| ▲ | okeuro49 14 hours 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. |
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| ▲ | enragedcacti 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I 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). |
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| ▲ | dmd 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It'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. | |
| ▲ | fastball 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Legality is orthogonal to politicality. | |
| ▲ | sltkr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How is forcing prospective academics to pledge alegiance to the American woke left anything _but_ political? DEI statements were nothing more than obligatory loyalty oaths. | | |
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| ▲ | 0xbadcafebee 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It'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. |
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| ▲ | noosphr 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In 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 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | The mind boggles that you write a literal apologia for Nazism. | | |
| ▲ | customguy 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you cannot read, why write? | | |
| ▲ | noosphr 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | >But they had a lost war and the 1920s to be bitter about, the treaty of Versailles If you can't understand why you're being a nazi when you're being a nazi, you're a nazi. | | |
| ▲ | fyrn_ an hour ago | parent [-] | | So what, you think no one should study the conditions that lead to the rise of fascism? Kind of a wild take in today's world |
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| ▲ | jubilanti 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Imagine 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? | | |
| ▲ | noosphr 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >Imagine 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. Yes, it's terrible what the English did in Ireland. | |
| ▲ | haberman 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I 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 34 minutes ago | parent [-] | | This 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. |
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| ▲ | _heimdall 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The 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. |
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| ▲ | Catloafdev 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Framing what's happening as simply 'removal of DEI' is horrifically out of touch with reality. |
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| ▲ | quantummagic 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Correct. 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. |
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| ▲ | breakyerself 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Just 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. |
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| ▲ | xhkkffbf 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | larkost 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Citation 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). | |
| ▲ | breakyerself 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How the fuck are ocean buoys based on skin color? |
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| ▲ | andrewla 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In a sense both things are true -- the current reaction is an overcorrection in the right direction, but it is still an overcorrection. The framing as this being "unheard of" is very disingenuous, though. |
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| ▲ | russellbeattie 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > "... who can claim to be the biggest victim." Right. You anti-diversity trolls are the biggest "victims" around. Don't you have a pogrom in Northern Ireland that you're late for? I'm sure there's some houses that you can go burn down if you hurry. |
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| ▲ | Kapura 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Are you stupid? |
