The whole blog is like this; it's all sort of comically smug "everybody else in the entire world is wrong, and here is a 7-point axiomatic derivation proving it"†, much of it depending on specific definitions of specific words. Check-mate, atheists!
There are lots of good, sharp, critical things to say about the DEI movement, most especially "institutional" DEI, but you can't meaningfully say them when you write with this tone, can you? Who's going to take you seriously? Like, at a bare minimum, you have to acknowledge (or take the trouble to refute) the concerns that animate your opposition.
The author isn't a rando! This is a tenured professor of philosophy at a major university. You know, writing like a high school sophomore on a message board.
† I highly recommend his carefully reasoned, inescapable argument that everyone has the right to own a gun for a perfect example of the form.
I genuinely find this criticism of yours to be almost-inexcusably vapid in its own right. You're criticizing tone, not content. And your bolded, italicized dagger-marked point doesn't make sense to me without context.
Other than style and tone, what is your issue with the content of this writer's position? What are your suggestions for how it could be amended?
The whole article can be summed up as: "Colleges claim they care about Diversity, but one definition of Diversity is X, and we can trivially prove colleges don't care about X. QED colleges don't care about Diversity."
It should not take a particularly sharp mind to identify the fallacy here: There are definitions other than X. Therefore the conclusion of the article is completely fallacious: we've only established that people aren't using definition X, not that they don't care about Diversity.
From any sort of intellectually engaged opponent, I would expect some attempt to try and work out "therefore, colleges must have some definition Y that they actually care about" and an understanding that words can have multiple definitions.
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In places, the article doesn't even bother to check if it's debunking of X is actually accurate, either: it should be obvious to anyone who looks that quite a few colleges actually do care about socio-economic diversity (Point 2.5 in the article), and make a point of extending extra support to ensure at least a few poor students can attend. We have visa programs specifically designed to allow students from other countries (Point 2.3).
Maybe it's not an explicit "Affirmative Action" program, but it should be obvious that colleges do care about these things. Yet the author insists "Of course, none of the above predictions are borne out" and "Conclusion: By and large, they don’t care about diversity. They’re just lying"
No, I'm criticizing tone and content. And I don't think "vapid" is a word you get to use here: I probably read this person's blog more carefully than most of his supporters on the thread did.
> everybody else in the entire world is wrong, and here is a 7-point axiomatic derivation proving it
What argument doesn't take this form? If you're making an argument you yourself agree with, then yeah, the implication is that you disagree with people who disagree with it. Axiomatic derivations will be involved, because... why wouldn't they be?
> much of it depending on specific definitions of specific words
I think what you must mean here is surprising definitions of certain words (otherwise, again, what argument doesn't have this characteristic?). I personally was not surprised by the usage of any of the major words in the article. Certainly some of the words are really "improper nouns", like "diversity", but it's clear from context what the different sorts of diversity being discussed are.
It sounds like your problem with my argument about the poor reasoning here is that I made it in too few words? I'll say it again: he hasn't actually managed to engage with the argument for DEI, even institutionalized DEI; he thinks instead that he's checkmated it by attempting to reconcile a dictionary definition with the rationale the Supreme Court used in the 1970s to defend Affirmative Action.
> I'll say it again: he hasn't actually managed to engage with the argument for DEI, even institutionalized DEI
The use of the definite article here is surprising. I get the impression you have an argument for DEI in mind that you think everybody has in mind. Which one is it?
Can you highlight where you made that argument the first time? I read your first comment as entirely concerned with tone and don't see where you are discussing lack of engagement with an argument.
It's a 127 word comment (not counting the snarky aside at the bottom), of which approximately 40% of the words make the points you're looking for directly, in a pair of sentences, one in the first paragraph and one in the second. I think you might have to not want to see them not to see them.
I'm an unrelated person driving by, and I actually scrolled up to try to find the sentences (i.e., the ones about an argument), and I'm not seeing them, either. I have a PhD in English, so I'm not totally terrible at reading carefully.
> he hasn't actually managed to engage with the argument for DEI
Sure, it would have been a better article if they had done that. What are some good books covering that? I haven't really heard much of an argument for it, merely brow-beating and social pressure. Ibram X. Kendi doesn't count, his arguments are ridiculously facile.
I didn't see a single line arguing how the content of this blog post was wrong also. If you think there are gross inaccuracies then please do write a better focused critique.
This tone is very common in academic philosophy. I would characterize it as being low in rhetoric and extremely blunt. I don't really see how it sounds like "a high school sophomore".
He starts with a "Webster's dictionary defines" kind of premise and most of the rest is rhetoric. Not one single "woke social justice warrior" values philosophy? That's not blunt, it's extremely lazy thinking expressed with name calling. I had no idea reading this that the author was nominally an intellectual and a philosopher.
>He starts with a "Webster's dictionary defines" kind of premise
We are talking about diversity in academia, so it's helpful to have some history of the word and how it started becoming used the way it's used today. Do you disagree with the history?
>Not one single "woke social justice warrior" values philosophy?
He didn't say this. He said that not one "woke social justice warrior" (this should have been expressed differently) values philosophical diversity within academia. That said, citing himself on this was a bit ridiculous.
>I had no idea reading this that the author was nominally an intellectual and a philosopher.
Yes, it's easy to dispute the history he's trying to establish here, because he's fixated on one particular legal aspect of it which happens to support his (much broader) argument.
Well, academic philosophy is a rather sophomoric discipline. The non-sophomoric parts of it have long since moved to other departments - PG even has an essay about this http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
> Well, academic philosophy is a rather sophomoric discipline. The non-sophomoric parts of it have long since moved to other departments - PG even has an essay about this http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
Why would the opinion of a VC who dropped out of an undergrad philosophy program be an especially authoritative or notable on this topic? Some tech people have an annoying habit of shitting on anything that isn't tech or tech-adjacent, and if anything, that essay seems to play into those biases.
In general the argument template is "If you're not 100% committed to realizing a more extreme version of your mission statement than the status quo, then you're being hypocritical and cannot be taken seriously." We see the same thing pop up in, "You don't like capitalism, yet you still participate in it," and "You don't like cars, yet you still drive places." It's the sort of tired teenager type argument that doesn't seek to advance the discourse. It does nothing to convince anyone of anything and instead it exacerbates division. There's plenty of other better arguments to make and for some reason the author goes for this one.
Sweden had an election yesterday, and I can't think of a single political subject where political opponents do not accuse the other side of being insincere. Environment, taxes, law and order, immigration, education, healthcare, elder care... "You say you want X, yet you still say/do/vote Y" would match the intended message in about 95% of every statement being made when a politician is describing an other politician politics.
Political debates would be much more interesting if they weren't allowed to do this. It would be a bit like the rule that one should never discuss the speaker, only the content. It would really help against polarization.
At the very least giving a name to the phenomena (and logical fallacy experts, please chime in) gives people the power to identify and categorize such arguments as not being worthwhile pursuits and can castrate their power.
A more productive way for political discourse would be to analyze the expected result of different political strategies, especially when mirror opposite strategies has the same intended end goal.
Of course, when people are pulling and advocating for one direction, doing the opposite seems like an contradiction. Thus the political debates becomes about trust and sincerity. No longer is the discussion about the effectiveness of the strategy but rather about how trustworthy the strategy is.
One very common way polls measure political strategies is thus in voter trust. Do voters trust that party X has a good strategy to solve problem Y. It generally only experts and researchers that attempt to measure the actually effectiveness of a political strategy.
Hey, I tried replying yesterday but I hit some kind of posting limit.
My bad! I think I had hit reply to the wrong comment. I could have sworn there was something written about tone, but it must have been someone else. Sorry about that.
> The author isn't a rando! This is a tenured professor of philosophy at a major university. You know, writing like a high school sophomore on a message board.
Man, that's disappointing. I like Prof. Huemer's writings on free will and philosophy of mind [1] a lot ("Existence Is Evidence of Immortality" is a fun one). I was unaware of his blog up until now—reading it makes me think significantly less of him.
The bar for publishing in a blog is much lower than an academic paper.
I don't know much about this particular professor, but part of converging towards the truth is to start somewhere which might be incorrect, then debate the flaws of that and come up with a better reasoning. Avoiding discussing or publishing thoughts that are not fully baked would be detrimental to that process, I believe.
If you knew someone who didn't like mushrooms, and you saw them enjoy a dish with mushrooms in it without knowing, and then after you told them they said they didn't like it at all actually, wouldn't that seem silly?
No? Sewer rat might, after all, taste like pumpkin pie. In Tokyo, my wife once very much enjoyed a piece of sushi that turned out to be whale. She's not all like, "I guess we eat whale now".
Saying you won't eat more because you disapprove of its origin is fundamentally different from changing you assessment after the fact of whether you "liked" it.
I can rattle some off, I guess? Institutional DEI can be elitist, furthering the interests of well-off credentialed people at the expense of those it claims to help; performative; a way of short-circuiting real debates about values that are uncomfortable or that cut against elite interests; largely defined in terms relevant to competing groups of rich white people; a surreptitious way of laundering policy arguments that have nothing to do with righting past injustices ("equity-washing"); counterproductive, in the sense of organizing and motivating opposition to social justice by adopting the language least persuasive to those who need to be persuaded, and, further, by reducing the effectiveness of organizations that would otherwise naturally work to reduce inequality. I'm sure there's a bunch more.
You're asking that question, I assume, as a bid for a show of good faith that I'm not just knee-jerking anything that opposes "diversity" efforts. That's fair enough! I don't know that we want to litigate the whole concept, though; I'm just here to point out a really bad argument.
I've read and understood this response. I've re-read and tried to understand your original comment criticizing the article. I do not understand it, though (except that it highlights the article's tone—critically).
Who is the opposition to Huemer (the author of this article)? What does animate their opposition to his case?
You asked me upthread to come up with some strong arguments (to contrast with the really weak ones in the post) for the article's position. I'm asking you to do the same in the other direction.
You said you knew of lots of good criticisms against a position, and I asked you what they were.
I'm saying that I can't make out what it is about article's position that you're saying is bad. Since you mentioned opposition who are animated by the author's position, I'm asking: "Who are the opposition? What does animate them?"[1] The fact that I don't know and couldn't figure out what you're referring to is the premise of the subthread. (And not false premise—like a contrived exercise.) Asking me to "come up" with arguments is different from asking you to say what you already have on your mind. Asking for me to come up with them when premise is that I've already articulated an inability to make sense of what's presented so far is another level removed from that, still.
1. It's actually not even different from the first question—just two different sets, and me asking, what are the sets' members? since you alluded to knowledge of them.
That makes it sound like the failure of productive discussion in this instance is a blameless, emergent phenomenon. If you don't want to discuss it productively...? Okay. "Nothing for us to productively discuss" isn't the best description for what comes down to someone being coy (and then, eventually, evasive), though.
I don't believe any of us disagree that such programs are ineffective under optimal conditions. Aside from that, what are the "lots of" other sharp, critical comments to be made?
I would think, given the over the top snark you had in your previous comments, you would have more to say on about on the topic. Right?
No, my goal here is just to point out how bad this blog post is, not to solve diversity. Unlike the author of the blog post, I don't think I'm capable of single-handedly solving diversity.
Sorry I didn't reply to this earlier, I hit a posting limit yesterday.
Thanks for the response. Honestly, I probably would have deleted the comment I had made, but you responded to it before I could remove it. Sorry about that.
I was annoyed because the topic is something I take very personally. I was being crappy and shouldn't have commented the way I did. Generally, I'm trying to get better about not leaving crappy comments when I'm in a bad mood, but I screwed up. I hope my comments didn't bum you out or anything.
Critiquing the style of a persuasive essay makes a lot of sense to me, however, because it accurately points out a flaw that will make it less successful according to this specific reader.
I'd suggest that if a reader is less successful at grasping the crux of an essay due solely to the writing style, that merely points out a failing of the reader. Digesting essays of varying styles is an important skill that one needs as an academic. That skill needs to be fostered.
But this isn't an academic context; this is a substack essay published on the internet for some internet denizens to read. In this case it makes a lot of sense to ask whether or not the essay succeeds at being persuasive, in the way it makes sense to critique whether or not a speech is delivered well. A public speaker can make a great point, but if they vomit on themselves halfway through the point, it makes sense to go "well, maybe we should address to vomiting thing" instead of "disgust in someone's vomiting on themselves is a failure of the audience".
I mean I think the point is that the top comment for this article is now about the tone of the article rather than the contents. You yourself say there are valid criticisms to be made, so why not do that and compare them to the article instead?
I read the full piece and didn't encounter any phrasing like that. A few things were pushing the envelope, maybe? Haven't been at Uni for a long time, but after reading about the Oberlin case my eyes/ears are open.
Suppose it is problematic if the author does indulge in that, but am not going searching for it. Found this piece reasonable on the whole. It does have an opinion on intolerance, and not everyone is going to like it.
It's not hard to come up with valid critiques of institutional DEI. But the blog post we're reading here is conclusory and derives almost entirely from a tendentious definition of a single word.
I don't believe any phrase has become its opposite here. Language is complicated, and some words have multiple meanings, and some of those meanings are subtle; the idea that every term should be crystalized down to a single unambiguous meaning is, ironically, quintessentially Orwellian.
(I'm not saying Orwell would approve of institutional DEI, which suffers from many similar rhetorical flaws).
> the idea that every term should be crystalized down to a single unambiguous meaning is, ironically, quintessentially Orwellian.
Sure, but no one is advocating for a single unambiguous meaning of the term, the parent seems to be noting that concern should be paid when a word/phrase develops an opposite (or at least very contradictory) meaning, presumably in the context of a charged political environment. You may not believe that's what's happening here, which is fine, but that doesn't imply an argument in favor of singular meanings.
Oh, this blog post is sure advocating for a single unambiguous meaning of the term "diversity"; the whole argument falls apart without that definition.
Do you disagree that many advocates for institutionalized DEI have a shallow definition of diversity? That is my experience.
You are correct that if the author's definition does not match the one in the wild, their argument falls apart, but by and large, I don't think that's going on here.
For what its worth, though I think we might disagree at some core level about this topic, I do appreciate your way of reasoning through your criticism. It's amazing how many disagreements start at the level of definitions without the disagreeing parties ever reconciling, or even acknowledging, the problem of messy definitions.
I think the post boils down to him not wanting to spend any effort accommodating diversity. It's a valid opinion but I don't see how anything he wrote would sway anyone one way or the other.
I think he's also wrong in the factual sense about what diversity initiatives are for. It's not actually that diversity is an automatic net win for companies because diverse workers are better. It exists specifically to combat bias and discrimination. Both conscious and unconscious. It's literally anti racism (or anti misogyny or anti homophobia etc). I support DEI programs because that's a laudable goal unto itself. Even if it makes a company less profitable. I think the goal of any human endeavor should be to make the world a marginally better place. Not just to maximize profit.
He's hung up on the Supreme Court's rationalization of Affirmative Action, which is why he's wedged in this one embarrassingly narrow notion of what "diversity" is for. Even within that notion, he hasn't actually made a valid argument; by the logic he's using, you could evaluate a diversity program based on how many flat-earthers it admits.
> Even within that notion, he hasn't actually made a valid argument; by the logic he's using, you could evaluate a diversity program based on how many flat-earthers it admits.
This single sentence is a far better rebuttal of the post than your initial one which generated a lot of heat :)
The implication is that somehow being correct in an argument matters more than tone, which is... childish.
If you want to have a productive argument (as opposed to just being an asshole screaming at passerby) you need to convince people that you are worth engaging.
This means showing good faith and not being overly dismissive (i.e. tone).
If you're talking about purely conveying information, tone is largely immaterial.
If you're talking about convincing people, proper tone is a prerequisite to conveying information.
For most communication, tone starts out being infinitely more important that anything you're saying. Once you reach an inflection point, tone is sufficient and correctness can take priority. The inflection point varies based on your audience.
If my tone is such that no one engages constructively, then it's not going to be useful whether or not I'm correct.
If my tone is such that many people engage constructively, then it may well be useful whether or not I'm correct, as either people learn from my contribution or people (including me) learn from corrections to my contribution.
It's more than a little context dependent and YMMV, of course.
No, it doesn't! It famously doesn't! There's a whole discipline of creating arguments that are deliberately difficult to engage with or respond to: it's called "college debate".
Did this feel like a compelling argument when you wrote it? You thought to yourself, huh, maybe this person can't possibly come up with an argument for diversity that doesn't run aground of an appeal for "viewpoint diversity"?
I'm trying to actually figure out what his points are. None of it is making much sense because he just seems so far off in his own thinking that it's not connected to DEI at all. Still trying to untangle it, but here's my lol as I work through what he's saying.
1.1 When did we start pretending to care about diversity?
He says 1978. What? He's fabricating a story to prop up his flawed belief system.
1.2 Diversity is intellectual?
It's good because it promotes a good education. What? It's far more about that: representation, opportunities for historically marginalized groups, challenging the status quo with ideas of how things should be done, etc.
2.1 The argument for affirmative action
How did we get to affirmative action? Are we back in the 1980's view of how we are supposed to level the playing field?
> by diversifying the racial composition of the student body, we will be indirectly producing intellectual diversity.
Yikes. He's totally missing the point around opportunities, exposure to diverse backgrounds that force you break out of your own stereotypical thinking...
2.2 Idealogy
> The most “woke” people are the ones who aggressively try to silence all dissent and to exclude conservatives, libertarians, etc., from the Academy.
This is a myth. Conservatives tend to get excluded because their whole goal is to exclude others based on their religion, their desire to prevent others from being able to become self actualized (ex against same sex marriage), their support for laws and institutions that maintain the status quo...
2.3 Other countries
> the most diverse people would naturally be those from other countries.
Yikes. He's totally gone off the rails now. Completely misses the point of what DEI is about.
2.4 Other races
> Affirmative action would also apply more strongly to, say, immigrants from Iran, or Korea, or Israel, than to black people (or anyone else) from our own society.
face palm that is just so painful to read. Yes, on the surface it's true, but not what DEI is actually trying to address in the US.
2.5 social class
> rural white people would get more affirmative action points than middle class suburban blacks.
lol this guy doesn't understand racism very well.
2.6 Proportionality
His point: you don't need a proportional representation for diversity.
And...? Not sure why this is even here. Seems pretty obvious.
2.7. Non of this is happening
> Conclusion: By and large, they don’t care about diversity. They’re just lying, in a really transparent way, because they think it gives them a patina of legal legitimacy.
lol my god how did we land here?
3. Conclusion
> “Diversity, inclusion, and equity” refers to ideological uniformity, exclusion, and discrimination.
Sigh. He really has no clue what he's writing about or how this works outside of his world view. I can't shake the feeling how sad I from having slogged through this. I'll chalk this up to being useless noise that's out of touch on what's going on in the larger world.
Seriously. His initial premise is so far off base that the whole article reads like some sort of conservative straw man pretending to be intellectual discourse.
Are there issue with some DEI initiatives? Yes, but they are often minor, and usually due to bureaucratic laziness, not malice against conservatives or white people.
He is butt hurt that reality has a liberal bias, and wants academia to subscribe to his knee-jerk conservative fantasies instead.
He essentially trying to argue that a completely straight, cis, white, male faculty and student body would still be "diverse" because some were poor/rich, some were rural/urban, and some were old/young. Sorry, that's not diversity, it's simply variations on a theme.
If ensuring that people from marginalized backgrounds get good treatment is important in third level education, would the same arguments not apply in a much stronger fashion to first and second level?
I always (not an American) thought it was weird that all the focus was on university while the research would suggest that interventions at primary school level (and before) would be wildly more effective.
> If ensuring that people from marginalized backgrounds get good treatment is important in third level education, would the same arguments not apply in a much stronger fashion to first and second level?
They do, which is why [primary] school desegregation was (and remains) an important policy goal for various progressive and racial justice movements during the previous century.
edit: It may not be clear to folks who don't live in the US, but the focus on affirmative action is generally driven by the people who oppose such initiatives. The people in favor of them, as far as I can tell, largely view them as a single piece of a larger project for justice.
> They do, which is why [primary] school desegregation was (and remains) an important policy goal for various progressive and racial justice movements during the previous century.
Sure, but that doesn't really solve the problem. Given that the funding of primary schools is predominantly driven by property taxes, one could argue that this is actually been made worse (assuming lower prop taxes => less weathly parents => structurally disadvantaged races).
“The most “woke” people are the ones who aggressively try to silence all dissent (https://fakenous.net/?p=2932) and to exclude conservatives, libertarians, etc., from the Academy. So they not only fail to value intellectual diversity; they are just about the most stridently anti-diversity people in the entire country.”
There are lots of good, sharp, critical things to say about the DEI movement, most especially "institutional" DEI, but you can't meaningfully say them when you write with this tone, can you? Who's going to take you seriously? Like, at a bare minimum, you have to acknowledge (or take the trouble to refute) the concerns that animate your opposition.
The author isn't a rando! This is a tenured professor of philosophy at a major university. You know, writing like a high school sophomore on a message board.
† I highly recommend his carefully reasoned, inescapable argument that everyone has the right to own a gun for a perfect example of the form.