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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   24309 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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MIT no longer requires diversity statements for faculty hires.

Allegedly. The only sources I’ve seen covering this are not exactly paragons of journalism, citing emails rather than anything public. MIT’s own website still describes the practice in glowing terms. I am curious whether the general population of MIT staff—the ones maintaining their websites—is in favor of this change, or if any of them were consulted.

Assuming this is credible, let’s make some predictions.

  • social media backlash: guaranteed.
  • news backlash, a la NYT: high. This is red meat for opinion columns, as evidenced by the fact that conservative outlets are already crowing about it. But maybe I’ve misjudged, and no one in the mainstream actually cares?
  • policy reverted: low. I predict a whole lot of nothing. The people who most care about this are less likely to have leverage over MIT. If it does get rolled back, I predict it’ll be downstream of administrative drama within the school.
  • policy spreads to other elite universities: medium? I have no idea which way the wind is blowing. Outlets are trumpeting their preferred conclusion. But I suspect this is going to be localized.

There is this ongoing bet between right wing intellectual influencers Neema Parvini and Auron MacIntyre over whether we'll see the "woke be put away" in a Trump presidency that signs a return of "fresh prince" 90s liberalism or instead a continuance of acceleration and radicalism.

Some part of the elites definitely understands that this isn't sustainable and that these beliefs are luxuries that are no longer affordable now that the West has to compete again for supremacy. Some have been made even more keenly aware of this by the recent Iraelo-Palestinian controversies.

But the outcome of the bet doesn't really depend on this, that's the premise, the outcome depends on whether or not this faction of the elites has the power to take a culture where DEI and somesuch have taken hold and purge it or make it marginal enough that it's no longer the constant center of attention.

Can they put the culture war back in the bottle? It's hard to say, but this looks like some people are really trying.

I don’t understand why people expect that of Trump. When has he ever struck back at the civil service? “Putting away woke” (?) sounds like it’ll end with the same results as “draining the swamp.”

Most progress on this front has been made by the B- and C-list of conservatives. DeSantis, Abbott…I think Rufo is more credible as a reformer, and he’s not even pursuing office. Would Trump be making these particular mouth sounds if they hadn’t been pushing related issues in the midterms?

In my opinion, the most likely path for making idpol unfashionable is a foreign-policy presidency. Doesn’t really matter who. We’re not getting a “fresh prince” decade by cranking up the domestic outrage.

Desantis and Abbott are conservative a-listers, though.

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