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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   24317 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.

I’d have expected that prestige media shuts up because diversity statements make them mildly uncomfortable and conservative media crows because diversity statements are obviously dumb, and that a few lefty rags publish an angry op Ed every now and then but otherwise don’t focus on it because they’re distracted by Palestine protests.

That sounds like basically what happened.

Maybe I hang around here too much, but my assumption was that prestige media was comfortable with or enthusiastic about the idea.

You can tell because they only defend them when they're being attacked, like everything they know is wrong but also disliked by the enemy. They also try to pull the "Republicans pounce! It's right wing culture war!" card instead of a real defense on the merits, just like with "whiteness must be exterminated because it means showing up to work on time"

There were never any NYT articles crowing about how 75% of all professor applicants are now pre-screened out by the DEI department, before their resumes are even given to the official hiring committee.
Maybe even you don't know that, even though people have told you before... It's that kind of defense through carefully cultured and reinforced blindness.

It's not happening, only those people commit the faux pas of noticing it, and now that it's been brought up everyone uncomfortably shifts their eyes around the room to avoid defending it. It's almost a relief when LaShawna from HR launches into "how DARE you!", and you can just nod along silently cringing and memorizing her spiel for your next promotion review.

Who are you quoting, there?

Anyway, I expect you could find defense on the merits. In fact, here’s the one you’re thinking of, since it explicitly mentions the 75% number.

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