especially in places like the Economist, is basically just therapy for yuppie parents with over-inflated opinions of their child(ren, but usually not).

I have been both, and I would say your take is basically accurate, but it’s actually more fundamental than what you describe.

Diversity statements are needed because teaching a diverse classroom is part of the job today. Applicants must demonstrate that they’ve grappled with the issues that arise while teaching. Applicants who can’t articulate a salient position on real issues they will face on the job are rejected for being unqualified, not because they don’t adhere to some Marxist political agenda pushed by radical DEI administrators.

I agree with what you wrote in your other post, that a lot of the discourse here is from people who have neither read nor written a DEI statement. It makes the discourse frustrating, because it means people are getting worked up over what they imagine the process looks like - which is usually a caricature of the sort you see being portrayed in other comments. The dearth of actual experience on this topic means that these 800 comment threads that crop up here are low quality echo chambers.

What would change my view on this is to hear someone who has reasonably strong disagreement with present-day progressive stances on education, and nevertheless felt comfortable stating their true beliefs in a DEI statement and was still hired.

> Applicants who can’t articulate a salient position on real issues they will face on the job are rejected for being unqualified

But that is the whole question right there. What is a salient position? If only one world view is credited as being "salient", then it is a de facto political litmus test.

I have no clue what the fuck this means, but I can tell you I think HR DEI training is a bunch of bullshit. I have to do it, of course, just like I have to do the AML training and the Insider Trading training and the Phishing training. It's all dumb bullshit. And the corporation has to require it because the risk of not requiring it is too large. So we all play the dumb game.

> and nevertheless felt comfortable stating their true beliefs in a DEI statement and was still hired.

LMAO. This would not get you hired. Like, "faculty make fun of your app on the hiring committee slack channel" levels of not getting hired >'D

MechE gives the reasons why -- people are asking if you can do the job and going on a political rant in your job application is a huge red flag regardless of your politics.

Believe me -- faculty, esp in STEM departments, are wary of hiring wacko leftists. It's not even about the political valence. You just don't want to work with someone who's obsessed with politics and feels the need to spout off about it in their job application. Those sorts of people fucking suck to spend time around.

When reading DEI statements, universities want to know that you can help increase the size of their total addressable market. The harsh cold logic of financial capitalism combined with demographics demands that they only hire sufficiently woke faculty. If you don't like it, time travel back to 2008 and pop out a bunch more white babies.

Once again, the purpose of a DEI statement is not to articulate how much you agree (or disagree) with progressive ideology. Doing either will sink your application.

The point of the essay is to describe how you handle on the job challenges related to diversity, because they are not abstract. Discussions of trans kids, sick people, blind people, wheelchair bound people, etc. are abstract to many here on HN, because meeting and serving the needs of such people is not part of the daily job description of the commentariat here. But it is part of the daily job of a professor, so it’s essentially addressed in the job application. Could you imagine giving your political views during a C++ coding interview? DEI statements are no different.

Just because the political parties have made diversity into a political issue, doesn’t mean it’s a political issue in our department during the hiring process. We never talk about candidates with any political colorings, only about their ideas and experience related to the job.

The key mistake many posters here are making (including you) is assuming this process is carried out by political actors looking to implement an agenda. Maybe you can find instances of that (as you can anywhere), but it’s mostly people just looking to hire a colleague, and trying to find the best one. It’s not political. Consider yourself lucky that political parties haven’t turned your hiring process at your job into a political football. I didn’t ask for this grief.

> What is a salient position? If only one world view is credited as being "salient", then it is a de facto political litmus test.

The salient position is that: the classroom is diverse, and that creates challenges in teaching. Any denial of that is to deny the reality of the job. That’s not a political litmus test, that is a job qualification test. Every member of the faculty knows this to be true from experience, from the famously conservative prof in the bio department, to the purple haired feminist in the sociology department. To deny this on your application is to telegraph you are willing to put your own political feelings ahead of the realities of the job.

Moreover, when an applicant parrots anodyne platitudes about how they treat every student equally, they neglect an opportunity to set oneself apart by highlighting experience in this area. For instance pronouns are a hot button issue. Some applicants will make some big deal about pronouns not being necessary, and we will have to reject that application because we all have our pronouns in our signatures. Not for political reasons, but because we have many trans students, and it makes things easier for everyone when pronouns are used upfront; when you have a Frank on your roster who is wearing a dress and lipstick and goes by Francine, having a protocol of pronoun visibility reduces friction in the classroom. It makes Francine feel welcomed and it helps her classmates as well. It’s a net win for everyone, and so political options about tans and pronouns are just not needed. You may feel political about pronouns, but our acceptance and usage of them is a practical matter for us because we have trans customers. Therefore arguments from a political position have no place in a DEI statement. You can argue that they aren’t practically needed, but that will go against our experience.

Feel free to hold whatever political opinion you want. Like I said, the bio prof is famously conservative. But you should keep your politics to yourself, especially during the application process. I believe that’s universally applicable advise.

You have just told me that putting pronouns in one's signature is effectively a condition of employment, because it "makes things easier for everyone" if people comply with this policy. That is a remarkable statement.

Consider how asymmetric these affordances are. On one hand it is considered a top priority that trans students are not only accommodated in their desired pronouns, but that everybody participates in a shared pronoun protocol on an ongoing basis to make trans students feel more welcome. On the other hand the community cannot tolerate a faculty member who prefers not to put pronouns next to their name; it is so intolerant of this behavior that the institution will not even hire such a person, let alone attempt to make them feel welcomed or accepted.

It is right and admirable to expect faculty to treat students with respect, including using requested pronouns within reason. But why should a faculty member be expected to put pronouns next to their own name if they prefer not to? The choice of how to identify is a very personal thing; that is the entire reason why this topic is so charged. What if someone strongly does not identify with putting pronouns in every place their name appears? Shouldn't they get a chance to decide how they identify?

It is not the accommodation of student requests that makes this political, it is the highly asymmetric offering of affordances. You are describing a culture where some people's choice of how to identify is protected as sacrosanct, but other people's choice is rejected as unacceptable and disqualifying. That is picking winners and losers on a charged topic where both sides have strong and closely held beliefs.

I'm probably speaking out of turn here because I went back and checked, and some faculty don't have this in their signature. So it's optional after all. Even still, leadership has asked us to put our pronouns in our signatures, so my perception was that it wasn't optional.

> Consider how asymmetric these affordances are.

I would soften both sides of your argument. On the one hand, it is considered a priority that to accommodate all students. Normalizing pronoun usage isn't a huge ask for anyone, dissenters are apparently accommodated, and trans customers (I'll refer to them as customers here to highlight that these accommodations are in fact made in the context of a transaction where large sums of money are exchanged) feel more visible and welcomed.

On the other hand, while the employer can apparently tolerate an employee who prefers not to put pronouns next to their name, it aspires not to hire people who outwardly express their political opinions about our paying customers during working hours, or in a way that would negatively impact revenues. This is the prerogative of all businesses. I'm using the employer/employee dichotomy to highlight the fact that this is in fact a job, where the expectation is that the employee will leave their politics aside.

So yes, the affordances are asymmetric, because the relationship between these groups and the institution is not the same. One is a paying customer, the other is an employee. Customer concerns are treated as a priority because education is a person-centric business. It's all about personal service to the customer. If a school gets known for a bad customer experience, that impacts enrollment which drives down revenues.

Conversely employee concerns are brought to HR and handled through internal channels. Otherwise employees abide by the institution's rules and procedures and are compensated with a salary and benefits.

I'm sorry if that offends your political sensibilities or strong and closely held beliefs, but they should be kept closely held in the context of your employment. The personhood of our customers is not debatable, because at the end of the day they are paying a large sum of money to attend our institution, and there's a lot of heavy competition out there. If that's picking winners and losers so be it. They're voting with their wallets so that's why they're winning.

I find this explanation unconvincing. If we take you at your word, then your institution would follow the preferences of the students even if they went in the other direction. Suppose the next cohort of students was against this pronoun protocol: not only do they eschew pronouns, they prefer for nobody else to specify them either, and they vote accordingly with their feet. Are you saying that you and your department would be prepared to reverse course on this issue and ask any faculty (including trans faculty, if there were any) not to specify their pronouns anywhere? Or even to reject faculty applicants who specify their pronouns during the interview process, for being too "political"? I doubt that the morals of the faculty are truly this flexible, nor should they be.

Market forces are real and I have no doubt that a loud contingent of students demand the practices you are describing. It is undoubtedly a difficult position to be in, and it is one I do not envy. But there must be a limit to how far customer focus can or should go. What if all of the students demand to get As? What if they demand that a math professor teach 2+2=5 or that a biology professor teach that biological sex is not a concept that has any basis in reality? At some point the faculty need to stand up for what is right and what is true.

And if the faculty and staff are not willing to do this, then other market forces will come into play like the article that we are commenting on. Public universities take public funds and are therefore accountable to the public, while private universities depend on alumni and donors. All of these people are entitled to have an opinion about whether they want to support this kind of behavior. You see the press turning this into "political football" that is causing you grief, I see it as a much needed check on institutions who have abdicated their responsibility to resist illiberal trends within their walls.

For a long time that was the case; Women and black people weren't allowed on campus for over a hundred years after the University's founding, but that all changed as generations churned.

> Suppose the next cohort of students was against this pronoun protocol: not only do they eschew pronouns, they prefer for nobody else to specify them either, and they vote accordingly with their feet.

I think changes like these happen at a longer timescale than cohorts. More like generations. We millennials are now teaching gen Z, and so obviously things are going to be very different from when boomers were teaching us. It will probably change again when Gen Z start getting faculty positions and gen "Alpha" (I had to look it up, who comes up with these?) start taking college classes.

> Are you saying that you and your department would be prepared to reverse course on this issue and ask any faculty (including trans faculty, if there were any) not to specify their pronouns anywhere?

I could see this happening, sure. Likely what would happen is people would complain, students would complain louder, and in the end they would get their way. Faculty would grumble, and then probably let their contracts lapse, while others who wouldn't find the situation so vexing would take their places and do their jobs.

> But there must be a limit to how far customer focus can or should go. What if all of the students demand to get As?

Grade inflation is a thing, so this is a real concern. Fortunately it's semi-checked by competing interests from our customers who appreciate that we maintain standards so that an A means something. But we're not immune from it, that's for sure. Squeaky wheels do often get grease when it comes to grades.

> What if they demand that a math professor teach 2+2=5 or that a biology professor teach that biological sex is not a concept that has any basis in reality?

Tenure and academic freedom play an important role here. Lord knows there's all kind of nonsense being taught on college campuses across the country. People can have different opinions on what constitutes nonsense; I'm sure there are topics I wish they'd shut up about that other people want taught, and topics I want taught that others would prefer be defunded and shut down. But you know what, I shrug and don't pay too much mind. I certainly don't go on about the "conservative bias" I see in many departments here. If people want to teach nonsense that's fine. If it has any utility or merit, they will attract funding, and students, and it will make our community better. We have people teaching things here that I consider to be actually far less coherent than 2+2=5. But I say, whatever, go for it. Teach away.

> At some point the faculty need to stand up for what is right and what is true.

We all are. Every single one of us. But that's why we have a marketplace, because not all of us can be right and true.

> Public universities take public funds and are therefore accountable to the public, while private universities depend on alumni and donors.

Private universities rely on all kinds of public funding to operate, not the least being public grant money. None of us are immune from public scrutiny, but in general the public better know what they are talking about if they want to leverage a criticism. If they want to open a dialogue, that can happen, but so far it seems like political and media firebrands are leading the charge, so a dialogue doesn't seem to be possible in this climate.

> All of these people are entitled to have an opinion about whether they want to support this kind of behavior.

Sure, and if they want a louder opinion so that they may be heard, they can spend more dollars. In the meantime, there are thousands of schools out there, and especially among the top schools, we are competing for the top students. And as it turns out, you can find the top students from almost any background. So when word gets out that school X is a welcoming and diverse environment, then it becomes easier to recruit top talent. If state schools get a reputation for being political playgrounds for whatever state governors or political parties, they will fall behind because they will fail to attract top talent from the new generation.

> I see it as a much needed check on institutions who have abdicated their responsibility to resist illiberal trends within their walls.

Respectfully, you've made it pretty clear you don't really know what's going on in the walls, so any assessment on how illiberal or not the activities are must be incomplete. The level of discourse in this entire thread is generally stunted because the HN commentariat is talking out of its depth. Software developers, web devs, people who have never been in academia aside from being a student, or haven't been in decades, are voicing their thoughts on what they think is happening in academia. These opinions seem to be fueled mostly by chatter in the right-wing media sphere, especially Tucker Carlson in recent days.

Absent from the entire conversation here seems to be people with first-hand experience reading and evaluating these DEI statements. I think I've noticed 2 other posters in the thousands of comments generated in the past 3 or so HN threads that hit the front page, who I would say have an accurate read on what goes on within academic walls. Everyone else seems to have somehow made up their minds about how these statements are used and what's in them, without reading a single one or asking anyone how they are actually used in practice. Instead you get people claiming as confidently and baselessly as ChatGPT that the whole practice is abjectly racist, illegal, unconstitutional - I've heard it all. You yourself said that you are dismissive of positive first-hand accounts because you assume they are just politically biased. There is zero curious inquiry going on surrounding this topic, and that should sound warning bells that this is just a political tornado.

I don't listen to Tucker Carlson, but I have been listening to what you have been telling me in this thread. From your own first-hand testimony I have learned:

- You have first-hand knowledge of faculty applicants who have been rejected on the basis of their belief that universal pronoun protocols are not necessary, or that they personally prefer not to volunteer their own pronouns.

- You do not count this as a political litmus test, instead you accuse the applicant of being political by having an opinion that is different from what students are demanding.

- You acknowledge that the institution is extending asymmetric affordances, and picking winners and losers on a charged topic, but rationalize this by citing market forces and a philosophy that the customer is always right.

Even if I had heard nothing else, that right there is the case for an illiberal trend. Some opinions are endorsed while others are rejected in the hiring process, and this is not based on any appeal to truth, fairness, or equal protection, but rather the arbitrary demands of the customer.

Respectfully, the fact that you would tell me all of this openly, but then think that I need right-wing agitation to consider this an illiberal trend, just reinforces to me how much of an echo chamber academia must have become. I'm sorry, but no amount of condescension on your part will convince me that this is ok.

> You yourself said that you are dismissive of positive first-hand accounts because you assume they are just politically biased.

I told you that I would credit such accounts if they came from someone who had significant disagreements with the dominant thinking on these subjects, and was able to be hired without hiding this.

It is little credit to the fairness of a process if the people who are aligned with the ruling school of thought find the process to be unburdensome.

To be clear I already admitted I was wrong about this after checking the other faculty signatures. The call to put pronouns in signatures wasn't mandatory. I certainly look very poorly at statements that go on and on about pronouns and rate them at the bottom, because as I said, we've already had this debate as a community, and a job application/interview is not the time nor the place for that debate to be rekindled.

> - You do not count this as a political litmus test, instead you accuse the applicant of being political by having an opinion that is different from what students are demanding.

Yes, and I don't see why that's a problem, because it wouldn't be tolerable in any other workplace to bring your personal political opinion into the interview. Imagine if I had an interview at BigCo and started complaining about capitalism, and how the CEO owner didn't work for his money, and that I feel he should reorganize the entire corporation so that workers controlled everything. Would you call me political for bringing those opinions to the interview, or would you call the owner political because he's forcing his capitalistic economic model on me?

> You acknowledge that the institution is extending asymmetric affordances, and picking winners and losers on a charged topic

It's not charged in our community. Just because the political Twittersphere goes crazy over some topic doesn't mean it's a big deal for everyone. Some communities can arrive at a different norm than others, and it's not "picking winners and losers" if that community starts rejecting outsiders who violate the community's norms. Sure it may be sad for the outsiders who wanted to participate, but it's not up to the community to accommodate the outsider's political sensibilities. I'm sorry you feel this is illiberal, but if it makes you feel any better, these standards were the result of intense community debate, and were voted on. At some point, things need to move on. We can't be in a perpetual debate about pronouns forever.

> Respectfully, the fact that you would tell me all of this openly, but then think that I need right-wing agitation to consider this an illiberal trend, just reinforces to me how much of an echo chamber academia must have become.

I have no idea what motivates you specifically, but it's not a coincidence that a furor of a thousand+ comments bubbled up here about DEI statements in academia at the same exact time the right wing media sphere also was very concerned about DEI statements in academia.

> I told you that I would credit such accounts if they came from someone who had significant disagreements with the dominant thinking on these subjects, and was able to be hired without hiding this.

That's definitely not me, but at the same time I doubt you've tried hard to seek these people out. Are you waiting for this person to drop in your lap? There are plenty of them out there, but they know not to bring their political opinions to a job interview. That always seemed like common sense to me, but it seems to now be a problem for some reason.

I was referring to prospective faculty, not current faculty. I saw your correction wrt current faculty, but this discussion is about hiring processes and how they act as political filters in the current climate.

> Yes, and I don't see why that's a problem, because it wouldn't be tolerable in any other workplace to bring your personal political opinion into the interview.

If you don't want to hear personal political opinion, don't require a personal statement on a contentious political issue as part of the application. It's as simple as that.

If you ask for a statement, but reject perspectives associated with the other side, then you have made it a political litmus test.

> Some communities can arrive at a different norm than others, and it's not "picking winners and losers" if that community starts rejecting outsiders who violate the community's norms.

If those norms are illiberal, then rejecting outsiders who violate those norms is also illiberal. Even if you debated and voted on them.

> it's not a coincidence that a furor of a thousand+ comments bubbled up here about DEI statements in academia at the same exact time the right wing media sphere also was very concerned about DEI statements in academia.

This is a site where people comment on current news stories. That said, diversity policy in business and academia is by no means a new or unusual topic of conversation here. In any case, it seems like some good evidence that this is actually a contentious issue that many people have genuinely strong feelings about.

Does it help female students, knowing that they have to accommodate this misogyny?

But I can guarantee that at least some of your female students are scoffing at the misogynistic idea that "woman = lipstick and dress and she/her pronouns".

I can tell you don't work with students. They are very vocal when you do something they don't agree with, to the point where they will anonymously send you their thoughts via a burner gmail account if they actually do feel for some reason they will suffer repercussions (which they never do). If the silent dissenters have thoughts, they will go unaddressed as long as they remain silent.

But to be clear you're arguing for a hypothetical person, correct? When you say "they stay quiet out of politeness", you are talking about students you invented that you assume exist, and not actual students you know personally who voiced this particular concern to you?

> "woman = lipstick and dress and she/her pronouns"

If you're trying to imply this is something I've said here or in the classroom, neither has occurred.

It feels like they'd be the ones violating the non-aggression principle here. They'd be offended at the idea that acknowledging the concept of gender as distinct from sex to ease trans students' dysphoria runs against their concept of gender as alloyed to sex (which isn't a thing that causes dysphoria to them; it's just a political stance). Dysphoria is a thing that causes people to hate, and sometimes kill, themselves. Political objections don't do that, to my knowledge.