Changing Tenor in HR Departments

[superrific]

Well, I did not initially read the article. I often just turn to What's New and read the latest messages. Those included lots of misuses of the term DEI.

I take the topic rather seriously because over two decades ago I found myself serving on two small university-wide committees charged with drafting "Plans for Diversity." Both became passed by the university. (I changed jobs, which is how I found myself doing this twice.) In short, "Diversity" and "inclusion" etc. movements/regulations are organized around the notion of creating an improved/inclusive COMMUNITY. Bothj plans included multiple proposals, largely oriented around improving knowledge and resources of all sorts. [Essentially, if the school is going to create a diverse community, then it also should provife resources for folks who are part of various minorities, and they also should provide information for the white majority so it can learn about the diverse segments of that community. These Diversity Plans were not largely about hiring or quotas, although the plans did include advice on how hiring committees could go about their business.


Now I have read (or skimmed) the article. There is much that one might say, but my chief response is that the author really lacks a good sense of quantitative methods, The numbers offered do not generally support the larger points. I don't really have time to spell that out in more detail. [It sort of reminds me of articles on Inside Carolina that were generally written by folks who had no training in writing about numbers.]

1. I get that you might be sensitive for that reason.
2. I don't think the author is trying to use quantitative methods at all. It's a piece of journalism written by an aspiring screenwriter. As I noted in my first post, the statistics are cherry-picked, anecdotal and not at all systematic. I think it's not a good piece for diagnosing, "exactly what has DEI become." It is a good piece for listening to "here's my experience of it," one offered seemingly without too much bitterness.
3. The interesting thing about it was the way the author pointed fingers at older white men. Not to the minorities "taking his job." And it seems to be reflective, though maybe I'm reading this in, that the problem is less DEI than the simultaneous use of DEI in a "diversity through addition only" way that is arithmetically destined to fail.