No, you’re wrong. Belief in “diversity” is the belief that many different groups/identities can contribute, and that none are strictly “best”. DEI is an effort to include more groups in institutions, in order to benefit from the mixing of ideas that results.
Sorry but that's not how it has been over the last 5-10 years in most parts of academia.
I've been explicitly told "WE WILL HIRE A XYZ BECAUSE THAT WILL IMPROVE OUR US NEWS RANKING, AND ONLY THAT. BUT DON'T SAY IT OUT LOUD B/C IT'S NOT VERY LEGAL."
Beyond that, when I'm mentoring pre-phds that are preparing their applications, something I need to very carefully explain if they are white males (I'm a minority but I'm a male, fyi) is that they will have to do much better on the exams and predoc research than most of their peers in order to have the same success.
Now, everyone does their DEI incantations. Everyone puts their pronouns in their emails, their pronunciation link at the end of their signature (so they don't get mispronounced), and we participate in many alliship programs in coordination with our DEI leaders. But I doubt people really believe any of this, instead of mostly being in fear of getting fired or at the very least reprimanded. My ex-soviet colleagues joke that this is even worse than in the Soviet era, because back then you could at least joke in private about the speech being BS, but nowadays anyone would snitch on you.
That logic is a hot mess. Why do you assume an implicit link between “different groups/identities” and “ideas?” It’s easy to accept your premise that everyone can contribute and that no group/identity is the “best.” But that just gets you to color-blind non-discrimination.
Your second point undoes your first point. “Ideas” can certainly be compared and ranked; there are good ideas and bad ones, ideas that have worked in practice and ideas that don’t work in practice. Defining people by “ideas” widely held by their group is a recipe for discrimination.
I don’t assume a link between groups and ideas. Its something many people have observed. This is typically called “culture”.
The thing about people and cultures is that they are comprised of many different, often changing, sometimes mutually conflicting ideas. This why ranking people and their cultures is an impossible, asinine idea.
Okay, let’s be concrete. What’s the “culture” of say Mexican Americans, and how would those differences make a team of Chinese software developers more effective?
Once you actually unpack this diversity idea it unravels. You can’t have it both ways. If you posit that people are basically the same regardless of identity group, then your notion of “diversity” being anything other than neutral makes no sense. But if you posit that people’s group membership makes them substantively different, then you’re inviting analysis of whether those differences are good ones or bad ones.
I’m not interested in doing a rank ordering of racial groups.
You're setting up a false dichotomy: people are the same and diversity is neutral or some people are better and diversity is bad.
You seem to be assuming that its perfectly knowable which groups are “best”, and that we should therefore assemble teams strictly out of those people. My contention is that this is hubris and instead we should bring together lots of different types of people, then let them figure it out.
We aren’t talking about “racial groups”—you shifted the conversation to “culture.”
So defend your premise. What is the “culture” of Mexican Americans (or any other group of your choosing) and how does that make a team of Chinese programmers better? That’s the central premise of “diversity”—that individuals from different groups are materially different—so give me one concrete example.
Are you asking about how a hypothetical non-Chinese person would improve an all Chinese team?
If so, I don’t presume to know. That would be up to the team members to find the ideas that best help them. This is the fundamental idea, put together different kinds of people and they’ll work out how to exhange cultural ideas in a way that works
If you don’t know, why are you so confident your idea is right? “Diversity” posits that, for example, an all Chinese team would be improved by adding Mexican people. Feel free to substitute any other groups, if you like. This is an idea you apparently subscribe to, so why can’t you provide a concrete example, and instead speak only in abstractions?
The fundamental problem with your reasoning is that you’re taking on faith the notion that differences are good ones. There is no reason to assume that. If differences between people can be good ones, they can just as easily be bad ones.
So you just take for granted that cultural exchange is a net negative? Why do you think people won’t learn anything useful from another culture?
Since you insist, I can provide a personal example. My former boss is from Colombia. I’m from the US. He insisted I take more time than I would have chosen when my child was born. He said this was based on his cultural upbringing in which family takes precedence over work. I appreciated that and I feel that it prevented my burnout.
Here’s a well known case: Kaizen in manufacturing, which was originated in Japan based on a mix of American and Japanese ideas then reimported to America.
I base my more general and abstract belief that cultural exchange is good on many examples throughout human history. Cultures that don’t admit new ideas generally haven’t fared well in the long term.
If you optimize for "different kinds of people" you cannot at the same time optimize for academic performance or IQ. You have to choose less capable people just to get more diversity. There is plenty of evidence that intelligence causes success on all kinds of measures, but I have never seen a study about racial/ethnic diversity causing success.
If the desired outcome is to benefit from the mixing of ideas, is that best served by using mandatory diversity statements to narrowly filter the applicant pool?
My understanding is that diversity statements are typically asking what you plan to do build/maintain diversity. Like, “I’ll start a science club at a local elementary school with a large population of underrepresented students”. It’s not just a description of how you have some uniquely desirable combination of identities.
Diversity claims groups are different, hence there must be some different outcomes, due to their different culture, language, mindset, sex, etc. If the outcomes are the same, then the only difference will be just color. I'm sure it is not what you want.
Then, given the expected outcomes will be different, why DEI is asking for equity of outcomes?
A bag has 100 balls: 90 are white and 10 are black. Please randomly grab 10, and send to to university, or jail. In this the only way you can get your DEI equity.
