The end of DEI (at least in America)

All the stats show that more diverse executive teams perform better. Now obviously there's a limit to that - they still have to have relevant skills, interests and experience - but pushing for a deliberately more diverse representation in leadership is shown to benefit organisations on average. By all means it can be taken too far but the stats show that it rarely is, and much more frequently the opposite still.
It is very unclear that to be the case. It is mostly attributed to a study of McKinsey, and as we all know, everything McKinsey does is flawed. There have been some studies recently showing the exact opposite, albeit from quickly skimming them, they look kinda bullshit.

This is a very nice essay on it which tries to be quite balanced: https://medium.com/@alex.edmans/is-there-really-a-business-case-for-diversity-c58ef67ebffa

Personally, I think the diversity of thought is far more important than other forms of diversity for a company to be successful. You can have different genders, LGBT, people from different countries and races, but if you create an echo chamber of thought, you are going to massively suffer. Which has been what lots of companies have been doing for the last few years and then crying 'bigots' when their products got ridiculed (Google Gemini most recently).
 
What you'd need to do though would be ensure that already highly qualified white men didn't take all the places in the training courses while, say, black men didn't really know it existed. One way to do that would be to specifically target, say, black men to offer the training too. That's known as...?

...Marketing
 
All the stats show that more diverse executive teams perform better. Now obviously there's a limit to that - they still have to have relevant skills, interests and experience - but pushing for a deliberately more diverse representation in leadership is shown to benefit organisations on average. By all means it can be taken too far but the stats show that it rarely is, and much more frequently the opposite still.
Article:
But does that argument actually hold up? University of North Carolina’s Sekou Bermiss, Texas A&M’s Jeremiah Green, and UNC’s John Hand (a visiting professor at Chicago Booth since 2017) analyzed data for the full set of companies in the S&P 500, and they find no evidence of a relationship between greater diversity on executive teams and better subsequent financial performance.
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/do-diverse-leadership-teams-produce-better-performance

I'd be wary of studies looking at already well performing companies who then increase their DEI initiatives for whatever reasons and then draw the conclusion that diversity made them perform better.
 
All the stats show that more diverse executive teams perform better. Now obviously there's a limit to that - they still have to have relevant skills, interests and experience - but pushing for a deliberately more diverse representation in leadership is shown to benefit organisations on average. By all means it can be taken too far but the stats show that it rarely is, and much more frequently the opposite still.
Yeah I have no doubts on that to be the case. A more diverse leadership team (or team of any sorts) will bring different backgrounds and ideas to the role. However, as you say that person still needs to be qualified to do the role and if equal opportunity can be enabled then those people will still get roles that way, rather than having an actual amount that HAS to be diverse.

The problem for me has always been a lack of opportunity, rather than an insistence on regardless of skill or qualification.
 
Is this a serious question?

What % of China's population speak English? What % of India's population speak English?

Out of those that do speak English, how many of them work in that particular field or market, understand the American business culture and/or even have the rights to work in the USA?
India is 100m people officially and many more with varying levels.

They were a colony, remember.
 

I don't live or work in the EU so not familiar enough based on that article to comment but Cheimoon left you a great reply that sounds about right to me.

Financial-wise, Indians and Chinese Americans do much better than white people (or any other group) in the US. I think Afonso's point is pretty clear, that if there was a systematic discrimination or racism in the West/US against non-white people, then Indians, Chinese, Taiwanese and co. (basically Asians) wouldn't do near as good as they are doing. Asian Americans median household is around 112K while White Americans at 89K. If you check when it comes to getting accepted at top universities, it is kinda similar. If an Asian American and an Afro American have the exact same CV, and if the Afro American has a 90% chance of getting accepted, I think that the chances of the Asian American are at just around 10-20%. With the same CV. So if there is some systematic discrimination in the US, it is against Asian Americans. Who nevertheless, still do much better than others.

Lots of people would argue DEI and affirmative actions are inherently discriminatory, if not racist policies. So kinda fighting racism/sexism with more racism/sexism. And in some cases, it is absolutely stupid, like the previous head of secret service wanting to have 50% women in Secret Service, despite that there is absolutely no good reason for that.

On the other hand, there are some reasons why DEI and affirmative action are good things. The most obvious one being that people need their own heroes, and let's be fair, humanity still does not have either equality of opportunity. In an ideal world, there should be equality of opportunity, and then everything else being merit-based. We are not in such a world, so maybe some type of DEI initiatives are needed. On the other hand, a lot of these initiatives have been absolutely stupid and have mostly irritated everyone while basically helping only the people who benefit from them, not their communities.

My best answer of what can be done different is to have a much better public education system. Invest in communities and public schools, especially in poor communities. And if you want to have some type of DEI, be it based on socio-economical status instead of race, sex, gender or other attributes. A poor kid being raised with no father and from an alcoholic mother needs help regardless if they are white, black, Asian or mixed. With the current DEI initiatives though, such a person if white or Asian would get overlooked in favour of someone who is Black or Latino even if they are much richer and coming from a functional family.

The first bold is just not a valid argument. For one thing, Indian, Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants to the US are, on average, much wealthier to start with than immigrants from Central and South America so that's a big part of what is going on there.

And the second bold is not accurate. Asian-Americans, for example, make up a huge majority of the most prestigious public universities like UC system (30% Asian at Berkeley and 35% Asian at UCLA) despite Asians only making up 16% of the California population. Also, college admissions are not and should never be just about test scores so I call BS to you asserting those percentages and even you being able to categorize the "same CV". There is definitely systemic discrimination against Asians (Trump was a big part of accelerating that during COVID), but its not this right wing angle that is really attempt to pit minorities against each other.
 
I don't live or work in the EU so not familiar enough based on that article to comment but Cheimoon left you a great reply that sounds about right to me.



The first bold is just not a valid argument. For one thing, Indian, Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants to the US are, on average, much wealthier to start with than immigrants from Central and South America so that's a big part of what is going on there.

And the second bold is not accurate. Asian-Americans, for example, make up a huge majority of the most prestigious public universities like UC system (30% Asian at Berkeley and 35% Asian at UCLA) despite Asians only making up 16% of the California population. Also, college admissions are not and should never be just about test scores so I call BS to you asserting those percentages and even you being able to categorize the "same CV". There is definitely systemic discrimination against Asians (Trump was a big part of accelerating that during COVID), but its not this right wing angle that is really attempt to pit minorities against each other.
Thank you for explaining it far better than I could.
 
I don't live or work in the EU so not familiar enough based on that article to comment but Cheimoon left you a great reply that sounds about right to me.



The first bold is just not a valid argument. For one thing, Indian, Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants to the US are, on average, much wealthier to start with than immigrants from Central and South America so that's a big part of what is going on there.

And the second bold is not accurate. Asian-Americans, for example, make up a huge majority of the most prestigious public universities like UC system (30% Asian at Berkeley and 35% Asian at UCLA) despite Asians only making up 16% of the California population. Also, college admissions are not and should never be just about test scores so I call BS to you asserting those percentages and even you being able to categorize the "same CV". There is definitely systemic discrimination against Asians (Trump was a big part of accelerating that during COVID), but its not this right wing angle that is really attempt to pit minorities against each other.
On the Asian %s at Cal and UCI it seems more like 40% for undergrads. And even that seems low if you walk around those campuses. I work really close to UCI, known locally by some as the university of Chinese immigrants or the university of Chinese and Indians.
 
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So, basically, it's total normal for 40% of CEO's to be of Indian or Chinese decent?
 
it depends on which moments in history we are talking about. if recent history (e.g. 1990's - 2005 ish), I'd probably say yes for academia, possibly less so for other sectors of the economy.

I started my PhD in the US in 2015, as did my friends. One of my (female) friends went to the top or second best university in the world for her very maths-heavy, male-dominated field. She was in an almost all-male lab and had a pretty good time within the lab. She also had friends (women) who went to other labs in that university, and to the only other university which could compete with hers in that field. Here is some of what she learnt:

Her friend who went to another lab in that university, realised after a while that not just was she the only woman there, but that there were very few female lab alumni. Later, she learnt that her professor used to have an only-male policy, but had since become enlightened - he now allowed East Asian women (like her) in the lab, because they were more innately capable of dealing with the maths needed. She considered launching a complaint about what she perceived as sexual and racial bias, but decided to prioritise getting her PhD, put her head down, and graduated. She learnt that previous East Asian female graduates from the lab had learnt the same thing and made the same decision, because, if a complaint was made, it would at best mean a one- or two-year investigation during which time their work was stalled, and then re-starting a fresh project in a different lab with a hostile new PI.
To the best of our knowledge, the professor continues in his enlightened ways.

At the other university was a senior professor in that field. He was the mentor of my friend's advisor. His lab graduates are also over overwhelmingly male. He shared that other professor's view on the unsuitability of women to the field, though he started taking in a handful of female PhD students towards the end of his life. However, it can not be said that he always kept women out. He offered female students a chance to be TAs for his courses, as long as they met the criteria he openly demanded - attractiveness.
This was a man whose academic tree shows his students - all male- have become professors within this field at virtually every university in the US.

Once again, this was 2015-2021.

In pretty much every university I've ever seen or been a part of this, any form of harassment is strictly forbidden and harshly punished (except harassment of conservatives, which is often tolerated even if forbidden by the letter of the policy law).

The only time during my PhD I saw someone censured for political opinion, was during a retreat when a senior PhD student (female) called a new student (male) a moron for agreeing with Jordan Peterson. She was made to apologise to him next day.

The only time I saw a trigger warning in a course I TA'd was for a video on evolution, part of which made fun of Intelligent Design people. Students were allowed to skip the class where the video was shown.

Why is all this the case? First, I think the male/female differences are largely domain specific, and probably driven by motivational differences with women finding some fields inherently less attractive and some inherently more attractive (much like the vast majority of wikipedia content providers, uber drivers and football fans tend to be male, despite these being open opportunities to anyone who might want to participate).

So is at all merit based (question 1)? For male/female, basically yes. Discrencies occur due to motivational factors (which may result from genetics or society). There are also certain cultures that may be simply be more off putting to women, such as philosophy which is very argumentative and aggressive. I don't think the discrepancies are due to hiring biases against women though. For race, I also don't think the discrepancies are due to hiring biases. If anything, departments are hungry to hire more and more ethnic minorities (except asians who probably are truly discriminated against, if anything because they perform too well) due to political and reputational pressures amongst colleagues. The problem is the lack of qualified candidates to meet the demand.

That's certainly a plausible theory.

Along the same lines, do you think the under-representation of conservatives in academia is because conservative traits* are badly correlated with traits valued in academia? There is some evidence from the US showing a positive correlation between IQ and leftist beliefs - perhaps conservative under-representation is a downstream effect of their deficient cognitive abilities? There is slightly more convincing evidence showing the correlation of conservatism with authoritarian thinking - perhaps conservatives aren't able to function well within groups, and this explains why they are missing from academia? Or perhaps conservatism is just badly correlated with interest in academia?

*which are genetic, as much as interest in science, or IQ, is genetic.

Now I personally don't think these IQ/EA GWASs are capturing particularly useful information, and some other behavioural GWASs are even worse, and I'm skeptical about how "innate" these things are. But if genetics cannot be ruled out for the under-representation of women and minorities, I don't see why it should be ruled out for the under-representation of conservatives.


To put my cards on the table -
I'm an non-US citizen South Asian male in US academia. To get into undergrad college within India, I had to face a sharper form of affirmative action, called reservation, which meant I had to compete for half the total available seats. (I managed to get in). Within the US, by not being a citizen, not being a woman, and not being a US-born under-represented minority, there are virtually no fellowships and grants I can apply for. As a result, my chances of getting a faculty job are reduced (fake numbers coming up) from 0.1% to 0.01%. I enjoy some racist and sexist podcasts, that would get me reprimanded if I accidentally played it aloud in the lab.

At the same time, the most sweeping censorship I've seen within universities in my 10 years here has been around Israel. Professors have lost tenure over it, while professors like those I described, or those saying that Black inferiority is genetic, retain their tenured positions. Lower down, dozens of postdocs and grad students have lost their jobs, and hundreds of undergrads have been suspended, all for very particular *left-wing* speech. The Israel exception to free speech was true before Oct 7, and has been enlarged since, and is now reinforced by the power of the right-wing federal government.
 
Google kills diversity hiring targets
Google is eliminating its goal of hiring more employees from historically underrepresented groups and reviewing some diversity, equity and inclusion programs, joining other tech giants rethinking their approach to DEI.

In an email to employees Wednesday, Google said it would no longer set hiring targets to improve representation in its workforce.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/google-kills-diversity-hiring-targets-04433d7c?mod=mhp
 
All the stats show that more diverse executive teams perform better. Now obviously there's a limit to that - they still have to have relevant skills, interests and experience - but pushing for a deliberately more diverse representation in leadership is shown to benefit organisations on average. By all means it can be taken too far but the stats show that it rarely is, and much more frequently the opposite still.
Not true at all.
 
Those white europeans from south Africa sound exactly the same as those white Europeans from Chile that hope for a way back to the past when everything was better (Pinochet).

They just want to continue to rule their foreign lands and foreign slaves as they please. Nice people.

Or the facist in Spain that says that with Franco life was better

Same old same old

Right wing rightwinging
 
I don't think they expect to win. Companies will move away simply to avoid the legal costs associated.
So basically if you want Starbucks you'll need to go to a blue state in future

This is a very slippery slope because essentially it's the government determining how a private business should run, what will be next, no WFH, all staff must wear a MAGA hat, the list could be endless!
 
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So our company which has a very robust DEI program just announced on Friday that it's ending due to the executive order from the white house. We still value diversity though, per our fearless leaders last paragraph of the letter sent to everyone.

Tbh I'm not surprised and find it kinda funny in a way. A few of us at work were wondering how long we'd hold out.
 
So our company which has a very robust DEI program just announced on Friday that it's ending due to the executive order from the white house. We still value diversity though, per our fearless leaders last paragraph of the letter sent to everyone.

Tbh I'm not surprised and find it kinda funny in a way. A few of us at work were wondering how long we'd hold out.
I'm curious to see how this plays out at my company as well, one of the divisons, separate to the one I work in, is LexisNexis who have a lot of federal contracts
 
We also do a fair amount of Federal work so that's why we're going to delete the DEI references & programs, at least that's the reason the CEO gave.
 
I thought private corporations can have their own DEI initiatives?

Nobody can bar you from hiring people of all colours and all inclusivitiy if you think that's good for company.

Nobody can force you to fire the DEI workers that's been employed.

Right?
 
I thought private corporations can have their own DEI initiatives?

Nobody can bar you from hiring people of all colours and all inclusivitiy if you think that's good for company.

Nobody can force you to fire the DEI workers that's been employed.

Right?

Right, but Trump's government can choose to not do business with organisations that promote and implement these policies so money talks.
 
So it's actually if you hire DEI we wont give you contract?

Serious question.

Isnt that? Blatant discrimination?

Depends on the legal standard is.

I'm not sure a Republican court would say that the government is not able to enforce a 'colour blind' policy as it's one layer removed from being the potentially discriminating party, but you never know