Corporate and/or forced social progress like this tends to feel hollow and perhaps even counter productive. And yet it indicates entry of these things into the more mainstream, and shines more of...
Corporate and/or forced social progress like this tends to feel hollow and perhaps even counter productive. And yet it indicates entry of these things into the more mainstream, and shines more of a light onto them.
I'd want to be careful not to over-backlash in-case maybe stuff like this - while easy to criticise and scoff at - might actually be efficacious. I really don't know, but I don't wanna be hoodwinked by nutters wearing shirts saying how reasonable they're being.
The article makes a point of how students and people in general see's DEI as superficial and performative. Because no matter how many people from these marginalized groups are in power, the lived...
Exemplary
The article makes a point of how students and people in general see's DEI as superficial and performative. Because no matter how many people from these marginalized groups are in power, the lived experiences of people on the ground rarely, if ever. materially improves.
The author brings up a ton of issues on things like left vs right politics and cancel culture and Palestine protests and the many different groups that need representation and that is all important in the right time and place. But I think those are exactly the superficial and performative issues everyone has with DEI.
I grew up in post apartheid South Africa where we have policy called Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment. "A strategic initiative that aims to realign the economic apparatus to better represent the demographic reality of the country." There is a 167 page book detailing the policy but it literally amounts to representation by formula and spreadsheet.
The same 10 people have been begging on my street corners for the last decade and they have a lot more friends now. Most of the horrific shanty towns created by the Group Areas Act have only grown and provide so few opportunities for the generations born there. But its all fine because "Exercisable voting rights of black board members as a majority percentage of all board members with a provision of 25% for black females."
The angry left-wing conspiracy nut in me is constantly screaming that this is all some capitalist shadow cabal plot to distract people with litigious semantics so the Old Roman Optimates will finally kill the dream of Julius (if you know, you know). But its more likely that people who mean well and hold considerable power, constantly make very public mistakes with far reaching consequences.
BBBEE is a rigid legislation designed to mathematically prevent foreign businesses from going nuts, but it created a bureaucratic nightmare for bad actors to mask widespread fraud and corruption. DEI went completely the other way with an abstract goal of addressing injustice with safe space for everyone but with frowned upon behavior in a very volatile environment with a lot of bad actors and its all a mess.
Both of these initiatives fall flat because they claim to but can't possibly meet peoples most fundamental expectation. Enforcing what is fair. I think we've all come to terms that the legal system isn't really just, but the best we could do. And maybe all the social progress of the late 90s and the internet in the 00s gave us some hope of finding true societal cohesion so we reopened that can of worms. Because true justice is such a monumentally difficult task and people will forever have hang ups on what could have been. We're so obsessed with the idea that a pillar of economics is opportunity cost and most religions have a motif that balances the scales. And the second you get to any sort of economic reparation, you'll probably hit communism and that has its own issues.
I don't know. It's such an important issue. Most South Africa are not going to be corporate execs or government officials the same way most Americans cant even name an Ivy League school. BEE and DEI won't matter to them. They've got bills to pay and got mouths to feed (and ain't nothing in this world for free). But a lot of their lives are going to be dictated by these people so its immensely important and the people spearheading these programs just keep fumbling at every opportunity with the most callous and narrow minded perspectives. And I can't even begin to imagine a reasonable way forwards when you have to so strictly maintain the status quo.
While your experiences and explanation of apartheid South Africa are interesting, I do not think that is an accurate comparison and serves to paint D.E.I. add baggage that they do not share. I do;...
While your experiences and explanation of apartheid South Africa are interesting, I do not think that is an accurate comparison and serves to paint D.E.I. add baggage that they do not share.
I do; however, really like this statement and I think it is the main point you were trying to make in your comparison:
Both of these initiatives fall flat because they claim to but can't possibly meet peoples most fundamental expectation. Enforcing what is fair.
I love this, though I think there is more to D.E.I. and it isn't just trying to enforce what is fair, at least for many organizations, especially corporations.
The biggest selling points of D.E.I. to the leadership most companies was the notion, supposedly shown in many studies, that organizations with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds tend to be more successful in the long term. The "fairness" that comes from this is good for publicity and if it materialized, good for the people. I just don't think that it matters much to most people "at the top". What they care about is success, usually in the form of wealth. I strongly believe this is why most D.E.I. efforts feel superficial, because the "good" part likely IS superficial in many examples.
Even if many of these organizations don't really believe in the goals of diversity, equality, and inclusiveness, as long as they get their success it's fine. They get the goodwill and good publicity, at least from the more left-leaning public, as a bonus.
Here's the problems with that as I see it:
What does "more successful" look like?
How long is long term?
Can you force this diversity and get the same result?
I think that reason we're seeing so many companies drop it was that their answers to #1 and #2 did not align at all with reality, again assuming the premise of the studies is correct. Most companies tried this out for a few years (their answer to #1) and didn't see profits or equivalent key metric go up (the only answer to #2 that most organizations care about).
Now much of what I just wrote above I do not think applies to UoM. I think their leadership actually does want to help and that their middling success, at best, is probably a combination of being heavy handed and quite simply that they don't know the right way to do it and are still trying to figure it out. I don't know that anyone has truly figured out how to achieve real "fairness", but I applaud them for continuing to try. On the other hand, I know that when I was a student, I was idealistic and strong willed and I would have resented the stifling nature of parts of the program. I don't know the answer, but I wish them luck in making it better.
I didn't touch on the states that are engaging in the anti-D.E.I. rhetoric as I believe that is typical racist politics. They made D.E.I. their new boogeyman since they wore out their previous CRT strawman.
That was a very long read. These are the two paragraphs that I found most interesting.
That was a very long read. These are the two paragraphs that I found most interesting.
D.E.I. theory and debates over nomenclature sometimes obscured real-world barriers to inclusion. The strategic plan for Michigan’s renowned arboretum and botanical gardens calls for employees to rethink the use of Latin and English plant names, which “actively erased” other “ways of knowing,” and adopt “a ‘polycentric’ paradigm, decentering singular ways of knowing and cocreating meaning through a variety of epistemic frames, including dominant scientific and horticultural modalities, Two-Eyed Seeing, Kinomaage and other cocreated power realignments.”
Only one sentence in the 37-page plan is devoted to the biggest impediment to making the gardens accessible to a more diverse array of visitors: It is hard to get there without a car. (While the arboretum is adjacent to campus, the gardens are some miles away.) “The No. 1 issue across the board was always transportation,” said Bob Grese, who led the arboretum and gardens until 2020. “We were never able to get funding for that.”
It was a long read, and it ultimately reaffirmed a lot of my negative opinions about the overgrowth of college administrators. There were quite a few parts that stood out to me: I grew up in the...
It was a long read, and it ultimately reaffirmed a lot of my negative opinions about the overgrowth of college administrators. There were quite a few parts that stood out to me:
The department convened a workshop led by Whitney Peoples, then the coordinator for critical race pedagogies at Michigan’s in-house teaching consultancy, known as the Center for Research on Learning & Teaching. The workshop was titled “Teaching Texts That Contain Racist Language,” but according to one person who attended, Peoples argued that literary works containing slurs should almost never be assigned in the first place. (Peoples did not respond to requests for an interview, but through a university spokeswoman disputed that characterization.) Someone else pointed out that her approach would exclude a large swath of books by Black authors.
I grew up in the South, and it's really disappointing how many people are pushing to ban books like Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird when they were so deeply influential for me. I'm saddened when people want to ban literature to avoid imagined harms. Sure, they need context, but they're powerful historical works we shouldn't shy away from. History can be ugly. Everyone can benefit from critically engaging with complex, historical fiction.
Some of her accusers were white women, she recalled. It echoed an observation I heard repeatedly from faculty at Michigan: The most strident critics were sometimes not the most marginalized students, but peers who claimed to be fighting on their behalf.
“They want to do something — be a part of the cause,” she said. “They are not part of the demographic that is being oppressed or victimized. But they can do this.”
This sums up most of my experience. Far too many white women in college administration with extremely "progressive" opinions and no ability to affect real lasting change. Just a lot of talk about microaggressions and what new word should be used to avoid causing offence. I've seriously seen "blackout" struck out of corporate use because it's supposedly racist.
Half a century later, in November 2022, the B.S.U. issued a scathing attack on D.E.I. 1.0 titled “More Than Four.” Despite the many millions spent on D.E.I. 1.0, the report noted, the percentage of Black students — then around 4 percent — was nearly as low as it was in 1970.
And of course the DEI program did fuck all to actually improve underrepresented minority enrollment.
When I asked why Michigan’s surveys showed a decline in students’ sense of inclusion, Chavous recast it as a win. Students were holding Michigan to a higher standard, she argued, thanks to “the ways that we’ve engaged around awareness building and setting expectations.” The conflicts around race and gender might simply be the price of progress. “Raising an awareness of an inequality, raising awareness of something that someone wasn’t aware of can elicit feelings — it can elicit anger or displeasure,” she explained.
Data will say anything if you torture it enough. It takes a special level of head-in-sand ignorance to boldly say increased acrimony is a sign of progress. Certainly, progress can come through painful dialogue, but there have been years and years of students cycling through these programs for no measurable improvements! Is there any high-quality, skeptical research proving programs like these work?
Civil rights officials at the federal Department of Education found that Michigan had systematically mishandled student complaints over the 18-month period ending in February. Out of 67 complaints of harassment or discrimination based on national origin or ancestry that the officials reviewed — an overwhelming majority involving allegations of antisemitism
And to top it all off, the college is still fucking antisemitic. My language is strong because I'm just so damn tired of these stupid programs that do nothing but raise cortisol levels of students and staff. In some ways, I'm glad I went to a more moderate university in a red state. The school doesn't support queer people enough (health insurance coverage issues, gender neutral bathrooms, etc), but at least there were fewer fights over performative nonsense. It was easier for students to unite in jeering at the bigoted pastors that showed up on campus.
Every single DEI policy I've had the displeasure of dealing with in a work or school environment has been actively hostile to the actual practice of bringing people of different backgrounds...
Exemplary
Every single DEI policy I've had the displeasure of dealing with in a work or school environment has been actively hostile to the actual practice of bringing people of different backgrounds together, remaining laser-focused on emphasizing every single difference possible between groups. To bring up any (proven and known to work!) methods from the world of international diplomacy is met with active hostility. Everything is viewed through a very specific, segregationist(!), Oppressor/Oppressed lens. I wish I was exaggerating, but I am not.
I'm someone who grew up in a diplomatic family (my parents worked for the US Foreign Service as such) and believe deeply in my heart that we can all find common ground with one another, if we put in the work. To see such actively hostile to true multiculturalism groups wear the concepts of Diversity and Inclusion as a skinsuit while they do the the exact opposite... I can think of no better way to fracture any sense of shared anything than what is currently being pushed in the name of inclusion, and it is infuriating.
//
gender neutral bathrooms
As an aside, I went to Montana State for a year many, many years ago. Admittedly, Montana is more of a Weird Purple than actually strongly Red or Blue, but even then, I remember nobody on campus had any problems with the gender-neutral bathrooms that were being added in some of the buildings while I was there, because frankly everybody prefers a real locked door and no one else in the room when they have to go. It's just a more comfortable arrangement across the board. I wish the common-sense approach to accessibility like this example was still in fashion. We'd all be better off for it.
Most students and faculty didn't have an issue with gender neutral bathrooms existing. They're increasingly common in the US for accessibility reasons (billed as "family restrooms"). Most of the...
Most students and faculty didn't have an issue with gender neutral bathrooms existing. They're increasingly common in the US for accessibility reasons (billed as "family restrooms"). Most of the issues stemmed from conflict with the state. Since it was a public university, some legislators wanted to get overly involved in the details of every policy and building on campus. It's the common story of "small government" red legislatures slapping down cool policies from blue cities.
Disclaimer this is my personal opinion, not the opinion of my employer. I've worked at UM for a little over 4 years. A lot of what this article talks about rings true, there's a lot of emails and...
Disclaimer
this is my personal opinion, not the opinion of my employer.
I've worked at UM for a little over 4 years. A lot of what this article talks about rings true, there's a lot of emails and policies and other things that feel purely performative. However in my niche in the system, it hasn't come across as heavy-handed or onerous. It does often feel superficial and somewhat useless, but ultimately I've tried to remain optimistic and participate when I can1. Because in the end, I'd rather the organization keep trying different things to get it right, than give up after it doesn't immediately work.
[1] Recently we had a DEI event where we watched a documentary about Pauli Murray, a person I had never heard of before but is really facinating and I encourage everyone to go watch the documentary on Amazon (free with ads) .
Leaders of the University of Michigan, one of America’s most prestigious public universities, like to say that their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is inseparable from the pursuit of academic excellence. Most students must take at least one class addressing “racial and ethnic intolerance and resulting inequality.” Doctoral students in educational studies must take an “equity lab” and a racial-justice seminar. Computer-science students are quizzed on microaggressions.
Programs across the university are couched in the distinctive jargon that, to D.E.I.’s practitioners, reflects proven practices for making classrooms more inclusive, and to its critics reveals how deeply D.E.I. is encoded with left-wing ideologies. Michigan’s largest division trains professors in “antiracist pedagogy” and dispenses handouts on “Identifying and Addressing Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture,” like “worship of the written word.” The engineering school promises a “pervasive education around issues of race, ethnicity, unconscious bias and inclusion.”
A decade ago, Michigan’s leaders set in motion an ambitious new D.E.I. plan, aiming “to enact far-reaching foundational change at every level, in every unit.” Striving to touch “every individual on campus,” as the school puts it, Michigan has poured roughly a quarter of a billion dollars into D.E.I. since 2016, according to an internal presentation I obtained. A 2021 report from the conservative Heritage Foundation examining the growth of D.E.I. programs across higher education — the only such study that currently exists — found Michigan to have by far the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any large public university. Tens of thousands of undergraduates have completed bias training. Thousands of instructors have been trained in inclusive teaching.
When Michigan inaugurated what it now calls D.E.I. 1.0, it intentionally placed itself in the vanguard of a revolution then reshaping American higher education. Around the country, college administrators were rapidly expanding D.E.I., convinced that such programs would help attract and retain a more diverse array of students and faculty.
Today that revolution is under withering attack. Energized by backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement and the right-wing campaign against “critical race theory” in public institutions, at least a dozen states have banned or limited D.E.I. programs at public universities. After the Oct. 7 attacks, as campuses across the country erupted with protests against Israel, critics accused D.E.I. programs of fostering antisemitism. In the fever of the 2024 campaign, Republican influencers and politicians have recast D.E.I. as an all-purpose boogeyman — the root cause of defective airplanes, the collapse of a Baltimore bridge and the near-assassination of Donald J. Trump.
But even some of Michigan’s peer institutions have soured on aspects of D.E.I. Last spring, both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences said they would no longer require job candidates to submit diversity statements; such “compelled statements,” M.I.T.’s president said, “impinge on freedom of expression.”
Michigan hasn’t joined the retreat. Instead, it has redoubled its efforts, testing the future of an embattled ideal. A year ago, the university inaugurated what it calls D.E.I. 2.0. At Michigan’s flagship Ann Arbor campus, the number of employees who work in D.E.I.-related offices or have “diversity,” “equity” or “inclusion” in their job titles increased by 70 percent, reaching 241, according to figures compiled by Mark J. Perry, an emeritus professor of finance at the university’s Flint campus and a D.E.I. critic. (The school’s own figures, which count the D.E.I. work force differently, show less growth over time and a much smaller staff as of last year.) When school began in August, brightly colored flags around campus promoted the goals of D.E.I. 2.0.
According to a confidential report I obtained, a committee appointed by Michigan’s provost — and stocked with professors with D.E.I.-related appointments — urged the school this summer to continue using diversity statements in hiring and promotion, arguing that eliminating them “would be seen as a capitulation to the winds of political expediency.”
But over months of reporting this year, I found a different kind of backlash building, one that emanated not from Washington or right-wing think tanks but from inside the university’s own dorms and faculty lounges. On Michigan’s largely left-leaning campus, few of the people I met questioned the broad ideals of diversity or social justice. Yet the most common attitude I encountered about D.E.I. during my visits to Ann Arbor was a kind of wary disdain.
Corporate and/or forced social progress like this tends to feel hollow and perhaps even counter productive. And yet it indicates entry of these things into the more mainstream, and shines more of a light onto them.
I'd want to be careful not to over-backlash in-case maybe stuff like this - while easy to criticise and scoff at - might actually be efficacious. I really don't know, but I don't wanna be hoodwinked by nutters wearing shirts saying how reasonable they're being.
... Not again anyway (fuck you Jordan Peterson).
The article makes a point of how students and people in general see's DEI as superficial and performative. Because no matter how many people from these marginalized groups are in power, the lived experiences of people on the ground rarely, if ever. materially improves.
The author brings up a ton of issues on things like left vs right politics and cancel culture and Palestine protests and the many different groups that need representation and that is all important in the right time and place. But I think those are exactly the superficial and performative issues everyone has with DEI.
I grew up in post apartheid South Africa where we have policy called Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment. "A strategic initiative that aims to realign the economic apparatus to better represent the demographic reality of the country." There is a 167 page book detailing the policy but it literally amounts to representation by formula and spreadsheet.
This is a real part of legislation aimed at addressing hundreds of years of systemic oppression across multiple cultures and continents; which still causes immeasurable suffering for millions of people that will never have shot at any stability, let alone prosperity. And I'm only being slightly facetious here. There are plenty of provisions for job creation and community development but the results speak for itself.
The same 10 people have been begging on my street corners for the last decade and they have a lot more friends now. Most of the horrific shanty towns created by the Group Areas Act have only grown and provide so few opportunities for the generations born there. But its all fine because "Exercisable voting rights of black board members as a majority percentage of all board members with a provision of 25% for black females."
The angry left-wing conspiracy nut in me is constantly screaming that this is all some capitalist shadow cabal plot to distract people with litigious semantics so the Old Roman Optimates will finally kill the dream of Julius (if you know, you know). But its more likely that people who mean well and hold considerable power, constantly make very public mistakes with far reaching consequences.
BBBEE is a rigid legislation designed to mathematically prevent foreign businesses from going nuts, but it created a bureaucratic nightmare for bad actors to mask widespread fraud and corruption. DEI went completely the other way with an abstract goal of addressing injustice with safe space for everyone but with frowned upon behavior in a very volatile environment with a lot of bad actors and its all a mess.
Both of these initiatives fall flat because they claim to but can't possibly meet peoples most fundamental expectation. Enforcing what is fair. I think we've all come to terms that the legal system isn't really just, but the best we could do. And maybe all the social progress of the late 90s and the internet in the 00s gave us some hope of finding true societal cohesion so we reopened that can of worms. Because true justice is such a monumentally difficult task and people will forever have hang ups on what could have been. We're so obsessed with the idea that a pillar of economics is opportunity cost and most religions have a motif that balances the scales. And the second you get to any sort of economic reparation, you'll probably hit communism and that has its own issues.
I don't know. It's such an important issue. Most South Africa are not going to be corporate execs or government officials the same way most Americans cant even name an Ivy League school. BEE and DEI won't matter to them. They've got bills to pay and got mouths to feed (and ain't nothing in this world for free). But a lot of their lives are going to be dictated by these people so its immensely important and the people spearheading these programs just keep fumbling at every opportunity with the most callous and narrow minded perspectives. And I can't even begin to imagine a reasonable way forwards when you have to so strictly maintain the status quo.
While your experiences and explanation of apartheid South Africa are interesting, I do not think that is an accurate comparison and serves to paint D.E.I. add baggage that they do not share.
I do; however, really like this statement and I think it is the main point you were trying to make in your comparison:
I love this, though I think there is more to D.E.I. and it isn't just trying to enforce what is fair, at least for many organizations, especially corporations.
The biggest selling points of D.E.I. to the leadership most companies was the notion, supposedly shown in many studies, that organizations with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds tend to be more successful in the long term. The "fairness" that comes from this is good for publicity and if it materialized, good for the people. I just don't think that it matters much to most people "at the top". What they care about is success, usually in the form of wealth. I strongly believe this is why most D.E.I. efforts feel superficial, because the "good" part likely IS superficial in many examples.
Even if many of these organizations don't really believe in the goals of diversity, equality, and inclusiveness, as long as they get their success it's fine. They get the goodwill and good publicity, at least from the more left-leaning public, as a bonus.
Here's the problems with that as I see it:
What does "more successful" look like?
How long is long term?
Can you force this diversity and get the same result?
I think that reason we're seeing so many companies drop it was that their answers to #1 and #2 did not align at all with reality, again assuming the premise of the studies is correct. Most companies tried this out for a few years (their answer to #1) and didn't see profits or equivalent key metric go up (the only answer to #2 that most organizations care about).
Now much of what I just wrote above I do not think applies to UoM. I think their leadership actually does want to help and that their middling success, at best, is probably a combination of being heavy handed and quite simply that they don't know the right way to do it and are still trying to figure it out. I don't know that anyone has truly figured out how to achieve real "fairness", but I applaud them for continuing to try. On the other hand, I know that when I was a student, I was idealistic and strong willed and I would have resented the stifling nature of parts of the program. I don't know the answer, but I wish them luck in making it better.
I didn't touch on the states that are engaging in the anti-D.E.I. rhetoric as I believe that is typical racist politics. They made D.E.I. their new boogeyman since they wore out their previous CRT strawman.
That was a very long read. These are the two paragraphs that I found most interesting.
It was a long read, and it ultimately reaffirmed a lot of my negative opinions about the overgrowth of college administrators. There were quite a few parts that stood out to me:
I grew up in the South, and it's really disappointing how many people are pushing to ban books like Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird when they were so deeply influential for me. I'm saddened when people want to ban literature to avoid imagined harms. Sure, they need context, but they're powerful historical works we shouldn't shy away from. History can be ugly. Everyone can benefit from critically engaging with complex, historical fiction.
This sums up most of my experience. Far too many white women in college administration with extremely "progressive" opinions and no ability to affect real lasting change. Just a lot of talk about microaggressions and what new word should be used to avoid causing offence. I've seriously seen "blackout" struck out of corporate use because it's supposedly racist.
And of course the DEI program did fuck all to actually improve underrepresented minority enrollment.
Data will say anything if you torture it enough. It takes a special level of head-in-sand ignorance to boldly say increased acrimony is a sign of progress. Certainly, progress can come through painful dialogue, but there have been years and years of students cycling through these programs for no measurable improvements! Is there any high-quality, skeptical research proving programs like these work?
And to top it all off, the college is still fucking antisemitic. My language is strong because I'm just so damn tired of these stupid programs that do nothing but raise cortisol levels of students and staff. In some ways, I'm glad I went to a more moderate university in a red state. The school doesn't support queer people enough (health insurance coverage issues, gender neutral bathrooms, etc), but at least there were fewer fights over performative nonsense. It was easier for students to unite in jeering at the bigoted pastors that showed up on campus.
Every single DEI policy I've had the displeasure of dealing with in a work or school environment has been actively hostile to the actual practice of bringing people of different backgrounds together, remaining laser-focused on emphasizing every single difference possible between groups. To bring up any (proven and known to work!) methods from the world of international diplomacy is met with active hostility. Everything is viewed through a very specific, segregationist(!), Oppressor/Oppressed lens. I wish I was exaggerating, but I am not.
I'm someone who grew up in a diplomatic family (my parents worked for the US Foreign Service as such) and believe deeply in my heart that we can all find common ground with one another, if we put in the work. To see such actively hostile to true multiculturalism groups wear the concepts of Diversity and Inclusion as a skinsuit while they do the the exact opposite... I can think of no better way to fracture any sense of shared anything than what is currently being pushed in the name of inclusion, and it is infuriating.
//
As an aside, I went to Montana State for a year many, many years ago. Admittedly, Montana is more of a Weird Purple than actually strongly Red or Blue, but even then, I remember nobody on campus had any problems with the gender-neutral bathrooms that were being added in some of the buildings while I was there, because frankly everybody prefers a real locked door and no one else in the room when they have to go. It's just a more comfortable arrangement across the board. I wish the common-sense approach to accessibility like this example was still in fashion. We'd all be better off for it.
Most students and faculty didn't have an issue with gender neutral bathrooms existing. They're increasingly common in the US for accessibility reasons (billed as "family restrooms"). Most of the issues stemmed from conflict with the state. Since it was a public university, some legislators wanted to get overly involved in the details of every policy and building on campus. It's the common story of "small government" red legislatures slapping down cool policies from blue cities.
Disclaimer
this is my personal opinion, not the opinion of my employer.I've worked at UM for a little over 4 years. A lot of what this article talks about rings true, there's a lot of emails and policies and other things that feel purely performative. However in my niche in the system, it hasn't come across as heavy-handed or onerous. It does often feel superficial and somewhat useless, but ultimately I've tried to remain optimistic and participate when I can1. Because in the end, I'd rather the organization keep trying different things to get it right, than give up after it doesn't immediately work.
[1] Recently we had a DEI event where we watched a documentary about Pauli Murray, a person I had never heard of before but is really facinating and I encourage everyone to go watch the documentary on Amazon (free with ads) .
Mirror: https://archive.is/FvoMm
Gift link: A Top University Bet on D.E.I. What Went Wrong?
Edit: fixed the gift link; originally posted the newsletter that announced it.
Edited the link to that. Thanks for the share.