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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   24312 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.

The only sources I’ve seen covering this are not exactly paragons of journalism

The New York Times is now reporting it too.

I wonder if they've managed to find a better source than "an email."

I don't think there's anything wrong with an email as a source, if you email MIT's comms office and they respond with a clear claim? They could be wrong, or lying, but they could lie to the NYT too.

Yes, I mostly want to see the receipts.

NYT should publish the SMTP headers. They’re a paper of record, afterall.

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