The administration merely doesn't want to let academia itself take all the credit for destroying American science. Such as when scientists were forced to make an ideological oath to diversity to get hired [1,2], were hired primarily based on adherence to that ideology [3,4,5], were told by major scientific publications to avoid or simply not publish studies that might question that ideology [6,7], disavowed studies based solely on them being used to criticize favored causes [8], were prosecuted by the state (albeit in Sweden) for true findings that harmed that ideology [9]. Papers were rejected if their results went against the liberal worldview, but methodologically-identical papers with pro-liberal results were accepted [10], and scientists were barred from accessing taxpayer-funded data if there was a risk their research might harm the dominant ideology [11].
[4] A recent report from the Goldwater Institute found that 80% of job postings for Arizona’s public universities required applicants to submit a statement detailing their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. - https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/policy-report/the-new-loy...
“If you write: ‘I believe that everyone should be treated equally,’ you will be branded as a right winger,” Vinod Aggarwal, the chair of Asian Studies at the university, said in an interview. - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/ucla-dei-statement.htm...
UC Berkeley’s rubric for evaluating diversity statements penalized candidates for saying that they prefer to “treat everyone the same,” or for objecting to racially segregated affinity groups. As my reporting has shown, by the early 2020s, the Berkeley rubric had become something of a gold standard, used by search committees across the country, including at the University of New Mexico, University of South Carolina, Northwestern University, and Ohio State University. - Sources:
Look. Academia is also tertiary education. To have teachers not practice a diversity mindset is to the detriment of all else. Tolerance of intolerance is not tolerance at all. I think the mistake you make is attributing all of this to ideology as if it is the only thing that matters. That is such a post-modern and bleak world view when in fact the majority of people are looking for opportunity. Diversity of thinking, as AI itself sort of proves, is a driver of innovation within a given environment and culture. AI’s usefulness is directly related to the diversity of data on which it is trained and nothing else.
I will say to have DEI policy cover research is a terrible thing; but how many examples do you really have? How many are proven; scientists are not arbiters for truth themselves and colour science as much as policy and media. There will always be extreme outliers in all directions and mistakes, and what have you. The solution is to relax those constraints,not to fight back with more.
But that’s okay, because academia will once again become the domain of those rich and fortunate enough to practice it in their free time. Obviously, it has no value to the administration outside of the results it returns to business and productivity. So there’s not point arguing about something that won’t be here
>To have teachers not practice a diversity mindset is to the detriment of all else.
It depends what you mean by diversity mindset but a lot of people along those lines seemed to see it as practicing racial discrimination - more blacks, less asians and the like. I think there's a lot to be said for not discriminating by race.
Berkeley's rubric was docking people for saying they want to "treat everyone the same". Arizona universities were requiring DEI statements in up to 80% of job postings. That's not just "some bias".
If you actually look at the rubric, that statement is described as a vague response to the question, not one promoting an "incorrect" ideology, and the rubric shows other responses with more specificity that would be graded better. The source given by GGP cites this quote from another article by John Sailer of the Manhattan Institute, who originally pulled that quote out of context to promote a right wing culture war narrative for MI's flagship rag, The City Journal, which publishes an alternative college ranking that laughably ranks The University of Florida first. Caltech is 21st, below ASU, and Harvard is 37th. I didn't know who these people were fooling, but GGP demonstrated that it's unfortunately not nobody.
The rubric explicitly gives a low score to candidates who "state the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and 'treat everyone the same'".
It listed a number of other positions that it would penalize, with the totality of tbe effect being to actively downgrade the colorblind position, and reward DEI positions.
You do understand that the state is entrusted to fix problems in society and that having some pockets of society not contribute as well as other pockets is a problem, right? Pretending a problem doesn't exist ("ignoring their backgrounds") is not a good way to solve a problem. That is the error in that statement, not the "treat everyone the same" part, which is merely overly vague. If you treat everyone with the goal of trying to get them to succeed, this necessarily involves understanding the backgrounds of the people you're trying to help. Ramanujan didn't have a background in formal mathematical proof, but Hardy was able to get him to do great things by understanding his strengths and filling in the gaps.
Typically, the people against programs that attempt to solve these problems assume that some pockets of society are unfixable. Korea had a literacy rate of 22% in 1945. These people, had they existed in 1945, would have said, "Well, that's just the normal order of things. No need to try to fix it because you can't."
Why should the current rightist adminstration be tolerant of an academia that is intolerant towards rightists?
I don't think your "Diversity of thinking" approach applies, if I am reading your comment as a rebuttal of the GP? By following Popper's paradox in this case you are sacrificing diversity of thinking in exchange for an artificial racial diversity.
The GP argues that the system is set up to promote racial/gender diversity first and then ideological homogeneity to that end.
>The solution is to relax those constraints,not to fight back with more.
I think this is the solution for a free society at large, but the power play for the right wing is to just defund all academia- they don't have the right demographics or positioning to work within academia and tilt it to their side (or even to tilt it neutrally)
Can you explain how, to take just one example from my post, 80% of job postings for Arizona’s public universities requiring applicants to submit a statement detailing their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion [1], is "mostly bullshit"?
Or is it just that you support banning your ideological enemies, so you don't see it as objectionable?
> were prosecuted by the state (albeit in Sweden) for true findings that harmed that ideology [9].
is a mischaracterisation. They were investigated at the insistence of a single third party (I found no indication of prosecution, fines, etc) for making public parts of medical data which potentially exceeded their guidelines and ethical constraints given for access.
This is a problem facing almost all epidemiological studies based on detailed data from small communities.
There's nothing to discuss? Clearly this is someone who doesn't want to communicate, and politely asking them to go elsewhere is appropriate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Given the ideological capture of American science, I don't see how it gets saved without a drastic overhaul of the kind this administration is pushing. We now have conferences about decolonizing scientific disciplines, which is absurd. These fields are filled with people who believe in censorship and are completely dogmatic about whether this kind of ideology should be part of their disciplines at all. It's hard to even have a dialogue about it because the people pushing this stuff refuse to entertain any real criticism of their core principles.
Mmm. What have you done to make sure you're not letting your ideology lead you into misinformation and misunderstanding?
In my experience, people who get mad about "decolonization" tend to either not understand what's actually being discussed or they got ragebaited by something inconsequential that they've blown up to ridiculous proportions.
I assume you don't think you're somehow immune from this phenomenon?
To be clear, the only ideology that belongs in science is the pursuit of objective truth. Not my views on economic growth and technological progress, and not the push for equity or other political goals. Once you start requiring anything beyond finding out what's true, you're bringing a non-scientific ideology into science. You're essentially masquarading political activism as science, which discredits the whole enterprise
In my experience, people who get mad about "decolonization" tend to either fully understand what's actually being discussed or they got ragebaited by something consequential that they've blown up to rational proportions.
You can put in a public comment on these changes here:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10...
The administration merely doesn't want to let academia itself take all the credit for destroying American science. Such as when scientists were forced to make an ideological oath to diversity to get hired [1,2], were hired primarily based on adherence to that ideology [3,4,5], were told by major scientific publications to avoid or simply not publish studies that might question that ideology [6,7], disavowed studies based solely on them being used to criticize favored causes [8], were prosecuted by the state (albeit in Sweden) for true findings that harmed that ideology [9]. Papers were rejected if their results went against the liberal worldview, but methodologically-identical papers with pro-liberal results were accepted [10], and scientists were barred from accessing taxpayer-funded data if there was a risk their research might harm the dominant ideology [11].
[1] Required ‘diversity and inclusion’ statements amount to a political litmus test for hiring - https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-universitys-new-loyalty-oat...
[2] Diversity Statements Required for One-Fifth of Academic Jobs - https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-...
[3] Berkeley Weeded Out Job Applicants Who Didn't Propose Specific Plans To Advance Diversity - https://reason.com/2020/02/03/university-of-california-diver...
[4] A recent report from the Goldwater Institute found that 80% of job postings for Arizona’s public universities required applicants to submit a statement detailing their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. - https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/policy-report/the-new-loy...
[5] Mathematicians divided over faculty hiring practices that require proof of efforts to promote diversity - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/mathematicians-divid...
[6] Science Must Not Be Used to Foster White Supremacy - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-must-not-...
[7] Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01443-2
[8] I Cited Their Study, So They Disavowed It - https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cited-their-study-so-they-dis...
[9] A Swedish professor proved that most rapes are committed by immigrants. The prosecutor's office took care of it - https://portal.research.lu.se/en/activities/a-swedish-profes...
[10] Human subjects review, personal values, and the regulation of social science research. - https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1986-12806-001
[11] The National Institutes of Health now blocks access to an important database if it thinks a scientist’s research may enter “forbidden” territory. - https://www.city-journal.org/nih-blocks-access-to-genetics-d...
“If you write: ‘I believe that everyone should be treated equally,’ you will be branded as a right winger,” Vinod Aggarwal, the chair of Asian Studies at the university, said in an interview. - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/ucla-dei-statement.htm...
UC Berkeley’s rubric for evaluating diversity statements penalized candidates for saying that they prefer to “treat everyone the same,” or for objecting to racially segregated affinity groups. As my reporting has shown, by the early 2020s, the Berkeley rubric had become something of a gold standard, used by search committees across the country, including at the University of New Mexico, University of South Carolina, Northwestern University, and Ohio State University. - Sources:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-death-knell-for-diver...
https://www.nas.org/reports/diversity-statement-then-dossier...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nih-national-institutes-health-...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-nih-sacrifices-scientific-r...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-ohio-states-dei-factory-...
Look. Academia is also tertiary education. To have teachers not practice a diversity mindset is to the detriment of all else. Tolerance of intolerance is not tolerance at all. I think the mistake you make is attributing all of this to ideology as if it is the only thing that matters. That is such a post-modern and bleak world view when in fact the majority of people are looking for opportunity. Diversity of thinking, as AI itself sort of proves, is a driver of innovation within a given environment and culture. AI’s usefulness is directly related to the diversity of data on which it is trained and nothing else.
I will say to have DEI policy cover research is a terrible thing; but how many examples do you really have? How many are proven; scientists are not arbiters for truth themselves and colour science as much as policy and media. There will always be extreme outliers in all directions and mistakes, and what have you. The solution is to relax those constraints,not to fight back with more.
But that’s okay, because academia will once again become the domain of those rich and fortunate enough to practice it in their free time. Obviously, it has no value to the administration outside of the results it returns to business and productivity. So there’s not point arguing about something that won’t be here
>To have teachers not practice a diversity mindset is to the detriment of all else.
It depends what you mean by diversity mindset but a lot of people along those lines seemed to see it as practicing racial discrimination - more blacks, less asians and the like. I think there's a lot to be said for not discriminating by race.
Berkeley's rubric was docking people for saying they want to "treat everyone the same". Arizona universities were requiring DEI statements in up to 80% of job postings. That's not just "some bias".
If you actually look at the rubric, that statement is described as a vague response to the question, not one promoting an "incorrect" ideology, and the rubric shows other responses with more specificity that would be graded better. The source given by GGP cites this quote from another article by John Sailer of the Manhattan Institute, who originally pulled that quote out of context to promote a right wing culture war narrative for MI's flagship rag, The City Journal, which publishes an alternative college ranking that laughably ranks The University of Florida first. Caltech is 21st, below ASU, and Harvard is 37th. I didn't know who these people were fooling, but GGP demonstrated that it's unfortunately not nobody.
The rubric explicitly gives a low score to candidates who "state the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and 'treat everyone the same'".
It listed a number of other positions that it would penalize, with the totality of tbe effect being to actively downgrade the colorblind position, and reward DEI positions.
You do understand that the state is entrusted to fix problems in society and that having some pockets of society not contribute as well as other pockets is a problem, right? Pretending a problem doesn't exist ("ignoring their backgrounds") is not a good way to solve a problem. That is the error in that statement, not the "treat everyone the same" part, which is merely overly vague. If you treat everyone with the goal of trying to get them to succeed, this necessarily involves understanding the backgrounds of the people you're trying to help. Ramanujan didn't have a background in formal mathematical proof, but Hardy was able to get him to do great things by understanding his strengths and filling in the gaps.
Typically, the people against programs that attempt to solve these problems assume that some pockets of society are unfixable. Korea had a literacy rate of 22% in 1945. These people, had they existed in 1945, would have said, "Well, that's just the normal order of things. No need to try to fix it because you can't."
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Why should the current rightist adminstration be tolerant of an academia that is intolerant towards rightists?
I don't think your "Diversity of thinking" approach applies, if I am reading your comment as a rebuttal of the GP? By following Popper's paradox in this case you are sacrificing diversity of thinking in exchange for an artificial racial diversity.
The GP argues that the system is set up to promote racial/gender diversity first and then ideological homogeneity to that end.
>The solution is to relax those constraints,not to fight back with more.
I think this is the solution for a free society at large, but the power play for the right wing is to just defund all academia- they don't have the right demographics or positioning to work within academia and tilt it to their side (or even to tilt it neutrally)
Agree on the last paragraph, sadly.
Those accusations are mostly bullshit pushed on so that they can destroy it.
Can you explain how, to take just one example from my post, 80% of job postings for Arizona’s public universities requiring applicants to submit a statement detailing their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion [1], is "mostly bullshit"?
Or is it just that you support banning your ideological enemies, so you don't see it as objectionable?
[1] https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/policy-report/the-new-loy...
I picked one and looked it:
> were prosecuted by the state (albeit in Sweden) for true findings that harmed that ideology [9].
is a mischaracterisation. They were investigated at the insistence of a single third party (I found no indication of prosecution, fines, etc) for making public parts of medical data which potentially exceeded their guidelines and ethical constraints given for access.
This is a problem facing almost all epidemiological studies based on detailed data from small communities.
Can you go spread your weird obsession somewhere else, please?
[flagged]
[flagged]
There's nothing to discuss? Clearly this is someone who doesn't want to communicate, and politely asking them to go elsewhere is appropriate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In what way do they “clearly” not want to communicate? Sounds more like your feelings are hurt that someone is speaking against your political tribe.
Perhaps you replied to the wrong comment? The comment you're replying too makes a certain case with a lot of supporting evidence.
Remember that the downvote is not a disagree button.
Given the ideological capture of American science, I don't see how it gets saved without a drastic overhaul of the kind this administration is pushing. We now have conferences about decolonizing scientific disciplines, which is absurd. These fields are filled with people who believe in censorship and are completely dogmatic about whether this kind of ideology should be part of their disciplines at all. It's hard to even have a dialogue about it because the people pushing this stuff refuse to entertain any real criticism of their core principles.
Mmm. What have you done to make sure you're not letting your ideology lead you into misinformation and misunderstanding?
In my experience, people who get mad about "decolonization" tend to either not understand what's actually being discussed or they got ragebaited by something inconsequential that they've blown up to ridiculous proportions.
I assume you don't think you're somehow immune from this phenomenon?
To be clear, the only ideology that belongs in science is the pursuit of objective truth. Not my views on economic growth and technological progress, and not the push for equity or other political goals. Once you start requiring anything beyond finding out what's true, you're bringing a non-scientific ideology into science. You're essentially masquarading political activism as science, which discredits the whole enterprise
In my experience, people who get mad about "decolonization" tend to either fully understand what's actually being discussed or they got ragebaited by something consequential that they've blown up to rational proportions.
Can you elaborate how I'm not understanding what the decolonization movement is and how properly understood it belongs in science?