For reference, I am a half Argentinian - half Israeli chemist; I think of myself as a center-left liberal both in an economic and political sense; I hate fascists and racists, and I believe that STEM direly needs more diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
A thoughtful essay, with good references. I am pleased to see the mention of Ceci et al work that shows that biases against women no longer exist, with a possible exception in teaching evaluations. At the very least, we should be honest and data-driven when we talk about issues of diversity.
I broadly agree with the main points made. Yet... Do we really want neutral pH everywhere? This would severely limit the scope of chemistry we can have -- in the real world, we need both strongly acidic and strongly basic environments for the diversity of outcomes. For example, I think it is perfectly ok to have uneven gender distributions that reflect gender-specific preferences [1], as long as these unequal distributions arise due to benign factors (individual choices and preferences) and not due to discrimination. We have already achieved gender near-equity in STEMM overall, but representation of women is not equal across different fields -- more women in life sciences and less in physics and engineering [2]. Is this a problem? If it is - what should we do with health and life sciences then? Start discouraging women to go into these fields?
"Women earned 53% of STEM college degrees in 2018, smaller than their 58% share of all college degrees. The gender dynamics in STEM degree attainment mirror many of those seen across STEM job clusters. For instance, women earned 85% of the bachelor’s degrees in health-related fields, but just 22% in engineering and 19% in computer science as of 2018. "
"We can and should speak about the glass ceiling and leaky pipe problems in science, about intersectionality, about the lack of representation for minorities, about DEI. There is still much to do. But the positive side is that we have many women, LGBT and people of color as professors, and most of us agree that we would like to see more of them at every level of the university hierarchy. "
So, in other words, there are actually no problems, except the need for problems. We have a truly terrible problem in academia, and society at large - there is not enough racism, sexism, whateverism to satisfy the terrible need for "ism". It's an "ism" shortage.
The problem with this ridiculous essay is that the author wants both to have "ism" and no "ism" at the same time. And anytime some says "intersectionality", I know that this is a Woke Joke.
As to "more of them", as a STEM professional, this is a repugnant and repulsive sentiment. We need excellence, and equity is the enemy of excellence. We need more great scholars, and this is NOT accomplished by quotas, required counts of skin color metrics, etc. In addition, somehow Asians are never considered in these counting games.
so you are then defining excellence as a term restricted to your class, instead of whether POCs have any intelligence or "excellence." We do not corner that market.
Not being a racist, I don't look at skin color when defining excellence. Your inclusion of race in the issue makes you a racist or a racialist. In the 1980s, when I got my PhD, we did not count by skin color (that I knew of). The inclusion of skin color, of DEI, is destroying the great universities.
We need more great scholars, and this is NOT accomplished by quotas, required counts of skin color metrics, etc. In addition, somehow Asians are never considered in these counting games.
I think I see where you're coming from. It sounds like you're interpreting George's comment to mean that we don't need "more of them", "them" being POC. Rather, we should select people based on their ability. However, I think there has been a miscommunication. George never said that POC couldn't be excellent as well, or that excellence was a market cornered by white people.
I believe what George was saying was simply that choosing people for a STEM position based on attributes unrelated to STEM (such as skin color) is a bad metric. If we choose people instead based on their abilities in the discipline they're applying for, these people could be white or POC but that would be irrelevant to the selection process. He went further to point out that not all POC benefit equally from equity-based selection, Asians being the prime example.
Ed, George: feel free to correct me if I misrepresented either of your positions.
Hi , I agree with your comment in the main. He could have worded it batter if your interpretation is correct. I do not have experience with selecting STEM candidates, and I would not know wether equity based selection works or not. I am saying that it is easier to play the equity card when the equity applies to excellence or not. If a miority applicant has an excellent resume, which of the two boxes make the difference? Excellence or equity? I knew an exec VP of Verizon who said when she was hired she had checked two boxes, Ivy League master's degree and as a woman. She was Caucasian. Too much is made of all this; hire them and let them prove themselves. Or not. Why should George have a say unless he is on the commmittee that selects the applicant? Who even decides how to prioritize the qualities an applicant brings?
You probably don't really understand what you are arguing for.
In contemporary parlance, there are 2 views of things:
1) Equality: In this view, we strive for no barriers for candidates. In all possible situations, it's best if all QUALIFIED candidates can apply and be considered for positions, opportunities, etc.
2) Equity: In this view, the only thing that is considered is the RESULT, which much show equal outcomes for all groups. So, we must have equal numbers of women and men who teach math, despite the CONSIDERABLE EVIDENCE that males are, at the top end, better at math than women. We must have proportionately equal numbers of black and white doctors. We must have proportionately equal numbers of persons shot by cops, even though it is well known that black criminals far outstrip their proportion in the population.
So, equity is a Marxist view, that RESULTS MUST BE EQUAL.
Equity is destroying universities. Because there are group differences and excellence is not proportionate to groups.
The point about asians is that asians, for cultural or whatever reason, are over-represented in many STEM disciplines. Thomas Jefferson High, a VA high school for high-performing students, tried to limit the number of asians to increase the number of black and hispanics in the school. And that is why Glen Youngkin is now Gov of VA.
Surely, an average pH=7 can be achieved by MIXING equal amounts of 6 and 8 (or 1 and 13). But there is no mixing in universities - most are heavily dominated by an ideology that is now forcibly changing how we teach, publish, and even conduct research. The only solution is having schools with explicit free speech policies and merit-based admissions (no quotas) attract students that employers value. Then, over time, colleges that teach that math answers are subjective and fluid, defund their police departments, and graduate unemployable activists will go out of business due to decreased enrollment.
A thoughtful essay, with good references. I am pleased to see the mention of Ceci et al work that shows that biases against women no longer exist, with a possible exception in teaching evaluations. At the very least, we should be honest and data-driven when we talk about issues of diversity.
I broadly agree with the main points made. Yet... Do we really want neutral pH everywhere? This would severely limit the scope of chemistry we can have -- in the real world, we need both strongly acidic and strongly basic environments for the diversity of outcomes. For example, I think it is perfectly ok to have uneven gender distributions that reflect gender-specific preferences [1], as long as these unequal distributions arise due to benign factors (individual choices and preferences) and not due to discrimination. We have already achieved gender near-equity in STEMM overall, but representation of women is not equal across different fields -- more women in life sciences and less in physics and engineering [2]. Is this a problem? If it is - what should we do with health and life sciences then? Start discouraging women to go into these fields?
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/04/01/stem-jobs-see-uneven-progress-in-increasing-gender-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/
"Women earned 53% of STEM college degrees in 2018, smaller than their 58% share of all college degrees. The gender dynamics in STEM degree attainment mirror many of those seen across STEM job clusters. For instance, women earned 85% of the bachelor’s degrees in health-related fields, but just 22% in engineering and 19% in computer science as of 2018. "
"We can and should speak about the glass ceiling and leaky pipe problems in science, about intersectionality, about the lack of representation for minorities, about DEI. There is still much to do. But the positive side is that we have many women, LGBT and people of color as professors, and most of us agree that we would like to see more of them at every level of the university hierarchy. "
So, in other words, there are actually no problems, except the need for problems. We have a truly terrible problem in academia, and society at large - there is not enough racism, sexism, whateverism to satisfy the terrible need for "ism". It's an "ism" shortage.
The problem with this ridiculous essay is that the author wants both to have "ism" and no "ism" at the same time. And anytime some says "intersectionality", I know that this is a Woke Joke.
As to "more of them", as a STEM professional, this is a repugnant and repulsive sentiment. We need excellence, and equity is the enemy of excellence. We need more great scholars, and this is NOT accomplished by quotas, required counts of skin color metrics, etc. In addition, somehow Asians are never considered in these counting games.
so you are then defining excellence as a term restricted to your class, instead of whether POCs have any intelligence or "excellence." We do not corner that market.
Not being a racist, I don't look at skin color when defining excellence. Your inclusion of race in the issue makes you a racist or a racialist. In the 1980s, when I got my PhD, we did not count by skin color (that I knew of). The inclusion of skin color, of DEI, is destroying the great universities.
We need more great scholars, and this is NOT accomplished by quotas, required counts of skin color metrics, etc. In addition, somehow Asians are never considered in these counting games.
your comment, not mine.
Hello Ed,
I think I see where you're coming from. It sounds like you're interpreting George's comment to mean that we don't need "more of them", "them" being POC. Rather, we should select people based on their ability. However, I think there has been a miscommunication. George never said that POC couldn't be excellent as well, or that excellence was a market cornered by white people.
I believe what George was saying was simply that choosing people for a STEM position based on attributes unrelated to STEM (such as skin color) is a bad metric. If we choose people instead based on their abilities in the discipline they're applying for, these people could be white or POC but that would be irrelevant to the selection process. He went further to point out that not all POC benefit equally from equity-based selection, Asians being the prime example.
Ed, George: feel free to correct me if I misrepresented either of your positions.
Hi , I agree with your comment in the main. He could have worded it batter if your interpretation is correct. I do not have experience with selecting STEM candidates, and I would not know wether equity based selection works or not. I am saying that it is easier to play the equity card when the equity applies to excellence or not. If a miority applicant has an excellent resume, which of the two boxes make the difference? Excellence or equity? I knew an exec VP of Verizon who said when she was hired she had checked two boxes, Ivy League master's degree and as a woman. She was Caucasian. Too much is made of all this; hire them and let them prove themselves. Or not. Why should George have a say unless he is on the commmittee that selects the applicant? Who even decides how to prioritize the qualities an applicant brings?
You probably don't really understand what you are arguing for.
In contemporary parlance, there are 2 views of things:
1) Equality: In this view, we strive for no barriers for candidates. In all possible situations, it's best if all QUALIFIED candidates can apply and be considered for positions, opportunities, etc.
2) Equity: In this view, the only thing that is considered is the RESULT, which much show equal outcomes for all groups. So, we must have equal numbers of women and men who teach math, despite the CONSIDERABLE EVIDENCE that males are, at the top end, better at math than women. We must have proportionately equal numbers of black and white doctors. We must have proportionately equal numbers of persons shot by cops, even though it is well known that black criminals far outstrip their proportion in the population.
So, equity is a Marxist view, that RESULTS MUST BE EQUAL.
Equity is destroying universities. Because there are group differences and excellence is not proportionate to groups.
The point about asians is that asians, for cultural or whatever reason, are over-represented in many STEM disciplines. Thomas Jefferson High, a VA high school for high-performing students, tried to limit the number of asians to increase the number of black and hispanics in the school. And that is why Glen Youngkin is now Gov of VA.
Surely, an average pH=7 can be achieved by MIXING equal amounts of 6 and 8 (or 1 and 13). But there is no mixing in universities - most are heavily dominated by an ideology that is now forcibly changing how we teach, publish, and even conduct research. The only solution is having schools with explicit free speech policies and merit-based admissions (no quotas) attract students that employers value. Then, over time, colleges that teach that math answers are subjective and fluid, defund their police departments, and graduate unemployable activists will go out of business due to decreased enrollment.
Its too late progressives have gone too far, too long. There is no good in them as they are tainted through.
Thats why DEI has gone the way it has. You are just blind, moreover you are dangerous, because you try and imply you are a moderate.
Progressive is jusf another name for the bad guys.
Well said, Sebastian!