Smoluchowski
No bio...
User ID: 948
Just as a point of information, I'm an academic who's had direct experience with both REU (NSF) and some of the analog programs at NIH. They absolutely discriminate in favor of women and minorities (and strongly against men, whites, asians) sometimes to the point of outright exclusion, as a matter of policy. They are, strictly speaking, engaging in illegal stuff. The official rules for applying for these programs say they look for programs that encourage women and minorities to participate, but in the cultural and political environment of academia for the past 20 yrs (or longer), this has meant a very strong version of "affirmative action". I haven't looked into what's happened since Trump's recent "discrimination is illegal" orders have taken effect, but if REU programs are being shut down, it's probably not because they're considered wasteful, but because, as presently constituted, they are illegal. All this is true of essentially anything to do with education in any form, as I imagine most people here know.
I'm in a hard science academic department. I would guess, in our department, it's about 50-50 those who are supportive vs those who (silently) disagree. We've had DEI speakers at our main weekly seminar (normally for colleagues at other universities who were invited to present their research) and those speakers were praised as "wonderful" by some of our faculty. Our administration requires all applicants for faculty positions to submit diversity statements--plans for how they will promote DEI should they be hired--and these are used in evaluating candidates. One of the members of a recent search committee was a virtual political commissar for DEI. In our last faculty search all males were explicitly excluded (their applications were discarded automatically), on (strongly implied) orders from the upper administration. There are many more such anecdotes. STEM faculty are (statistically) less gung-ho for woke/DEI ideology than humanities or social sciences, but there is considerable support even there.
More options
Context Copy link