[HN Gopher] The Impact of Chief Diversity Officers on Diverse Fa...
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       The Impact of Chief Diversity Officers on Diverse Faculty Hiring
        
       Author : undefined1
       Score  : 66 points
       Date   : 2021-02-02 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nber.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nber.org)
        
       | slg wrote:
       | I think this makes sense when you consider what hiring a CDO
       | signals. Organizations that don't care about diversity aren't
       | going to hire a CDO and it is likely not going to be anyone's
       | first step into valuing diversity. It instead is a signal of a
       | commitment that already exists within the organizations and
       | therefore isn't going to generate much change. The places that
       | could actually benefit from hiring a CDO don't do it because they
       | likely already have an institutional apathy for the work that a
       | CDO would do.
        
         | bluGill wrote:
         | Organizations that don't care will hire a CDO and put him
         | (sexism intentional, though it could be her and still fit) off
         | to the side to be a figure head for the non-existent efforts.
         | If it gets the activists off their back it might be seen as
         | worth a high salary.
        
       | BurningFrog wrote:
       | Is anyone tracking what percentage of college employees does work
       | related to actual education?
       | 
       | I assume it's in steep decline the last few decades.
        
       | corty wrote:
       | The intended impact of hiring a CxO is a press release about how
       | important 'x' is and how great they are for recognizing that,
       | whatever fashionable new thing 'x' might be. Anything more is
       | bonus.
        
         | LegitShady wrote:
         | I think that's only true if you don't understand the
         | development of power blocks between groups of people.
         | Empowering someone to define policy regarding hiring gives them
         | a lot of leverage over other people and groups, and it builds
         | power blocks as members of each subclass of identity politics
         | wants access to that power.
         | 
         | The press release is the least impactful long term consequence
         | of the decision.
        
           | tomatotomato37 wrote:
           | That's only true if the position is actually empowered.
           | Titles are cheap, the Chief of Diversity may just be a PR rep
           | in the same way that janitor is a "President of Custodial
           | Duties."
        
             | bluGill wrote:
             | That isn't completely true. Titles sometimes have legal
             | implications. If a company is sued the testimony of "just
             | and employee" has a different value from the Chief
             | Diversity Officer. Even a low level HR employee (is someone
             | who should have done something about the situation that
             | brought this to court) might be able to sneak by on company
             | policy not allowing the right action. However the Chief
             | Diversity officer will take the fall. This taking the fall
             | might or might not be enough to protect the CEO (who also
             | should have done something)
        
       | LatteLazy wrote:
       | I've had to sit through diversity training and then sit at lunch
       | with a team of older guys and gently try to undo the damage the
       | training did in their opinions of diverse people. I honestly
       | think these programs are actively counterproductive in the
       | majority of cases.
        
       | prof-dr-ir wrote:
       | Almost all the academics I know already share the desire for more
       | diversity, are aware of pitfalls like unconscious bias, and are
       | completely ready to hire people from more diverse background...
       | only to find that the overwhelming majority of the applicants are
       | run-of-the-mill (say, "white male") candidates. :(
       | 
       | One could force up those candidates that would add to a
       | department's diversity, even if there is no indication of prior
       | adverse circumstances. This is however considered undesirable -
       | it might not be fair and also be bad for the candidate's
       | reputation in the long run.
       | 
       | Academic hiring can be great fun but in the end it is already a
       | completely ill-defined optimization problem. I do not see how a
       | CDO could be a valuable addition to the process.
        
         | commandlinefan wrote:
         | > the overwhelming majority of the applicants are run-of-the-
         | mill (say, "white male")
         | 
         | See, people keep saying this, but when I was in school (in the
         | U.S.) - especially when I was in grad school in the mid 00's -
         | I was the lone white male in a sea of Indians. My teachers were
         | Indian. The TA's were Indian. My classmates were Indian. There
         | was one class where there were two Americans, including me -
         | and the other one was born to Indian immigrants.
         | 
         | And today, all my co-workers are Indian.
        
           | prof-dr-ir wrote:
           | Sounds like the CDO might have misread their job description.
           | :)
           | 
           | I should not have said "white male", in particular because in
           | my field there are also a significant number of (excellent)
           | Chinese and Indian researchers. Although we should not forget
           | about the many other underrepresented groups, the most
           | visible diversity issue for us is the gender asymmetry.
        
       | COGlory wrote:
       | >We are unable to find significant statistical evidence that
       | preexisting growth in diversity for underrepresented
       | racial/ethnic minority groups is affected by the hiring of an
       | executive level diversity officer for new tenure and non-tenure
       | track hires, faculty hired with tenure, or for university
       | administrator hires.
       | 
       | This is certainly no surprise to anyone. The real question is -
       | is this because most college administration jobs are just
       | bureaucratic rent seeking, and really don't do anything to begin
       | with, or is it because trying to hire diversity is difficult
       | because there is a low supply of diverse candidates who meet
       | requirements?
        
         | undefined1 wrote:
         | what if not they're not actually seeking diversity? maybe
         | that's a red herring?
         | 
         | what if the goal is to entrench an ideology?
         | 
         | a good strategy would be getting control of the hiring process.
         | then adding signals and filters for like-minded people. CDOs
         | may be highly effective if measured on that basis.
        
           | COGlory wrote:
           | That doesn't make for as high quality of a discussion if I
           | open with that. But it's certainly a possibility, and if the
           | goal was to entrench an ideology, getting control of the
           | hiring process is probably the best way to do it.
        
         | 908B64B197 wrote:
         | Have they considered that tenure track positions are pretty far
         | along the education pipeline?
         | 
         | Best way to get "diverse" tenured hires is to get "diverse"
         | grad students. And the best way to get "diverse" grad students
         | is to get "diverse" undergrads.
         | 
         | And, shockingly, getting "diverse" undergrads can be
         | achieved... by investing in whatever "diverse" community you
         | want to grow.
        
         | lucozade wrote:
         | > just bureaucratic rent seeking, and really don't do anything
         | to begin with, *or* is it because trying to hire diversity is
         | difficult
         | 
         | At the risk of appearing trite, that *or* is very probably
         | inclusive.
        
           | COGlory wrote:
           | I don't understand what you mean by this comment. Could you
           | clarify it?
        
             | alexpetralia wrote:
             | It's not an exclusive-or (exactly one is true), but rather
             | an inclusive-or (at least one is true, potentially both).
        
         | ARandomerDude wrote:
         | Third option: universities are already seeking to be as diverse
         | as possible, so adding extra C-level pressure doesn't move the
         | meter.
         | 
         | Honestly, I think university culture is _too_ diversity
         | /intersectionality/critical race theory etc. focused at the
         | expense of other goals. So it wouldn't surprise me if
         | additional diversity is hard to achieve.
        
           | CobrastanJorji wrote:
           | Another option: the same amount of pro-diversity work is
           | being accomplished regardless of whether a university
           | classifies the person/people doing the work as C-level
           | executives or not, and the title and bureaucratic shuffling
           | is effectively noise.
        
             | Balgair wrote:
             | Yet another option: The CDO's effects are hidden as
             | ineffective and maintaining of the status quo. Yet, without
             | them, the environment would be even less diverse. Their
             | actions are meaningful, but through sheer luck, they
             | exactly cancel out any further 'backsliding' of diversity.
             | 
             | I'll admit, this possibility is incredibly small.
        
           | offby37years wrote:
           | "The next time some academics tell you how important
           | diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their
           | sociology department" -- Sowell
        
           | ordinaryradical wrote:
           | The irony is that the modern university's view of diversity
           | is so narrow-minded that it doesn't actually yield a
           | diversity of perspectives. Yes, you can bolster a student
           | body by welcoming students of different backgrounds, but ask
           | any conservative student, any Christian student, or any
           | student with no obvious ideological home in the secular Left
           | if they feel welcomed and free to contribute the conversation
           | and you will get an entirely different picture of the
           | university system.
           | 
           | Diversity is not merely a set of physical traits--it has to
           | run through the psychological core of a person.
        
             | spoonjim wrote:
             | I remember when I was at an elite institution's diversity
             | training session and the facilitator asked people to stand
             | up and say how they felt oppressed because of their
             | diversity. An enormous man stood up and said that he felt
             | that people thought he was stupid because he had a Southern
             | accent. That was so clearly the "wrong" answer that even
             | the facilitator laughed, until finding the black people and
             | women she had been looking for.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | ARandomerDude wrote:
             | Agreed. I was in ROTC at a very left-leaning campus during
             | the "Bush=Hitler" fad. It wasn't a pleasant experience.
        
               | kingkawn wrote:
               | How you think that experience rates against Iraqis and
               | Afghans?
        
               | pc86 wrote:
               | With a comment like this, on supposedly a professional
               | forum, it's easy to see why @ARandomerDude had to put up
               | with nonsense.
        
             | ylem wrote:
             | I am a bit confused by this. I went to college in the
             | Midwest in the 90s (grew up in the Midwest) and to grad
             | school on the east coast. I am agnostic, but my grandfather
             | was a baptist minister and have other ministers in the
             | family. I am a democrat. I was in the engineering school
             | and started college with a lot of credits, so the only
             | humanities/social science course I took was a junior level
             | english class--so I can't comment on classes. But, I
             | remember that people seemed quite willing to share
             | Christian views. My roommate in grad school was a devout
             | Catholic and we had several good debates in issues like
             | abortion. I had another roommate who was a libertarian who
             | also wasn't shy about his views. In college, I had friends
             | that tried to convince me that the bible was consistent
             | with evolution. My point is that at least in my
             | interactions people seemed pretty comfortable sharing their
             | views even if we disagreed. Has this changed in colleges (I
             | don't work at a university)? Again, in classes I have no
             | idea because it just doesn't come up in say a quantum field
             | theory course or when you are learning analysis on
             | manifolds. Even with coworkers, I had an officemate who was
             | very pro iraq war and we debated a lot-- I also had him
             | over for Thanksgiving dinner. Do I live in a bubble?
        
               | BitwiseFool wrote:
               | At lot has changed in 30 years. Not only are you about
               | two generations removed from the current zeitgeist on
               | college campuses, intersectionality means politics is now
               | appropriate in fields that used to be apolitical.
        
             | tmpz22 wrote:
             | > an entirely different picture of the university system
             | 
             | I disagree. When I was in college ~4 years ago there were
             | diverse discussions in all my classes and students freely
             | contributed what would be considered conservative
             | mainstream opinions without retribution - and when well
             | argued earned some support from their more liberal
             | colleagues.
             | 
             | University means different things to different people. For
             | many it means partying. For others it means the paper
             | certificate you may then use to get a higher paying job. To
             | me the heart of a university is the discussion sections
             | where students pick and prod at their lectures and each
             | other's ideas. Diversity initiatives did not, anecdotally,
             | affect those for me personally.
        
               | asciident wrote:
               | Isn't the premise already a problem? Even the
               | _mainstream_ conservative views did not result in
               | retribution. Yet extremist liberal views would never be
               | considered for retribution.
        
               | ordinaryradical wrote:
               | > students freely contributed what would be considered
               | conservative mainstream opinions without retribution
               | 
               | Sure, but the presence of these opinions is not the same
               | thing as proof of a diverse, free-thinking environment. I
               | shared unpopular opinions too--when I felt I could. It
               | wasn't always easy to do so.
               | 
               | The chilling effect is hard to measure because people
               | self-censor and self-censorship is invisible. It's a bit
               | hard to explain, but if we take your metric and extend
               | it, you can see where it falls short: just because there
               | are black students on campus doesn't mean they feel
               | welcome or comfortable to share their minds.
        
               | musingsole wrote:
               | Unless you're the one stating the views, you're not in a
               | position to know if those students received no
               | retribution for their views. What you perceived as your
               | peers listening and responding thoughtfully to the non-
               | tribal thoughts may well have been anything but to
               | someone without your set of assumptions. You simply
               | cannot know.
               | 
               | Claiming that you know otherwise is highly indicative
               | you're part of the problem when it comes to diversity of
               | thought in these venues.
        
             | renewiltord wrote:
             | People say this about tech, too, and I'm in tech and not
             | particularly left by the standards here (I support free
             | enterprise way more than anything else and can easily say X
             | lives are worth less than Y money) and people haven't been
             | dicks to me at all. In fact, people quite like me.
             | 
             | So considering that there's all this wolf-crying about
             | tech, and the warnings about universities sound almost
             | exactly the same, I'm going to go ahead and just assume
             | they're also wolf-crying.
        
               | mrec wrote:
               | If you're willing to say, whereabouts are you? My
               | impression is that the rampant illiberalism in tech is
               | _mostly_ confined to California /SV and companies
               | headquartered there.
               | 
               | Which needn't damn the whole sector, but is still
               | worrying considering how influential those places are.
        
               | renewiltord wrote:
               | I live in San Francisco. To be clear, here are some views
               | I've expressed and had others discuss with me while still
               | treating me kindly after both as a human being and as a
               | coworker:
               | 
               | * Universal tracking and rating would allow better
               | standards of living for normative people
               | 
               | * It's okay to exclude low-quality people from some parts
               | of cities since they are generally bad for everyone else
               | 
               | * It's okay for some army of people to be kept quiescent
               | with heroin since it is societally cheaper than
               | attempting to get them productive
               | 
               | * Government employees are mostly rent-seekers. We can
               | create systems far more capable than them.
               | 
               | * Most government services should also have auction lanes
               | where you can just bypass the normal line.
               | 
               | Essentially, lots of anti-equity stuff, lots of anti-
               | privacy stuff, lots of callous nonsense. People engage
               | with this all in good faith (which is nice, because I'm
               | not trolling them).
        
               | Bakary wrote:
               | What you describe just sounds like standard neoliberal
               | ideas that tech people with high salaries are likely to
               | gravitate towards. That said, some of these are not
               | necessarily expressed directly or are cloaked in
               | euphemisms and emerge more as actual behavior than stated
               | opinions. In any case, I'm not sure why you expected
               | ostracism in the tech sector from those opinions alone.
        
               | renewiltord wrote:
               | I don't expect ostracism because I don't get ostracised.
               | I expect to be listened to and it happens because people
               | in real life like listening to me.
               | 
               | I suspect lots of people are just expressing views no one
               | is eager to debate because they're uninteresting.
        
               | mrec wrote:
               | That's possible. I don't agree with most of your
               | examples, but only one of them would make me want to
               | reach for a pitchfork, and they're interesting enough to
               | trigger a "hmm, okay, how would that work in practice?"
               | reaction rather than a hardwired one.
        
               | mrec wrote:
               | That's certainly controversial, but seems to avoid the
               | major Hot Buttons Of Doom i.e. anything coded on (or
               | insufficiently coded on) the officially important kinds
               | of identity label.
        
               | renewiltord wrote:
               | I don't want to be flagged here, so I avoided mentioning
               | any of those. Rest assured that I didn't hesitate to
               | correlate "low-quality people" or who should be given
               | heroin instead of jobs with the appropriate visible
               | markers.
        
             | _jal wrote:
             | I do believe there exist some well-meaning conservatives
             | who come to be Big City College and are hammered for their
             | views. I think their misfortune is not just to be exposed
             | to the same sort (but opposite polarity) of conformity
             | demands I experienced growing up in a small southern town,
             | but also to be used as political weapons by their supposed
             | allies.
        
             | cherrycherry98 wrote:
             | Would love to see some statistics on party affiliation of
             | faculty at these universities as a proxy measure for
             | ideological diversity.
        
               | pc86 wrote:
               | It's not a good proxy, at least not anymore, so I'm not
               | sure why you would. Plenty of fairly conservative people
               | had been registered Republicans for a long time up
               | through and maybe including 2016. Maybe this was
               | different in the 90's or 00's and may have worked then?
        
               | offby37years wrote:
               | Heavily Democrat:
               | 
               | - Of 12k donors from University of California faculty,
               | only 6% donated to Trump, 94% to Biden
               | 
               | - MIT, 5% Trump, 95% Biden
               | 
               | - Stanford, 5% Trump, 95% Biden
               | 
               | - Harvard, 4% Trump, 96% Biden
               | 
               | - University of Colorado, 4% Trump, 96% Biden
               | 
               | - University of Washington, 3% Trump, 97% Biden
               | 
               | And so on:
               | https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-election-trump-
               | biden...
        
               | mindslight wrote:
               | A straightforward conclusion from that data would be that
               | universities are overwhelmingly conservative, having
               | donated to the more conservative candidate. But really it
               | just shows the futility of discussing things in terms of
               | group affiliations when one of the major parties in the
               | middle of an upheaval.
        
               | AnimalMuppet wrote:
               | A straightforward conclusion would be that you are
               | spinning that data _really_ hard to try to make it
               | support your narrative.
        
               | mindslight wrote:
               | I didn't spin anything. The comment I was replying to
               | said that 95% of faculty donations went to Biden. Biden
               | was the conservative candidate - he respects
               | institutions, supports gradual changes to the status quo,
               | and goes to church regularly.
               | 
               | What I was doing was being a bit facetious, by using the
               | plain definition of the word _conservative_ rather than
               | the contemporary stretched definition referring to a
               | movement that has turned into _radical populism_. And I
               | obviously don 't believe that colleges are full of
               | conservatives - that was a reductio ad absurdum.
               | 
               | My actual point is that it's foolish to be looking at
               | that 2020 presidential race as a proxy for conservatism
               | on college campuses, especially tolerance of
               | conservatism, when the candidate calling himself
               | "conservative" is nothing of the sort. Put another way,
               | shunning Trump supporters is in no way shunning
               | conservatives.
        
               | AnimalMuppet wrote:
               | A fair point - once you bother to make it. You could have
               | made the same point in your previous point without
               | sounding like you went full-on troll, though...
        
               | hooande wrote:
               | This is a weak proxy in this case. Could be ideological
               | conservatives that didn't want to donate to a particular
               | candidate
        
               | COGlory wrote:
               | I haven't thoroughly investigated this study or its
               | methodology, but it doesn't seem very hard to believe:
               | 
               | https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-
               | registration-i...
               | 
               | >We looked up 7,243 professors and found 3,623 to be
               | registered Democratic and 314 Republican, for an overall
               | D:R ratio of 11.5:1.
        
               | commandlinefan wrote:
               | That kind of makes sense though - university jobs rely on
               | government funding and it's usually the Republicans who
               | (at least claim to) try to reduce government spending.
        
               | setr wrote:
               | https://news.gallup.com/poll/146786/democrats-lead-ranks-
               | uni...
               | 
               | Across federal employees, that doesn't seem to matter
               | much. I also wouldn't expect republicans to care so much
               | that they'd put monetary source before job type/location
               | -- it'd be quite difficult to be a republican teacher and
               | find a job that's not significantly government-funded
        
             | cafard wrote:
             | Josh Hawley graduated from Stanford, didn't he?
        
             | pc86 wrote:
             | When I attended a private liberal arts college (04-08)
             | there were plenty of conservative and Christian students,
             | and to my knowledge none had any issues with administration
             | or faculty. Most of the problems came from other students,
             | typically because of the ideological fervor of a fresh (and
             | uneducated) convert.
        
               | ripply wrote:
               | Occupy wallstreet was 2011, it ended with the narrative
               | switching from class warfare to critical race theory and
               | systemic racism. Gamergate was 2014 when the culture war
               | really started to heat up. 08 was a different time,
               | things have really changed that much.
        
               | listless wrote:
               | I felt like it went into overdrive in 2016. Maybe
               | partially driven by a certain political figure who seemed
               | to be the perfect foil.
               | 
               | I think the irony of MAGA is that it made a bad situation
               | far worse. Or rather, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
               | The question is whether or not we've learned that lesson.
        
             | d33lio wrote:
             | People still think that the way the TV show Silicon Valley
             | portrayed Christians is a joke... it's now more true than
             | ever.
             | 
             | For those out of the loop, the gist of the joke is "it's
             | more risky to come out as a christian in SV than come out
             | as gay in a baptist town in the 50's"
        
               | driverdan wrote:
               | Absurd. No one is going to kill or beat you for being
               | Christian in SV.
        
       | Mediterraneo10 wrote:
       | Some large nonprofit arts organizations (orchestras, theatres,
       | etc.) have privately expressed that the hiring of a "chief
       | diversity officer" has simply become a necessary cost for
       | organizations. Even if you have already been doing outreach for
       | years or decades to attract a more diverse audience, activists
       | will hold it against you that you do not have a formal, salaried
       | position dedicated specifically and solely to this aim.
        
         | fallingknife wrote:
         | There is a high degree of overlap between people who care a lot
         | about "diversity" and people who think bureaucracy gets things
         | done and titles matter.
        
         | remarkEon wrote:
         | Absolutely, but it's not just nonprofits. It's become a
         | competitive barrier to entry exercise throughout industry. Only
         | the big, established players can afford to do this, and it
         | functions as a sort of tax.
        
           | namdnay wrote:
           | I don't think small organisations would be criticised for not
           | having this type of position though.
        
             | BitwiseFool wrote:
             | I think it depends on how much attention the smaller
             | organization gets. I can totally see a CDO being a de-facto
             | requirement for Bay Area startups due to all the pressure
             | from the politics in the area.
             | 
             | It's also possible a small to mid size organization gets
             | into some imbroglio on Twitter and realizes they need a CDO
             | to try and stop the bad PR.
        
           | naturalpb wrote:
           | "Tax" is a great model on which to view the situation! I also
           | think of these leadership positions, critical race theory /
           | anti-racism / unconscious bias trainings, and diversity
           | initiatives as a sort of insurance policy against social
           | media-driven outrage. A large organization pays the "premium"
           | to prevent a possible large loss of brand reputation.
           | 
           | As you stated, this functions to benefit the large
           | organizations that can afford the premiums while smaller
           | organizations will go unprotected and pay the costs of the
           | outrage that will be deflected their way.
        
         | BitwiseFool wrote:
         | From an ideology point of view, this is amazing. Imagine having
         | activist pressure be so strong that you can make institutions
         | create high paying executive positions designed to satisfy your
         | demands.
        
           | namdnay wrote:
           | I don't see what "ideology" or "views" that would be. It's
           | not like anyone is saying that diversity is bad, we all agree
           | that the ideal company would match the diversity of the
           | society it operates in.
           | 
           | It's just that hiring someone specifically for this seems a
           | bit silly. To take a coding parallel, it's as if you had a
           | "chief code review officer" to ensure people are doing enough
           | code reviews. We all agree that code reviews are a good
           | thing, and that most companies could do with more of them,
           | but we also think it's a bit silly to have n executive
           | position for it
        
             | jimbob45 wrote:
             | I'm saying diversity is bad. I want a pure meritocracy, not
             | a college campus where applicants are judged based on the
             | color of their skin.
        
               | namdnay wrote:
               | We seem to be arguing two different things. I'm saying
               | diversity is a good goal for our society to aim for, not
               | that it's a good means to get there.
               | 
               | i.e. I'm not saying that selection should be based on
               | skin colour, I'm saying that it's a good long term goal
               | for our institutions (be they fortune 500 companies or
               | universities) to reflect the diversity of our society.
               | There are lots of ways to get there, and american-style
               | racial quotas are definitely not the best way IMHO
        
             | rory wrote:
             | I think the more common stance is that diversity is
             | neutral, not good or bad but merely incidental.
        
             | free_rms wrote:
             | Which society should they demographically match, America?
        
               | namdnay wrote:
               | I guess it depends on the company, right? For a global
               | company I'd expect the top levels to be pretty global
               | too.
        
             | vel0city wrote:
             | > It's not like anyone is saying that diversity is bad
             | 
             | From the start, there are absolutely people out there who
             | argue diversity is bad and that ultimately we should live
             | in some kind of ethnostate. Then there's a whole gradient
             | of people from that end to people who think the government
             | should force integration in pretty much any semi-public
             | setting. There are definitely people out there arguing
             | diversity is bad. I don't agree with these people, but I at
             | least acknowledge these people do exist.
             | 
             | In this spectrum, there are other people who don't have a
             | problem with diversity but only wish for such things to
             | happen more or less organically. Of course there's a view
             | that if the people making hiring decisions are always a
             | particular kind of world view they're going to usually
             | select people they can self-identify with leading to a
             | self-selection bias that restricts the rate of integration
             | in an organization. Enforcing such integration or not, or
             | the level of such forced integration, is absolutely a
             | diverse range of policy viewpoints largely anchored on base
             | political ideologies.
             | 
             | Your own opinion that "hiring someone specifically for this
             | seems a bit silly" is a view you have based on your
             | ideology. Others don't find it silly, which is their view
             | based on their ideology.
        
           | jariel wrote:
           | This has become institutional.
           | 
           | And FYI it's not a paradox that you can 'care about
           | diversity' and still be bullied by activists.
           | 
           | Major corporations are making requirements for panels at
           | conferences etc. and it can get very complicated.
           | 
           | A female documentarian in Montreal just quit the industry
           | over the institutional rejection of her work which focused on
           | homelessness and happened to be mostly 'white men' due to
           | requirements of diversity.
           | 
           | In my own discussions with 'executive level people' I find
           | that they are generally of the classically liberal type
           | (think European liberal). Basically - they are nice, upper
           | middle class white men who actually do 'care' about such
           | things, but generally are not exactly well read or super
           | thoughtful on the issue. They're not 'up on the lingo' and
           | are very, very afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. The
           | 'right thing' is effectively forced upon them, and they
           | generally act to placate angry voices and want it to all go
           | away, like a Father caving to his teenagers angry demands
           | about this that, hoping that tomorrow it will all just go
           | away.
           | 
           | I've heard, even my own very white, executive golf club
           | member say the most 'woke' things lately it's almost made me
           | laugh, when I inquire about it, it's clear they have no idea
           | what they are saying, they are repeating the argument made to
           | them by someone with a more radical view.
           | 
           | Because there is no 'pushback' on the issue (everyone is
           | afraid), then things get out of tilt.
           | 
           | I'm not sure what the end-game is, but it would be nice if
           | there were some kind of 'centrist' and defensible ideal that
           | people could appeal to that enables execs to make thoughtful
           | decisions about diversity but that aren't based on 'caving
           | out of fear to activism'.
        
             | 908B64B197 wrote:
             | > A female documentarian in Montreal just quit the industry
             | over the institutional rejection of her work which focused
             | on homelessness and happened to be mostly 'white men' due
             | to requirements of diversity.
             | 
             | Homeless folks were white men in Montreal? How is that
             | surprising?
        
           | CoolGuySteve wrote:
           | Doesn't seem much different than any of the ISO9000 guys I've
           | met at big companies. Cushy job if you can tolerate it.
        
             | BitwiseFool wrote:
             | ISO9000 is a documented and defined standard. What
             | qualifies as 'Diverse' is entirely up to the whims of the
             | most vocal.
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | I was going to argue that ISO9000 doesn't get its own
             | C-level exec, but apparently Chief Compliance Officer _is_
             | a thing so maybe
        
           | EpicEng wrote:
           | The tricky bit, apparently, is making the right demands in
           | the first place.
        
             | nailer wrote:
             | Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer is a fine demand, in that
             | it requires the institution to pay attention to activists.
             | Activists of the 'woke' kind generally prioritise attention
             | over improving ethnic group involvement in a field. Once
             | the CDO is hired, the activists will move on gaining
             | attention by making subsequent additional demands.
        
       | one2know wrote:
       | CDO's are democrat party political officers who are charged with
       | keeping corporations under the control of the leftist democrat
       | party. That doesn't necessarily mean they will meet minority
       | quotas for executives because racial diversity is not the true
       | goal. Party control is the true goal, and that is why CDO exists
       | and has power to veto new hires who might be a threat.
        
       | gsich wrote:
       | No surprise there.
        
       | jxramos wrote:
       | Wow are my eyes deceiving me, but did they just blindly link to
       | anything hit on the web that links back to them? Just from the
       | titles it doesn't look like the backlinks hold too flattering a
       | view on their work? This is pretty bold and catching me off
       | balance, I always interpreted "mentioned in the news" sections as
       | curated and tailored to maximize the positive impressions of a
       | place.
       | 
       | > # Mentioned in the News > * Colleges Are Hiring More Diversity
       | Officers Than Ever - Here's How Racial Resentment Could Be ...
       | JULY 13, 2020 SOURCE: THE DAILY CALLER > Surprise: Diversity
       | officials pull down big salaries with little effect > SEPTEMBER
       | 7, 2018 > SOURCE: THE COLLEGE FIX
        
         | itsdrewmiller wrote:
         | There is a pretty good chance that is automated, and there
         | isn't a ton of mainstream excitement over a paper that fails to
         | reject the null hypothesis. (I'm glad they published though!
         | Keep those negative results papers coming!)
        
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