Debate Over Abolishing DEI Programs to be Held at MIT
“In this heightened climate, it’s more important than ever that spaces be created for DEI issues to be debated from all sides, and for constructive, meaningful debate on the topic, to be modeled for other institutions.”
Next week, a debate is taking place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to ask whether Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs should be abolished.
This will be the first major debate on this topic on a college campus and feature some notable names. It’s important to note that diversity staffers at MIT were invited to participate and declined.
Several organizations are co-sponsoring the event, most notably the MIT Free Speech Alliance (MFSA).
They put out this press release:
Heather Mac Donald, Nadine Strossen, and others will debate Diversity-Equity-Inclusion at MIT on Tuesday April 4, 2023, 7:30-9:00 p.m.
On Tuesday, April 4, the topic “Should academic DEI programs be abolished?” will be debated on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Heather Mac Donald and Pat Kambhampati will argue the affirmative; Pamela Denise Long and Karith Foster will argue the negative. Nadine Strossen, a past president of the ACLU, will moderate. The debate is hosted by the MIT Chapter of the Adam Smith Society, cohosted by the MIT Free Speech Alliance (MFSA), and cosponsored by fifteen other organizations…
The motivation to stage such a debate grew out of the 2021 disinvitation of Professor Dorian Abbot, who had been invited to give the prestigious John Carlson Lecture at MIT on the subject of climate and the potential for life on other planets. Some months before the lecture was to occur, he co-authored an op-ed in Newsweek in favor of “Merit, Fairness, and Equality” (MFE) as an alternative to “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI). A campaign to get him disinvited started on Twitter and within eight days the department chair had called him to tell him the lecture was cancelled because he was too controversial.
Here’s more info from the MFSA:
Debate: Should Academic DEI Programs be Abolished?
University diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and practices are among the most debated and contentious issues in higher education today. Universities have invested significant resources in DEI programs and staffing in recent years, and while these efforts enjoy significant levels of support, they have also faced mounting criticism – including from policymakers who want to ban such programs entirely. Whether DEI programs in higher education should be abolished is hardly an idle question — it’s one being actively debated around the country, with significant implications for the future of higher education.
In this heightened climate, it’s more important than ever that spaces be created for DEI issues to be debated from all sides, and for constructive, meaningful debate on the topic, to be modeled for other institutions.
Resolved, that academic DEI programs should be abolished.
Debating in support of the resolution are Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of numerous books, including the forthcoming When Race Trumps Merit; and Pat Kambhampati, professor of chemistry at McGill University whose writings on campus DEI issues have appeared in the National Post, among other publications.
Arguing against the resolution are Pamela Denise Long, CEO of Youthcentrix Therapy Services and a contributor to Newsweek magazine; and Karith Foster, founder of INVERSITY Solutions and a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging specialist.
Moderating the debate is Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law Emerita, past president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and author of HATE: Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship, among other publications.
The debate will be livestreamed on YouTube.
If you’ve been following this issue, this is must-see TV.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
If you work off merit you don’t need to suck up and we advance when you suck up you get a party that throws the law out the window.
MIT had always been a pure meritocracy… no legacy or donor or big name preferences in admissions because there was a recognition that there was no place to hide academically unlike the Ivies which have extensive major choices that enable them to push most anyone through.
MIT has also had issues with student suicides over the years (though thankfully not recently) as many high achieving students found the environment overwhelming.
I don’t know how deeply DEI has ingrained itself there but I hope they haven’t sacrificed the high level of academic excellence.
“I don’t know how deeply DEI has ingrained itself there”
Here’s one “bright, shining moment.”
This wokester got MIT to “cancel” a bona fide genius professor — recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant and founder of the Free Software Foundation — because he had (trigger warning) “offensive opinions,” and because he (like about 5% of all MIT students) exhibited the common (and often awkward) social syndromes typical of high-functioning autism.
She has a couple other entries on that same blog in which she attempts to justify her shameful intellectual lynching.
Disclaimer: he’s not a man I would invite to share a Chinese meal, but I recognize his immense talents and his overwhelming contributions to the field over his lifetime.
Back in the day, MIT implemented the pass / fail only freshman year, to deal with the “Freshman Year at MIT Problem.” All these kids, always won at a walk, now have to work their best to be average. It was an adjustment.
Don’t know their protocols these days. BUT, it was a real solution.
Related serendipity, dealing with some successful friends’ kid, who’s now at Clemson, griping last week that other schools’ rocketry clubs were better funded. Oh, prep-school guy; now that you’re dealing with people who went to Sidwell Friends, you get it. They started on third base, with a bought ref; you only started on second and have to play straight.
The ‘diversity staff’ declined because their job is to organize the disruption of the debate and to delegate who will do the room clean up after the mess is made..
You actually believe they clean anything up?
Next up :
Debate Over Abolishing CRT Programs to be Held at Boston University
Join us as “Ibram X. Kendi” of BU runs from the podium, fearing for his life, before he’s scheduled to go head-to-head with Cornell Law Professor William A. Jacobson.
The moderator for this debate is Milhouse, whose time will have been wasted making the trip to Boston due to Kendi being Kendi. Milhouse, however, salvages his trip by making a pilgrimage to Fenway Park.
Word is that some pretty smart dudes hang at MIT. They are smart enough to know that such a debate is ripe for disruption. They are also smart enough to take steps in advance to stop such disruption in its tracks. If disruption occurs regardless, these smart dudes must have wanted it.
Holding a “debate” is lynching. It’s violence. Another example of white supremacy. It is a clear violation of progressive woke dogma.
Hopefully the IRS and FBI will be raiding the debaters’ residences just prior to the scheduled debate. That should help set the proper debate atmosphere.
Quite possibly true.
Arguing against the resolution are Pamela Denise Long, CEO of Youthcentrix Therapy Services and a contributor to Newsweek magazine; and Karith Foster, founder of INVERSITY Solutions and a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging specialist.
If this were a boxing match, the ref would stop it in the first round. Who are these muppets?
Apparently their paychecks live and die by this grift, so at least they won’t be going in the tank for a percentage of the gate.
They declined because they cannot defend it in the face of different views and those armed with knowledge. They only know one thing, their mantra.
As John Stuart Mill famously said:
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
Perhaps Mill had his own “woke” type issue back in the day.
Two newborn babies. Both orphans. One black one white. Should they be treated differently?
Two multimillionaires. One black one white. Should they be treated differently?
One white poor high school dropout living in a rented trailer park. Raised by a single mother. One black multimillionaire Harvard graduate. Wealthy college educated parents. Should they be treated differently?
DEI and CRT say yes. In all cases the white is considered an oppressor. The black oppressed.
Yes.
Thank you and goodnight.
diversity (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry)
diversity is inequity, exclusion or DIEversity
That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one. #HateLovesAbortion
This debate had better be titled: Resolved: DIE must DIE.
Is there a Reddit for this? I remember back in the early days of the interwebs, a newsgroup titled alt.barney,dinosaur.die.die.die.
This is an important debate and MIT gets much kudos for sponsoring it
I am at MIT attending this debate. I expect a great discussion. In the hour before it has started everyone is polite and respectful
I watched this debate, and it was like a breath of fresh air. While I disagreed with the pro-DEI speakers, they were respectful, well-prepared, and articulate, and my hat is off to them. They also agreed that DEI has gone “way too far.” It’s telling that MIT’s own DEI people refused to participate.
I’m cautiously optimistic that the tide is slowly turning against academic wokeness, and it appears MIT may be leading the way, first by reinstituting standardized admissions testing, and now by hosting this debate.
Maybe there’s hope.