Debate: Should Academic DEI Programs be Abolished?

all right good evening everyone my name is J.R Scott and I am the co-president of the MIT chapter of the Adam Smith Society along with the MIT free speech Alliance I would like to welcome you to tonight's debate about academic Dei programs before introducing our moderator I would like to take the time to thank a few organizations and individuals without whom this event would not occur first I would like to thank our 15 co-sponsors representatives from many of these organizations set up tables in the foyer outside of the debate and I hope you had an opportunity to interact with all of them from the MIT free speech Alliance I would like to thank president Chuck Davis executive director Peter Bonilla secretary bill fresa and the rest of the executive committee for their tireless efforts putting up this debate over the past year now to tonight's debate the proposition to be debated is resolved that academic Dei programs should be abolished as a reminder we are being broadcast live on the alumni Free Speech alliances YouTube channel and the recording will be made available for later viewing I'm honored to introduce the moderator of tonight's debate Nadine strassen Professor strassen is the former president of the American civil liberties Union professor emerita at New York law school and a senior fellow at the foundation for individual rights and expression her most recent book is hate why we should resist it with free speech not censorship she is also the host and project consultant for free to speak a three-hour documentary film series that will be released this fall please join me in giving an enthusiastic welcome to Professor strawson who will introduce tonight's debaters and explain the debate rules professor strassen to Jr uh thank you so much for that warm welcome thank you for that very kind introduction J.R and thanks for all the work that you're doing to promote free speech at MIT before I introduce our distinguished Debaters I want to briefly highlight the importance of tonight's debate the debate resolution of course raises issues of urgent concern especially with the growing number of laws that Target campus Dei programs regardless of our views about Dei in particular the broad and vague language in some of these laws presents General academic freedom concerns so our debate topic is now more relevant than ever when we began planning it more than a year ago yet too many people have argued that these issues should not be subject to debate that debating them causes harm moreover polls show that many people including right here at MIT don't dare to discuss this topic for fear of being accused of causing harm so solely by participating in this debate we participants all agree on one major overarching point which cannot be taken for granted much as we might disagree about the specific debate resolution we agree that these issues are not Beyond debate and now I'm going to put on a prop which is not what you might think it is very timely today I don't know how if you could all see it but it says make JS Mill great again as in John Stewart Mill yeah um and you know John Stuart Mill demonstrated what he powerfully explained to be the benefits of questioning and debating even our most cherished ideas MIT as a world leader in science and technology should also be a world leader in the rigorous examination and criticism of ideas that is essential for pursuing not only scientific truth but truth in all Fields by the way as a token of my respect for MIT even though I went to that other school in Cambridge but I respect you and I'm wearing your school colors which are much prettier than my school colors a couple years ago MIT earned criticism for violating academic freedom principles when it canceled the scheduled lecture by University of Chicago Professor Dorian Abbott because some people objected to his extracurricular comments about out tonight's very topic but there has been a big Silver Lining to that cloudy episode it galvanized and continues to Galvanize the MIT communities renewed commitment to these Free Speech principles as embodied in a number of concrete steps including the founding and flourishing of the MIT free speech Alliance the faculty's adoption of a robust speech protective policy with specific recommendations for improving the Free Speech climate here welcome actions by your new president Sally cornballth both to endorse the principles of free speech and to promote it in practice a new course on free speech that was designed by philosophy professors Alex Byrne and Brad scow and I had the honor of speaking to their class when they pioneered it and a new dialogues across different series spearheaded by community and Equity officer John Dozier I highly recommend the recent kickoff talk in that series by heterodox Academy President John tomasi and during that talk John appreciatedly endorsed tonight's debate as an important step toward modeling and promoting open inquiry here at MIT now let me briefly introduce our distinguished Debaters highlighting a few facts that they themselves considered most important starting with the affirmative team Heather McDonald is the Thomas W Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute two of her recent books are the diversity delusion and the war on Cops Heather's newest book is directly relevant to tonight's topic when race Trump's Merit and the subtitle is how the pursuit of equity sacrifices Acts Excellence destroys Beauty and threatens lives it will be available two weeks from today on April 18th and you can pre-order it now patanjali com bombati who goes by Pat to everyone except his mother is a chemistry professor at McGill University he was born in India and has since become a naturalized citizen of both the United States and Canada Pat is mostly focused on science and Jazz and dogs however as a lifelong egalitarian libertarian Pat also Advocates classical liberal principles including in the Dei discussion now for the negative team Kenneth Foster is the CEO and founder of inversity solutions that's a trademarked name she is a media personality author and specialist in diversity Equity inclusion and belonging carrot didn't ask me to say this but I am in awe of the fact that she has a background as a stand-up comic so uh I I told her she can't possibly be afraid of being a debater after having the courage to do that uh tareth has appeared in two recent films as an advocate for free speech and conscious communication one was can we take a joke and the other one was no safe spaces uh finally Pamela Denise long who goes by Denise after the initial introduction is a Seventh Generation American a doctoral candidate in organizational development Denise is researching effective executive leadership for implementing anti-racism when Denise is not writing op-eds including as a columnist for Newsweek she raged tweet States about how Dei is off the rails or meditates during 10 Mile walks now let me outline the debate format each speaker is going to have an eight-minute opening statement alternating between the affirmative and negative teams each opening statement will immediately be followed by three minutes of cross-examination by a member of the opposite team then each team will have five minutes for rebuttals with the eight of our excellent time keeper Jr and my gavel I am going to strictly enforce time limits when time is up I'm telling all of the speakers I will strictly I will pound the gavel and say time and the speaker must then stop I'll allow just a few words to finish up a sentence okay finally we'll turn to audience questions I understand I thought there were going to be standing mics for the questions is that not true are where are they okay great so the audience is ahead of me please feel free to start lining up behind the microphones as we're approaching the end of the rebuttals so now it's time for our opening statement our first opening statement uh from affirmative team speaker one who is going to be Pat thank you Nadine and thank you to the MIT free speech Alliance for putting on this event I believe this event really captures and touches upon the Zeitgeist of our times and I'll make a small joke in homage takarith over here as a comedian one of my comedy is also one of my loves and there's a brilliant comedian by the name of Chris Rock who has come up with this uh bit called uh selective outrage and I strongly encourage you to watch it I think Chris Rock touches upon the issues of the Zeitgeist of our time what he touches upon but misses is selective empathy and in particular selective empathy is something that drives me apoplectic I find anathema and in particular is part and parcel of the diversity inclusion and Equity uh uh uh umbrella so I think the idea is selective empathy is something we should be very afraid of and that's something that's taking place over here here having given that little opening Salvo I'd like to make four basic points in these eight minutes or seven minutes I have remaining the first point is why should anyone listen to me and that's something I always think about as a humble scientist as that I can offer some value as a chemist or a physicist or engineer but why should you as a student or a taxpayer or an alumnus listen to me what value can I add to this discussion and the value that I can add to this discussion is I've been thinking about these ideas of so-called Equity diversity and inclusion or race and racism or sex and sexism and casts and castism ever since I was a child having immigrated from India to America so I immigrated from a third world country with my parents my parents experience considerable amount of difficulties in racism we never thought of ourselves as victims we never thought of ourselves as anything more than being lucky to be part of possibly the greatest country on Earth but certainly a marvelous country that made us able to succeed and fly as high as we want to so myself and my parents and my family we've all benefited from this country and as a result I take great pains to defend a lot of the things that this country and related countries have put forth to advance the state of human civilization as a result I will not be canceled and that's the thing that a lot of people worry about is cancellation and as my friends Jordan Peterson and Gad sad say Don't Be Afraid God said especially says be a honey badger be an academic honey badger and that's something that I take to heart don't be canceled say what you think say it kindly and politely and listen to other people and as Jordan Peterson says you should probably interact with people with whom you disagree so you can learn more and hopefully become smarter but don't cancel others and I refuse to be canceled that's one of the reasons why I'm here now the next question is what about an intellectual approach is there an intellectual approach that we should take and the approach that I'd like to propose is the is the Primacy of free speech free speech is Central to human civilization the foundation of democracy the advancement of civilization and it is the means by which we learn we are not supposed to have safe speech we're not supposed to have kind speech we're supposed to have a vast Marketplace of free speech and ideas that we can consume reject debate modify do as we see fit free speech is the absolutely primary Foundation of our civilization and any efforts to restrict Free Speech should be looked at with the utmost of fear and concern the second rather third point is having established an intellectual approach what is our value proposition our value proposition I take from Dorian Abbott and Yvonne marinovich who came up with this idea of Merit fairness and equality Merit fairness inequality was merely their marketing statement to discuss classical liberal principles as discussed by John Stuart Mill or classical conservative principles as discussed by Edmund Burke brilliant people have worked on these ideas far smarter than me far earlier than I have so what we aim to do is to learn from them Merit fairness and equality Merit means I'm going to judge you based upon your merits as an individual and that and that alone not I'm going to judge you by the content of your character not by the color of your skin or your organs or your religion or your nationality I only judge you based upon Merit and I certainly have practiced that in my life and certainly as a scientist and as a professor fairness is a fairly straightforward thing we won't belabor that any further societies have historically not been fair and we try to make them more fair everyone wants to do that equality is the central point we are equal under the law in American society what we don't necessarily have is equal rights and responsibilities but ideally We should strive for equal rights and responsibilities as typically discussed by the founding fathers whether of America or even France these are brilliant ideas we should focus on equality having said that what is the opposite of Merit fairness and equality diversity inclusion and Equity diversity inclusion and Equity sounds wonderful no one wants to say I'm against diversion diversity inclusion and Equity but these ideas are a wolf in sheep's clothing and I would tell anyone to be absolutely wary of them diversity inclusion and Equity let's begin with Equity Equity versus equality is a very different concept Equity involves redistribution of resources from me to you if I've earned resources and you haven't earned resources maybe we should redistribute them this falls under the auspices of what the Communists try to do and the Communists now are becoming repackaged in a modern version called cultural Marxism we had economic Marxism a century ago in Moscow in 1920 and now in Cambridge in 20 T20 we have we have cultural Marxism the cultural Marxism suggests that we are all collectives of one group against another victims and oppressors this is not how most of society works and that's certainly not how Cambridge in 2020 works so I think the idea of equity is very very dangerous diversity is also dangerous because why should we have diversity in outcomes we're all different do we have diversity in the NBA do we have diversity in the NFL do we have diversity in particle physics and the answer is no was the diversity in the Rolling Stones no people do things when they want to with their skill set and people of all walks of life can come together and create rock and roll or jazz or particle physics or play basketball or soccer that's the idea we want to let people of all walks of life of similar interests add value to human society that doesn't mean there's a diversity of outcomes it means there's a diversity of interests and with that I'll conclude and uh thank you for your time [Applause] cross-examination by a negative team member foreign so thank you Pat for your statements you mentioned selective empathy and I'm curious to know the extent to which you feel MFE actually demonstrates The Selective empathy toward American Negroes or descendants of slaves in the United States is my mic still on oh here it is that's an excellent question and I can say undoubtedly that I empathize greatly with the plight of African Americans indigenous Americans and Indigenous Canadians I'm a Canadian as well and what has happened to them over the course of hundreds of years I could not be more sensitive to that but that doesn't mean that I believe the solutions are the solutions of diversity inclusion and equity in my view the solutions to Historic problems are achieved by removal of barriers that is because my tendency is to be a Libertarian and as a Libertarian I would never Force anyone else to be libertarian either you can be conservative you can be liberal You Can Be leftist You Can Be right-wing you can do what you want but I think the idea is we might have different values we might have different approaches but the key point is we shouldn't have selective empathy and I agree with you we should have absolute empathy for the plight of African Americans and what they've had to suffer over the course of hundreds of years I have a question regarding uh your approval I guess of the Chris Rock special yeah um I found it quite disappointing and the reason is as an advocate for free speech and as someone who does support Dei I felt that he really was trying to to balance he wasn't stretching himself what was it about that presentation that speaks to your message of MFE in this case I wouldn't necessarily say as a comedy fan I know you're a professional comedian so with all due respect um this is also one of my loudest comedy so this wasn't the best Chris Rock special it wasn't up there with Dave Chappelle who's to me the goat having said that I like the idea of selective outrage which captures to me the zeitest of our times and again connects to selective empathy he came up with the idea of selective outrage that's Hill sales pitch but I've been talking about selective empathy my whole life especially in the last 10 years when I see tremendous amount of empathy going to some people but not others it goes to African Americans but not to Asian Americans it goes to women but not men it goes to trans but not straights and the people who get the least empathy of all are straight white men negative team speaker number one who I understand is going to be current oh it's going to be I'm sorry do I have it wrong I'm so sorry either you choose I can go you're the bosses of your team I'll do it all right so much of the argument for merit fairness and equality sorry MFE focuses on black students and black Americans in particular and we American Negroes are 80 of the black population so when this criticism about what black folk get it's really about me and my people so MFE notes that black Americans get special treatment from the government are a protected group and institutions offer American Negroes special set-asides they're right and Negroes should forever maintain a special relationship with our nation that enslaved us since 1776 and for those of us who were in this land before America became an actual nation of its own American Negroes are those black families who were emancipated from the threat of slavery in 1865. we are those folk who endured a hundred years of abhorrent unimaginable unconstitutional discrimination until 1960 and those of us who have consistently experienced disproportionate negative impact of social policy even until today myself included MFE ignores or dismisses or marginalizes the accumulated burdens and accommodations required by that history proponents are not interested in the pre-existing obligations of our nation-state and so since they're done with it they figure the academy should be as well but they're wrong to push institutions into their way of thinking adherence of MFE mimic the most flamboyant proponents of Dei and what do I mean when I say that I mean they too bastardize the American Negro Legacy for example mfe's sacred text which is an op-ed published by Newsweek that claims that diversity Equity inclusion and anti-racism violates the ethical and legal legal principle upon which equal protections is rooted MFE Doctrine further claims that special considerations to Negroes replicates the harm during the 1900s that Negroes endured if that scrambles your brain it should that argument is wishful thinking in the formal sense it's a moral failing and it's a deviation from the original intent of the post-civil war 14th Amendment it and its equal protections Clause specifically 14a was written because of the threats facing the newly freed slaves but it was also written to ensure that those emancipated slaves and their progeny received the rights and that those rights were so secure that no one who disagreed with them could form a majority and just overwrite it Justice katandra Brown Jackson reiterated the original tent of the 14th Amendment and her opening arguments or the opening arguments of Meryl V Milligan a current scotus case that questions federal government oversight of Alabama's actions of affecting black citizens voting recall that Alabama was a confederate State and the oversight of voting rights and access is a federal obligation because those states have consistently sought to undermine Negroes even until today in every generation negro families face some version of thought leadership and opposition to our protections that current version is MFE proponents of MFE say that Dei can make things worse and they're right and here's how Dei makes things worse when Advocates attempt to shoehorn the Ambitions of all people into the backs onto the backs of the descendants of U.S slaves and our Legacy Dei is derailed when activists say men who want to be women are equal to women and allow those men access to women's hard-earned rights Dei is derailed when they say that minor attracted people is just a sexual preference that we should adapt to and accept that is also a derailing of Dei and to hook that to our Legacy as slaves is wrong and egregious having said all that the reality is that all those people exist and what we miss out on the opportunity to do between Dei and MFE is to figure out what do we do with the reality of the humans who live alongside us instead of arguing about philosophy we ought to put our minds together to problem solve that issue and that does not require at any point taking away marginalizing or defaming the protections that me my ancestors and every single person born into my family from this day forward should always have D I also gets anti-racism wrong when it teaches an oppressor oppressed narrative based on skin color what Dei ought to do is prepare Educators to help all students from PK 212 pre-k through college excuse me develop the necessary knowledge to not be racist and develop their competencies to disrupt racism in their Circles of concern and influence and of course what we have to do is build Educators capacity to do that well and in the interest of free speech what we know is no one teaches us how to have these conversations at all let alone how to do them well let alone how to forgive each other and show Grace when we totally mess it up which we will that's part of the learning process so what I want to leave you with is this thought we do not need to abolish Dei programs nor anti-racism what we really ought to do is to urgently Nuance how those programs function so that we ultimately achieve the chain the the aim of equality in our nation and if we do that right and if we do that now if we commit to honoring the goal of equality not just saying we're at an equal playing field but recognizing the various reasons we are not and how could we be if we focus on the goal we can accomplish equality this generation thank you thank you and now a three-minute cross-examination by an affirmative team member who I believe is going to be Pat thank you Denise and thank you for your very heartfelt comments I'm going to tell you that personally for what it's worth and I'm just one individual I happen to agree with most of what you said I empathize with you I empathize with the plight of African Americans and the question that I would raise is not whether we agree with you but what should we do and how should we proceed one should we have the ability to freely debate things without fear of being canceled and two the questions of EDI are not specific to America and African Americans but are a global issue I live in Canada despite being an American citizen I'm a dual citizen there the issue is often involve indigenous people and something you might question there's something you might know is that uh the EDI approach isn't purely applied to African Americans how do you feel about its application to women and other minorities whether in America or elsewhere in the world not just African Americans so what I can speak to is obligations from that history it's contextualized the obligations in Australia unique to Australia the obligations in the United States unique to the United States Canada and so on and so forth my so I I believe that diversity Equity inclusion and anti-racism does apply to all a because we're all stakeholders in it with the unique obligations are different but we're also a countrymen so we do know need to know how to interact with each other what I can say which I think I heard you ask is part of this um conversation or talking points when the within MFE is that words can never hurt you that's actually scientifically untrue and practically untrue words create worlds we're in this space today and in some way we will be changed and transformed so I would encourage the proponents of MFE to instead focus on due diligence in those words need we to re-uh resurrect I guess is the word I want to use some ideas about scientific racism ought we to leave some ideas dead because you're not familiar with the context of the United States and you're new here or you don't know the nuances of history in the way that you might ought you maybe should do we give you the right or support your ability to uninformately without due diligence introduce Concepts that are detrimental to our country instead of advancing it thank you are we out of time here I'd appreciate it if you could just keep holding up whatever thank you so much that will help me so um now for uh Heather the next second affirmative team speaker thank you madam moderator I start from the following proposition being female is not an accomplishment my being female should play no role in my being hired for a job of course my sex undoubtedly has made me the target of sex preferences on numerous occasions thus casting doubt on any actual qualifications I may hope to possess my being female should be particularly Irrelevant in a university until recently universities were dedicated to the enlightenment ideal of universal knowledge a male Chinese engineer and a female Nigerian engineer may have no spoken language in common but they can communicate through the universal languages of mathematics and physics whether the buildings they erect stand or fall has nothing to do with their nationality or their sex but with whether they possess Mastery of engineering principles I will go further being black gay or gender fluid are also not accomplishments and should have nothing to do with faculty hiring or student admissions the only thing that should matter when a medical school hires a researcher in pancreatic cancer say is whether that oncologist is the best in his field the Dei bureaucracy is the Nemesis of the Enlightenment ideal of knowledge it puts Relentless pressure on every academic Department to hire on the basis of race and sex not on the basis of intellectual achievement every faculty search today is one desperate effort to find even remotely qualified minorities or female candidates being female or a non-asian minority confers an enormous advantage in the hiring and tenure process yet despite this obsessive attention to diversity many departments still do not pass the Dei proportionality test so Dei bureaucrats are on a crusade to extirpate the sources of bias that allegedly stand in the way of proportional representation every colorblind objective test of academic skills whether the SATs lsats or the Medical College admissions test is under attack as racist and is going down step one of the medical school licensing exam test students knowledge of basic physiological processes step one went past fail last year because Black and Hispanic students disproportionately got Rock Bottom scores their poor scores impeded those students ability to land The Residency of their choice whether the students who will now squeak by with the pass will be the most qualified candidate for those residencies is of no interest scientific research priorities are being reformulated merely to increase the diversity of Federal grant recipients the National Institutes of Health has shifted funding from basic science to research on health disparities in racism simply because black scientists do more disparities research and less pure science reality check the reason why colleges are not proportionally diverse has nothing to do with bias or exclusion the reason is large racial differences in academic skills this is an uncomfortable subject and one that is taboo on a college campus indeed I may get retroactively canceled for bringing it up but if we're going to indict American universities and other institutions for systemic racism we should get our facts straight in 2019 according to the National assessment of educational progress 66 percent of black 12th graders did not possess even partial Mastery of basic 12th grade math skills such as being able to perform arithmetical calculations or to recognize a linear function on a graph only seven percent of black 12th graders were competent on those basic 12th grade math skills and the number who were advanced was too small to show up statistically the picture was not much better in Reading in 2021 the American College Testing organization rated only 10 percent of black high school seniors College ready based on their combined math General Science and reading scores on the ACT whites were five times as likely to be College ready these gaps do not subsequently close they're replicated in every graduate measure of academic skills they mean that at present you can have diversity or you can have meritocracy you cannot have both it is mathematically impossible to produce 13 percent black representation in chemistry nuclear biology or medicine say without lowering meritratic standards of course there are many individuals from underrepresented groups who meet existing standards far from being discriminated against however they are treated like quote gold dust as an astrophysicist at the University of California told me thanks to Dei etiology we are opting for diversity over meritocracy indeed diversity is simply a code word for preferences but those preferences do no good to their alleged beneficiaries if MIT admitted me for the sake of gender diversity and I had a 600 on my math sat whereas almost all of my peers had close to 800 I would struggle in if not fail my Calculus class because the teaching would be pitched to the class average I would likely have done perfectly well however at a school where my peers matched my own level of academic preparation so too for race preferences the beneficiaries of them would be academically competitive in colleges where their qualifications match those of their peers but when they're catapulted into schools for which they are not prepared they struggle as numerous Studies have demonstrated racial preference beneficiaries intending to major in stem are far more likely to switch out of their intended major than their non-preferred peers the Dei bureaucracy then informs them that their academic difficulties are the result of the school's systemic racism the solution to their struggles is of course more diversity bureaucracy indeed we are witnessing at this very moment a great institutional mitosis as existing diversity equity and inclusion bureaucracies spawn identical bureaucracies these latter go under a new name however quote offices of belonging if you thought that inclusion encompassed belonging you underestimate dei's fecundity in endlessly generating syncures a University's task is the pursuit of Truth the Dei bureaucracy however is founded on a lie one that teaches students to think of themselves as victims and to see racism where none exists it is iatrogenic creating through racial preferences the very divisions and discomforts that it purports to solve in an endless vicious cycle by all means let us redouble our efforts to make sure that all children are prepared to succeed by focusing on a child's earliest years campus diversity bureaucracy bureaucrats have nothing to contribute to that effort they do however suck up vast sums of money narrow the acceptable range of discourse and force the adoption of double standards of achievement the university should embrace a single colorblind definition of Excellence it will only do so however by eliminating Dei fiefdoms and by replacing identity with Merit as the Touchstone of academic accomplishment thank you [Applause] thank you and now three-minute cross-examination by the negative team yeah Heather you shared some astounding facts about the discrepancies right for Black and Hispanic students and I'm just curious um that discrepancy for the Black and Hispanic students compared to White students should we consider history or economics or simply write those students off as innately inherently inferior that's not the issue before us and of course they're not innately and inherently inferior the question is when you get to college should there be preferences for them and I would argue that preferences are cruel you're you're you're putting black students in college when you give them entry through these vast racial preferences at a competitive disadvantage college is not going to solve the academic skills Gap it has to be solved at the earliest grades that is that is this that is the Civil Rights issue that we should be worried about not not what the proportion is in college but do you also I'm sorry do you also think there should be room for for a bit of cultural understanding meaning you know I I recently and I I terribly wish I wish I could cite this but it was a professor who had Asian students and black students and this was a I believe in Ivy League school and the black students were doing terribly on their tests and the professor knew that they were smart enough to get into the school didn't understand what the problem was and after observing them realize that when the Asian students got together to study they studied together and the black student studied individually and when that Professor corrected that and had the students start studying together it was like a 180 and things turned around so where's the room and the consideration for people who come from different backgrounds have different cultures to be able to excel in environments that maybe you know they weren't taught before let me just say interfacial preferences it's not College the same number of blacks go to college they just go to college on the same condition as everybody else with peers that share their academic qualifications right now black students alone are being catapulted one level up that is cruel again I would fail at MIT you would not do me favors to put me with MIT but I may do perfectly well at Boston if you if you get rid of how about how about now I and that's and I would get a great education at Boston College or Boston University there's this inherent elitism that if you can't go to Harvard your life is over well that let's shut down every other university because nobody then should have to suffer the handicap of not going to Harvard and I didn't and I survived I don't know how but I did laughs thank you uh now negative team speaker two Carly good evening my name is Cara Foster and I am arguing for the case of Dei uh because the idea of abolishing all di efforts in uh from higher education is throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water or the metaphor I'll share later the pool water let's face it well all babies are not attractive this is a brave space we can say that and be honest um all babies do deserve to live and they deserve to be loved and raised in homes that allow and encourage them to become productive members and contributors of society same for Dei efforts and just as there are healthy and unhealthy ways to raise a child they are healthy and toxic ways to conduct diversity Equity inclusion and belonging efforts but before we dive into that let's start with some fun facts did you know that until 1976 it was legal in the state of Missouri to exterminate Mormons black exclusion black exclusionary laws made it illegal for black people to own land in Oregon those laws existed until they were eradicated in 2002. for contacts the wire and American Idol came out in 2002. according to the Department of Transportation U.S airlines reported that mishandling or damaging or completely destroying more than 800 wheelchairs happened in October of 2022. and last fun fact for my techies and my scientists there's a segment of the population that is more likely to be struck and killed by self-driving cars like Tesla than any other group of the human populace I'll give you a hint they're the same group of people who during covid the pandemic that we all went through together when hand washing was critical for all of our health and safety the same group of people had trouble getting soap to release from automated soap dispensers if you're racking your brain on this one spoiler alert you're looking at one of those people and technically three of the four people on this debater stage represent that group simply because we have darker melanated skin than the majority of the people here now why would that be is it because the billionaire and father of tin Elon Musk and his Mastermind scientists are inherently racist I highly suspect that isn't the case and they have to do more with the fact that the algorithms and the software that detect human life didn't take into account that humans come in different Hues and people with darker skin weren't taken into account when this technology was being devised a significant oversight not just with serious financial implications but literal life or death ramifications a diverse set of scientists during this Inception of this technology likely would have remedied this this is why Dei is important all the reasons I listed are why Dei is important not just for the feel-good aspect of seeing America reflected in the workplace yes that's nice not to fill some obligatory quotas because the government deems it but for multiple reasons not just representation but for a diverse array of input knowledge and experience that is true diversity and this attention to Dei is equally important in higher education where our leaders creators inventors and Educators reside and then disperse their students into the world to make it a better and more Equitable place if it's possible to hold conflicting views at the same time and have them both be true then Dei and all of its trappings is both a necessary and yet can sometimes be a feckless albatross around the necks of Educators in Academia when done well lives can be transformed and transported to an infinitely better place one infused with knowledge and empathy generating a deeper understanding not just of humankind but of ourselves and isn't that why one goes to University to broaden their Horizons to get an education to learn about others but most importantly to know thyself cover when Dei is done poorly which lets be blatantly honest it has taken a left turn it creates insurmountable barriers of fear mistrust Vengeance and indifference and while those are all obviously negative ramifications I believe indifference is the worst of these descriptors because the opposite of Love isn't hate you see with hate you still have passion and interest the opposite of Love is indifference when we stop caring all together even worse when we stop being curious about one another that is when we're in serious trouble and we will be screwing dangerously into the edge of indifference when we cease including Dei initiatives in Academia as much as I would like to make this an argument of logic addressing a topic such as Dei is highly illogical because it's based on bias bias that is conscious and unconscious that's infused with personal opinions and experiences to quote David Hawkins Dr David Hawkins a life member of the American Psychiatric Association man salima is now an always has been that he misidentified his own intellectual artifacts as reality but these artificial suppositions are merely the products of an arbitrary point of perception each person on this debate stage is arguing from their point of perception which makes it incredibly personal as is Dei to suggest otherwise is naive at best when conversations around diversity diversity Center on who you are and your identity The Chosen aspects and inherent ones I can completely understand why my opponents feel the way they do if I were an immigrant who worked my tail off to get where I am today I'd Marvel at why others who have the quote-unquote advantage of already being born here hadn't put the same grit and hard work into it as I did if I were a white woman who had absolutely zero choice of being born into the packaging that I came in I might even be a little bit bitter that I'm automatically dubbed a villain for something completely out of my control we are all only able to come to this argument with our perspective which if I may be so bold is to summarize this Viewpoint it's not fair none of it is fair but looking to eradicate an effort as badly as it's been done isn't the answer either we need to reform Dei and all the conversations and programs around it because to be true because excuse me to be the one true inclusion where all have a voice not just the marginalized I have nothing against Merit and I wish nothing more than life would be fair but I assure you and I assure you I want the most qualified lawyer scientist and doctor I can get but I also want the next time that I go to a hospital for an emergency or to have a baby for that qualified Health practitioner to know better than to assume to treat me differently because they have been dutifully misinformed that the content of my melanin and the skin that I have makes me susceptible to less pain that is why Dei is important and should not be dismantled there are too many lives relationships and experience at stake to dismiss such a powerfully important topic that should arm us all with conscious empathy and awareness for the shared but also the unique human experiences foreign thank you and now cross-examination for three minutes by Heather Kara if a physics department is looking for a researcher in dark matter and it finds somebody who has spent his life since he was six immersed in the mysteries of the universe should he be disqualified because he can't pigeonhole his work into showing how it advances diversity equity and inclusion absolutely not yes you disagree with the di bureaucracy uh if a lab is looking for a cancer researcher and Alzheimer's should it choose the most qualified researcher or somebody who is has less qualifications and less of a of a research record obviously the most qualified person should be considered but what should also be considered is um not just letting our bias take a hold when the resumes come across the desk making sure that we do reach out to a vast array of candidates because quite often you know we we live in our own Echo Chambers we live in our own bubbles the the term you know birds of a feather fought together it's not just popular because it's cute and it Rhymes it's what we tend to do and is that inherent bias that sometimes keeps us from diversifying the field of perspective clients of perspective students of prospective co-workers and that is where my stand with Dei is I don't think that anyone who is not qualified should be considered but I think we should broaden the pool and not just go with what we know because it's what we're comfortable with which is what most people tend to do do you have an example of a black faculty member who was not just turned down because of his race but was not considered for his race my impression of Faculty searches and I'm happy to be corrected by this audience is that they are casting a very wide net so do you know of a black faculty member who was overlooked in a faculty search or was actually turned down because of the color of his skin I am not aware of that okay and black students do you know if any black students who have not been admitted to college because of the color of their skin personally I do not okay so I would argue then that the Dei mission is question not a comment okay um what is the expertise of a Dei bureaucrat honestly at this point I think people can make that up okay and when will it end what is the end point when do we know that we don't need Dei any longer I don't think we'll ever know unfortunately I don't think we I think this is the song that never ends remember lamb chop and Sherry like this this is what we've gotten ourselves into which is why we do need reform without question now we are up to the final segment of tonight's exciting debate and we'll start with a five minute rebuttal and closing statements by the affirmative team uh you can divide the time as you'd like so should we split it okay so you can if you want to have two separate uh you have five minutes okay well I guess we'll share this time and I want to uh thank our opponing opposing Debaters for their excellent points and hopefully what we showed here is that you can have a civil and polite discussion not just a debate but a discussion about important topics that are really uh representative of the Zeitgeist of our times to use that phrase I think the idea is that EDI or die in my concluding comment Bears correspondence to economic Marxism a la cultural Marxism I'm less interested in the specifics of African Americans in America as I am in the principle of Dei for all people case in point German women in Germany I have German scientists and Russian scientists and Chinese scientists all of whom are my colleagues and friends all over the world and these discussions are taking place all over the world so the issue is not specific to African Americans in America but is specific to the principles and practices of EDI and how they run counter to the foundations of classical liberal democracy thank you I could not agree more with Karith and Dennis Denise that the history of this country is heartbreaking whites treated blacks until very recently with gratuitous cruelty with constant nastiness it is and the conservative history about America of America I think is a whitewash I think we do not pay enough attention to the fact that we were a white supremacist country no question about it nobody would have predicted however that that has changed a hundred percent now again I don't know of any white students or any black students who are wanting to characterize themselves as white on a college application form because being black does confirm enormous advantages the problem is the skills Gap that needs to be solved it continues to tear up our country apart but but doing that through these massive bureaucracies that have nothing to contribute to childhood education is not going to solve anything we should not be questioning our Norms of Excellence the problem is not the expectation of Merit and and accomplishment we should not apologize for those standards we should be continuously upholding them and rather than lowering them for specific groups of people because let us be honest that is what this is about it is about double standards that doesn't help anybody we should say we believe everybody can meet the same standards of excellence start working hard from the day you're born families have to get involved schools have to be highly expectational but destroying our standards of excellence is a way to end our civilization thank you and now up to five minutes to be shared by the negative team and it's Karen again for the record I've heard a couple different pronunciations tonight like Karen and Meredith put together don't call me kerative Jersey has been hijacked no question in my mind and I believe the overarching error that many people make in this field in this realm is thinking that it's a two-way street one of those Lanes is that it's solely about race or ethnicity gender or sexuality the other lane that we get stuck on is thinking that if we do diversity right if it's a success then everybody agrees in the end and everybody's on the same page that is the antithesis of true diversity real diversity is also diversity of thought and ideas neurodiversity is just making its entree into the conversation right and diversity should be something that we celebrate all of us we should be able to celebrate who we are our background Our Heritage the languages we speak the religions that we practice everything that makes us us and that's why I've actually coined the term inversity right because we need to take the division out of it instead we need to look inside we need to focus on what we have in common because we have more in common than we don't we need to be inclusive truly of one another and having these conversations and thoughtful debate and we need to be introspective meaning understanding your value and worth and your connection to humanity so you can see that in someone else and when we can apply those things we can truthfully move forward connecting our heart and our mind because guess what this is hard work too I got Neuroscience to back that up we have over 40 000 neuroreceptors that makes our heart a little brain that thinks and feels and reasons independently when we can connect those things and of course what's in between our mouths we can put all those things into action that's when our we're on our way to success as a human race some so it's not lost on me that we're holding this event in Boston Massachusetts the grounds upon which our Founders through a massive tea party um and they took a stand on fulfilling the rights of man and what I know from a survey of American History is that that language fulfilling the rights of men has been geared toward American freedmen the descendants of slaves ever since literally President Truman called forth a commission on civil rights to have that conversation about how to make it happen as did President Johnson in 1966 and in that year 1966 when President Johnson made those statements he noted that it was not enough to provide the Negro with opportunity to compete because of the accumulated burdens which do add up for performance and resources he needed to ensure achievement so while we deride double standards we have 400 years of double standards of treatment and we can't just decide that now the plane filled this level when we've been digging out of a ditch so here is what I would like to say if this proposition about Dei at any point reminded you of the conversations or debates at Oxford between Malcolm X or James Baldwin and William Buckley they should the tone tenor and messaging is very different we're really sick of providing special accommodations to the people from whom we've essentially Shackled literally Shackled and disenfranchised for so very long so here's what I would like to see to Heather's point I would like to see competent hint hint deia advocates actually create that multi-generational Talent pipeline in the Negro Community we have such bright Minds we can literally ship chips from China to the United States talk about supply chain let's create a supply chain of talent so that when carath or I are in a medical situation we have professionals that actually understand our experience and what it is like to live in our shoes so that we and our children might experience the Health Equity that is also an issue in the United States of America thank you thank you thank you to all of The Debaters now it's time for the audience q a so can you please line up at the microphones and I would like to uh lay out the ground rules if you feel comfortable introducing yourself please do so uh you may address your question to a particular team or speaker but both teams will have the chance to respond to all questions The Debaters agreed to give me some discretion about the timing here but we also agreed we should try to confine each question and answer to two minutes total so Jr thanks for holding up the time cards we want to accommodate as many audience questions as possible so let me start on this side thank you panelists and Debaters for wonderful debate and thanks to MIT for organizing this my question is very very small and Tiny which is mainly to the challengers but you know you can answer why are diversity offices the least diverse departments on campus that's a great question and I think it goes back to what I just said that people have created his misnomer that to be diverse you have to be Black Or Hispanic okay you have to be part of a marginalized group and it's unfortunate that that's how we've siphoned the the positions within the diversity realm and the conversations around it and you're absolutely right that's a very cute observation it's unfortunate what I'd also like to offer to that um in doing trainings around diversity Equity inclusion and anti-racism there's a common refrain that I've heard I'm not sure kareth if you've heard it as well but I often get the idea from uh Dei folk that white people don't listen to non-white people around this kind of thing they don't feel comfortable sharing their vulnerabilities and therefore a white person needs to lead the sort of work I'm not sure if that's what your department looks like in your place but where I come from in the midwest that is a common refrain that I see I come from Missouri right which is kind of the Michael Brown whole thing situation so take that for what it's worth I'd like to give one minute to the other two like if you'd like to comment no obligations I would I would add to that issue um do do historically black colleges and universities have a diversity problem they are at least 75 percent black and they have very small diversity offices should they be moving towards a 13 black uh population in their student body so that they can be diverse is it okay for us to have to answer questions as the folk I'll give you one more but I really want to be respectful of the audience please you have to take that as a rhetorical question no I'm happy to answer it I just want to make sure that I'm you know not getting gaveled out here uh I do believe that historically negro because when those were established we were talking about Negroes not black immigrants institutions have a particular place in black society I do not believe that they should be subject to uh mandates to dilute the population or to increase the diversity in the populations though I will tell you that when you look at the faculty at hbcus you'd be hard-pressed to find an actual negro uh in faculty position uh yeah can you keep it very briefly I'll make a very brief comment to expand upon your question which is a brilliant observation I suspect you're an MIT scientist congratulations now no okay fine wait the stereotypes the majority of EDI workers what I've seen as a university Professor are female and Caucasian 90 of my diversity Dean is a female Caucasian and refers to me as a racialized minority I told her please don't do that and she didn't listen to me and then she said I don't want to speak to you anymore so that's uh I agree with you hi thank you all so much so for some context for my question in 2014 when Apple came out with their health app they claimed that the app would be able to quote monitor all of your metrics that you're most interested in except they fail to include the most commonly used Health app and maybe there are men in the audience who know what I'm referring to but I'm certain that the women do it was a period tracker the development team who made up primarily of men failed to include a period tracker does that mean that they were sexist or ignorant I doubt or that despite being excellent Engineers with likely Stellar grades from R1 universities maybe they lacked all of the qualifications necessary some which cannot be Quantified by test scores but by lived experiences so my question for the um this team I forgot what the exact terminology is do you believe that there are traits that may be advantageous in Academia and Engineering that can only be a quantited for accounted for by vei efforts or can all qualities be measured by standardized testing well I'm happy to address that question as a university professor and a scientist I would say science is completely agnostic to your race gender religion or any combination thereof other fields not necessarily so if I were a teacher or a grade school teacher or a police officer perhaps you know politician then it might be useful to have people who are different races and genders and religions and all that sort of thing because Human Experience is different but science is Not Human Experience and if that's what we're discussing especially in stamina and MIT that's one of the points it might be different if you look at literature because literature is more human Enterprise but I would say science doesn't require or doesn't care what you are having said that what you've talked about is how you choose to implement it which is that the average man might not think about the period and the average white person might not recognize that we brown people don't show up well in cameras but for what it's worth it's not because of programming it's because of the detector we're at MIT so I can talk about detectors for a bit it's the detector negative team comment all Enterprises are human Enterprises anything that engages people is a human Enterprise and diversity Equity inclusion and anti-racism has applicability across this and I don't think it was because the scientists were racist or sexist I think they didn't have girlfriends stand up comedy okay next question please thank you this question is for the opposing side um you both share the Visions for how you think Dei efforts should look like a lot of Provisions do you really see it in realistic path from the way the eye offices exist now and what they focus on and given what we know of organizational Tendencies human Tendencies from that to your vision I personally do and the reason I do is because when I take my programming whether it's through college or university or a Fortune 100 company when I'm able to express the revised way of appreciating true diversity I see the light bulbs go off I see the epiphanies I see people who were scared to even touch it realize that true diversity means consideration it means having awareness it means being conscious it means being compassionate and that is an absolute possibility in all of the Arenas in which we're talking about and touching and how I would address that is similar to what the young lady answered before and the folks who are talking about not having color-based uh systems will not appreciate this but you the the people who are in the system have produced what we have how do you understand a thing and how to fix it when you've never experienced it so my belief is that the people who lead Dei need to be the people who are primarily experiencing the inequity that necessitates diversity Equity inclusion and anti-racism and I believe that multi-generational black Americans are deal ideally suited with the knowledge and experience to Nuance that to get to Solutions yeah I've I think in an academic context I just would like the examples of what the inequities are that are being experienced today I just I don't think that's a a reality that is large enough at the very least to justify these massive bureaucracies that are costing tens and hundreds of millions of dollars money that could go into scholarships or into faculty hiring next question hi thank you um for your comments I have a question for both sides and I'd be really curious to hear really how you disagree or if you disagree to tell the answer to this question you've both both sides have suggested that Dei is in some ways gone off the rails from whatever it should be I mean perhaps the affirmative would say it shouldn't exist in the first place but I'm curious to hear why you think that it has gone the direction that it has gone in so far as you think it there was a positive direction it might have gone in and that it is diverged from there and it is sort of similar to the question or the previous questioner asked what is the solution to that I'll let the affirmative go first since the negative yeah I would posit that EDI or die was never a good idea as I said it was a wolf in sheep's clothing now you're a question why have we accelerated so much in the last five to ten years and it's been an astronomical acceleration I would encourage the gentle reader or listener to look at the works of Jordan Peterson and Gad sad who explained in great detail how we arrived at this point over the course of decades starting from what I call grievance studies in the 1970s which gave rise to majors and grieving studies in the 1990s and now we see students who are offspring of grievance studies so that created a small group of people who have a very narrow way of thinking that's not consistent with reason logic and evidence as normally taking place in University environments so that small subset created what we call cancel culture and that created this idea of self-censorship where everyone's afraid to say what they think that's been like a runaway train in the last several years for reasons that are probably 50 years old [Music] yeah so I think part of it like I said before we're off the rails because the people who are leading it actually don't have an actual lived experience to guide it I think that um part of the reason Dei started was because of the sense of urgency around well reason that accelerated is because of the sense of urgency around very publicized very disgusting very obviously racist murders of black Americans or black people in the United States of America and how that captured the imagination and condemnation rightfully so from the entire world how do we fix it is I think we uh mfedi come together make it happen and I think we change the people who are leading the conceptualization and the implementation plans overall can I can I just say quickly diversity training began in the early 1990s in corporations you had R Roosevelt Thomas other people going around telling corporations that they needed to be trained in managing and valuing diversity and that's when you got the ideas that the expectation of punctuality was at self-white supremacist that expectations of accuracy were white supremacists uh so this was in fact created for reasons that again we had a a skills Gap in an accomplishment Gap and the Dei bureaucracy change it's a way to change the subject from from the fact that there are skills gaps that need to be solved but but attacking standards is not the way to do it and that's how this whole racket began in the early 1990s if I could just have a few seconds I think that most practitioners um in the DI space their hearts and minds are in the right place the idea was to correct the horrific wrongs um and civil right infractions that so many people faced um it has gone off the rails because we've gone from trying to bring people together to being hyper sensitive and I think that you know not to get all conspiracy theorists on you but it's a distraction you know I do agree with Heather in some respects I think it's a distraction it's like you know they think we're cats and look shiny light over there while the bigger stuff is going on behind the scenes and it is taking a lot of money that could be going to some really positive helpful things um and we're not doing any better we're not bringing people together it's almost intentional in some ways and it's it's sick next question good evening everyone my name is David uh for a brief context I'm going to bring to you a personal anecdote and mainly I would like to hear from the team in affirmative but I would like to hear from both now for context I am 24 and I have a GPA of 1.76 so I am surrounded by people in the throne bar far smarter than I am hi Mom please don't beat me uh that aside the reason why I'm up here is because I feel like I have been a victim of this process if you will that being I come from New Jersey and I was initially offered enrollment into a college that was very prestigious now when I tried to apply for this college I barely made the cut and I'll be honest with you while I'm smart in high school I am not very studious I don't have the best of study habits and when a push came to shove I got over the Finish Line partly because of my background now when it came time for me to do the college please get to the question this question is primarily related to I go into I go into the college I am let in on a lower bar because of my background and then I am just absolutely shell-shocked at the amounts of work and the relative grade or quality of it that needs to be done I'll now look at calculus textbooks with the same reference as someone with a clogged toilet and what's your question please my primary point what do you what do you think for students who have been through this process who have been let in on a lower bar what can we do to go ahead and correctly address this issue because well obviously it didn't work out that well for me I think this is exactly one of the dangerous points that uh that Heather had brought up which is that if you let in people who cannot maintain this average standards then they often end up not learning as much as they could if for example maybe instead of going to MIT you went to another place and they don't expect you to drink from the fire hose so that's the point some of us are able to drink from the fire hose and you should try to do that but some of us cannot as a case in points I might be really interested in playing basketball but I'm actually quite inept so really I shouldn't be going around playing basketball on the streets of New York City or whatever it might be so by the same token you should be able to do what you're reasonably good at and feel happy about that and run with it that's all I would suggest don't try to be something you're not the negative team like to comment yeah so uh feel for you in that situation I was a high school student who really just spent all my time thinking about how to get out of Mississippi um I had a great time in Chicago when I went up there my GPA showed it and I didn't test that well and I still don't I'm a pretty smart chick um I would have to agree with what Pat was saying about the idea that some of our students who perform lower on standardized testing and the like do have the actual capacity to succeed how does one assess that is anyone in Dei for example looking at what happens with students and what is their I don't know personality profile other markers of success that better predict that what I will also say is even though I kind of sucked in high school and I really wasn't interested I graduated with honors from my Occupational Therapy Program um there are a lot of things that I accomplish now that I'm pretty sure the people who saw me in high school are kind of surprised about or they're really championing I saw it in you and I'm glad you finally saw it yourself so I think the universities that choose to let students in because they saw something in them that they invited into the institution need to really have the capacity to support those students success in all the ways that matter I I would just say racial preferences are pernicious they are evil they are putting blacks at a disadvantage and they are reaffirming stereotypes here is the data every single selective law school has massive racial preferences at least a standard deviation of difference what happens after first year here's the data this is Nationwide this is tens of thousands of data very brief please Heather 51 of black law students after their first year of law school end up at the bottom 10th of their class compared to five percent of whites two-thirds of black law students end up at the bottom fifth of their class that is a way to reaffirm racial stereotypes not to break them up and all this is is a an endless uh employment card for the Dei bureaucracy that comes in and says Ah the problem is racism rather than racial preferences it is a pernicious machine next question please hi uh my name is Sohan I have a question for Heather McDonald a question about um at some point you mentioned that the interventions should not be done in college for you know Equity or um for equality it should be done earlier on I believe like interventions for making sure that that there's diversity right intervention should happen early on I believe um what what should these interventions be could you offer some specifics please and uh also specifics about where the funding for these interventions would come from are you asking what are the early interventions that should be undertaken to try and close the skills gaps yes uh I think the family can do more I think there can be if everybody acted like Asians we'd all be in Harvard you know there's the obsessive attention to academic achievement to parents monitoring that their kids are going to school that are they're taking their textbooks home that they're studying for exams that would make a massive difference uh also we should have schools that are high expectations no excuses we used to have those this whole group of charter schools called No No Excuses schools that would be just obsessively in uh routinized regularized about teaching students the basic habits of accomplishment of of deferred gratification you you walk quietly down a corridor you do not beat up on your classmates you do not uh object to your teacher those parents have to sign contracts one of the early proponents of of this no excuses philosophy was a charter school chain called Kip and they had a motto that said work hard be nice a perfectly non-offensive motto right wrong they re they retracted that after the George Floyd race riots because they said it was racist so they feel that they can no longer expect conscientiousness from their students because that would be have disparate impact and be uh and be systemically racist so I would say get rid of the kit mentality return to Kip one and say we need to work on uh socialization that begins in the family but should continue in the schools make no excuses do not have an idea that discipline has a disparate impact and therefore we've got to get rid of student discipline so you're leaving kids that are extremely uh disruptive in this classroom because if you if you if you discipline them you're gonna have a disparate impact on minority students that those sorts of ideas a whole disparate impact and see it has to go a negative team would you like to comment thank you okay I mean you want yeah no no I I just I you want to go over so many things yeah yeah um I you know I I know so many Asian students who are teetering on the verge of suicide and stress because of what their parents are doing to them and putting them through um it's it's horrific and it's sad and I get it's a cultural thing um I also you know I think of you know the disruptive children and I think of red dye 40. which is something that most people don't know about but it's an ingredient in a lot of foods that most parents have no clue no idea it changes my daughter my beautiful wonderful hyper intelligent super incredible daughter from like Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde there's so many elements that we just aren't considering when we're talking about why students are the way they are why their behavior is the way they are you know their allergies there are so many things that we think I'll just solve it with ritalin they're disruptive because you know of their family life there's so many things that we just do not know and don't take into consideration and to make a blanket assumption like that I think that's um I think it's incredibly unfortunate that's the nicest thing I can say next question thank you okay so my name is Peter and first of all it was very nice hearing from both of you and second of all what I noticed when I was trying to look around the room is like the demographic here skews a lot older than the people living and working here overall and so my question is what do you see as some obstacles and some possible solutions for bringing more students and other young people into these conversations yeah I think from a very practical implementation perspective I think the institutions who are sponsoring this who are proof Pro free speech reaching out and developing relationships and setting up clubs in high schools and even middle schools right so children learn political orientation especially in today's climate pretty early on so I think from a practical perspective that's one of the things um I think as well adults are kind of afraid of being canceled and saying the wrong thing children probably even more so being in middle school is Tough Enough than me having to decide like how I feel about Merit versus Equity right and so creating a space where we're having even conversations with our own children about these very difficult topics so they can develop their language their own values around these types of things as well and I'll stop there I was just going to add to enroll younger people we need to shift from the safe spaces which I think are a horrible idea I'll be very honest um to feel that you know there's a space where you can be protected from ideas and thoughts like that's just that's tragic that's not what school is about right let's have Brave spaces right where you can show up as your authentic self but you can also be brave enough to hear ideas that are contradictory to your own and maybe get something out of it um and this idea that you know people aren't allowed to say something or it's going to be over your head forever it's going to be put on social media you're not going to get a job I mean we have terrified these poor children and I do say children because they're not 25 they're prefrontal cortexes I'm not fully developed right we've terrified them into silence and guess what we're gonna get adults who do the same exact thing I I can very much agree with karathon this point that may I culpa if I pronounced her name incorrectly I'm sensitive to that as well now I think what is happening is we've created this culture of safe spaces and Trigger warnings that we all have now discussed quite a bit and that's harmed children from the ability to speak freely and be brave as karth has said I think we should be able to do that and the irony of it is we old folks are the ones who don't get along with each other and can't talk to each other you young folks are the ones who are supposed to be open-minded in University and college talking having all night Bowl sessions that doesn't happen anymore I see it in undergraduates and PhD students they're afraid to say what they think you when you're young should be the most unafraid so I don't know why well actually I know why you're so unafraid I know why you're so afraid it's this modern culture of safe spaces and Trigger warnings and not offending someone we shouldn't do that be brave next question hello um I wanted to ask so based on my understanding as opposed to equality which means equal outcomes Equity means more equal sorry quality that means more equal opportunities Equity means more equal outcomes on the other hand inclusion means more people and diversity means a greater variance of people which I would assume would lead to more varying outcomes for people so in your mind one is there a contradiction between equity and the diversity diversity inclusion if not why not and if there is a contradiction in your mind how do you address that yeah so I definitely don't Define equity as what you described I find that hard to even wrap my mind around what I I'm not criticizing your questions just by the way but that's a common refrain in this conversation I Define equity more in the in keeping with the sort of dictionary the sense of it the two ways one return on investment a crude return on uh benefit accrued from investment in a thing and being fair about that now we can certainly parse fair right we can have a whole nother debate literally about what that means um but to me uh equality means uh receipt of the going treatment whatever that is right um and I think in the United States not just to reiterate it I think that you can't get to equality in the United States without delivering equity to American Negroes um and so and I know that sounds like I'm saying other people are set apart from that and that's exactly what I'm saying because of all the history that I outlined here that doesn't change just because we don't like it because we're here whether we're new here or we've been here we don't appreciate the history it's just the reality that there's that stuff that I talked about accumulates my child for example her school district was found in 2012 in the midst of a Kenyan American president to have discriminated against her on the basis of race her and other students so don't talk to me about how racism is done in America there are things that I can speak about that I have experienced across my professional life after I graduated college in particular that would break me down to this very day and piss people off in this room and be ready to go get some folk so don't talk to me about how racism is done because it is not and as an American Negro who comes from that lineage of people who were in chains that is not something that I ever want to see continue to happen nor should you no matter what you think fair is or isn't that is grossly unfair affirmative team comment well I think this is an interesting question and again I would like to broaden the discussion Beyond African Americans in particular the largest Equity grouping seeking group in America are not African-Americans but are white women African-Americans correspond to 15 of the population approximately and uh women correspond to 50 so of some fraction or Caucasian so the largest Equity seeking group are actually women non-african-americans how are they being treated should we have Equity should they be Equity seeking groups what about Jews who are prevented from going to selective universities until the 1960s my own University had quotas against Jews until 1950s or 60s and now similarly for Asians shouldn't we be Equity seeking groups what about in my case where my family was subject to colonialists for obviously hundreds of years and then one day it didn't happen should we be Equity seeking groups I don't like the idea of groups I don't like the idea of equity seeking I don't like the idea of equity what I like is equality where we're treated as individuals with their own agency and accountability and that's the end of it we are not Equity seeking groups I don't believe in Collective victimology I agree with Denise I think that the the historical treatment of blacks in this country was sui generous in its awfulness now we can argue about Native Americans but but we do not pay enough attention to that history but I would say that the present is radically different but my real point is if we want to say that there is something owed and we need to work obsessively to make sure that that history is overcome I argue that racial preferences are not the way to do it it is it is not helping people blacks to be the one category that are routinely catapulted into academic environments that they're not qualified for I'm not saying that we should have the same number of people going to college but blacks should go to college on the same conditions as everybody else not under this incredible disadvantage of being asked to compete with a norm that they're not prepared for and this is not about race as I say the same thing would occur for gender preferences so my own our disagreement is not over the analysis of our past but whether this is the way to go about atoning and compensating for that past what I would like to do because we're we're running out of time and I don't want to overtax the speakers or the audience but I really want to respect the audience members who have been standing up here so what I would propose if you could take notes is to have everybody who has is standing in a microphone now to please briefly put your question and then I'll give each member of each speaker one minute or so to choose what you want to address of the points that have been made okay so we can alternate microphones so you first please sure um this is principally for the ladies on the supporting Dei or every choose to characterize yourself uh in the 1950s many colleges and universities in the U.S required anti-communist loyalty Oaths for their professors but these were found to be illegal and unconstitutional because they were compelled speech here I have a list of 10 MIT job openings for tenure track professorships all of which require Dei statements as part of the admission process in what way is this not also compelled speech and also unconstitutional and illegal thank you next question I want to say thank you for everyone thank for all the panelists I really appreciate you all taking the time very quickly I would just like to ask if all of these Dei bureaucracies which have been individual models throughout various institutions if all those have supposedly been wrong or corrupted what exactly is your model for reform it's very easy to talk in kind of the abstract but if all of these models all of these Laboratories have been wrong what is your actual prescriptive model thank you thank you next question it the idea of needing to have lived experience in Dei bureaucracies is kind of interesting the obvious question is how do you eliminate the expectation bias it's inherent in people who have all of this lived experience next question hi there thanks to each of you for a stimulating discussion I made an observation my question is whether you agree or disagree in what elaborations you might like to make the pro abolished side seems to me to be arguing against Dei programs as they exist or as they exist in many places and the anti-abolic side seems to be arguing for Dei as it could be or ought to be do you agree with that and what more would you say about it this is a question or comment for Denny's it seems like you were saying the 14th Amendment is only for African Americans in fact you're kind of making an even narrower distinction it seemed like you were saying many of these protections should only be for African Americans actually excluding black immigrants and there was a little bit of a strike against immigrants when you were referring to Pat here some of us immigrants have been in America longer than you have been on Earth so that's kind of something to wander on first of all I really want to thank charith and Pam you guys like we would break bread together I don't agree with you but in so many other ways I'm absolutely Beyond impressed and so I want to thank you uh my concern about what you're saying about Dei you're the only two pro-di people I've heard of in the entire Globe who I would be willing to agree with it sounds like the argument is kind of from the idea of the Socialist to say well you just haven't tried the right kind of socialism and there's a good one out there am I proof of that is at this event about a single Dei administrator from MIT was even willing to attend this event which proves how broken it is if they had you wouldn't have met us the last person just said the statement I wanted to select really thank you for being here for being so courageous to have this conversation I really appreciate it um I have two questions simple as one is do you think Di and anti-racists all these things should be woven into the very course work that we take to become a college educated person second question is sorry could you say that again yeah do I think Dei what so do you think that should be woven into the very college courses that we take yes of course to get the degree that we want let it be whatever degree we want second question is what do we do with professors who are not professors but activists of Dei and classrooms what do we do with them because of the hiring the bureaucracy that we have settled like set up yeah thank you these were all great questions unfortunately the speakers probably won't have time to answer all of them some of them suggested their own answers but I'm now going to leave it to the so I was really glad to hear from you um yeah I will now leave it to the speakers maybe we should go in the same order that we did initially to take a minute or so please in addressing whichever subset of the questions you you would choose so I guess I'll go first uh I think someone asked a question about compelled speech I think that was a brilliant question Jordan Peterson talked a lot about compelled speech with regards to a bill in Canada involving transgender pronouns or something to that effect and the issue is not being a nice person we all want to be a nice person hopefully some of us not really but most of us do so we don't want compelled language and you're right that we had communist witch hunts far worse than the Communist which months or the actual Communists so there's something about that uh you know we forgot about that point which is kind of convenient um and there's a reason for that so anyway I think this compelled speech is a problem and because of diversity inclusion and Equity you must pledge allegiance to it otherwise you will not be considered or hired in stem you might not get promoted you might not get an endowed chair these are loyalty Oaths we must take loyalty Oaths does anyone think that's a good idea I don't think so Denise oh okay statement was very interesting to me and I think probably the reaction to it is your reaction the react the reaction to having to note a Dei statement or commitment thereof is a reaction to how bastardized Dei has become so here's what I would do um I would say that a competent Dei professional works with the faculty individually as well as all the trainings and all the standard stuff to figure out uh their own personal competencies around this work professional competencies around this work and how to infuse deia a being anti-racism into their course content if you're an engineer and you're in the engineering area how do we talk about how you prepare your engineers to think about the fact that yo if you want to be an auto engineer your car better not be running over black folk right that kind of thing in a very practical and pragmatic sense I am not at all opposed to Dei statements because I think what it should do rather than compelling your speech is to get you to think about how does this apply to me and work with someone who will Coach you help you thought partner with you in order to make it real and significant and not just something you have to do in a perfunctory way Heather well I I I still ask what is the competence of of Dei bureaucracies I don't know how how one qualifies oneself to do that I would say that this country is ready should be ready to be post-racial most people want to be post-racial kids do not give a damn they want to have friends uh play ball do as little studying as possible the function of a Dei bureaucracy and they starting early and early I mean many all all private uh high schools and and elementary schools have them now is to keep America obsessively focused on racial divisions that is not the way to overcome what was a horrifying appalling history that undermines our claims to be foundationally committed to equality we were not we were white supremacists let's not let's not cover that up but that is not what we are now and the way to get beyond that racism is to start thinking about achievement falling in love with knowledge and not having these specious bureaucrats and universities I'm not speaking for you guys but the university ones are not contributing anything they are a parasite on the academic Mission uh allow us to get on with the joy of learning and passing on the the Great Western Civilization filled with beauty Sublimity creation and wit carrot callback about Dei and and that that cute little baby or not so cute baby um I think what's happened is it's you know we've brought that baby to a pool where everybody's supposed to be there having a good time and nobody put a swim diaper on and so now it's ruined for everyone and that's what the Dei statements are doing and that's in effect my my thoughts on that huh in a metaphor [Applause] many many thanks to the speakers and to the audience I for modeling the kind of robust uh and respectful discourse that the MIT free speech principles are aiming for uh and thanks to everybody for contributing to making J.S Mill great again thank you very much [Applause] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign

Channel: Alumni Free Speech Alliance

Views: 26,082

Keywords: freespeech, debate, alumni, MIT

Id: elG_zyZya5g

Length: 106min 44sec (6404 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 05 2023