DEI statements are affirmations made when you’re applying for college admission, university jobs, or even science-society grants, recounting to the authorities your philosophy of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” your history of DEI activities, and how you will implement DEI initiatives if you get the admission/job/grant. I have posted quite a bit about them (see collection here), and object to them because they are not only compelled speech and are often completely irrelevant to what you’re applying for, but also ignore the fact that there are many ways to make contributions to society beyond enacting DEI. (For example, what about a college applicant who has taught illiterate adults to read?) And I think many institutions are eliminating them. For one thing, some of them may violate the recent Supreme Court decision on race-based admission. Now MIT has joined the statement-eliminators.
The top headline in the screenshot below, which really is true, needs to be promulgated widely, as MIT is doing all it can to keep it quiet. So pass it on, repost it, or whatever.
Because this report originally came from The Babbling Beaver (a website that satirizes the mishigass at MIT, much like the Onion but better), my friend Jay Tanzman, who sent it to me, wasn’t sure whether it was true or false (click to read):
Here’s the entire article, and you can get an idea of its snark, a snark that makes one wonder if the ditching of DEI statements is genuine. But it is! There is of course snark, like the “carrying water for Hamas” bit, but the kernel of the article is true.
Quietly, in the dead of night, with neither announcement nor fanfare, MIT President Spineless Sally Kornbluth did the right thing. She banned the use of DEI statements for faculty hiring and promotions, across all schools and departments at MIT. In order not to rile up the Wokies, she left it to the Beaver to get the word out.
A private anonymous faculty poll revealed that about two-thirds of MIT’s professors hate the damned things. Merit lives, despite the fact that supporters have been largely hiding under their desks afraid to fight back.
About one in twenty faculty polled believe “DEI activities are as important as research and teaching in evaluating candidates.” It’s time to track those people down and show them the door. That’s precisely how MIT got saddled with a race-grifting chancellor totally unqualified for the job, along with a party-pack of radical progressive humanities professors that have been driving MIT’s culture into the ditch.
It remains to be seen whether individual departments will continue training their graduate students how to fill out these loyalty oaths when they seek academic positions elsewhere. One would think ChatGPT could do a bang-up job.
Reaction has been muted, most likely because DEI true believers have been too busy carrying water for Hamas. Or maybe they’re beginning to see the writing on the wall as the whole country wakes up to the damage DEIdeology has done to our college campuses.
And so, the pendulum swings. May it keep on swinging until sanity is restored.
Jay then wrote to the publisher of the piece, who replied with a statement that I can put on this site. Note: the pejorative characterization of MIT’s President is the publisher’s, and I know almost nothing about Sally Kornbluth. Below the asterisks is Jay’s comment, with the BB publisher’s statement doubly indented:
********************
I asked the Publisher if the story was true, and the Publisher replied that it is. Specifically, the Publisher replied:
“It’s true. MIT has banned DEI statements. We have multiple confirmations, including one from President Spineless Sally Kornbluth herself. Alas, she didn’t have the courage to announce it. As far as I can tell, this report from the Babbling Beaver is the first publication to mention it.”
In a second email, the Publisher elaborated:
“Even better, let me give you a quote from an “Officer of the MIT Free Speech Alliance.
“The MIT administration has advised the departments that were requiring DEI statements to stop requiring them and to stop using this kind of information. This has just recently been disclosed to the faculty, but a general announcement to the students is not planned.”
“The MIT Free Speech Alliance is gratified that one of its key recommendations on putting an end to compelled speech on campus has been adopted.”
And please share the Babbling Beaver piece widely. Someone in the mainstream press needs to pick up on this story. It’s a real crack in the dam.
I then asked the Publisher if I could share this information with you [Jerry] in case you wanted to report it on your website, and he replied:
“Yes. The Babbling Beaver is a big fan of WhyEvolutionIsTrue. This story needs to get out.
***********************
So that’s the report: another crack in the dam.
This is indeed a great news! I hope more universities to follow this.
Good news if it’s true! It seems to be.
Yay!!
This is not directly related to this news, but it pertains to DEI. A few weeks ago, I engaged in a discussion with a senior employee of a large pharmaceutical company (he works in the data analysis and administrative side of the business, not the drug development or R&D side) who claimed to be fully committed to DEI. He stated that when he’s building a team, he utilizes DEI to select its members. I asked him how that works, and then he became quite crafty, avoid admitting to committing Title VII violations, but essentially implying that he does so without detection. I mean, he all but admitted to engaging in discriminatory hiring practices. When I pressed him he justified his behavior by, in essence, claiming that DEI was a countervailing force against the status quo, which he characterized as white supremacist. I assume this same kind of behavior is happening in universities that have a commitment to DEI.
RAT HIM OUT!
No subtle craftiness required at Canadian universities. We just have straight-up race-based faculty hiring.
Hallelujah!!!! Though I keep pinching myself.
(In an interview with faculty at Rutgers, there was a DEI person on the call. I was honest and said I dislike the words, that they can mean anything and are ideologically driven. I said we should be able to question DEI but that I wouldn’t make a shtick about it. Then, I said, I want to reduce disparities in cognitive function and would put in a grant to do so.
I spent another 10 minutes explaining which prior endeavors of mine addressed DEI matters and what I have done interpersonally regarding DEI.
I asked at the end of the call what had interested them about my application. They said my cover letter, that I seemed sincere.
Well, I hope their valuing of sincerity extends to my honest disdain for DEI.)
It gives me hope that MIT has done the right thing. If all the Ivies follow suit, perhaps this will trickle down to public schools, like Rutgers. But the government incentivizes DEI by dangling grant funds around and for it. Faculty are incentivized to hire those who will get DEI grants.
Again, this tempts me to vote for Trump. If Biden were smart, he’d undo his DEI policies.
Wow, I really can’t believe my eyes about MIT ending DEI statements. It can’t be true.
It can’t be true…
Quite often when reading the first lines of such an article I think I might be getting into a Borowitz.
Yeah, how does that saying go? “If it’s too good to be true, it is.”
I hope you get the job based on your sincerity. If they pass you over due to your honestly stated misgivings about DEI, I’d say you dodged a bullet.
“this tempts me to vote for Trump” does not follow from any of the (otherwise perfectly reasonable) things you’ve said.
[Orson Welles applause in Citizen Kane ]
That’s cool they gave some acknowledgement!
They shouldn’t stop there – they ought to go further – subvert the subversion.
Here’s a tip : there’s a New Thing called BRIDGE. You can guess what that’s about.
Excellent news!
Of course it’s good news that this ideological litmus test is being discarded. But I’d hold off on any celebrations, as this does not actually address the underlying problem this policy indicated, which is that the wokesters who put this litmus test in place are still in power, still making hiring decisions, and still trying their damnest to promote their DEI vision. They are still going to be selecting for people who are committed to DEI, it’s just going to be harder for them to suss out who these people are. But make no mistake, their agenda hasn’t changed just because they have one less tool in their arsenal to enact it.
As somehuman who identifies as 2% Denisovan [ which is a whole lot more Denisovan than Senator Warren is Cherokee ], it is about time DEI in its current form is abolished. 100% subspeciesist.
Time for genomic analysis to be included in all college applications and for academic positions …. Oh dear, who lacks Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA?
I wonder if some departments will continue them via other means……………………………..Ideologues can’t be trusted.
They should rename MIT to the Monstrous Institute of Tyranny!
Or something.
Yay!! Even though I’m at a point in my career where I’m long past worrying about this, I haven’t been able to stop worrying about its effect on science. Merit lives!!!
DEI commitments from universities seem like an unbreakable vow for future self immolation. Institutions lamenting current “encampments” are prime examples and should note the response of Fletcher in “The Outlaw Josey Wales” who said, “…don’t piss down my back and tell me it is raining.”
This has been a slow motion train wreck everyone with functioning neurons has seen coming for quite some time.
Catering to the unduly passionate (aka DEI) is how the vow to self immolation was fulfilled. Congrats?
As ELO song said, “You made the wine, now you drink the cup.”
go woke. go broke
The message doesn’t seem to have made its way to departmental websites: https://mitcommlab.mit.edu/eecs/commkit/faculty-application-diversity-statement/
There was a front page article about this in The NY Times. The MIT president has not been quiet about it at all.