I say this as a professor at a top computer science department. I have _never_ felt limited in my ability to collaborate with the best folks in my area. Ever. I do! And it's great! And I also believe strongly it's important to make sure we are growing those next generations of amazing people, because the thing that makes research awesome is working with them.
Especially not when said administration has a track record of cancelling things because they Ctrl-Fed outgroups they considered to be the enemy and discovered a completely irrelevant Latin prefix in someone's abstract.
Trying to reframe them as "we didn't REALLY mean it!" (while also insulting a race and sex) doesn't help your case.
This is what the communist leads of universities did here in eastern europe and it was disgusting back then as well.
Honestly, if filling in those boxes with anything other than a diatribe against the suitability of women and minorities and poor people to do research is "following the politics of one party" now, that says more about the conformance demanded by the other party than the science. Good to hear you're much happier now they're in charge and introducing formal komissar roles to ensure that any studies whose results contradict RFK Lysenko Jr or reference transgenic mice or Transjordan or employ too many research assistants with funny foreign names are liable to be defunded before publication.
That's what happens when academia politicizes themselves - they become part of the game. And that means begging for scraps of who ever is currently on the top.
It's horrible... but you said yourself - you just need to fill some boxes correctly.
People get upset as though this policy is dictating that a minority from the corner of the earth with no meaningful experience is going to be mandated into the role of heart surgeon or airplane pilot as well. That’s not how this works. However, those roles themselves stand to benefit from the diversified cultivation at the bottom of the stack, eventually.
Even very intelligent people seem to think inclusive policies mean that incompetent people will be promoted in private industry or government, but frankly, I never witnessed that to any abnormal degree until the people decrying it the most ended up in power. A game show host as president. A Fox News anchor as secretary of war. I can only keep a straight face because I’m so jaded by it.
And it's not even clear what issue they're supposed to be solving. Visit any STEM class, research lab - corporate or public, or so on even well before any of these sort of things began to be official guidelines and it was anything but homogeneous, even by the largely irrelevant characteristics that these guidelines target.
It was idiotic to squander the talent of the best and brightest Black people that way 75 years ago, and it’s just as idiotic to use race and gender as a factor in admissions or employment today.
They immediately regretted it but the results were already printed in the newspapers. The rest as they say is history.
> Some examples that illustrate contributions in each of the five areas are given below. Proposals need not address all of these areas, and PIs are advised to focus on those areas in which they are well prepared to make meaningful contributions.
"Broadening participation of underrepresented groups" is only one of the five areas, and no proposal was required to use it. I had proposals funded that focused on workforce development, for example. I saw others focus on science communication to the public (now forbidden in the memo this post is about!).
Proposals that passed grant panels were first and foremost always those that would great science. At ~10:1 oversubscription rates or more, proposals don't pass without it. The BI component needed to be credible but could be handled lots of ways.
Fundamentally, Congress recognized when defining BI as a component for merit review in the NSF that fundamental science only pays off in the long term. BI is a pragmatic choice to ensure that grants also yield near-term benefits to society as well.
Irrespective of whatever was going on in academia I take issue with this. Everyone who has a) a double digit number of brain cells b) has ever dealt with government approval in any capacity c) is't just a straight up liar knows that if the requirements set forth by a panel with discretionary authority says to do items 1-5 that you will not be approved without doing all of them, (unless of course you have the right last name or connections).
If you don't believe me watch any local board's meetings for the next 6mo and research everyone who comes before it after finding what outcome they got.
This has nothing to do with academia, DEI or what the other items on the list of requirements were. This is just how the sausage is made. It's all the same steps even if some factories are a little dirtier than others. So yeah, I 100% believe that if someone unconnected didn't pay the right lip service to the right things in every single one of the items in the list they would not get the outcome they wanted even if theoretically their stuff could have been approved with only 4/5 boxes checked. The approvers are not going to stick their necks out like that with no reason.
Are those mutually exclusive? I know that's a common argument, but it doesn't track to me. Finding the diamonds in the rough in underrepresented groups is part of finding the best of the best to collaborate with.
its apples and ebola
A lot of research won't be profitable for years to come or is even unlikely to be profitable at all, so you funding sources are limited. The government, having no profit motive, can encourage this kind of research by funding it. Typically the hope is that it'll lead to increased productivity or innovation down the line.
You don't have to be a statistician to see that not all groups of the populace are represented equally among scholars. If you want all viewpoints covered from you populace, wouldn't that mean you want to try and push for inclusion there? That doesn't mean everything has to be inclusive but you sure can incentivize it
This is the core of the issue. We don’t actually want all viewpoints represented because that wouldn’t by itself produce any value.
You want someone to come up with the fundamental theorems of Calculus, linking the area of a curve with its anti-derivative, because that’s incredibly useful. Generically grabbing everyone’s view isn’t a competitive strategy. You need to be selective on things that are intrinsically useful and promote that.
The study you mention can be founded with pen and paper. No expensive trials or heavy equipment or team needed.
The best of the best involves people from underrepresented groups. These policies exist to counteract the cronyism and “doesn’t look like me”-ism inherent to the way people make choices. We know people don’t hire and collaborate with the best of the best, because when looking for the best they see it easiest in people with similar backgrounds and perspectives as themselves.
It’s a shame the culture war cooked your brain on this one.
If there are no martian biologists because of systemic discrimination, why would the best if the best biologists include a martian.
The argument defeats itself. I don't understand why people keep repeating this lie instead of the truth.
The only way this makes sense is if you think the only way someone can be inspired by someone else is if they look the same.
Inspiring specific groups to follow a career path by showing them people on that path is “representation” not inclusivity. Representation matters because it’s easier (not impossible, as you suggest the argument is) to see yourself e.g. as a nurse or a teacher if you have seen male nurses or teachers succeeding.
Representation matters, but not nearly as much as the opposite side of things - who gets opportunities. Which is what I was talking about.
Btw one of the major groups that have benefitted from the dreaded “DEI” in universities has been white men. They are an under-represented group in many post-secondary settings.
You can put in there standard things like “we will design new grad and undergrad courses that train new students in this tech that we will develop”.
You can put wider-impact things like “we will partner with local community colleges to integrate the results of this research in their XYZ course”, or “we will design summer research programs with recruitment from community colleges”.
And yes, you can (or used to be able to) include things like “we will partner with high schools with high populations of underrepresented demographics to do outreach and involve students in research”.
Clearly, there’s a large variety of things that fall under broader impact, and scientists weren’t required to pick only the “wokest” policies.
Please don’t comment on things you don’t know much about.