No. DEI is simply institutional CRT, or more generally, CSJ (but it's mostly about race). DEI is hardly an anti-government measurement, as DEI has been adopted by the federal government itself. Most, if not (yet) all, government agencies that fund scientific research now require every proposal to include a DEI plan, to devote part of the budget to advance the goals of DEI, to demonstrate how the research group and the institution are committed to DEI, and to show how the research itself will advanced the aims of DEI (I'm currently part of a group of scientists authoring a paper documenting this). This includes even fundamental physics. Somehow, particle physicists have to explain how their research will benefit those identity groups favored by the DEI/CSJ ideology.
Pincourt clearly and concisely explains the relationship of DEI to CSJ
here.
Here is the thing. From what I can see from that article, Critical Social Justice is an umbrella term used by its critics rather than by the ones promoting it. In this case, it might be similar to how the word "woke" is currently used, or for those who prefer a less gauche term, "identity synthesis" in Mounk's vocabulary. On the other hand, critical race theory is specifically used by its proponents, so it is much easier to evaluate in terms of what it stands for or not.
Pincourt there has two sentences that describes DEI. I think the first is likely to be what its practitioners are trying to do and the second is what some of the loonier fringes are trying to achieve.
"soft" DEI:
DEI is typically described as a way to bring a wider variety of “voices” into science, particularly the voices of historically oppressed identities (women, blacks, transgendered, and others). This is the polished and laudable aim of DEI and its initiatives. If this were the only thing that DEI initiatives proposed and implied, then I would not be penning this essay.
"hard" DEI:
It is because science is considered inherently and irredeemably racist that diversity, equity, and inclusion are used to advocate for increased representation in science of historically oppressed identities, at the expense (implicitly or explicitly) of historically oppressor identities (whites, Europeans, and males). As a result, DEI and its initiatives are retributive. The intention of righting historical wrongs is used as a justification to enact current discrimination.
In my own field, I have seen people of both stripes. A former co-worker of mine noticed that in my university there were very few women in our department, and her own experiences of attending interviews for the jobs seem to point to why that is. The university wanted her to be able to work hours which would make it hard for her to pick up her daughter from school, or attend PTA events which she, as a mother in Japan, is expected to do far more than her husband. From her point of view there is
systemic discrimination * against women. She is easily as qualified as other people in the department, but she finds it more difficult to get work. As a result, she has been quite active in the fledgling diversity area of our field. It is not yet an incorporated feature of the university system in Japan, I don't think, but if I go to conferences, there will be plenty of talk of it.
On top of that, I tend to find that jobs in the field are not really given according to merit. There is a baseline threshold that someone needs to pass (number of publications of literally any standard and a simple masters degree is often enough), but after that it becomes a case of who you know, not what you know. This is the old boys' network, the old school tie, etc... In such situations, it can't be that surprising if the people getting most of the jobs tend to be buddies with similar interests, etc... And quelle surprise, there is often an overlap in terms of ethnicity and gender.
For me, this "soft" DEI makes sense. An effort to raise awareness of biases that might have nothing to do with ability. Shouldn't there be ways of overcoming this kind of thing?
However, I also know opponents of this simple soft DEI. Guess what, there are people who are from, say, Canada, who have nothing more than a BA, but assume that the woman from India with a PhD who gets the job instead of him is a "diversity hire".
*Funnily enough
systemic discrimination is a term that is often laughed at as if it was stupid on its face. I used to think something similar.
Now, in terms of "hard" DEI, I also have no doubt that some of the people involved with this are also the people who have pulled long and hard on the Post-Modern bong, and I see some of them also active in the same areas. They try to do intellectual gymnastics which make literally no sense and make logically incoherent statements such as "There is no such thing as truth" (Is that true?
Doh!), "Science is racist!" (well then you won't want a racist job, I assume!).
One of the most "hilarious" things I have noticed recently is that an area that I have looked at called code-switching is now considered illegitimate. Code-switching is simply switching from one language to another, or perhaps one register to another, but this has recently been challenged by an idea called... wait for it...
translanguaging.
There are strong and weak forms of this term. The weak form is essentially redundant, being the same in meaning as code-switching, but the strong form asserts that languages are cultural constructs (true enough), but that the conclusion from this is that there are no such thing as actual languages (false conclusion in my opinion). They consider the word
language as a noun to be illegitimate, and instead use
language as a verb! The idea is that by throwing off the shackles of "named languages" (you know, made up things like "English", "Spanish", "Russian" etc...) students in English classrooms can empower themselves to overthrow the oppressors (or something idiotic like that). Of course, what the proponents don't seem to understand is that by trashing the very idea of "named languages" as purely created by dominant power structures, they also throw other named languages such as American Indian languages or Ainu under the bus. Why bother trying to rescue these languages from extinction if they are not even real things and probably invented by the patriachy anyway?
Also, if the term to language is being used, then what does it even mean to translanguage? Presumaly translanguaging is going from one language to another, but that is the very thing that has been undermined.
Anyway, that is a bit of a digression, but I only bring it up because whereas before I had seen the idea of translanguaging used in papers, I saw it used in the wild for the first time by one of the proponents of "hard" DEI.
This is probably a long-winded way of saying that I partially agree, but I think there is a better and more nuanced discussion to have in which certain forms of DEI might be useful and certain forms (Kendi and DiAngelo) are pure nonsense.
