Conservatives like to dismiss Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statements as empty posturing and virtue signaling, as the politicization of science, as discrimination against conservative points of view. I would counter that by saying that they work.
Case in point: UCLA didn’t hire a professor, Yoel Inbar, in part because grad students pointed out that he didn’t support DEI. This annoyed Matt Yglesias, who wrote:
Guy says DEI statements as a hiring tool is just way to screen candidates for “an allegiance to a certain set of beliefs.”
Grad students pen letter saying that shows he shouldn’t be hired since he doesn’t pledge allegiance to the right beliefs.
That “certain set of beliefs” is the idea that we should respect all of our students, and give every one an equal opportunity to succeed. (I don’t know what happened to Yglesias’s brain, I think he has a terminal case of centrism.)
Inbar’s case was well-researched by the students, and they responded with a lengthy letter documenting his inadequacies. Inbar has a podcast with 101 episodes in which “he discusses various topics relating to current events in academia, including but not limited to: diversity statements, anti-racism in psychological organizations, sexism and racism on college campuses, freedom of speech, polarization, and conservatism in psychology.” Isn’t that nice? He provided a wealth of data, the data was evaluated, and his proposal was rejected. Evidence-based scientific reasoning! Exactly what we want!
Most concerning to us as students is Dr. Inbar’s opposition to institutions endorsing positions on sociopolitical issues he has deemed “contentious” or “controversial.” In particular, he takes a strong stance against promoting DEI initiatives through the use of diversity statements and DEI criterion to evaluate research. He also takes a firm position against the use of diversity statements as a tool in the hiring process, and specifically criticizes their use in the University of California system’s faculty application process. In episode 15, he remarks that his “skepticism about these [diversity statements] is they sort of seem like administrator value signaling. It is not clear what good they do, how they’re going to be used…” He continues, “to lots of people on the left, diversity is such an obviously positive thing,” and says that the left fails to acknowledge that these statements “[signal] an allegiance to a certain set of beliefs.” Rather than recognizing the value of DEI initiatives to improve representation and inclusion of marginalized scholars, he casts valuing diversity, equity, and inclusion as uniquely “liberal” values reflective of ideological bias. These comments frame diversity statements as a threat to ideological diversity, and reflect a lack of prioritization of the needs and experiences of historically marginalized individuals across the lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. In contrast, our institution’s position on this issue is unequivocal: page one of the UCLA Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion FAQ proclaims “Equity, diversity, and inclusion are integral to how the University of California conceives of “merit.”
So here’s this guy who opposes a key value promoted by the university, the need “to improve representation and inclusion of marginalized scholars,” and he didn’t get hired. Are we supposed to hire people who oppose representation and inclusion?
Inbar did not do well in his on-campus interview, either.
Our concerns were deepened after the graduate student meeting with Dr. Inbar on Monday, January 23rd. During this meeting—which traditionally takes the shape of graduate students asking questions and interviewing faculty candidates—he initially prioritized asking us questions about the Psychology Department and life as graduate students, which would presumably inform his decision on whether to accept a job offer from our program. We interjected to reframe the discussion and ask pointed questions about his past and prospective efforts in advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts both in mentorship and in his line of research. To most of us in the room, his answers to these questions were less than satisfactory, and some responses were outright disconcerting. For example, he responded by indicating that his “work does not really deal with identity, so these issues don’t come up for [him] in a research context.”
As Dr. Inbar studies issues of morality, social attitudes, and political ideology, including how moral psychology shapes prejudice (e.g., Inbar et al., 2009; Inbar et al., 2012), it was deeply troubling to hear that he does not believe identity (i.e., individual background as it pertains to race, gender, sexuality, class, or ability) has bearing on these research questions. It is our perspective that considerations of identity cannot accurately be disentangled from the study of prejudice and moral behavior, and that disseminating these findings requires a high level of sensitivity to how results might be misrepresented or misunderstood given real-world sociopolitical conditions.
Wow. He studies “morality, social attitudes, and political ideology,” but he doesn’t think identity is relevant to his work. OK, man, you don’t get the job, and further, that calls into the question the value of all your published work.
This is exactly what job applications and interviews are supposed to do, screen applicants to determine whether they are good candidates for a position. We also want students to contribute to the decision — every time we have a job candidate on my campus, I announce it in my classes and tell them that we truly, honestly want their input. If they don’t think the person is someone they’d want teaching them, say so! We don’t usually expect a detailed four-page analysis that required research into the papers and podcasts of the candidate, but that is an impressive effort.
Of course, now the media are irate that Students Pressured University Not To Hire Professor Who Questioned ‘Diversity’ Statements
. Pressured? No. The students did as requested and as they were supposed to do and evaluated the quality of a candidate and made a recommendation. That’s going to be the message everywhere, though, and they seem to be unaware of the fact that they are effectively poisoning his job search. If he were desperate enough to apply to UMM, for instance, his notoriety means he wouldn’t get past the initial screening of applications. Like we’d want to hire someone at our minority-serving institution who thinks diversity is a waste of time.
On the other hand, he’ll be greeted with open arms at the University of Austin.
Wow. Just wow. Someone’s lived their entire life in an ivory tower. More likely, though, it’s he just wishes large segments of the human population were made irrelevant.
I have no idea who this guy is but being rejected by UCLA isn’t going to matter one bit.
It just makes him into a martyr for the right wingnuts.
He will fall upwards to some right wing college like NoLiberty U., Hillsdale, Patriot U. etc.. or get a job at one of the many so called right wing think tanks.
If you want to see purges and witch hunts in action, just look at the bible colleges and right wing universities.
Their governing model is Stalinism and they preriodically fire professors who don’t follow the party line.
Around a decade ago, the xian universities like La Sierra and Calvin went through their biology departments and fired biologists who accepted the Theory of Evolution.
and
I have no idea who this guy is.
That he is at the University of Toronto in the department of psychology is a very bad sign.
We all know which rock Jordan Peterson lived under for a long time.
U. of Toronto department of psychology.
He seems to be a tenured faculty member there.
So, why is he looking for a job at UCLA? Is U. of Toronto sick of hiring racist haters yet?
Well, that sure sounds like the product of some serious scientific research.
Scratch someone who’s anti-DEI, sniff a bigot. Every time.
Inbar’s claim that his “work does not really deal with identity, so these issues don’t come up for [him] in a research context” is pretty much a lie. Here is a paper where he was the lead author: Political Diversity in Social and Personality Psychology. He explicitly studies psychology professors and their self-described identities as conservative or liberal. Maybe some identities are more important to him than others, but nevertheless he felt he had to directly deceive in his on-campus interview, which should itself be disqualifying.
@3 raven
“Around a decade ago, the xian universities like La Sierra and Calvin went through their biology departments and fired biologists who accepted the Theory of Evolution.”
The fired Calvin professors were in the religion department. The biology department supports evolution. Calvin has always been inconsistent that way.
raven @2: But would those Christian institutions hire a person with Jewish background? His name is Hebrew (and the last name a modern, rather than traditional name), he is either Israeli or the son of an Israeli.
IOW, he might be too ‘diverse’ for Christian universities of that line.
Sure.
If he converted to xiantiy.
And it has to be the One True Sect of xiantiy.
And he has to sign their Statement of Belief and recite whatever magic spells (such as the Apostle’s Creed) that they believe in.
I went and read a few of the articles about Yoel Inbar.
He doesn’t seem like the worst person in the world.
He wants to move to LA because his partner got a job offer at UCLA.
But there sure are a whole lot of Red Flags.
In his interviews at UCLA he was vague and tried to walk back a lot of what he said in the past.
It’s likely that UCLA was afraid of getting another Jordan Peterson or Peter Boghossian. Some right wingnut hater who doesn’t do any academic research worth noting that you can’t fire because they have tenure. And if you do fire them, they will sue you and then you have a years long court case while they become a martyr and go to Austin U. or the Hoover Institute.
Peter Boghossian didn’t have tenure but he had a high enough profile to make him difficult to get rid of.
It’s too high of a risk.
Ironically, now that Yoel Inbar has gone public with his axe to grind, his employment opportunities have gotten both more restrictive and better.
No one at a mainstream public university who is alert is going to even interview him. If you do and don’t hire him (which is likely, e.g. Martin Gaskell at Kentucky), it sets you up for a lawsuit.
OTOH, he is now a right wingnut martyr and that makes him very employable at their institutions.
You do realize that that podcast he was criticized about was from 2018. Is it not possible his views have changed since then?
Was he was going to be offered the job as decided by the hiring committee? If so, was that decision based on merit? What is the point of a hiring committee, if they can be pressured by students to reject candidates the committee liked? While I have no problem with diversity hiring, I do think merit is the most important criteria. It reminds me of that old WKRP episode where another radio station is trying to hire Venus to be their token black DJ, just because he is black, and not based on what they think of his DJ abilities. (He declines their financially-enticing offer, as he wants work where he is respected as a person)
It is more likely they haven’t changed.
If you read the articles, they didn’t.
He was interviewed and didn’t do well in the interviews.
That hadn’t been decided.
That wasn’t what happened.
You do realize that the whole point of a University is to educate students? In fact, these days especially, they are the ones that pay for the University and keep it alive with their tuition and fees.
They aren’t just there as decorations.
No students=no money=no university
raven @ # 2: He will fall upwards to some right wing college like …
… the State University System of Florida. (That’s five links, each on separate topics – I could’ve found more sooo easily…)
Well, he’s a true leader in that effort. He’s made himself utterly irrelevant.
And as PZ said, ” We don’t usually expect a detailed four-page analysis that required research into the papers and podcasts of the candidate, but that is an impressive effort”. Given that students have far better and more pressing things to do, it speaks volumes that such efforts were expended!
Good job on the students that thoroughly hammered that nail home, then properly and deeply set it. I doubt it’ll make an impression on him though.
As for the right wingnuts, counter their complaints of student pressure with the students having the option of exercising options elsewhere in a free market, taking tuition with them to schools that do value what they value.
It’s always fun expending their favorite ammunition against them.
@14
The committee asked: Was he prepared to defend those comments now?
“To be honest, I wasn’t, because this episode is like, four and a half years old,” Inbar said on Very Bad Wizards. But he explained his current stance: “The very short version is, I think that the goals are good, but I don’t know if the diversity statements necessarily accomplish the goals.”
Oh gee, a right wingnut meme. Merit.
I hope you aren’t trying to channel Anna Krylov.
We’ve already dissected her and there was nothing there.
Yes, it was based on merit, however vague and ill defined that right wingnut buzzword is defined.
Part of merit for a faculty member is being able to get along and interact with other faculty members, the university staff, and the students.
A whole lot of those people aren’t going to be white cis het males and openly hating them is going to make your job impossible.
Being a smart, racist, misogynistic jerk isn’t going to work at a place like UCLA.
People like that end up at bible colleges, NoLiberty U.,Hillsdale, Patriot, or DeSantis dream colleges in Florida.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/this-professor-criticized-diversity-statements-did-it-cost-him-a-job-offer
This article has some info on what happened.
The Red Flags are there. If you look at Inbar closely, he doesn’t look at all like someone you want around other people.
This is stupid.
If you can’t even Fake being able to deal with diverse people, then why hire someone like that?
Inbar: “But what you get is somebody writing about what they believe, and perhaps what they’ve done to demonstrate that.”
So, what is wrong with that.
We can’t read minds or predict the future so we go with the data we have.
His solution is what? Flip a coin?
More Red Flags.
He says he isn’t anti-DEI and then makes anti-DEI statements in the next paragraph.
He doesn’t think people should speak out on things like Georgia’s abortion law.
Georgia’s abortion law makes getting an abortion a felony, murder punishable by the death penalty.
I wouldn’t hire this guy ever.
It’s too great a risk.
You could easily end up with a Jordan Peterson, some hate merchant who does nothing but take up space that you can’t easily fire because he has tenure.
And then when you do get rid of him, he sues you and you spend a few years in court and
$500,000 in legal fees.
It’s a big world, hire someone you want, not someone whose goal in life is to be a right wingnut martyr.
Not smart.
It’s way too late for that.
He hasn’t even been hired at UCLA and already he is…causing huge problems for UCLA.
Anyone with a brain is going to avoid him now.
As if on cue, and somewhat apropos, our good friends the Supremes have just upended another mainstay of civil liberties: race can’t be considered in university admissions. That race was was long considered in university admissions…if you’re black, don’t bother asking…is not part of their equation. By my read, they just defined “affirmative action” as a form racism, essentially…that sounds a familiar note in America’s current climate. Other things to follow? Gender? Sexual orientation? Et cetera. Doing something restorative for people who have by systematically excluded from opportunities is now passé. I wonder how long it will take for Republicans in Southern universities to reverse some 60 years of effort to redress past wrongs.
Racists have been pretending affirmative action was racism so it’s unsurprising the law will pretend too.
The act of correcting for racist bias isn’t racism. I need to look at the wording but attention to race isn’t racism. I have to hammer that one over and over.
I’m going to have goad that the law is wrong upfront to deal with people insisting while incapable of quoting decisions.
We’ll need shaming and shunning of people involved in any resulting racist hiring practices.
@18
So I use the term ‘merit’, and I’m suddenly a right wingnut. Ad hominem much?
If you are having surgery, do you want the doctor to be very good at their job, or just from a minority? Certainly there are doctors who are both, but regardless I would be more concerned about the former than the latter.
So did Inbar satisfy all the criteria for the job or not? That is what merit refers to in this context.
Regarding DEI statements, he said: “The very short version is, I think that the goals are good, but I don’t know if the diversity statements necessarily accomplish the goals.”
That doesn’t make him unable to “get along and interact with other faculty members, the university staff, and the students” or “a smart, racist, misogynistic jerk”.
A troll lying.
We haven’t see that in a few hours.
You are an obvious right wingnut troll here to defend right wingnut trolls.
Also sealioning.
No, calling you what you are is not persecution.
You are doing exactly what Inbar is doing. Trying to hide your right wingnut views because they are socially unacceptable.
No!!!
He didn’t even come close.
To even claim this shows that you are stupid and unable to read for comprehension.
Not smart.
It’s way too late for that.
He hasn’t even been hired at UCLA and already he is…causing huge problems for UCLA.
Anyone with a brain is going to avoid him now.
I’m going to amplify this point a bit.
Yoel Inbar hasn’t even been hired at UCLA and already he has caused them huge problems.
I’m sure a whole lot of right wingnut lawyers are already offering to defend him for free and sue UCLA.
He may end up doing exactly that and cost them a million dollars or so in legal fees and drag it out in court for a few years.
A guy like that is a trouble maker who is going to wreck his department with feuds and lawsuits and bad publicity like a Jordan Peterson or Peter Boghossian.
He wasn’t being hired to cause trouble and wreck the department, he was being hired to be a professor and do scholarly things like teach, research, and mentor students.
All the other mainstream universities can see this and they aren’t even going to interview him.
Because interviewing Yoel Inbar is just asking for trouble, bad publicity, trolls like Bacon coming out of the woodwork, probable lawsuits, and maybe stochastic terrorism from the right wingnuts such as just happened in Canada.
I’m sure the UCLA psych department is getting death threats right now.
Inbar doesn’t seem all that bright but you can tell that he is slowly realizing that being the exact opposite of what a university wants to hire isn’t a good job hunting strategy.
Too late Inbar, that ship has already sailed.
It’s a big world and there are hundreds of more qualified people for UCLA to hire.
Yes! Keep him out of my state. We should probably assume that his partner is also a right wingnut.
It seems to me that both of them would fit in much better in Florida or Texas.
Robro, thanks for bringing up the not-so-supreme court decision. I immediately wondered how California and other blue states are going to handle this. I’m certain that our governor will have some comments on this subject.
@ # 20 robro
“By my read, they just defined “affirmative action” as a form racism, essentially…that sounds a familiar note in America’s current climate. ”
Yep. I was just looking at a thread on Youtube. The righties are out in force, and they’re just cackling with delight. From now on it’s going to be merit, merit, merit, nothing but merit, and skin color won’t mean a thing. I’m sure that’s the way it’s going to be.
I’m even happier I’ve been actively using ignorance and incompetence in political debates. People don’t just exclude useful words like racism.
BACONSQAUDgaming @22 blithered thusly:
If you are having surgery, do you want the doctor to be very good at their job, or just from a minority?
On what grounds do you assume either that those two things are mutually exclusive, or that anyone is actually making that sort of choice?
Certainly there are doctors who are both, but regardless I would be more concerned about the former than the latter.
If there are “doctors who are both,” as you just admitted, then why do you think you have to make that choice? Are you even smart enough to understand how you just exposed and undermined your own false-choice argument?
Also, if a clinic or hospital hires a surgeon from an under-represented group, maybe they’d bring a perspective to their work that their colleagues from the majority group wouldn’t have. Don’t you think that would count as “merit?”
PS: Please change your name already. It sounds incredibly stupid and I, for one, am sick of seeing it. I know some people have called my screen-name stupid, but at least it’s a meaningful phrase with real words that I’ve spelled correctly.
@BACONSQUADgaming
i’ve been in the position of having satisfied all the requirements for a job and then some and not getting the job specifically because i’m transgender. this is not an assumption or opinion. i know this to be a fact and learned about it years later when an acquaintance who was part of the discussion on who should be hired for the job confessed this to me. i was passed over, being the most qualified for a specific job solely because of my gender identity. and there’s no recourse for me. the company is totally within their lawful rights to discriminate against me in this manner, even though i satisfied all the criteria for the job.
if you were in the position of my acquaintance, would you have done what they didn’t and spoken up on my behalf like you are for Inbar?
Speaking of inclusion, I read that membership in the flat-earth society is growing all around the globe.
as Flip Wilson would say: the devil made me do it!
But, seriously, the prevalent human tendencies of selfishness and dishonesty make the push for DEI important. The SCROTUM ruling dumping affirmative action is quite premature. Of course, affirmative action would not be needed if we lived in a society that prioritized education over Crapitallist BS, because we would have a fully funded public education system that would provide sufficient quantity and quality for everyone.
Civil rights eroding rapidly away, smog is back, maybe we’ll get a second chance at another Cuban missile crisis and go thermonuclear this time.
Because, for the right, backwards is better and the sooner we get back into caves, the better.
Another Red Flag for Yoel Inbar.
He is not just a right wingnut crackpot and a troublemaking entitled white guy.
He ia also very stupid and displays astoundingly poor judgement.
How did the entire world find out about Yoel Inbar’s interview failures at UCLA anyway? The stupid right wingnut told the entire world what happened. Proof.
And who are the Very Bad Wizards. Right wingnut kooks.
Yoel Inbar slimed his prospective employer UCLA and their Department of Psychology. No way in hell are they going to hire him now.
I’ms sure they are devoutly hoping his partner doesn’t come either. That is likely to be a mistake in the making. I doubt if his partner’s ideology is any different from his own.
He has also made sure that no mainstream university will even interview him.
It will cause them huge problems and he will slime them too.
Inbar has channelized his career to right wingnut think tanks and private right wingnut colleges.
This is very stupid.
And, you can tell that the slow witted Yoel Inbar is just now slowly realizing that sliming a potential employer was not a smart thing to do.
Cthulhu, the Red Flags on Yoel Inbar are numerous and gigantic.
I’ve seen a lot in academia but nothing quite this bad.
.1. Anti-diversity.
.2. Lies about it.
.3. Deliberately goes out and tries to cause huge problems for UCLA by accusing them of being Social Justice Warriors who somehow just don’t like racist, misogynistic jerks.
Who is going to hire a trouble making kook who can’t even act normal for one day of a job interview?
.4. Yoel Inbar is dumb. Stupid. A slow witted nonthinker.
No one smart looking for a job is going to be this clueless.
Ironically, UCLA was doing him a big favor.
There wasn’t a job opening.
They opened one, on a partnership basis since his partner had already been offered a job.
This is a favor to keep couples together, something difficult in academia.
No good deed goes unpunished!!!
The hand that feeds gets bitten by rabid right wingnuts.
I’m amazed that he didn’t skip directly to “shrill”.
I’m guessing that only white cishet males get to be “intense” without repercussions. Except the same behavior labeled “intense” in a woman of color would be labeled “dedicated” and “driven” and “committed” when displayed by a white cishet man.
silvrhalide, “confident” and “assured”.
@13
Ahhh, the strangely undefined “merit”.
Well, if you really want hiring (and by extension, student admissions) purely by “merit”, which I am interpreting as “scholastic aptitude” for this post, then colleges and universities would be filled largely (but not exclusively) by a wide variety of… Asians. The model minority. Whose assorted cultures have a tendency to value education and scholastic aptitude and hard work (as opposed to sports ability.)
For that matter, if you are really so committed to “merit”, you shouldn’t have any problems getting rid of all the sports teams and sports scholarships or preferences in admission based on athletic ability. After all, you are at a college or university to learn academic skills and knowledge, not how to toss a ball around better than other people, right? Think of how much money could be saved by not running an Division 1 sports program/team! Money that could buy a concert hall instead of a sports arena or an electron microscope instead of sports equipment and travel money.
Heck, if you really want to hire (and admit) based solely on “merit”, get rid of legacy students. No more points or quiet admissions because you had the random good luck to be born to one or more parents who themselves might have only been admitted because they had an alum parent.