There’s no doubt that bias is everywhere in academia; and it is very far from being unconscious. But can men expect to win accolades in academic life? Probably not.
They are doing this at all levels -- and think noone will notice -- or rather that noone will dare to notice. Professional societies (ACS, APS, etc), academies, honor societies... In addition to blatant discrimination against men, this also robs those women who deserved the awards they got from their achievement, because based on the data it is now not unreasonable to assume that they got the awards because of their membership in the preferred category rather than their accomplishments. It also brings back old stereotypes -- that women cannot advance on merit, only by social engineering.
Love your writing and love this. Don't confuse them with math, its not their strong suit!
The only positive upside to these Marxist mandates and affirmative action quota systems, is that, whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Let me explain. In 1988 when I was graduating from McGill Engineering, on the job posting boards for new grads in the student center, ALL the major local industrial employers were posting for candidates, and women were preferred. Of all the women in my class (maybe 15%) ALL had jobs guaranteed out of the gate. The boys were on their own.
And while that doesn't sound, and isn't, 'fair', all the boys, including me, took it in stride and worked HARDER to get jobs. Life is not fair. One of my roommates, Chem Eng., middling grades, write 100+ letters and got 100+ rejections and posted them on our apartment wall as a badge of shame/honor! He ended up working as a junior engineer in a remote mine operation and is a great success today.
All that hard work for us paid off, as we all become excellent networkers, and excellent and practiced job hunters, and this has served us very well.
If you make things hard for people (but not too hard, where one is actually destroyed) most people rise above and it actually helps them in the long run.
I know of a story that confirms this from times when women were discriminated against.
A friend of mine, who just retired from her position at the University of Colorado, told me that before this frenzy for DEI took hold, there were a few women hired as engineering faculty. The bias against women was pretty intense and she had her own run-in with it. And then, things became FAR easier, and the women flooded in.
However, she noticed a marked difference between the women hired in the pre-DEI period and the post-DEI period. Those who had to struggle against substantial barriers were MUCH more capable than those who came later, and were much more accomplished. In fact, she expressed some disdain for those later female hires.
This probably applies to "race" and other characteristics as well. New immigrants, like East and South Asian immigrants to the US, try much harder and do much better as a result, compared to the "native" American population (where the term "native" does not mean a member of an aboriginal tribe). If you go back a century or more, the same was true of Jewish immigrants to the US. According to the Israeli Ambassador to the US, in Israel the high performers are those on the "bottom" of the totem pole, like Christians and Muslims, and so on.
Sometimes, we need to be spurred on to perform at the highest levels, it would seem.
My son who is white and who already a few years ago published an edited collection and a number of articles might have much less chance to be acknowledged then those who do not fall under the same damned category of whites (plus a Jew, even worse – white Jew).. I just hope that it’s not going create any problem for him being granted a tenure. He sure works hard.
The system is a horrible mess at the moment, from what I can tell. Males are unwanted, and even more, white males, particularly white Jewish males. And increasingly the ranks of the STEM institutions are filled with incredible incompetents. And they make all the decisions. So...
If you remember legendary novel "We" by prescient Yevgeny Zamyatin, i featured there as sqrt(-1), i.e. the imaginary unit and the metaphor for rebellion against the tyranny of real numbers (and of totalitarian ideology)... Nothing happens without a reason, as they say!
I got an academic award. One. It was from a major, big name university in the states. It was in grad school, the end of my first year. I got a provost's research award. I had published 4 papers on the failure modes of flow cytometry assays. In truth I was thrown into the deep end by a professor and dug my way out. (Forgive the mixed metaphors. The deep end was a slurry of deep mud.)
Oddly, that professor took great umbrage that I had accomplished such a thing in his lab. In fact, when I brought the writeup to him, he wrote back, "I withdraw from these papers, and I will not approve their publication!" I went to the head of the academic senate, who told me that I should publish because I had an obligation to do so, and that because he had written his withdrawal, I was free and clear. So I submitted them. Professor #1 took more umbrage at this I later found out. It was quite idiotic of him. Had he signed on, he could have been the hero who helped solve some long-standing problems. But the man was and is rather stupid---cunning, conning, and sociopathic, but really stupid.
After that, I was forced out of lab after lab as I went through rotations my first year. The 2nd lab, when the professor #2 found out I had been in the lab of professor #1 --- he threw me out on principle because I was contaminated. It didn't matter that I had problems with professor #1. Professor #2 wanted nothing to do with that man in any way. The 3rd lab, I was not Asian, so my role was to "give ideas" to Asian students. The 4th lab, I did a little project that contradicted what a woman (a grad student in her 6th year) in the lab had done. Her math was not wrong, it was fantasy. She threw a stomping, screaming, arm-waving, veins popping rage-fit at me. Professor #4 heard her out, then told her that I was right, which made her crazy enraged. Professor #4 told me I would have to find another lab because I couldn't get along. The 5th lab, I was getting fed up, and when I found that a (white, female) grad student in an Asian run lab was essentially being tortured and prevented from graduating because she had brought smoking gun evidence of academic fraud to professor #5, I helped her file complaints with office of research integrity (ORI). But it became obvious that professor #5 had not just approved but participated in the faking of data. ORI accused us of unclear incompetence, because we were, "just grad students", then said that "the statute of limitations has run out." ORI closed the case. The university's office that handled complaints essentially shouted "Hurrah!" (They would have had to give the money back to NIH.) But at least the tortured grad student was rapidly graduated with her very well earned PhD. (I heard through the grapevine that she was so devastated after graduation that she fell into deep depression and became an alcoholic. Since COVID nobody has heard from her.)
There is, of course, no statute of limitations on academic fraud. If there was, the "Case of the Midwife Toad" would never happen. The cases Elizabeth Bik and others have pursued would not happen. How did we know for certain that it was fraud? The animals were cared for by specialists who did everything---because the rules required this. (Those rules were precipitated by a grad student dying of a deadly disease the animals can carry.) On the days when the published paper (by a fellow Asian who got a plum professorship from this) said there was blood drawn and processed, there were no blood draws. On the days that were near, the processing showed very different results. (And, of course, the data was just too perfect.)
The final lab #6 was understanding, but professor #6 told me that if I wasn't a woman or minority, there was no future for me. I was able to do my project definition and pass my oral examination in lab #6.
Then the head of the grad group petitioned to the Dean of Grad studies to reverse the results of my oral exam. My professor came to congratulate me for this, and asked what I had done, because he knew the individuals attacking me were notorious backstabbers. He also told me that he had never heard of such a thing. The Dean did not act. The head of the grad group then wrote to the head of my thesis committee, who was also head of the academic senate. That didn't go anywhere either. I nosed around and found out that Professor #1 had been spreading nasty stories about me, saying that I stole data and "much worse." The much worse was so bad that nobody would tell me what it was; I just got grim expressions. One of those told me that while she was "truly sorry" and would like to help, she had to think of her own career, and "these people" were colleagues she couldn't afford to offend. So she could not take me. I also found out that the head of the grad group had, from the beginning called every professor I worked with and told them awful things about me.
Since head of the grad group couldn't get the Dean or my thesis advisor to sign on to reverse my oral exam results, he kicked my professor #6, who ran lab #6, out of the grad group on a technicality. Professor #6 said it would take 6 months to be reinstated, but that this move would put me on academic probation because I had no lab to work in now. In three months I would be out. Professor #6 explained to me that they had tried to get my oral exam killed so that I would not graduate with any degree at all. If I was terminated with my oral exam results intact, I'd get a masters. Before the head of the grad group could put me on academic probation, I registered a leave of absence to figure out what I should do now. This stopped the clock.
By this point, I had a few professors that were sympathetic who thought this was scandalous. I had helped one of these professors deal with a false accusation of sexual misconduct filed by an Asian grad student in lab #2. (That misconduct accusation was a bid to extort more lab space from the department, and get rid of competition. The charges didn't stick after I dug up pictures of professor #2 dancing naked in his living room in a chorus line with said Asian grad student.)
I reconstituted a thesis committee, and turned the 4 published papers into a thesis. The doctoral thesis rules specified at least 2 chapters that were of academic publication quality. Having your chapters published in a reputable journal meant that nobody could argue. The professors on my committee were in my grad group, and were not required to immediately let the grad group head know. The head of my thesis committee signed off on my thesis, and so did the other two professors. (Minimum 3 in the committee.) I walked over to the bursar's office, paid a fee to come off academic leave of absence, then I walked this and my thesis to the Dean's office, and got a receipt from them that they had received these. (I had to be sticky about that. I wasn't going to allow them to lose this paperwork as they had lost other things.) The end of that week, I got notified I could pick up my approval and notice. I was officially graduated with a doctorate.
I notified the head of my thesis committee, who congratulated me. (He and the head of the academic senate came to my graduation and walked with me.) I had a research award my first year, and was top of my class in grades. Then, the head of my thesis committee notified the head of the grad group of my intent to graduate (i.e. turn in my thesis). The grad group chair was livid, but could do nothing. It was over and done.
Then I did my thesis defense. At this university, their custom was to do this after graduation. It wasn't really a defense, it was just a presentation. This attracted about 20 people, and a protestor. One of my classmates in my year yelled that my graduation wasn't real, it was only because I sued the university and got a settlement---and other things. He was red faced and furious. Then he stood in the back with his back to me. Everyone else was a bit wide-eyed. I had to tell everyone that none of that was true. And the head of my thesis committee backed me up.
At the graduation ceremony, I shook the hand of the despicable chancellor of the University. That had a bit of backstory. I had written a letter after the academic misconduct complaint process, to that chancellor. He had actually written me back. He told me that I was wrong in all respects. He also wrote to me that he thought everything I had experienced was right and proper. He essentially told me that if it were up to him, I would have been terminated.
So, I shook that despicable chancellor's hand, and he looked at me like he was gagging on a fishbone. I would even call it a look of hatred. There I was at the head of the line with an honors sash. I wanted to kick the chancellor in the nuts right there. Perhaps I should have, or just punched him out. But I didn't. I just gave him a look of contempt. He died of a heart attack a few years later. When I got the condolence notice from the university extolling this creep of a chancellor, I wrote back what I truly thought of him and why.
Was all of that DEI? No. But a great deal of it was, and I think it can be argued that an unaddressed, very big problem that has come along with DEI is importation of the culture of corruption from nations like India, Pakistan, China, etc. Much of the rest of the world runs by corruption and graft. That's how everything gets done. DEI is, in a very real way, the beachhead for institutionalized third world corruption in the academy.
Mr. Revers makes some interesting points. Where it really counts, in the gladiatorial arenas, society will accommodate substantive worth without issues concerning equity. Gladiators are bought, sold and traded in a marketplace not dissimilar from those in Zanzibar a couple of centuries ago. Our republic emulates Roman and Greek models with predictable results.
In 2023, 70.4% of NBA players were African American, 17.5% were white, 2.2% were Latino, 0.2% were Asian, and 9.7% were multiracial or other races.
In 2023, over 53% of NFL players were Black or African American
In 2020, 48.4% of Division I college football players were Black
In 2020, 81.7% of Division I college football head coaches were white, and 15.6% were Black.
Of course we are seeing an active attempt to skew awards towards less qualified women over more qualified men...and under-rerepresented races versus Asian and White academics. While working a so called professional society I saw this on 2 levels. In the awarding of research awards for students, a DEI modifier was applied to all applicants. Applicants received points based race...0 for white, 0.5 for Asian, 1 for Hispanic, more for Black and Native American. More points were awarded for being homosexual/trans versus heterosexual and female versus male. The only point criteria that was not legally prohibited by anti-discrimination law was the point for being a first generation college student. Despite this bias against straight, white and male applicants, the end results actually reflected the student demographics of the society which reflects that generation of future geoscientists if not the wider society. A European member of the awards committee inquired about whether we should adjust these criteria to focus purely on the most underrepresented groups...Black and Native American. The poor soul was immediately castigated by white women for sexism for not appreciating their plight. I did the study that demonstrated that the results of our current biased system actually were achieving equal outcomes based on the relevant population and pointed out that if the wider society was our objective then white WOMEN were as OVER REPRESENTED as white men and should lose their favored status. My observations were no appreciated! (Keep in mind that this same society had a diversity council of 9 members 7 of whom were white women. 1 was a minority woman and 1 was a minority man. When it was pointed out that maybe more of the non white women minorities should be included they were again accused of marginalizing the status of women.)
I remember the results of a study completed some years ago. The vast majority of those benefiting from Affirmative Action in the US were not minorities, but white women.
I am wondering about whether we need to start segregating certain professions and academic institutions by sex once more.
The most fervent of the "woke" feminists seem to be desperate to replace themselves with men pretending to be women. And they do not seem to understand how ridiculous this appears.
It is time we start looking at the numbers and applying the same "quota" system used against white men to white women and other groups. White women will quickly decide they are against DEI when that happens.
Logic and math are wonderful. And are wasted on the woke left who believe only in ideology. Commissars will commissar.
Wonderful to see the serious pushback towards the woke and their DEI in the US. I'm hoping that will come to us, but the woke seem to feel disaster looming and are doubling down.
I have good news for you: We started eliminating DEI south of the Great Lakes :) So hopefully, it will also reach you soon, eh!
By the way, does anybody know if MFE will be concurrently implemented? We still need somehow ensure that there is no (forward or backward) discrimination in Academia...
Good luck. DEI is completely entrenched, not only in the system, but much more worrisome n the minds of leadership and most involved. They cannot envision an environment without DEI. Just this week at Cincinnati Children's we had a faculty forum where they discussed legal and illegal DEI. The vive was to generate mechanisms and language that allows administrators, leadership and PIs to circumvent the rules. They could not imagine a world where merit, rigor and fairness are paramount. Most of them do not belong anywhere near science and they know it, maybe not consciously, buy they know. Without the gift, they'd have zero chance at garnering any resources or attention. In my opinion, the enterprise has largely descended to being simply performative. Nothing is about mission and substance, for example, discovering novelty or creative enterprise and deep problem solving. DEI hires are incapable of any tangible production.
Are we using merit as measured by objective tests such as the SAT as opposed to subjective assessments based on measures such as essays which are easily gamed in our decision making to determine who is being admitted to the top universities, hired or promoted to the best jobs or are we currently discriminating against whites, Asians and men in an attempt to compensate for the past discrimination against others?
If we are currently discriminating based on race and sex and recent (US) Supreme Court cases suggest that we are, then don't those currently being discriminated against have the same legitimate grievances that women and blacks had in the past? Just asking.
This feels a lot like the mirror image of the woke left's bean counting. It'd be one thing if you had a large sample over time with a statistically significant result, but this is not it.
We're all living the examples daily. From awards, number of postdoctoral students, promotions, funding opportunities, etc. Also the soft discrimination, number of photos on the hospital website, announcements for presentations in the elevators, promotions and on and on. It's beyond obvious and blatant. Of course the drifters will defend such a system with virulent force, it's their only means to survive as they cannot compete in metrics of productivity. Additionally, they will destroy the legitimate standards and productive rigor by which comparisons on merit are based. Boils down simply to opportunity theft by incompetents.
They are doing this at all levels -- and think noone will notice -- or rather that noone will dare to notice. Professional societies (ACS, APS, etc), academies, honor societies... In addition to blatant discrimination against men, this also robs those women who deserved the awards they got from their achievement, because based on the data it is now not unreasonable to assume that they got the awards because of their membership in the preferred category rather than their accomplishments. It also brings back old stereotypes -- that women cannot advance on merit, only by social engineering.
Love your writing and love this. Don't confuse them with math, its not their strong suit!
The only positive upside to these Marxist mandates and affirmative action quota systems, is that, whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Let me explain. In 1988 when I was graduating from McGill Engineering, on the job posting boards for new grads in the student center, ALL the major local industrial employers were posting for candidates, and women were preferred. Of all the women in my class (maybe 15%) ALL had jobs guaranteed out of the gate. The boys were on their own.
And while that doesn't sound, and isn't, 'fair', all the boys, including me, took it in stride and worked HARDER to get jobs. Life is not fair. One of my roommates, Chem Eng., middling grades, write 100+ letters and got 100+ rejections and posted them on our apartment wall as a badge of shame/honor! He ended up working as a junior engineer in a remote mine operation and is a great success today.
All that hard work for us paid off, as we all become excellent networkers, and excellent and practiced job hunters, and this has served us very well.
If you make things hard for people (but not too hard, where one is actually destroyed) most people rise above and it actually helps them in the long run.
I know of a story that confirms this from times when women were discriminated against.
A friend of mine, who just retired from her position at the University of Colorado, told me that before this frenzy for DEI took hold, there were a few women hired as engineering faculty. The bias against women was pretty intense and she had her own run-in with it. And then, things became FAR easier, and the women flooded in.
However, she noticed a marked difference between the women hired in the pre-DEI period and the post-DEI period. Those who had to struggle against substantial barriers were MUCH more capable than those who came later, and were much more accomplished. In fact, she expressed some disdain for those later female hires.
This probably applies to "race" and other characteristics as well. New immigrants, like East and South Asian immigrants to the US, try much harder and do much better as a result, compared to the "native" American population (where the term "native" does not mean a member of an aboriginal tribe). If you go back a century or more, the same was true of Jewish immigrants to the US. According to the Israeli Ambassador to the US, in Israel the high performers are those on the "bottom" of the totem pole, like Christians and Muslims, and so on.
Sometimes, we need to be spurred on to perform at the highest levels, it would seem.
Thanks, I believe your story 100%. Making this artificially easy for people works against their interests.
You’ll find more white men in childbirth data than in these examples…
you're not supposed to notice
My son who is white and who already a few years ago published an edited collection and a number of articles might have much less chance to be acknowledged then those who do not fall under the same damned category of whites (plus a Jew, even worse – white Jew).. I just hope that it’s not going create any problem for him being granted a tenure. He sure works hard.
The system is a horrible mess at the moment, from what I can tell. Males are unwanted, and even more, white males, particularly white Jewish males. And increasingly the ranks of the STEM institutions are filled with incredible incompetents. And they make all the decisions. So...
I hope architecture is not as poisoned.
Sorry to be nit-picking here. The last formula in your article, the binomial sum, is missing the i! factor.
If you remember legendary novel "We" by prescient Yevgeny Zamyatin, i featured there as sqrt(-1), i.e. the imaginary unit and the metaphor for rebellion against the tyranny of real numbers (and of totalitarian ideology)... Nothing happens without a reason, as they say!
I got an academic award. One. It was from a major, big name university in the states. It was in grad school, the end of my first year. I got a provost's research award. I had published 4 papers on the failure modes of flow cytometry assays. In truth I was thrown into the deep end by a professor and dug my way out. (Forgive the mixed metaphors. The deep end was a slurry of deep mud.)
Oddly, that professor took great umbrage that I had accomplished such a thing in his lab. In fact, when I brought the writeup to him, he wrote back, "I withdraw from these papers, and I will not approve their publication!" I went to the head of the academic senate, who told me that I should publish because I had an obligation to do so, and that because he had written his withdrawal, I was free and clear. So I submitted them. Professor #1 took more umbrage at this I later found out. It was quite idiotic of him. Had he signed on, he could have been the hero who helped solve some long-standing problems. But the man was and is rather stupid---cunning, conning, and sociopathic, but really stupid.
After that, I was forced out of lab after lab as I went through rotations my first year. The 2nd lab, when the professor #2 found out I had been in the lab of professor #1 --- he threw me out on principle because I was contaminated. It didn't matter that I had problems with professor #1. Professor #2 wanted nothing to do with that man in any way. The 3rd lab, I was not Asian, so my role was to "give ideas" to Asian students. The 4th lab, I did a little project that contradicted what a woman (a grad student in her 6th year) in the lab had done. Her math was not wrong, it was fantasy. She threw a stomping, screaming, arm-waving, veins popping rage-fit at me. Professor #4 heard her out, then told her that I was right, which made her crazy enraged. Professor #4 told me I would have to find another lab because I couldn't get along. The 5th lab, I was getting fed up, and when I found that a (white, female) grad student in an Asian run lab was essentially being tortured and prevented from graduating because she had brought smoking gun evidence of academic fraud to professor #5, I helped her file complaints with office of research integrity (ORI). But it became obvious that professor #5 had not just approved but participated in the faking of data. ORI accused us of unclear incompetence, because we were, "just grad students", then said that "the statute of limitations has run out." ORI closed the case. The university's office that handled complaints essentially shouted "Hurrah!" (They would have had to give the money back to NIH.) But at least the tortured grad student was rapidly graduated with her very well earned PhD. (I heard through the grapevine that she was so devastated after graduation that she fell into deep depression and became an alcoholic. Since COVID nobody has heard from her.)
There is, of course, no statute of limitations on academic fraud. If there was, the "Case of the Midwife Toad" would never happen. The cases Elizabeth Bik and others have pursued would not happen. How did we know for certain that it was fraud? The animals were cared for by specialists who did everything---because the rules required this. (Those rules were precipitated by a grad student dying of a deadly disease the animals can carry.) On the days when the published paper (by a fellow Asian who got a plum professorship from this) said there was blood drawn and processed, there were no blood draws. On the days that were near, the processing showed very different results. (And, of course, the data was just too perfect.)
The final lab #6 was understanding, but professor #6 told me that if I wasn't a woman or minority, there was no future for me. I was able to do my project definition and pass my oral examination in lab #6.
Then the head of the grad group petitioned to the Dean of Grad studies to reverse the results of my oral exam. My professor came to congratulate me for this, and asked what I had done, because he knew the individuals attacking me were notorious backstabbers. He also told me that he had never heard of such a thing. The Dean did not act. The head of the grad group then wrote to the head of my thesis committee, who was also head of the academic senate. That didn't go anywhere either. I nosed around and found out that Professor #1 had been spreading nasty stories about me, saying that I stole data and "much worse." The much worse was so bad that nobody would tell me what it was; I just got grim expressions. One of those told me that while she was "truly sorry" and would like to help, she had to think of her own career, and "these people" were colleagues she couldn't afford to offend. So she could not take me. I also found out that the head of the grad group had, from the beginning called every professor I worked with and told them awful things about me.
Since head of the grad group couldn't get the Dean or my thesis advisor to sign on to reverse my oral exam results, he kicked my professor #6, who ran lab #6, out of the grad group on a technicality. Professor #6 said it would take 6 months to be reinstated, but that this move would put me on academic probation because I had no lab to work in now. In three months I would be out. Professor #6 explained to me that they had tried to get my oral exam killed so that I would not graduate with any degree at all. If I was terminated with my oral exam results intact, I'd get a masters. Before the head of the grad group could put me on academic probation, I registered a leave of absence to figure out what I should do now. This stopped the clock.
By this point, I had a few professors that were sympathetic who thought this was scandalous. I had helped one of these professors deal with a false accusation of sexual misconduct filed by an Asian grad student in lab #2. (That misconduct accusation was a bid to extort more lab space from the department, and get rid of competition. The charges didn't stick after I dug up pictures of professor #2 dancing naked in his living room in a chorus line with said Asian grad student.)
I reconstituted a thesis committee, and turned the 4 published papers into a thesis. The doctoral thesis rules specified at least 2 chapters that were of academic publication quality. Having your chapters published in a reputable journal meant that nobody could argue. The professors on my committee were in my grad group, and were not required to immediately let the grad group head know. The head of my thesis committee signed off on my thesis, and so did the other two professors. (Minimum 3 in the committee.) I walked over to the bursar's office, paid a fee to come off academic leave of absence, then I walked this and my thesis to the Dean's office, and got a receipt from them that they had received these. (I had to be sticky about that. I wasn't going to allow them to lose this paperwork as they had lost other things.) The end of that week, I got notified I could pick up my approval and notice. I was officially graduated with a doctorate.
I notified the head of my thesis committee, who congratulated me. (He and the head of the academic senate came to my graduation and walked with me.) I had a research award my first year, and was top of my class in grades. Then, the head of my thesis committee notified the head of the grad group of my intent to graduate (i.e. turn in my thesis). The grad group chair was livid, but could do nothing. It was over and done.
Then I did my thesis defense. At this university, their custom was to do this after graduation. It wasn't really a defense, it was just a presentation. This attracted about 20 people, and a protestor. One of my classmates in my year yelled that my graduation wasn't real, it was only because I sued the university and got a settlement---and other things. He was red faced and furious. Then he stood in the back with his back to me. Everyone else was a bit wide-eyed. I had to tell everyone that none of that was true. And the head of my thesis committee backed me up.
At the graduation ceremony, I shook the hand of the despicable chancellor of the University. That had a bit of backstory. I had written a letter after the academic misconduct complaint process, to that chancellor. He had actually written me back. He told me that I was wrong in all respects. He also wrote to me that he thought everything I had experienced was right and proper. He essentially told me that if it were up to him, I would have been terminated.
So, I shook that despicable chancellor's hand, and he looked at me like he was gagging on a fishbone. I would even call it a look of hatred. There I was at the head of the line with an honors sash. I wanted to kick the chancellor in the nuts right there. Perhaps I should have, or just punched him out. But I didn't. I just gave him a look of contempt. He died of a heart attack a few years later. When I got the condolence notice from the university extolling this creep of a chancellor, I wrote back what I truly thought of him and why.
Was all of that DEI? No. But a great deal of it was, and I think it can be argued that an unaddressed, very big problem that has come along with DEI is importation of the culture of corruption from nations like India, Pakistan, China, etc. Much of the rest of the world runs by corruption and graft. That's how everything gets done. DEI is, in a very real way, the beachhead for institutionalized third world corruption in the academy.
Mr. Revers makes some interesting points. Where it really counts, in the gladiatorial arenas, society will accommodate substantive worth without issues concerning equity. Gladiators are bought, sold and traded in a marketplace not dissimilar from those in Zanzibar a couple of centuries ago. Our republic emulates Roman and Greek models with predictable results.
In 2023, 70.4% of NBA players were African American, 17.5% were white, 2.2% were Latino, 0.2% were Asian, and 9.7% were multiracial or other races.
In 2023, over 53% of NFL players were Black or African American
In 2020, 48.4% of Division I college football players were Black
In 2020, 81.7% of Division I college football head coaches were white, and 15.6% were Black.
Of course we are seeing an active attempt to skew awards towards less qualified women over more qualified men...and under-rerepresented races versus Asian and White academics. While working a so called professional society I saw this on 2 levels. In the awarding of research awards for students, a DEI modifier was applied to all applicants. Applicants received points based race...0 for white, 0.5 for Asian, 1 for Hispanic, more for Black and Native American. More points were awarded for being homosexual/trans versus heterosexual and female versus male. The only point criteria that was not legally prohibited by anti-discrimination law was the point for being a first generation college student. Despite this bias against straight, white and male applicants, the end results actually reflected the student demographics of the society which reflects that generation of future geoscientists if not the wider society. A European member of the awards committee inquired about whether we should adjust these criteria to focus purely on the most underrepresented groups...Black and Native American. The poor soul was immediately castigated by white women for sexism for not appreciating their plight. I did the study that demonstrated that the results of our current biased system actually were achieving equal outcomes based on the relevant population and pointed out that if the wider society was our objective then white WOMEN were as OVER REPRESENTED as white men and should lose their favored status. My observations were no appreciated! (Keep in mind that this same society had a diversity council of 9 members 7 of whom were white women. 1 was a minority woman and 1 was a minority man. When it was pointed out that maybe more of the non white women minorities should be included they were again accused of marginalizing the status of women.)
I remember the results of a study completed some years ago. The vast majority of those benefiting from Affirmative Action in the US were not minorities, but white women.
I am wondering about whether we need to start segregating certain professions and academic institutions by sex once more.
The most fervent of the "woke" feminists seem to be desperate to replace themselves with men pretending to be women. And they do not seem to understand how ridiculous this appears.
It is time we start looking at the numbers and applying the same "quota" system used against white men to white women and other groups. White women will quickly decide they are against DEI when that happens.
Logic and math are wonderful. And are wasted on the woke left who believe only in ideology. Commissars will commissar.
Wonderful to see the serious pushback towards the woke and their DEI in the US. I'm hoping that will come to us, but the woke seem to feel disaster looming and are doubling down.
Good article - cheers!
I have good news for you: We started eliminating DEI south of the Great Lakes :) So hopefully, it will also reach you soon, eh!
By the way, does anybody know if MFE will be concurrently implemented? We still need somehow ensure that there is no (forward or backward) discrimination in Academia...
Good luck. DEI is completely entrenched, not only in the system, but much more worrisome n the minds of leadership and most involved. They cannot envision an environment without DEI. Just this week at Cincinnati Children's we had a faculty forum where they discussed legal and illegal DEI. The vive was to generate mechanisms and language that allows administrators, leadership and PIs to circumvent the rules. They could not imagine a world where merit, rigor and fairness are paramount. Most of them do not belong anywhere near science and they know it, maybe not consciously, buy they know. Without the gift, they'd have zero chance at garnering any resources or attention. In my opinion, the enterprise has largely descended to being simply performative. Nothing is about mission and substance, for example, discovering novelty or creative enterprise and deep problem solving. DEI hires are incapable of any tangible production.
Sorry for the spelling errors, I'm typing on a phone and my fingers are that of a 6'3", 210 lb blokes, bloke.
The question that everyone needs to be asking is:
Are we using merit as measured by objective tests such as the SAT as opposed to subjective assessments based on measures such as essays which are easily gamed in our decision making to determine who is being admitted to the top universities, hired or promoted to the best jobs or are we currently discriminating against whites, Asians and men in an attempt to compensate for the past discrimination against others?
If we are currently discriminating based on race and sex and recent (US) Supreme Court cases suggest that we are, then don't those currently being discriminated against have the same legitimate grievances that women and blacks had in the past? Just asking.
This feels a lot like the mirror image of the woke left's bean counting. It'd be one thing if you had a large sample over time with a statistically significant result, but this is not it.
We're all living the examples daily. From awards, number of postdoctoral students, promotions, funding opportunities, etc. Also the soft discrimination, number of photos on the hospital website, announcements for presentations in the elevators, promotions and on and on. It's beyond obvious and blatant. Of course the drifters will defend such a system with virulent force, it's their only means to survive as they cannot compete in metrics of productivity. Additionally, they will destroy the legitimate standards and productive rigor by which comparisons on merit are based. Boils down simply to opportunity theft by incompetents.