> Sure I see a lot of hand waving here about that, but this community is notably not necessarily the most diverse
HN, like the American tech industry in general, is almost certainly more diverse than the Stanford administration and faculty. Moreover, diversity in HN is organic. Folks on here may happen to be Laotian American (or even Laotian—HN is international). Nobody selected them for inclusion in the community.
By contrast, diversity at Stanford, especially among faculty, is carefully curated by the overwhelmingly white faculty. Your average immigrant from a former colony may not care about eliminating “colonial language.” But the white Stanford faculty wouldn’t hire those immigrants into the cultural studies department of the university. You’re much more likely to get a job at Stanford by writing papers on how colonial terms “cause harm.”
The faculty system and widespread use of race and nationality conscious hiring gives white people at elite universities tremendous power. There’s few other organizations where the white leadership gets to hand pick any minority representation based on its own ideological priors.
The current administration at Stanford seems fairly diverse but over-represented by Jewish people[1]. I am not disagreeing that people in other global communities might not care about these issues. Some people abroad are surprisingly attuned to US political wokeness though.
I imagine if you are white you might compensate for that by being more woke to protect your career. This is, after all, still a majority white country in spite of the admissions policies of elite universities and the racial makeup of tv commercials and the immigration policies. So that may reflect on staff hired decades ago. Although I believe elite universities will begin to change the racial makeup of their staff and students more aggressively since the status quo is indefensible.
That doesn’t address the problem I’m talking about, since the process of “changing the racial makeup” of these institutions is going to be done by existing white faculty and administration hand picking the minorities that appeal to elite whites.
As they say, you can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools. We shouldn’t be looking to academics hand picked by white elites to figure out how to police minority communities, or what words to use or not use with respect to minorities, etc. Elite universities are inherently bad vehicles for leading the discourse on those issues.
Your conception of how academic hiring works is wrong. Even if it started as you describe, the new minority hires will have a vote on the next hire equal to than of the more senior faculty. If they find themselves on the hiring committee, they have even more power to shape the hiring process. Hiring committees also include a member outside of the department, so there is external input as well.
This system has shown to increase diversity in academic departments, and it’s not something the white faculty can conspire to keep under control. The issue is that progress is slow for two reasons: 1) positions open up rarely and 2) the hiring pool is limited. These are issues that are being worked on, but progress is being made.
> This system has shown to increase diversity in academic departments
Minorities aren’t a monolith or fungible. The fact that Harvard hires some minorities doesn’t change the fact that those minorities were hand picked by white elites and operate within an institution dominated by elite whites.
Now, that doesn’t mean those minorities can’t be great professors, as individuals. But it does mean that their views on minority issues shouldn’t be give any more weight than those of the elite whites that selected them and on whom they depend for their position and status. Leadership on those issues must instead come from people who are put in positions of leadership by minority groups themselves.
Sure, "white elites". It's comparable to the USSR imo. Universities are heavily politicized because the university has a privileged role in society and is therefore useful for executing an agenda. Diversity does not mean what you think it means. You might as well complain about the left more broadly because they have an agenda which is not "we want equality and to help all people regardless of race". It's not that at all.
> The fact that Harvard hires some minorities doesn’t change the fact that those minorities were hand picked by white elites and operate within an institution dominated by elite whites.
But it does change the makeup of who gets to make future decisions. I also feel like you're doing here what you often decry when white liberals do it: infantilizing minorities. You're discounting and minimizing the people who are not white elites, who do have a voice in making such decisions, as if they are completely invisible or beholden to other forces.
For instance, our faculty search committee had 1 white male on it. The first round interviews were done by the committee, final selection of candidates was done by the whole faculty, and the vote on who to hire was unanimous. The chair, who is not a minority transmitted the decision to the dean, who is a minority, and the candidate was hired. This person will be serving on the hiring committee next semester. I'm failing to see the invisible hand of the white elites here, who have somehow masterminded this turn of events.
And even if they did, why should we assume that minorities who are hired by white elites are somehow beholden or deferential to them? These faculty have their own agency and are highly educated in their own right. They can make up their own minds.
> HN, like the American tech industry in general, is almost certainly more diverse than the Stanford administration and faculty.
The point I was trying to make was that HN has some very real and very wide ideological blindspots. It's true what you say that there are many viewpoints here on HN, but they aren't all uniformly represented. That said, the commentariat here is also self selected, so not necessarily representative of the general population.
> By contrast, diversity at Stanford, especially among faculty, is carefully curated by the overwhelmingly white faculty.
That may be true, but at the same time there are more stakeholders who have input into initiatives like these.
> But the white Stanford faculty wouldn’t hire those immigrants into the cultural studies department of the university. You’re much more likely to get a job at Stanford by writing papers on how colonial terms “cause harm.”
Do you have evidence that such people didn't have input or their input wasn't allowed? Or are you just speculating to make a point? You seem fixated on white Stanford faculty, but it's not clear that the linked list is even a product of the faculty, it seems like it's a product of a committee of the IT department. It seems to me like you just have some ideological things to say about Stanford faculty without really addressing the facts on the ground re: this list.
> If you can't even make your point without repeatedly using one of the forbidden words by accident, then perhaps the forbidden word list is too broad.
I'm not accidentally using forbidden words, I'm intentionally using words that are not in fact forbidden, because no one (especially Stanford) has forbidden anyone from saying them. Stanford doesn't police my language, I can use whatever words I want. If someone is offended by my words they can tell me.
But Stanford is not in the same position I am, posting on an internet forum. They are a corporate entity looking to manage their brand. I'm going to keep making this point, because so far no one so far has really engaged with it, but this is no different than Coke having an internal style guide for how their logo can be used and in what contexts.
We have engaged with your argument. You just can't seem to understand that this is a domino falling into a field of dominos, not a barren desert. You don't think this will be cited by others? At the bottom of the document, they cite the university lists from that fed into this one. These are dominos, and they are not alone.
Where? I’ve read all the replies. How is Stanford deciding what should be used on their sites different from how Coke decides how its logo can be used?
> You just can't seem to understand that this is a domino falling into a field of dominos, not a barren desert.
I understand all of that. So at best your argument is that this is a slippery slope. Moving past the fallacious nature of that argument, you still haven’t articulated any conceivable harm to you or society. Even if all of the dominoes you foresee fall, then where are we? Are you restricted by government thought police at that point, and that’s what you’re worried about?
Or are you worried about your employer restricting your speech? If so, I refer you to my Coke argument; you are already subject to a list of words approved by your employer. The only difference maybe is that it’s implicit, but that doesn’t make it any different than what Stanford has here (except less transparent and delivered by capriciously by fiat instead of created by the community with input from across the company).
What does it matter to you if some dominoes are falling elsewhere?
It’s not only a correct take, but a critical one. Elite universities taking over the discourse has the perverse effect of diverting political and cultural power from minority groups to elite whites (along with a small group of elite minorities hand picked by those whites).
"Latinx" also proves that the motivation is grounded in bad faith, for if someone were truly offended by the gendered term "Latino", they would surely use "Latin" instead of creating an ostentatious monstrosity that is totally alien to both English and Spanish.
Or, like the people who came up with :-), lmfao, wtf, l33t, pwned!!!111!1 and similar internet shortcuts, they were communicating in a text only medium and didn't need to worry about pronunciation?
The discourse around policing is another one. Eric Adams addressed this in his recent op ed on moving the Democratic primary to South Carolina: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/opinions/democrats-2024-prima.... Adams writes that the move could help “address[] the concerns of all people of color and working-class people, many of whom feel the party has misrepresented their beliefs.”
Adams is talking about white political elites rather than white academics, but as Elizabeth Warren illustrates, there’s a lot of ideological overlap between the two.
Wait, how does the effort ostensibly against "elite whites" and in support of minorities, that looks exactly like many similar efforts by minorities and their advocates aimed against "elite whites" (or white men in general), ends up being "diverting political and cultural power from minority group to elite whites"?
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm completely baffled by how you've managed to reach the opposite conclusion to the one I'd expect.
Who are “white elites?” Harvard professors or Wall Street executives with BLM lawn signs might demonize Trump or Elon Musk as “white elites.” They may even mean people who aren’t even all that elite, such as small business owners who support Trump. But they don’t identify with the term themselves, even though they undoubtedly fit the bill.
Thus, advocacy that purports to attack “white elites” can nonetheless take power away from minorities and give it to elite whites. Historically, advocacy on behalf of minority groups was done by minority groups themselves. For example, the black civil rights movement was closely tied to black churches. Today, such advocacy has been increasingly taken over by white elites. BLM is funded mainly by affluent white people. Ibram Kendi was selected to be a professor at BU by an overwhelmingly white faculty. Or to use another example, consider MacKenzie Bezos giving tens of millions of dollars to “AAPI” activist organizations. Those groups don’t answer to recent Chinese and Bangladeshi immigrants in Queens. Their whole incentive structure is oriented toward appealing to rich white people like MacKenzie Bezos.
The net effect of that is that much advocacy that claims to empower minorities actually ends up taking power away from minorities and empowering white elites. You can see this clearly in New York City, where white people in Manhattan strongly opposed Eric Adams, and so did minority activist groups. But actual minorities overwhelmingly voted for him. But in many, many cases, minorities don’t get to directly weigh in like that. Instead white-dominated institutions act on behalf of minorities, based on their own ideological preferences.
The project of identity politics is based in the elite classes, and is used to further alienate the working classes, who lack the time or interest to keep up with the quickly-evolving shibboleths, that often contradict their lived experiences.
Identity politics is gleefully adopted by the elite institutions, and the base of resistance against it is working class.
It's because this is simply an exercise in wasting resources while looking progressive. Instead of advocating to actually help discriminated people in important ways (pressure on wages, blind interviews to combat unfair hiring, unionization to help solidify such practices, and many other real social changes), they are pushing bullshit changes that don't help anyone in the affected groups, but make them feel better and give them a new lever to use against ideological opponents.
HN, like the American tech industry in general, is almost certainly more diverse than the Stanford administration and faculty. Moreover, diversity in HN is organic. Folks on here may happen to be Laotian American (or even Laotian—HN is international). Nobody selected them for inclusion in the community.
By contrast, diversity at Stanford, especially among faculty, is carefully curated by the overwhelmingly white faculty. Your average immigrant from a former colony may not care about eliminating “colonial language.” But the white Stanford faculty wouldn’t hire those immigrants into the cultural studies department of the university. You’re much more likely to get a job at Stanford by writing papers on how colonial terms “cause harm.”
The faculty system and widespread use of race and nationality conscious hiring gives white people at elite universities tremendous power. There’s few other organizations where the white leadership gets to hand pick any minority representation based on its own ideological priors.