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> But arbitrary cancellations and delayed disbursements are unprecedented. And justifying them on the basis of politics—prohibiting, for instance, grants that i
by okeuro49 3mo ago
> But arbitrary cancellations and delayed disbursements are unprecedented. And justifying them on the basis of politics—prohibiting, for instance, grants that include language referencing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)—was unheard of until now.
It is odd how removal of DEI is framed as being political, when it is the other way round. DEI schemes were deeply political, and depended on who can claim to be the biggest victim.
- Kapura 3mo ago[flagged]
- russellbeattie 3mo ago[flagged]
- 0xbadcafebee 3mo agoIt's not odd. If the institution of it is political, the removal of it is therefore also political. It is not, however, based on who can claim to be the biggest victim. It is based on a simple statistical analysis of demographics.
- noosphr 3mo agoIn a previous project I ended up talking with a scientist who couldn't shut up about how she was 1/4th Indigenous and how many grants that could open for our collaboration. If I wanted racial purity in my collaborators it get a time machine to 1930s Germany. That someone was doing this in 2022 was extremely off-putting. That they were getting government support because of it makes the me not care much about the fact the system is being burned down today.
- customguy 3mo ago> If I wanted racial purity in my collaborators it get a time machine to 1930s Germany. If you knew more about it than some memes about racism, you'd know that the nihilism, this thin-skinned "at least we'll take them with us" sentiment you just expressed, was at the heart of it. But they had a lost war and the 1920s to be bitter about, the treaty of Versailles, not someone who "couldn't shut up" about something. The mind boggles.
- noosphr 3mo ago[flagged]
- ieatcandlewax 3mo agoYou're right nihilism is a never a productive reaction to have, but I find it a bit tone deaf to say it now after the past 10 years of ever increasing partisan capture of science agencies. If being apathetic to a broken system makes you Nazi, what would be a better approach to the problem outlined by the person you were responding to? How would you keep political agents out of science institutions?
- customguy 3mo agoSomeone once talked to a scientist who wouldn't shut up about how they could use their, let's call it privilege at this point, to help them both (use it for their collaboration), and now they are happy with seeing all science burn? Because that situation was like the 1930s Germany? Yeah no. And US science isn't getting less political with Christian fundamentalists and kleptocrats dismantling as much as they can as quickly as they can, so complaining about the previous situation more than the current one might be projection.
- jubilanti 3mo agoImagine that your people had the land you'd been living on for countless generations invaded, taken from them after a bloody campaign, where the survivors were forced into poverty in concentration camps, where they could not leave, where many women had their fallopian tubes tied without even their knowledge, where children were beaten for speaking their language, where they were intentionally and deliberately kept in structural poverty for generations, and other horrors. What kinds of damages would you think your descendants should be owed? If you heard that the restitution given was for those who managed to climb into the ivory tower of academia are now first in line for research grants... Sure, that's a trade. There are many scholarships, grants, services, and opportunities for descendants of Holocaust victims who had their property and lives taken from them. Do you support that? What's the difference? > That they were getting government support because of it makes the me not care much about the fact the system is being burned down today. I just want you to sit with that sentence for a minute. You'd rather have no publicly funded science, you'd rather have the entire enterprise collapse, just because of some people are getting research funding because they are descendants of genocide victims? Seriously?
- haberman 3mo agoI think you can easily turn this around: scientists who are only willing to do science if it involves preferential treatment, DEI statements, and other practices that half of the country despises are saying that it's better to do no science at all than to set those divisive practices aside and just do science. Proponents of these policies want to have it both ways; they're at one moment just this small thing that nobody should be bothered by, but in the next moment a nonnegotiable bedrock principle that they are unwilling to stop doing, even under threat of losing funding.
- skulk 3mo agoThis group of people you're describing ("scientists who are only willing to do science if it involves preferential treatment") is simply not real. The idea that academics would cling to DEI statements or refuse funding is beyond laughable, and could only be dreamt up by someone who has never experienced academia.
- _heimdall 3mo agoThe statistical analysis is step one, but those stats are (or were?) used as proxies for quantifying a persons victimhood. I dont actually think "victim" is quite the right word here, but the OP used it and it fits well enough.
- enragedcacti 3mo agoI don't think requiring prospective hires to write a DEI statement is equally as political as illegally cancelling already funded and approved research into e.g. racial disparities in maternal mortality, or health equity gaps for rural Americans (yes, it's DEI even if it's for predominantly white people).
- dmd 3mo agoIt's not just research into things like that. As I mentioned elsewhere, one of the researchers in my department had a study canceled because something they did "engendered a robust hemodynamic response". Someone replied saying theirs was canceled for "mineral inclusion". There are thousands of things like this. It's not about DEI, it's about getting rid of science, because science is at odds with their view of the US.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- sltkr 3mo agoHow is forcing prospective academics to pledge alegiance to the American woke left anything _but_ political? DEI statements were nothing more than obligatory loyalty oaths.
- stouset 3mo ago[flagged]
- paytonjjones 3mo agoI've never once turned on Fox News, but I have been in elite academia and I'm sorry to say the person you're replying to is dead on. That's...exactly the point of DEI statements! They are used to filter for "cultural fit", i.e. determine if you fit the political mold or at the very least capable of pretending you are with the most recent shibboleths. I've literally seen faculty searches cancelled because there were too many white male applicants.
- breakyerself 3mo agoJust having keywords associated with DEI could get a project defunded. Thee government isn't just defunding liberal projects. Look at the millions being thrown out on ocean monitoring because the Trump admin thinks global warming isnt a problem if you don't monitor it.
- xhkkffbf 3mo ago[flagged]
- breakyerself 3mo agoHow the fuck are ocean buoys based on skin color?
- larkost 3mo agoCitation needed. DEI statements are not about quotas. Anyone who was using them as quotas was acting illegally. But so far there has been no attempts at showing that that was the case anywhere (only people spouting off, like Charlie Kirks's statement about a theoretical black pilot).
- xhkkffbf 3mo agoNot about quotas? It's pretty well-known that the DEI committees don't review the statements blindly and somehow manage to choose people with the skin color they want. For instance, in the past Berkeley's DEI committee let only 13.6% of the white people onto the short list for Bio professorships in one application cycle. And said that this was a "positive change". So, yes, we know about this because the people in the DEI committee wanted to brag about it. This report is gone from the web now, but here's an archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20221006090551/https://ofew.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/life_sciences_inititatve.year_end_report_summary.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20221006090551/https://ofew.berk...
- andrewla 3mo ago[flagged]
- Catloafdev 3mo agoFraming what's happening as simply 'removal of DEI' is horrifically out of touch with reality.
- quantummagic 3mo agoCorrect. But not understanding how DEI drove a huge wedge into science (or at least its politics and institutions), and is actually a large component of the underlying rift, is just as horrifically out of touch with reality. The current crisis can be largely laid at the feet of the people who prioritized DEI over everything else, with utter contempt for opposing opinions. The current crisis is just the backlash.
- danny_codes 3mo agoI don't think DEI was political until Trump made it a dog whistle for white nationalism? Insofar as Trump platformed white nationalists, I suppose it's political, but you are confusing the causality.
- titzer 3mo ago> DEI schemes were deeply political, and depended on who can claim to be the biggest victim. Disagree. This is just defaulting to "it makes one of the political poles angry, it must be political". DEI isn't about achieving or gaining political power for "the left", but anti-DEI is absolutely about gaining political power for the right-wing reactionaries. DEI didn't just come from nowhere. Data supports the idea that groups with more diversity and representation are not only more fair, but also more efficient and robust. The point of DEI was to make our systems stronger by helping everyone participate. That means addressing structural problems that discourage and even prevent many people from participating. DEI didn't just come about because they wanted to see fewer white faces and more brown faces. It's actually based on Science! There are just too many right-wing reactionaries, and as a society we humor them too much! Everything feels threatening to right wing reactionaries. They're afraid of vaccines for fuck sake! They believe that "DEI = hating white people". Learning new things threatens the cultivated ignorance that keeps their political masters able to control them, which is ironic because the little house cats think they they are lions.