Not requiring DEI statements is a positive development! This was among the most potent among forces of conformity because it required a confession of faith, it compelled speech, as a condition of employment. However, I think it’s unlikely that procedures for hiring will weight saying the “right” things about diversity any less. They’ll just have to be more covert about how they ascertain the info to conduct their litmus tests.
Jun 4·edited Jun 4Liked by Greg Lukianoff, Angel Eduardo
Regarding Tiananmen Square. When I was on the geosciences faculty at the U of Hawaii, we had a Ph.D. student who was a survivor, so to speak, of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He was initially active in Honolulu protests against China regarding the Tiananmen Square crackdown, but became so worried that Chinese operatives was watching him that I sometimes had to escort him as he left my laboratory. That's the kind of visceral fear he lived under. Or as my old friend, the late Prof. John Furedy (first president of the Canadian Society of Academic Freedom and Scholarship) might say, he lived through real totalitarianism rather than the American "Velvet Totalitarianism" (Prof. Furedy's expression) of ideologically-stifling campuses. Neither form of totalitarianism is a good idea.
In my view, FIRE lacks credibility:actions speak louder than words. My alma mater, DePauw University, three years ago, installed a new president who immediately installed a hard-core DEI program with and built a large bureaucracy to administer it and enforce it. They came in dead last in the initial FIRE Survey of free speech. They didn’t come in last the next year, but only because the participants in the survey were expanded. I get report after report after report from students and faculty about the repressive, Stalinist nature of the enforcement of DEI at the school. They figured out last year they could game the system if they simply amended their written policy on free speech to make it acceptable to fire, who immediately gave them a gold Ranking, not for free speech, but for the written policy. If Harvard hadn’t fired Gay, the A&S college would never have been able to take the move they did. When something is so thoroughly and totally entrenched and institutionalized, it takes a wholesale change in management before something can happen. Things are still horrible at DePauw. Last year they showed remarkable improvement in the fire survey, but only, as fire admitted to me in a written email, because they greatly expanded the survey components. Where, in the past the rating was based 100% on student feedback, which is the only true measure there is, they added a lot of other irrelevant components. When one examines the score from the students, the student feedback on the total lack of free expression didn’t budge from prior years and is mired in the 25th percentile. The school raves like a banshee about the Gold rating and fire looks the other way, ignoring the fact that the only thing that counts is how the students see it.
Not requiring DEI statements is a positive development! This was among the most potent among forces of conformity because it required a confession of faith, it compelled speech, as a condition of employment. However, I think it’s unlikely that procedures for hiring will weight saying the “right” things about diversity any less. They’ll just have to be more covert about how they ascertain the info to conduct their litmus tests.
Fengsuo Zhou is a legend! Highly recommend visiting his Tiananmen Square museum in NYC.
Regarding Tiananmen Square. When I was on the geosciences faculty at the U of Hawaii, we had a Ph.D. student who was a survivor, so to speak, of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He was initially active in Honolulu protests against China regarding the Tiananmen Square crackdown, but became so worried that Chinese operatives was watching him that I sometimes had to escort him as he left my laboratory. That's the kind of visceral fear he lived under. Or as my old friend, the late Prof. John Furedy (first president of the Canadian Society of Academic Freedom and Scholarship) might say, he lived through real totalitarianism rather than the American "Velvet Totalitarianism" (Prof. Furedy's expression) of ideologically-stifling campuses. Neither form of totalitarianism is a good idea.
Thanks for keeping up the good fight. America needs it.
Statements are good, but actions are better.
As to campus statements, perhaps this really will be the “duh” heard round the world (https://open.substack.com/pub/hankwilliamssr/p/the-duh-heard-round-the-world?r=3rav05&utm_medium=ios). And thanks for the Tiananmen link. It’s extraordinary how far away those events now seem in every way possible—in time, in imagination, in possibility.
In my view, FIRE lacks credibility:actions speak louder than words. My alma mater, DePauw University, three years ago, installed a new president who immediately installed a hard-core DEI program with and built a large bureaucracy to administer it and enforce it. They came in dead last in the initial FIRE Survey of free speech. They didn’t come in last the next year, but only because the participants in the survey were expanded. I get report after report after report from students and faculty about the repressive, Stalinist nature of the enforcement of DEI at the school. They figured out last year they could game the system if they simply amended their written policy on free speech to make it acceptable to fire, who immediately gave them a gold Ranking, not for free speech, but for the written policy. If Harvard hadn’t fired Gay, the A&S college would never have been able to take the move they did. When something is so thoroughly and totally entrenched and institutionalized, it takes a wholesale change in management before something can happen. Things are still horrible at DePauw. Last year they showed remarkable improvement in the fire survey, but only, as fire admitted to me in a written email, because they greatly expanded the survey components. Where, in the past the rating was based 100% on student feedback, which is the only true measure there is, they added a lot of other irrelevant components. When one examines the score from the students, the student feedback on the total lack of free expression didn’t budge from prior years and is mired in the 25th percentile. The school raves like a banshee about the Gold rating and fire looks the other way, ignoring the fact that the only thing that counts is how the students see it.
DEI = Didn’t Earn It.