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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program
globular-toast wrote 11 hours 44 min ago:
DEI is actually a bit of red herring here. It's worth reading again the
commentary from simonw's blog:
> If we accepted and spent the money despite this term, there was a
very real risk that the money could be clawed back later. That
represents an existential risk for the foundation since we would have
already spent the money!
This is the real problem. It's not about DEI really. It's the same
problem as so much else this year: the US government is currently
wildly unpredictable and doing business with such an entity is a
liability.
shadowvoxing wrote 12 hours 34 min ago:
DEI is racist. It's picking people because of skin color instead of
merit.
trymas wrote 12 hours 51 min ago:
> discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal
anti-discrimination laws.
Striving for equality according to MAGA is discrimination. Make
systematic racism and sexism great again like itâs <1950s?
theandrewbailey wrote 9 hours 39 min ago:
Racism and sexism is illegal under Federal anti-discrimination laws.
Galanwe wrote 12 hours 59 min ago:
What is most scary to me, is that these grants are not opportunistic
(money is raised when needed), they are on an enveloppe basis (the
amount to be distributed is fixed).
Essentially that means for every dollar not spent on, say, the PSF;
then an other organization willing to denounce DEI is going to get
these $1.5M.
I fear less for the opportunity loss to _proper_ organizations, and
worry that activist anti-DEI/partisan organizations are artificially
going to get a massive funding increase.
In that setup, it may be the lesser of two evils for the PSF to accept
that grant, if only to deny a more partisan organization to get this
funding.
lan321 wrote 11 hours 55 min ago:
It's a general issue with budgeting grants but at the same time
companies need to be talked to in numbers. If there's no known money
jar, I don't believe anyone will partake and it'll all get more
sketchy. 'Why did money appear for them but not for us?' type of
thing
BrenBarn wrote 13 hours 44 min ago:
It's the right move.
DEI has always been a weird thing because half the people supposedly
doing it were always just trying to curry favor with people in
positions of power who supported it, and now that the winds have
shifted they're equally happy to curry favor by getting rid of it.
They signal virtue or vice depending on how virtuous or vicious the
leader.
I think the PSF actually wants to do the right thing, which in the
current perverse environment makes them more likely to be targeted.
The wisest move is not to play.
test6554 wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
Under the grant rules programming languages must be strongly typed. No
strings identifying as an int, etc. :-)
jameslk wrote 15 hours 13 min ago:
The government didnât have to spend more money, and this organization
didnât have to take money with strings attached they didnât likeâ¦
It seems like a win-win to me
hedora wrote 17 hours 11 min ago:
I wonder if we need a GPL v4 that revokes itself if the end user
violates other peopleâs human rights.
That way, this sort of situation would result in the revocation of the
python license, instead of the grant proposal.
pabs3 wrote 12 hours 27 min ago:
Python doesn't use the GPL, and such a license wouldn't meet the FSF
Four Freedoms, nor the OSI Open Source Definition, so it would likely
lead to a fork, less usage and less redistribution.
Kalanos wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
pypi put out a survey a while back that was full of bs questions about
dei fluff. the lack of subject matter made me really question the
competence of the project staff.
sam345 wrote 19 hours 44 min ago:
Welcome to government funding. This is par for course. It's not just
dei or anti dei. If you want to take government funding, you have to
not read the fine print and swallow hard.
hashstring wrote 20 hours 10 min ago:
Good game. Trump 2.0âs Maoism is becoming boring.
next_xibalba wrote 18 hours 40 min ago:
Biden's DEI wave was much more Maoist than Trump 2.0. Not saying this
is great either, but stuff like land acknowledgements, "overthrowing
the oppressors", etc. sure look a lot like stuff seen in Mao's
cultural revolution.
hashstring wrote 11 hours 14 min ago:
In what way?
This whole manufacturing of a fear culture, the emphasis on
us-vs-them (ICE), loyalty oaths (MIT, pledges of CEOs), purging of
institutions (doge), attempts to reorganize higher education
(Harvard), control of media (Kimmel), the symbolism (maga), itâs
all Trump 2.0 boring attempt at a âCultural Revolutionâ a la
Mao.
Itâs just a bit messier because Trump never commits to much and
blatantly chases much of his own selfish interests (crypto schemes
and market manipulation).
I believe that the parallels that someone may draw between Biden
and Mao are much much weaker.
rcpt wrote 20 hours 11 min ago:
Under discussed is that it should not takes months of work to apply for
scientific funding.
Grant writing and the gigantic infrastructure for checking that the
researchers are doing exactly what you've approved is an enormous
burden on progress.
brokegrammer wrote 20 hours 39 min ago:
Confused about this decision. Why not take the money and then do only
DEI activities that don't break the law?
speakfreely wrote 17 hours 4 min ago:
Because that wouldn't allow them to use the PSF as a front for their
political activism.
neuronexmachina wrote 21 hours 9 min ago:
Some predictions on how the current admin is going to probably
retaliate for the PSF withdrawing their proposal:
* IRS audit into the PSF's 501c3 status
* if the PSF has received federal funds in the past, they'll probably
be targeted by the DOJ's "Civil Rights Fraud Initiative"
* pressure on corporate sponsors, especially those that are federal
contractors
th wrote 21 hours 44 min ago:
It seems like a number of the "DEI is anti-merit discrimination"
messages in this thread are overlooking how DEI work usually works.
A relevant tweet from 2016 ( [1] ):
> Hello from your @PyCon Diversity Chair. % PyCon talks by women:
(2011: 1%), (2012: 7%), (2013: 15%), (2014/15: 33%), (2016: 40%).
#pycon2016
Increased diversity in communities usually comes from active outreach
work. PyCon's talk selection process starts blinded.
If 300 people submit talks and 294 are men, then 98% of talks will
likely be from men.
If 500 people submit talks and 394 are men, then ~79% will likely be by
men.
Outreach to encourage folks to apply/join/run/etc. can make a big
difference in the makeup of applicants and the makeup of the end
results. Bucking the trend even during just one year can start a
snowball effect that moves the needle further in future years.
The world doesn't run on merit. Who you know, whether you've been
invited in to the club, and whether you feel you belong all affect
where you end up. So unusually homogenous communities (which feel hard
for outsiders to break into) can arise even without deliberate
discrimination.
Organizations like the PSF could choose to say "let's avoid outreach
work and simply accept the status quo forever", but I would much rather
see the Python community become more diverse and welcoming over time.
URI [1]: https://x.com/jessicamckellar/status/737299461563502595
IshKebab wrote 5 hours 8 min ago:
That stat is basically meaningless on its own. It could mean anything
from they've done an amazing job on engaging women, to they've bodged
the numbers by unfairly discriminating against men, or anything in
between.
Annoyingly they actually do have the data to answer which it is,
because Pycon's review process has a first stage which is blind, and
a second stage which isn't. So if they published how many talks get
rejected at each stage, by year and vendor, then we could draw actual
conclusions.
I couldn't find where they have published those numbers though so we
can't draw any conclusions here.
throwaway091025 wrote 5 hours 27 min ago:
Have you looked at the keynote speakers page for PyCon 2025??? It's
at least half Marxists.
rjaT25hja wrote 6 hours 19 min ago:
DEI in practice works like this: You have a ruling class of affluent
white males and a Harvard educated Executive Director. None of these
have ever been suppressed in their lives.
If anyone points out that fact on PSF infrastructure, you ban them
(yes, this has happened).
You create a couple of programs that are mostly ineffective but good
for PR.
You never mention any economic or other injustices that could upset
the corporate sponsors.
You support and promote job replacement by AI while blogging about
redistributing jobs via DEI.
fzeroracer wrote 8 hours 1 min ago:
Realistically, the whole 'DEI is anti-merit discrimination' argument
falls incredibly flat in the year of the current admin, where they
openly and brazenly admit to both racially discriminating against
individuals and casually committing sexism. Said argument should
simply just be tossed away in the garbage where it belongs. Notably
none of the people that act like they give a shit ever show up when
the Supreme Court says it's completely okay to racially profile
people or when the US government attempts to kick out otherwise fit
members of the military. They're arguing like it's 2022, not 2025.
The PSF not taking the deal is the right play because as we've seen
repeatedly over the past few months the current admin has zero issue
using these things as leverage for harassment and politically
motivated gain, which never ends no matter how much you try and
appease them.
roenxi wrote 11 hours 58 min ago:
I personally agree with the PSF that the risk of weird political
things happening is too high to risk taking the money under any
circumstances. And I have no objection at all if they want to have
whoever at PyCon. But there is a double-perspective in the situation
you are describing - if this is an unbiased selection process that
could reasonably turn up 98% male speakers could be classified as a
DEI program. 98% male isn't very diverse.
But on the other hand if the PyCon is achieving 40% female speakers,
how could it not be said that there is some pretty heavy bias going
on introduced by the outreach process? Unless I turn out to live in a
very isolated community of programmers (and internet for that matter)
the Python community is far more male skewed than that. Diversity of
gender at PyCon almost has to be excluding the actual Python
community from the speaker selection process if it has that sort of
gender balance. Might be good or bad, but if that is a neutral
sampling process then it'd be really interesting to learn where all
these python girls are hiding because they aren't applying for
developer positions.
WesolyKubeczek wrote 9 hours 52 min ago:
Would be fun to also pull up the metric of how many âdevrelâ,
âdeveloper evangelistsâ, and other professional PR talkers got
the stage â versus the actual programmers.
yibg wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
There is a also merit at the individual level vs merit at the
organizational level. e.g. most tech companies are male dominated,
but many serve primarily women (Amazon retail, Pinterest, Etsy etc).
So having more women in the companies, especially in positions to
directly impact the customer experience is important even if we
disregard individual merit. Ditto for products that serve primarily
minority populations etc.
xdennis wrote 15 hours 35 min ago:
>> (2011: 1%), (2012: 7%), (2013: 15%), (2014/15: 33%), (2016: 40%).
#pycon2016
> Increased diversity in communities usually comes from active
outreach work. PyCon's talk selection process starts blinded.
There is no world in which 40% of programmers are women. 1% in 2011
is also probably evidence of discrimination. But too few people are
willing to admit that if 40% of the speakers are women that
represents a drop in the quality of the talks. There just aren't that
many women programmers.
If DEI is all about promoting women in the hopes that they'll succeed
later, I could get behind that. But often DEI goes to absurd lengths
like lowering standards for female firemen or combat soldiers.
saagarjha wrote 11 hours 22 min ago:
You know what encourages women to be programmers? Seeing women be
programmers.
kelnos wrote 12 hours 31 min ago:
> But too few people are willing to admit that if 40% of the
speakers are women that represents a drop in the quality of the
talks.
Not necessarily. It's certainly possible that, if you go and rank
the top 100 python speaker candidates, 40 of them will be women.
The total number of female programmers will certainly influence the
number in the top 100, but it won't define it.
GP said that the PyCon speaker review process starts blinded,
meaning that reviewers don't know the gender of the speaker
candidates. So if they got 1000 submissions, and had to pick 100
of them, and 40 of those chosen were women, they were likely among
the top 100 speaker candidates, or at least approximately so.
> But often DEI goes to absurd lengths like lowering standards for
female firemen or combat soldiers.
Big fat [citation needed] there. (Not just for the idea that it
happens -- I'm sure it has happened at least once -- but to support
your assertion of "often".)
seattle_spring wrote 15 hours 13 min ago:
> But often DEI goes to absurd lengths like lowering standards for
female firemen or combat soldiers.
I've certainly heard that claim manu times, but never seen it
backed up with actual data or even reputable anecdotes. Can you
share the sources that led you to this conclusion?
somenameforme wrote 12 hours 37 min ago:
You can see this very visibly in things like the Marines combat
fitness tests. [1] In any case where strength is directly
involved the requirement for a minimum score for men tends to be
near the standards for a max score for women. In that particular
test the ammo can lift range is 62-106 for men versus 30-66 for
women.
Obviously men are stronger than women and so different standards
are reasonable, yet this is also the exact same reason (well, one
amongst many) that militaries traditionally did not permit women
to participate in direct combat operation. A unit is only as
strong as its weakest link.
The US military is now moving towards gender-neutral standards,
but that will take one of two forms. If standards are maintained
then it will be an implicit ban on women from the most physically
intensive roles, or it will be lowered standards for everybody.
[1] -
URI [1]: https://www.military.com/military-fitness/marine-corps-f...
kelnos wrote 12 hours 27 min ago:
I'm pretty sure that the effectiveness of a soldier in combat
depends on a lot more than just a strength score.
userbinator wrote 15 hours 10 min ago:
Look at the FAA ATC hiring controversy.
URI [1]: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scan...
kelnos wrote 12 hours 26 min ago:
Everything I've read (that isn't from a blubbering MAGA source)
suggests that the "controversy" is entirely manufactured.
stackbutterflow wrote 9 hours 45 min ago:
Every single time. You look into the source and realize that
there's nothing behind the claims.
It's like some people really want to feel angry and accept
the most vague or fabricated statements as real facts.
But anytime you sit down and try to go the root of the issue
in good faith you realize they really was nothing. Best you
can find is someone on Twitter that said something stupid and
then they use it as if that means there's a whole apparatus
enforcing national wide policy based on that person's tweet.
sagarm wrote 14 hours 47 min ago:
If you want to make an argument, make it here and cite some
primary sources.
epicureanideal wrote 16 hours 54 min ago:
> unusually homogenous communities
Which can be socioeconomic rather than racial..
Itâs hard to break into the club of people who know CEOs or have
parents or relatives who are VPs of major companies and can provide
access for startups by people they know, for example.
nroets wrote 9 hours 52 min ago:
No, it's not hard compared having a good combination of STEM and
marketing skills. Many emigrants to the US had no or very few
connections: Elon Musk, Sergei Brin, a long list of Indians,
Chinese and other Asians.
throwaway743 wrote 15 hours 11 min ago:
Imo DEI should have always been based on socioeconomic status over
anything else. It'd likely address the other forms of diversity,
and would provide way less homogeneity in thought while at the same
time providing a sense of inclusion/belonging.
eadmund wrote 18 hours 2 min ago:
Reaching out only to members of certain groups rather than others is
still invidious discrimination. When based on characteristics like
race, sex or national origin it is probably illegal, although I am
not a lawyer.
roumenguha wrote 12 hours 57 min ago:
Not that this is a wholesale defense of DEI initiatives, but what
you're describing was exactly the state of affairs before DEI
policies.
If I misunderstood your comment as being critical of DEI policies
on the basis of being discriminatory along protected
characteristics, I apologize in advance.
gatvol wrote 19 hours 25 min ago:
"The world doesn't run on merit. " Critical systems do.
userbinator wrote 15 hours 29 min ago:
And we are seeing a slow collapse as a result of the past decade of
identity politics.
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote 20 hours 0 min ago:
This is how DEI should work, and probably does in some, or maybe
many, cases.
In other cases, it boiled down to "this quarter, we only have
headcount for 'diverse' candidates", metrics for DEI hiring that turn
into goals, and e-mails stating "only accept new L3 candidates that
are from historically underrepresented groups".
I expect that I'll get accused of making this up, which is why the
latter is an exact quote shown on page 28 in this court case:
URI [1]: https://www.scribd.com/document/372802863/18-CIV-00442-ARNE-...
throwawaykf10 wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
You have cited a lawsuit (of which there is no recorded outcome, so
probably an out-of-court settlement) against the same company that
has had to pay millions for discriminating AGAINST women and
minorities. [1] So maybe one could argue maybe they were not DEI
enough!
On this topic HN almost always devolves into anecdotes. There's
gotta be data on this. What does the data say? How much have DEI
efforts shifted the demographics in these companies and/or the
professional prospects of minorities?
My guess: no change at all, because it's all performative.
URI [1]: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/google-settles-...
Thorrez wrote 8 hours 15 min ago:
Check out Google's diversity report[1], pages 63-110. It contains
a lot of data. E.g. for US tech hiring, in 2015 2.2% of hires
were Black+, in 2024, it was 10.0%. For global tech hiring, in
2015 19.6% of hires were women, in 2024, it was 30.2%.
Disclosure: I work at Google.
URI [1]: https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/819bcce604bf...
tremon wrote 6 hours 22 min ago:
Only looking at hiring % doesn't mean anything if we don't know
the composition of the hiring pool. For example, page 64 shows
that Google's APAC offices have 90.7% Asian workers, up from
90.4% a year earlier -- at the expense of all other
ethnicities. Is Google doing a bad job there, or is this an
accurate reflection of the available workforce?
kelnos wrote 12 hours 46 min ago:
> This is how DEI should work, and probably does in some, or maybe
many, cases.
It's hard to take these sorts of complaints seriously unless you
can quantify in what percentage of cases we get the bad kind of DEI
you describe.
Sure, if 90% of DEI is discriminatory hiring practices, then sure,
that's a problem. But if it's 10% instead, then we should
certainly call it out, but we should accept that, in any kind of
initiative, there's going to be some bad behavior.
(Instead, of course, the right turns it into a culture war topic.)
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote 12 hours 1 min ago:
Given that it was technically illegal (but IMO very common) back
then, it's hard to quantify. Usually, they were smart enough to
not put the most blatant parts in writing, and of course the same
HR departments pushing this were also doing outreach.
All that I can say is that the form of DEI that I, myself, saw
and experienced certainly included a lot of the "bad" form,
people were justifying it (and some still are in this thread),
and it was very clear that daring to criticize it would be a
career-limiting move. You can look at the rest of the thread to
see both personal anecdotes and further sources showing other
large companies doing this.
The way it usually worked was that metrics for diversity hiring
were set top down, without specifying how they should be
achieved, and then the company openly turned a blind eye to such
"bad behavior".
Even with the current backlash, at least I don't have the
impression that proponents of DEI will be ostracized and/or fired
just for daring to suggest it.
I suspect it works so well as a "culture war topic" because many
people have personal experiences not just with such practices,
but also with being silenced and gaslit (told that what they
experienced doesn't actually happen and is just a culture war
topic) when trying to speak out against them.
cycomanic wrote 10 hours 12 min ago:
If it really was this common how come that the percentages of
e.g. blacks in tech jobs didn't actually change significantly.
I mean if you listen to people here it sounds like companies
were absolutely flooded by DEI hires.
It is also quite telling how everyone is up in arms about these
discriminatory hiring practices, but the same people don't bat
an eyelash about the fact that discrimination happens mostly
the other way, I don't know how many studies I've read that
showed that cv's with names associated with certain ethnicities
have much lower chances to be invited to interview than the
same cv with a white name.
> Even with the current backlash, at least I don't have the
impression that proponents of DEI will be ostracized and/or
fired just for daring to suggest it.
Have you read the actual article?
potato3732842 wrote 8 hours 30 min ago:
>If it really was this common how come that the percentages
of e.g. blacks in tech jobs didn't actually change
significantly.
Because the race based pity hiring programs didn't actually
address the pipeline problems.
hitekker wrote 13 hours 12 min ago:
YC's Jessica Livingston and the founder of TripleByte observed the
similar racial and sex quotas from the inside: [1] IBM's CEO
infamously championed DEI-as-quota which led to wave of lawsuits
that IBM was forced to settle.
The memory holing on this topic is concerning.
URI [1]: https://x.com/jesslivingston/status/1884652626467303560
virx61 wrote 3 hours 40 min ago:
âMemory holeâ is a term that should be reserved for things
everybody actually forgets. This is more of a thing lots of
people probably remember, but they donât bring it up all the
time.
gcanyon wrote 16 hours 2 min ago:
Did that case ever resolve?
In your mind, if Google researched their past hiring and found that
whites/males had been favored for, let's say, the past 15 years,
how long would it be reasonable for them to favor minorities and
other underrepresented groups to balance the scales?
epistasis wrote 18 hours 26 min ago:
> "this quarter, we only have headcount for 'diverse' candidates",
Such a statement from those with hiring authority is highly
illegal. Any HR department that would let this message be
delivered, either explicitly or implicitly, would open the company
to massive lawsuits, such as the one you linked to. It's as bad as
allowing sexual harassment.
Linking the term DEI to illegal hiring practices is like linking
having a male manager to sexual harassment. The entire point of DEI
was to eliminate illegal biases.
throwaway48476 wrote 13 hours 14 min ago:
Whether something is illegal is only loosely correlated with
whether it is common. Eg the war on drugs.
jchw wrote 15 hours 42 min ago:
> Linking the term DEI to illegal hiring practices is like
linking having a male manager to sexual harassment.
Obviously, it is not fair to discredit all DEI initiatives simply
because some of them (possibly a small minority of them) have
lead to illegal hiring practices, but it is nonetheless an issue
that it happens. That's obviously still true even if it seems
entirely antithetical to the point of said initiatives. How much
of an issue it really is we can only really postulate, though.
Personally, I feel the existence of illegal discrimination in
service of improving diversity numbers felt like it was treated
as an open secret for almost as long as I've been working in
tech. I honestly figured it was mostly an urban myth, but it does
seem to be a recurring problem that needs addressing.
(I also was somewhat skeptical of police ticket quotas being
prevalent, as they are routinely brought up in every day
conversation despite being illegal in most jurisdictions I've
been, but that also turned out to be largely accurate. Color me
surprised.)
alistairSH wrote 10 hours 13 min ago:
How much of an issue it really is we can only really postulate,
though.
Between the Labor Dept and various think-tanks/economic
research groups, there should/could be data.
I suspect there are a small number of very public MegaCorps
doing illegal DEI and thatâs enough to illicit the backlash
weâre seeing.
I know from my own employer, DEI is about outreach during
recruiting and a combination of training for all employees and
providing opportunities for people to gather and talk (via
coffee talks and round tables that with DEI topics, but open to
all).
jchw wrote 3 hours 10 min ago:
My thought is, if this sort of problem was happening at a
company as big and influential in the industry as Google,
that's already pretty bad. The backlash may not be warranted
either way but the other position (that everything is fine
and nothing needs to be done) isn't necessarily correct
either.
epistasis wrote 1 hour 40 min ago:
> that everything is fine and nothing needs to be done
That's a complete statement that nobody is even advocating
for. We already have the enforcement mechanisms in place.
Just because a law is violated doesn't mean that we get rid
of the entire scheme and try something else. Theft does not
mean that we need to get rid of property rights, and theft
doesn't mean that we need to stop people from seeking
material goods.
Perhaps there should be better enforcement mechanisms, but
I'm sure that all the DEI advocates would be all ears,
because the illegal violations of the law are not what DEI
advocates want, precisely because it leads to backlashes in
addition to being counter to the explicit goals of all DEI
advocates I have ever heard.
alistairSH wrote 2 hours 28 min ago:
Agreed, I think.
The solution to "DEI has run amok!" is not "Ban DEI!" but
"better define what DEI means and what is within
bounds/outside bounds". But, the latter doesn't fit on a
campaign poster, so here we are...
rayiner wrote 7 hours 38 min ago:
I would estimate illegal DEI was happening at more than half
of top 100 firms. Iâm not as familiar with corporations,
but I would be checked if it was less than 25% of Fortune
100s. The HR folks all attend the same conferences together.
And the big corps set the permission structure for how
everyone else acts.
potato3732842 wrote 9 hours 33 min ago:
>I and thatâs enough to illicit the backlash weâre
seeing.
Gee, it's almost like we're re-learning what the origin of
the phrase "even the appearance of impropriety" is.
TimorousBestie wrote 9 hours 10 min ago:
Unfortunately, itâs trivial these days to gin up the
appearance of impropriety even where there is none.
renlo wrote 16 hours 44 min ago:
Most eye opening experience in my personal development was
attending HR conferences (we sold an HR product but I am an
engineer), where speakers were openly saying this out loud. I
know you wonât believe me given your statement, but using
codewords they said they were trying to hire âdiverse
candidatesâ, retain âdiverse candidatesâ, explicitly mark
ânon-diverse candidatesâ leaving as non-regrettable churn,
filtering and searching for diverse employees within the company
to fast track for promotion, etc. I was in shock how brazenly
they were saying the quiet part out loud, and breaking the law.
This was 10 years ago, there were no repercussions for it, in
fact they were all lauded.
cycomanic wrote 10 hours 24 min ago:
It's funny how everyone brings up all these anecdotes, but then
the reality is that there are plenty of studies that show that
if your name is associated with being black you have much lower
chances to be invited to an interview.
So seems like all this talk by HR people didn't really change
any hiring practices. It's also funny how everyone is outraged
by the DEI programs, instead of the real discrimination that is
happening in hiring.
WesolyKubeczek wrote 10 hours 3 min ago:
Hint: if everyone has such anecdotes, they are no longer
anecdotes.
heroprotagonist wrote 4 hours 25 min ago:
No, they're still anecdotes.
anecdote /'ænɪk,doÊt/
noun
short account of an incident (especially a biographical
one)
rayiner wrote 16 hours 34 min ago:
It wasnât even coded in many cases. Iâve had pitch meetings
where I had to explain how I was brown as part of an express
consideration of the business decision. White people talked
about my race to my face more in 2020-2021 than during seven
years in the south starting right after 9/11.
Some âDEIâ was high level measures like recruiting at a
broader set of universities. But in the last 5 years it
routinely got down to discussing the race of specific
individuals in the context of whether to hire them or enter
into business relationships.
colechristensen wrote 17 hours 2 min ago:
Illegal stuff happens all the time in the workplace and very
frequently goes unreported, underreported, or otherwise results
in nothing.
Using claims that something is illegal to discredit an argument
is extremely dubious.
FloorEgg wrote 17 hours 58 min ago:
I don't think that's quite fair, as in many cases there were
federal regulations that pressured industries into behavior that
was discriminatory to one group in order to favor others. In fact
there was an accumulation of contradictory laws and regulations
over 15+ years. In many cases regulations were set that had
financial repercussions if hiring practices that were considered
illegal weren't followed. There is a respectful interpretation of
one of the conservative concerns during the election in that the
accumulation of regulations made it impossible to conduct
business legally and compliant with regulations in some
industries.
Personally I'm very much for the goals of DEI and very much
against some of the means that were being taken to reach those
goals. It's an extremely difficult and complex problem.
I can't help but wonder if the movement had just focused on
inclusion and primarily where there is leverage towards future
prosperity, if there wouldn't have been such a backlash and the
efforts would have been enduring and compounding.
Slipping that "equity" in there is a trap to confuse
responsibility with privilege and cause a lot of trouble that is
extremely hard to work through. It's the justification for
representation-driven hiring and selection (affirmative action),
and equity based hiring practices that were both federally
mandated AND constitutionally illegal at the same time.
I can't help but suspect it's something like satisfaction, where
if you pursue it directly it's fleeting and destructive but if
you focus on the inputs you get more of it and it's enduring.
rayiner wrote 17 hours 59 min ago:
> Such a statement from those with hiring authority is highly
illegal. Any HR department that would let this message be
delivered, either explicitly or implicitly, would open the
company to massive lawsuits, such as the one you linked to.
Youâre correct about the law, and the EEOC interpretation has
been consistent for decades: [1] . But in practice, in many
though not all places, âDEIâ became a vehicle for double
standards, quotas, and other illegal hiring practices.
I suspect what happened is that a generation of professionals
went through university systems where racial preferences were
practiced openly: [2] . When they got into corporate America,
including law firms, they brought those ideas with them. But even
though pre-SFFA law authorized race-based affirmative action in
universities, it was never legal for hiring.
So you had this situation where not only did the big corporations
engage in illegal hiring practices. But their law firms advising
them were themselves engaged in illegal hiring practices. They
all opened themselves up to major liability.
URI [1]: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/section-15-race-and-c...
URI [2]: https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-...
KPGv2 wrote 16 hours 53 min ago:
> I suspect what happened is that a generation of professionals
went through university systems where racial preferences were
practiced openly
I feel like you're ignoring that racial preferences were
practiced openly for the entirety of the existence of the
university systems in the US. It's just that for almost all of
time, the preference was for "white non-Jews" (where "white"
was historically malleable: Benjamin Franklin wrote a somewhat
famous screed about how Germans and Swedes weren't white, they
were inferior, and they were "darken[ing America]'s people"
veeti wrote 1 hour 50 min ago:
Should we be giving Swedish people special treatment and
privileges in 2025, or how long until bygones are bygones?
potato3732842 wrote 9 hours 44 min ago:
>Benjamin Franklin wrote a somewhat famous screed about how
Germans and Swedes weren't white, they were inferior, and
they were "darken[ing America]'s people"
I am going to use the crap out of that reference whenever I
see people on HN creatively redefining Europe to exclude
parts in order to dishonestly back up some point.
rayiner wrote 16 hours 37 min ago:
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned that and it was awhile
before the discrimination was rebooted to run in the opposite
direction.
wredcoll wrote 17 min ago:
> The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned that and it was
awhile before the discrimination was rebooted to run in the
opposite direction.
Wow, I am extremely happy to know that all racism ended in
1964!
KPGv2 wrote 16 hours 27 min ago:
So in other words, it went on for a few centuries like I
said.
TimorousBestie wrote 15 hours 58 min ago:
Discrimination didnât magically end with the Civil
Rights Act, either. American universities are still
mostly good olâ boy networks in all the relevant ways.
rayiner wrote 16 hours 22 min ago:
Correct. Then we made it illegal, but universities
started doing it in the other direction. Thatâs the
timeframe relevant to my point, which is about the people
who made the illegal hiring decisions in 2020. They went
to universities in the 21st century, not in 1945.
amanaplanacanal wrote 11 hours 34 min ago:
How else are they going to balance out all the legacy
admissions?
koolba wrote 9 hours 57 min ago:
Why does an hard working non-legacy white boy deserve
less of a shot than a non-legacy black one? Why
should he be penalized because someone elseâs
father with a comparable skin tan was accepted 25
years ago?
klipt wrote 18 hours 13 min ago:
That's like saying "the Crusaders weren't real Christians because
real Christianity is peaceful"
See also: No True Scotsman Fallacy
rlprlprlp wrote 17 hours 58 min ago:
Sure, but youâre god deciding who goes to hell.
epistasis wrote 18 hours 2 min ago:
No, that's not at all the case, the crusaders were acting under
the blessing of the church. It still may not be "real"
Christianity, but it's not like there were DEI advocates out
there giving guides on how to break the law. I was at two
companies promoting DEI that were explicit about
non-discrimination and had extensive training on it to prevent
the illegal actions linked in that lawsuit.
There's no "this is DEI this is not DEI" but any halfway sane
and truthful assessment would focus on what the proponents
claimed, said, and propagated as their intentions. Just as the
Christians of the time were intending to do with the crusades.
Calling this a "no true Scotsman fallacy" is just attempting to
misapply a logical fallacy to avoid looking at the issue
truthfully and honestly.
rayiner wrote 17 hours 30 min ago:
Your point is well taken. Not everyone was violating the law.
But meanwhile Microsoft was setting explicit numeric targets
on hiring employees from particular racial groups: [1] .
Companies were also demanding race-conscious staffing
practices at the law firms they used: [2] . Microsoft
offered financial bonuses to law firms for promoting lawyers
from specific racial groups: [3] .
URI [1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wells-fargo-microsoft-d...
URI [2]: https://www.wsj.com/business/law-firm-clients-demand...
URI [3]: https://today.westlaw.com/Document/If3eb4570033e11eb...
FloorEgg wrote 17 hours 52 min ago:
> it's not like there were DEI advocates out there giving
guides on how to break the law
I think you're very mistaken. Not only were their guides, but
there were federal regulations mandating that the laws be
broken. It is/was a mess.
judahmeek wrote 17 hours 24 min ago:
What are your sources?
xdennis wrote 15 hours 15 min ago:
Here's an example: the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021
allocated grants to help restaurant owners. It did so on
a racist basis: if the restaurant is owned primarily by
women, veterans, or the "socially and economically
disadvantaged".
There was a trial. The government lost.
URI [1]: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-c...
epistasis wrote 14 hours 22 min ago:
That is not an example of DEI advocates giving
guidelines on how to break the law.
That is Congress passing a law distributing grants in a
way that was determined to be illegal, quite different!
And in fact there are long standing government
contracting preferences of that sort, from long before
DEI was a term or something that corporate America
sought.
tremon wrote 6 hours 41 min ago:
I fail to see any difference between "congress
passing a law that is in violation of another law"
and "federal regulations mandating that laws be
broken". Can you explain how these situations differ
quitely, other than that "regulation" and "law" are
different words?
judahmeek wrote 1 hour 47 min ago:
Regulations are made by federal agencies.
Laws are made by Congress.
epistasis wrote 3 hours 14 min ago:
The difference was an incentive grant program that
was found to be discriminatory, versus regulations
which dictate how private entities act. This a
pretty big distinction.
It's an especially big distinction when the
question was for sources of DEI advocates handing
out instructions to corporate decision makers no
how to break the law. It's not even remotely
connected.
FloorEgg wrote 16 hours 57 min ago:
The federal regulations... It's not hard to find if you
go looking...
judahmeek wrote 16 hours 52 min ago:
Then it shouldn't be hard for you to say something
other than 'do your own research'
FloorEgg wrote 16 hours 27 min ago:
I became aware of the legal contradictions last
summer and spent a few hours doing searches and
reading through the relevant regulatory language for
a few industries. I don't have all the references
handy.
I don't work for you. It's not my job to do research
for you. If you're genuinely curious and interested
in the truth it won't be hard for you to find.
Literally go search and read the regulatory language
in a few major industries. Start with the department
of education. It doesn't seem like you're curious
though, it seems like you're combative.
epistasis wrote 3 hours 9 min ago:
That's fine, of course you don't work for anyone
else! But you are also not going to convince anyone
else by being vague and refusing to give any
specifics.
Usually when somebody makes broad vague assertions
of evidence but refuses to back it up, I find that
they are either mistaken about their experiences
and that their take aways do not really follow from
their primary evidence. Though usually it's those
on the more DEI side that say "I'm not responsible
for educating you" that make these mistakes! In the
past year I'm seeing it from people that think DEI
is about discrimination, so it's an interesting
evolution. The argument is still unconvincing, no
matter who says it. And again, I'm not saying you
must produce anything for anybody else, I'm just
saying that you end up looking like you don't have
anything to actually produce.
FloorEgg wrote 39 min ago:
Actually, I work for many people. My customers,
my colleagues, my family. I just don't work for
strangers on HN.
My mistake was answering judahmeek's question
directly. They asked "What are your sources?" and
I answered with the truth, that my impressions
came from reading the regulations myself. Instead
I should have just not replied at all, because I
didn't have the time then to go re-do the
research and find all the links. It's not like I
save every link I visit when exploring my own
curiosity. I am not trying to get some paper
published here, just trying to understand whats
going on and occasionally share what things seem
like to me on HN. Also if they had said something
like "This is shocking to me, can you point me
where to look into this for myself" I would have
probably waited and made a more constructive
response.
I hope you appreciate that I just took time out
of my day to do this for you, primarily because I
found your response (in contrast to judahmeek's)
reasonably respectful.
What I noticed when I looked into this last year
was that regulatory implementations of the
affirmative action executive order 11246
continuously increased and seemed to hit a couple
inflection points. I think one was in 2000 and
one was in 2021, but there may have been more. I
didn't save all the sources that I read to give
me the impression I got last year, but after
spending about 30 min trying to find at least
some of them, it wasn't hard to start to see the
picture again.
Note that there is a lot of disparate facts here
that paint a picture, and they will paint
different pictures depending on the stance the
reader starts with before engaging. When I
explored this last time, I came at it with
curious skepticism. The picture they painted for
me, was that something that was well intentioned
(affirmative action) came with an assumption: if
organizations hire blindly based on merit, over
time the distributions of their workforce will
match the distributions of the pool of applicants
applying to work there. To implement affirmative
action these organizations need to include
everyone in the pools of applicants, which may
require disproportional outreach to invite
minorities. Based on this assumption,
recommendations were made into outreach programs
and requirements were set to measure outcomes.
Over time the outcomes didn't match expectations,
so regulatory pressure was increased. As the
regulatory pressure increased, it put more
pressure on all levels within these organizations
to take action beyond just outreach programs. So
what was federally mandated across many
industries specifically was race, gender,
sexuality reporting and making plans to reach
distributions representative of the broader
population. Given this accountability set by
federal regulations, and decades of efforts to
try to solve the problem with outreach and merit
based hiring not leading to the expected
outcomes, efforts naturally expanded beyond
outreach into all relevant decisions (hiring,
promoting). That is how you get people being
hired and promoted based on race, gender,
sexuality instead of merit. (The exact opposite
of the original intention).
For example in Title 41: [1] See 60-2.16
placement goals
Federal contract compliance programs [2] FAR
52.222-23 [3] Construction firms must set goals
for gender participation in workforce
SEC Release no 34-92590 [4] Publicly traded
companies that don't have at least two minorities
on their board risk being delisted from exchanges
What I remember from last year as most shocking
were Department of Education regulations and NSF
incentives, but I can't find those primary
sources now. The NSF website seems gutted. What I
recall was that NSF set criteria in grant awards
to incentivize institutions to have a diverse
workforce. I can find evidence of this from
secondary sources, but not the primary source I
remember seeing last year. Similarly what I
remember, is that the DOE mandated DEI reporting
and planning and tied it to federal
funding/support. The effect was that leaders
would put pressure on the organization beyond
just job placement recruitment/outreach. The
reporting and accountability focused on diversity
and representation throughout the entire
organization, and so the "plans" and more
importantly implications would extend beyond just
outreach and impact placement decisions from
hiring, to special training / career acceleration
programs and promotions.
I think it crossed a line for some people in the
years following 2021 (EO 13985) when these
regulations were expanded to include factors
related to peoples sexual orientation and
preferences. Once some manager who was just
trying to get through their quarter and hire the
candidate that will the do best job has to forgo
what seems like the best candidate in favor of
some other candidate because of how they chose to
identify or who they like to have sex with,
well... yeah it was getting ridiculous.
Let me be extremely clear that I don't condone
discrimination. I think we should do our best to
support everyone to thrive. We just have to be
careful about confusing responsibility with
privilege, and respect how hard it is to design
incentive systems that actually produce the
desired outcomes.
You can look at the evidence that I am presenting
here and call it weak and argue against it. Or
you can consider that I dug this up in 30 min on
my lunch break as a favor to you, as someone with
no motive other than curiosity and concern.
URI [1]: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-41/su...
URI [2]: https://www.federalregister.gov/document...
URI [3]: https://www.acquisition.gov/far/52.222-2...
URI [4]: https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/nasd...
the_sleaze_ wrote 18 hours 31 min ago:
I sat in an all hands where the vice president of HR proudly crowed
to the company that they had hired 75% non-whites that quarter.
gcanyon wrote 16 hours 0 min ago:
In your mind, if the company had researched their past hiring and
found that whites/males had been favored for the previous history
of the company, how long would it be reasonable for them to favor
minorities and other underrepresented groups to balance the
scales?
0xDEAFBEAD wrote 12 hours 8 min ago:
Suppose you were abused by your parent. How much would it be
reasonable for you to abuse your child, in order to balance the
scales?
gcanyon wrote 7 hours 46 min ago:
That's a bad metaphor.
rayiner wrote 7 hours 38 min ago:
Itâs a good metaphor. You canât undo racial
discrimination against someone who is now dead by
discriminating against someone else who is now alive.
TimorousBestie wrote 5 hours 51 min ago:
No, itâs a bad metaphor.
The correct analogy is, âSuppose you were abused by
your parent; should you be allowed to establish a benefit
specifically and only for the abused children of other
parents?â
You and 0xDEAFBEAD answer that question no, because that
benefit discriminates in your mind against all non-abused
children. And against all adults, probably. I donât
know how deep the grievance mobilization goes.
rayiner wrote 4 hours 13 min ago:
To make your analogy work, the benefit would be for
people who werenât personally abused, but whose
parents or grandparents were abused. And yes, that
would be quite odd.
The rationale for racial preferences in 2025 is not
that they are a benefit to individuals who were
personally harmed by racial discrimination. The
institutions engaging in these practices insist that
they are otherwise engaged in race blind practices. If
such practices existed, DEI as we know it would be
unnecessary. We could simply just enforce the existing
laws in a race-blind way.
TimorousBestie wrote 2 hours 36 min ago:
> To make your analogy work, the benefit would be for
people who werenât personally abused, but whose
parents or grandparents were abused.
No, this is a consequence of your ideology, which
assumes that racial discrimination ended with the
Civil Rights Act and etc. (Hence âwe could simply
just enforce. . .â) Mine does not.
Note that the metaphor as stated by 0xDEAFBEAD, which
you already said was good, did not include this
additional generational gap.
kelnos wrote 12 hours 43 min ago:
This isn't a thread about what's reasonable, it's a thread
about what's legal.
gcanyon wrote 7 hours 40 min ago:
That means a "what's reasonable" question is disallowed?
klipt wrote 13 hours 19 min ago:
"If countries conscripted only men for thousands of years, for
how many thousands of years is it reasonable to conscript only
women to balance the scales?"
gcanyon wrote 7 hours 43 min ago:
Okay, so we've established that your upper bound is "less
than thousands of years" but what's your lower limit? Or were
you just strawmanning?
akimbostrawman wrote 11 hours 32 min ago:
If these people where actually sincere and not just hiding
behind a ideological smokescreen that only benefits them they
would be for this same as with DEI in other men dominated
jobs like sewage cleaning, road building or other physically
taxing but underpaid jobs.
It really makes you think that all the "men and women are the
same and sometimes women are even better" always starts at
the silicon valley jobs and stops right at enlistment which
would be actual equality.
gcanyon wrote 7 hours 40 min ago:
I'm a white male, there is zero chance DEI benefits me
directly. But I think we all benefit from a diverse
society, with female plumbers and electricians, minority
software developers, etc. etc.
ModernMech wrote 11 min ago:
Disability accommodations are a cornerstone of DEI. As an
able-bodied individual, you may not feel you would
benefit from those today; but if you are blessed enough
to grow old, one day you will likely be disabled in one
way or another. When that day comes, you'll be asking for
accommodations to get into public areas, and if those
accommodations are not available to you, you will likely
find how that limits your ability to participate in
public life very unfair.
akimbostrawman wrote 7 hours 22 min ago:
It's not only not benefitting you but actively putting
you at a disadvantage because of the way you where born.
Why do you think that? Because it makes you feel good or
because there is an actual measurable benefit? And no you
don't need to have a specific skin color or sexual
orientation to be considered diverse/different. If you
think "all white dudes are/think the same" maybe change
white to black and say that in front of a mirror.
rectang wrote 46 min ago:
(Not gp but...) I believe it because diversity is not a
zero sum game, where every gain for a demographic other
than mine means a loss to my demographic which must be
fought tooth and nail.
First, we are all enriched by having a variety of
experiences and perspectives available to draw upon.
Second, I feel stronger bonds with historically
marginalized humans than with humans who happen to
belong to my own demographic.
> If you think "all white dudes are/think the same"
Ha, we definitely do not all think alike.
Ohmec wrote 14 hours 39 min ago:
Inverting the privilege pyramid does not make for a balanced
and healthy system.
typewithrhythm wrote 15 hours 20 min ago:
You cannot make a fair system by introducing subjective ideas
like historical balance.
A set of rules for fairness require that current decisions only
account for individual merit; not special status.
gcanyon wrote 7 hours 44 min ago:
I didn't propose subjective harm in the past, why would you
suggest that I did?
But in any case, it seems like your answer is zero, right?
xdennis wrote 15 hours 26 min ago:
If that's the case, I do think favoring non-whites and
non-males is perfectly okay.
But how do you think people arrive at the conclusion that
whites/males have been favored in the past? Do they:
1) inspect their hiring practices and find evidence of
discrimination
2) look at the proportion of minorities in the company vs
proportion of minorities in the general population and conclude
that any disparity is proof of discrimination
gcanyon wrote 7 hours 38 min ago:
Companies know their own historical data and practices best.
3oil3 wrote 12 hours 30 min ago:
I think they come to that conclusion with that segregation
thing?
Besides that, all nonsense. We need the best for the job, the
best we can have.
Just the best, with no regards to anything else but the
abilities to fulfil the job and all around it.
Instead of non-sense of choosing someone based on racial,
etnic, religous, etc... it goes both way. Instead of that,
put more teachers in schools, provide free
books/uniforms/utilities. Fix that damn airco in that
kindergarden class.
Better what makes better.
gcanyon wrote 7 hours 37 min ago:
> We need the best for the job
I'm curious why you say that, since we've arguably been
managing without "the best for the job" for centuries,
anytime the best was a woman or a minority.
3oil3 wrote 4 hours 33 min ago:
Because we must do better than our ancestors, we have no
escuses, whereas e.g. 1880 gobal ileteracy rate > 80%.
More comfortable schools with less pupils per 1 teacher
we need, fix the issue, not give painkillers.
amanaplanacanal wrote 11 hours 36 min ago:
We think we want the best, and then at hiring time we look
for "culture fit", or hire people we already know, or our
relatives instead. Then we wonder why everybody is just
like us.
3oil3 wrote 4 hours 26 min ago:
Yep, you'r 100% right, it reminds me I once read that of
all given jobs offers, 50% would be taken by someone who
got introduced internally.
Out of personal exeperience as employer, that so was
decided by me because it was filling the need instantly.
And out of those personal experiences, bad employees
brought bad recruits, good employees brought good
recruits.
Unknown recruits? half good, half bad.
Ironically chiraldic.
analog31 wrote 16 hours 48 min ago:
That's a lot of whites for a roofing company.
epistasis wrote 18 hours 25 min ago:
Seems like a lawsuit right there... is this happened I sure hope
that there was a lawsuit! Or at least HR implementing new hiring
practices company wide afterwards...
tick_tock_tick wrote 17 hours 5 min ago:
Who's going to start a lawsuit and get blacklisted? HR is
normally pushing for this.
mensetmanusman wrote 17 hours 56 min ago:
No one is brave enough to start such lawsuits. Likelihood of
winning too low, first mover disadvantage at play.
anal_reactor wrote 20 hours 8 min ago:
I'm a huge opponent of DEI programs. Bend the statistics as you wish,
DEI is at its heart a type of discrimination. You might argue that
the end justifies the means, but if intermediate step is that a
person gets different treatment depending on their sex or skin
colour, then it is discrimination. Moreover, I disagree with the
statement that diverse communities are better. I work in a very
international company and I've noticed that people tend to cluster in
groups of similar cultural background because that makes
communication much easier.
I have personally been in a situation where I was denied educational
opportunities because of my sex. I think that wasn't okay.
conartist6 wrote 6 hours 47 min ago:
If the status quo is discrimination, at some point the argument is
"I deserve to continue to benefit from generations of
discrimination."
We're talking about generations of people who faced this same
treatment you have that "wasn't ok". They, as you, experienced what
we call injustice.
The question is, does their injustice deserve justice? Or only
yours?
po wrote 19 hours 27 min ago:
Did you read the comment you're replying to? It's talking about the
DEI selection process being blind and instead focusing on outreach
to get a more diverse input. You wouldn't be denied anything due to
your sex under a system like that. It has nothing to do with what
you're talking about.
adriand wrote 19 hours 36 min ago:
> DEI is at its heart a type of discrimination. You might argue
that the end justifies the means, but if intermediate step is that
a person gets different treatment depending on their sex or skin
colour, then it is discrimination.
The purpose of DEI is to rectify the discrimination that is already
present. It isn't as though we live in a discrimination-free world
and then DEI arrived on the scene and suddenly started creating
discrimination. Rather, the opposite is true. There is rampant
discrimination on the basis of race, gender and other
characteristics across society. DEI is an attempt to fix that. Like
all human endeavours, it is not perfect, and some organizations did
it better than others.
You state that you were in a situation where you were denied
opportunities due to your sex. This experience is entirely
commonplace for women, particularly women who are in male-dominated
fields. You say what happened to you wasn't okay, so I have to
assume you also believe it isn't okay that it happens to women
every day. You don't think DEI is the solution - so what solution
do you propose?
lmm wrote 16 hours 49 min ago:
> The purpose of DEI is to rectify the discrimination that is
already present.
But what's the mechanism for how it can ever actually do that?
Suppose there was discrimination that meant some women who
"should" rightfully have done CS degrees instead did something
else (and I don't think anyone's ever actually shown this without
making an arbitrary assumption that any difference in the number
of applicants must be due to discrimination, but let's put that
aside for the moment). So now you have a number of women with
less CS experience than they rightfully "should" have. If you
lower the bar for women to give conference talks, or get promoted
in the workplace, to compensate for this lesser experience,
you're not actually filling that experience deficit, you just get
a number of women who've been promoted above their experience
level. That doesn't fix past discrimination, it makes it worse.
chownie wrote 5 hours 55 min ago:
This only holds if you assume that the hiring process is
already fully meritocratic (which it very clearly isn't) and
that it isn't missing talented women already (which it very
clearly is).
If hiring managers are, subconsciously or not, more likely to
pick the male candidate when faced with a choice for equally
capable male/female candidates then there is inherent
discrimination in the process and the DEI approach balances the
scale.
This means more women working these roles with the same
capability as men, it doesn't mean replacing men with women who
are worse at the job, which ironically is an attitude making up
part of the reason efforts like this have to be made.
klipt wrote 18 hours 8 min ago:
> The purpose of DEI is to rectify the discrimination that is
already present.
Randomized studies show that men now face more hiring
discrimination than women do: [1] So shouldn't there be more DEI
rectifying anti-male discrimination now?
URI [1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375863746_Men_N...
thunderfork wrote 6 hours 25 min ago:
The article you linked is not the "randomized study" you
mentioned. Your argument would be more solid if you linked to a
source that backs it up.
thaumasiotes wrote 13 hours 39 min ago:
> Randomized studies show that men now face more hiring
discrimination than women do
This is an odd phrasing. These are exclusive categories that
cover the possibility spaceâ ; it makes sense to say that
"women are favored over men", but it doesn't make sense to say
"men face more discrimination than women". Any number you come
up with for "discrimination against men" is necessarily defined
relative to the outcomes for women; you can't assign cardinal
numbers to both groups.
â Not quite. The possibility space also includes children.
They face far, far more discrimination than either men or women
do. For example, hiring them is a serious crime.
klipt wrote 13 hours 25 min ago:
You might expect both
1. discrimination against women in male dominated industries
and
2. discrimination against men in female dominated industries.
Studies show that now 2. is worse than 1: [1] > Gender
discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of
womenâs disadvantage in the labour market, yet earlier
studies show mixed results. However, because different
studies employ different research designs, the estimates of
discrimination cannot be compared across countries. By
utilizing data from the first harmonized comparative field
experiment on gender discrimination in hiring in six
countries, we can directly compare employersâ callbacks to
fictitious male and female applicants. The countries included
vary in a number of key institutional, economic, and cultural
dimensions, yet we found no sign of discrimination against
women. This cross-national finding constitutes an important
and robust piece of evidence. Second, we found discrimination
against men in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK,
and no discrimination against men in Norway and the United
States. However, in the pooled data the gender gradient
hardly differs across countries. Our findings suggest that
although employers operate in quite different institutional
contexts, they regard female applicants as more suitable for
jobs in female-dominated occupations, ceteris paribus, while
we find no evidence that they regard male applicants as more
suitable anywhere. [2] > Male applicants were about half as
likely as female applicants to receive a positive employer
response in female-dominated occupations. For male-dominated
and mixed occupations we found no significant differences in
positive employer responses between male and female
applicants. [3] > both scientists and laypeople overestimated
the continuation of bias against female candidates. Instead,
selection bias in favor of male over female candidates was
eliminated and, if anything, slightly reversed in sign
starting in 2009 for mixed-gender and male-stereotypical jobs
in our sample. Forecasters further failed to anticipate that
discrimination against male candidates for stereotypically
female jobs would remain stable across the decades.
URI [1]: https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/38/3/337/641275...
URI [2]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33513171/
URI [3]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0...
thaumasiotes wrote 12 hours 35 min ago:
> Studies show that now 2. is worse than 1
This is a coherent claim, but it can't be summarized as
"men face more discrimination than women do". Neither (1)
nor (2) is an amount of discrimination.
It could be the case, for example, that there are twenty
times as many jobs in male-dominated industries as in
female-dominated industries, and that men and women apply
to these in perfect proportion to their availability.
(Your more specific claim, women do not face any negative
discrimination in male-dominated industries, will mean that
the amount of negative discrimination faced by women is
lower than that faced by men regardless, but this isn't a
necessary part of the way you've constructed the question.)
sophrosyne42 wrote 19 hours 16 min ago:
The purpose of DEI is to enforce what is idealized as the equal
outcome, assuming that all observed differences are the result of
discrimination. The problem is that it has not been shown that
all observed differences are the result of discrimination as
opposed to preference, ability, or other uncontrollable factors
not related to discrimination but which are reasonable bases for
the difference. There are many cases where differences have been
shown exist for reasons other than discrimination. The blanket
approach of DEI essentially is a move back to medieval policies
which afford certain groups special legal privileges.
We should be removing special privileges that can cause
discrimination and not creating more, because a new special
privilege can never reverse but will only compound the negative
social effects of them.
adriand wrote 18 hours 15 min ago:
DEI is not standardized. Organizations can seek various
outcomes using various means. Redacting the names of job
applicants, so as to eliminate discrimination based on gender
and ethnicity, is an example of DEI that does not afford
special privileges to any group at all. It simply removes the
special, unearned privileges from certain groups.
I agree that not every unequal outcome is the result of
discrimination. But we have plentiful examples of major
inequities that are not explicable by âpreference, ability,
or other uncontrollable factorsâ. In 2021, the median Black
household in the US had $27k in net worth compared to $250k for
White households [1]. What uncontrollable factor accounts for
this? It is not a preference, thatâs for sure!
DEI is an attempt to try and address this inequity. If youâre
not in favour of it, then what is your proposed solution? Would
you support reparations, as Ta-Nehisi Coates has advocated? [2]
This is my biggest issue with opponents of DEI: they donât
seem to have any ideas for what to do. They seem to prefer the
status quo, which just so happens to benefit them.
1: [1] 2:
URI [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/2023/12/04/wealth-gaps-acr...
URI [2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/t...
lan321 wrote 11 hours 12 min ago:
Anonymizing names and such is fine/good but the whole push
for equal net worth, etc is IMO bad. Granting assistance
exclusively to people below the median is equal to punishing
those above the median. And if you start adding race, gender,
etc it gets even worse. And adding history makes it even more
so. Historically everyone has fucked over everyone at some
point and many versions exist for many events.
The status quo benefits me, but I also don't see why I owe X
to Y. My parents worked hard to get me educated. Their
parents worked hard to get them educated. Their parents
worked hard to get them their own house. You can stretch it
and say they were able to do that because Ys grand...parents
got exploited but it's honestly not my problem at this point.
We still exploit kids mining in bumfuck nowhere and making
phones, everyone cares mostly when they can make an extra
buck unless it's straight up death camps.
cycomanic wrote 9 hours 59 min ago:
> And adding history makes it even more so. Historically
everyone has fucked over everyone at some point and many
versions exist for many events.
You obviously don't believe we should forget everything in
the past, otherwise what does prevent me from taking your
stuff today and tomorrow when you come back with the police
I'd argue it's in the past "and everyone fucked over
everyone at some point". So the question then becomes how
far back should we go. Sure you can just say as far as it
benefits me, but that is not a solution that works on the
scale of a society is it?
lan321 wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
One is a crime though. For 'daily' crimes I believe
essentially every country has some form of Statute of
Limitations. If I decide to pursue a theft 20 years after
it happened the courts will tell me to fuck off because
it's no longer relevant..
The issue with reparations or w/e though is that it's
punishing people who committed no crime for something
that's now a crime but back in the day, wasn't, done by
their ancestors long enough ago that most have no real
life recollection of it anymore.
chownie wrote 6 hours 17 min ago:
Does it become ok if we redefine wronging you so it's
no longer a crime? This is what the people looking for
reparations are arguing, no wrongs were ever righted
because the responsible at no point considered it their
duty to do so.
This means they have been generationally disadvantaged
compared to you. It means they have had worse social
mobility. By the time Obama rolled around there had
only been four black US senators in its history.
The US's historic (and ongoing!) poor treatment of its
people based on skin colour is so obvious from the
outside that I struggle to understand how you don't see
it. The government can snap into action for Florida but
cannot find its energy for New Orleans, and many other
such interesting coincedences.
> done by their ancestors long enough ago that most
have no real life recollection of it anymore.
The last US school to desegregated did it in the 1990s,
it very much is within memory.
lan321 wrote 5 hours 20 min ago:
> Does it become ok if we redefine wronging you so
it's no longer a crime?
In a way, yes. Of course, it's different nowadays in
that if I don't like how country X is treating me I
just move to country Y so I won't touch that too
much. If we make it equal to where I get sold (how
did I become property? Debt? War? Kidnapping? The
country just decided to cover some debts?) to go plow
fields in bumfuck nowhere, I likely won't be happy,
but that's so outside of modern life I have no idea
how I'd feel since people are kinda weird under
stress.
The thing is that it wasn't morally or legally wrong
for a long time. So it's just holier than thou modern
people judging people of the past and wanting
retroactive punishments for legal actions to people
who have nothing to do with said actions. Sure, it
could have happened faster, it also could have not
happened at all.
And again, the people who'll be punished by a
retroactive application of a law will punish mostly
people who had nothing to do with it.
> The last US school to desegregated did it in the
1990s, it very much is within memory.
No clue if that's true, apparently two high schools
in Cleveland got merged in 2017 due to segregation.
Anyway.. This is covered clearly as of Brown v. Board
of Education (1954). So anyone who had an issue with
it could sue based on it. It's how the system is
supposed to work. Not via redistribution systems
based on "reverse" racism/sexism/etc.
chownie wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
> And again, the people who'll be punished by a
retroactive application of a law will punish mostly
people who had nothing to do with it.
It's better to feel punished now when your illfound
gains are equalised to the people who lost out for
you to have them, than to continue punishing the
people who lost out forever because you don't have
the humility to say "yeah my ancesters were
probably wrong about this"
> No clue if that's true, apparently two high
schools in Cleveland got merged in 2017 due to
segregation. Anyway..
"No clue" might be the best I'll get, if you want
to look it up and learn it's Duval County, Florida
which integrated in 1999.
maddmann wrote 18 hours 35 min ago:
âThe purpose of DEI is to enforce what is idealized as the
equal outcome, assuming that all observed differences are the
result of discriminationâ
I donât think a single proponent of DEI has ever said this,
and it is telling to me that you are misinterpreting it with
such a politicized slant. Maybe you need to think about reading
some other opinion pieces on this from a much broader spectrum
of perspectives?
Iâve been through many DEI programs while I worked in non
profits in Upstate NY. The core focus of those programs was
often to bring awareness to historical discrimination, and
attempt to create environments in organizations where that does
not reoccur.
Iâm sure the approach differs across the spectrum but to me
it was a good faith attempt at righting historical wrongs and
attempting to avoid the historical discrimination.
politician wrote 3 hours 24 min ago:
"Maybe you should [get some education], because [my
anecdotes]" is rude and not particularly convincing.
endomorphosis wrote 20 hours 24 min ago:
Disparate treatment on the basis of protected and usually immutable
characteristics, is literally illegal, all the sort of mental
gymnastics do not matter, that's literally what the law is.
Dylan16807 wrote 20 hours 13 min ago:
Encouraging specific people to submit applications is not illegal.
Even based on those characteristics.
polski-g wrote 17 hours 53 min ago:
No that is also illegal. You can not target advertisements based
on protected characteristics.
> the Justice Department secured a settlement agreement with Meta
(formerly Facebook) in February 2025, alleging that Metaâs ad
delivery system used machine-learning algorithms relying on Fair
Housing Act (FHA)-protected characteristics such as race,
national origin, and sex to determine who saw housing ads
seattle_spring wrote 15 hours 23 min ago:
You're asserting that the Fair Housing Act applies to tech
recruiting?
KPGv2 wrote 16 hours 32 min ago:
It would take a lengthy essay to explain all the ways you've
misunderstood how the law works in the United States, but in
summary FHA rules only apply to FHA cases,
Furthermore, you seem to be conflating different meanings of
the word "advertisement" where the one you've chosen to support
your point is a broad meaning that would seem to make Barbie
commercials that feature only girls illegal (which is obviously
not the case).
judahmeek wrote 17 hours 4 min ago:
Securement of a settlement proves literally nothing.
jkelleyrtp wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
In high school, I ran a robotics team that did lots of STEM outreach.
We went to community centers, after school programs, and worked with
other similar orgs like "girls who code."
I think we played an important role in the community. In our mission we
stated we wanted to help bring "equity to STEM education."
In 2025, according to the current admin's stance on "DEI," my robotics
team would not be able to receive grants without risk of being sued.
It's plainly obvious the line is not drawn at restraining "overly
progressive policies" - it's just arbitrarily placed so the govt can
pick and choose the winners based on allegiance.
It's a shame that folks with a strong moral fiber are now punished for
wanting to help their communities.
belorn wrote 20 hours 22 min ago:
Around 2019, Guido official stated that he would not longer mentor
any white male, and that there was enough white males around that any
white male who wanted to learn developing python would have to do it
on their own. The community in general seemed to follow the same
policy back then, but now seem to have relaxed a bit.
Reducing complex individuals into two bits of information, skin and
gender, will never be a stable system for equity. It always bring
push back, which usually escalate hostilities and bring more
polarization.
I would like to imagine than in the place of DEI or anti-DEI, we will
instead see a push for programs that look to the individual and their
need for support. Needing mentors and support is not born out of
gender or skin color, nor faith or sexual orientation. Its born from
human need to improve oneself and those around us. That is a program
that deserve government grants, and I wish there was governments that
would support that in 2025 political climate.
I noted today in local Swedish news that one of the largest STEM
university in Sweden found that they have now reached their gender
equallity goals for technical programs, and is looking to change the
diversity program towards other demographics that has been overlooked
and gotten worse over the years in term of gender equallity, like for
students in biology and chemistry. Time will tell what the people
with strong moral fiber will do, as there seems to be a lot of
resistance among those who previous was supported by that diversity
program.
aswegs8 wrote 2 hours 40 min ago:
>Around 2019, Guido official stated that he would not longer mentor
any white male
Honestly such statements weird me out. How did we come to saying
such things being considered normal??
lou1306 wrote 10 hours 30 min ago:
It's not like a white male cannot get mentored in Python by
anybody. By 2019 Python was already one of the most popular
languages in the world. Surely any dev on Earth who wants to learn
Python has plenty of people and resources at their disposal, and it
would take a very good set of reason to turn to the language
inventor himself.
I agree that DEI often acts as a fig leave over a whole bunch of
other systemic issues, and the European vs American cultural and
historical landscapes are already so different as to make any
cross-the-pound discussion on DEI extremely hard to navigate, but I
still commend the PSF for not taking clearly ideological orders
from a funding body. That road would have lead to nothing but
trouble.
bbarnett wrote 12 hours 26 min ago:
From my side of the coin, I've always thought that the best
solution is ground level support.
Ensure that students of any type have excellent public schools.
Ensure that people without resources, of any background, have
access to higher education. This can be by grants for the very
poor, just as it can be by government backed, guaranteed approved
student loans.
Healthy, stable food in schools is an excellent way to keep a
child's mind on education.
These things level the playing field. There are plenty of white
males who need such help to be on a level playing field with
wealthier families too. I grew up in a rural community in Canada,
and saw many smart but underprivileged(including trouble with
keeping food on the table) families end up with grants to go to
university.
If you do this, if you provide the capability for merit to shine,
and ensure that merit can be fed intellectually, you're doing much
of the work required for true equality.
I frankly don't give a rat's ass about women being in any specific
field, or someone of whatever skin tone. I do 100% care if people
want to, but cannot!! I want all who are capable, to be able to
express that capability.
If this is done, and done correctly, then the numbers of candidates
applying for jobs will result in numbers indicative of candidates
in the field. And more importantly, of people wanting to be in
those fields. If you get 11% women in the field, and 11% women
applicants, and nothing prevented women from entering that field,
you're where you want to be.
We don't need to encourage people to enter a field. We need to
only ensure they can if they want to.
This sort of "women are weak and are scared of entering fields" is
bizarre, from an equality standpoint. The same for people with
different skin tones. Why do people seem to think women, for
example, are weak and incapable of pursing their dreams? They are
not!
The women I've known in my life have been strong in opinion and in
drive, the same goes for people of any racial background. There
are of course those that are not, but I've seen lazy, undriven
white males too.
People don't need to be prodded, dragged, pulled into a field.
They just need to have no way that they are hindered. They just
need the freedom to choose. To know that they can pursue that
which they desire.
Support at the ground level does this.
analog31 wrote 17 hours 58 min ago:
>>> Reducing complex individuals into two bits of information, skin
and gender, will never be a stable system for equity.
It's a remarkably stable system for inequity.
pseudalopex wrote 19 hours 36 min ago:
> The community in general seemed to follow the same policy back
then
Our definitions of the community in general must differ. This was
not what I saw.
> Reducing complex individuals into two bits of information, skin
and gender
This is a straw man. Skin and gender were not the only factors he
considered. And he considered gender because of patterns of failure
when other mentors mentored women.
slumberlust wrote 20 hours 25 min ago:
Cronyism is back on the menu.
zb3 wrote 20 hours 35 min ago:
You state no details.. but things like "girls who code" sound
discriminatory. What about outreach to people who can't learn to code
for example because they're not wealthy enough?
rs186 wrote 19 hours 27 min ago:
I believe you are always allowed to create a club "boys who code"
if that's something you are interested in.
bmelton wrote 17 hours 15 min ago:
If you want to use any public spaces (libraries, community
centers, parks) then no, you can't. Virtually every state has a
prohibition on the use of public spaces that specifically
prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex or gender
If you wanted to leverage the "private club" exemption per
Roberts v Jaycees, then you would be disqualified from using
public spaces as well, which -- my wife established a "girls who
code" organization and it benefited greatly from the use of both
public and lent private spaces, but she could not have done
without the ability to use both as it would have been extremely
cost prohibitive (and it wasn't in any way profitable anyway)
runako wrote 5 hours 41 min ago:
> Virtually every state has a prohibition on the use of public
spaces that specifically prohibit discrimination on the basis
of sex or gender
This ties into a very specific confusion about affinity groups.
Specifically, they generally are not exclusionary (in part
because it's largely illegal). The only thing preventing boys
from participating in a "girls who code" type of event is the
boys don't want to go to something with "girls" in the name.
kelnos wrote 11 hours 58 min ago:
If you were to create a "boys who code" organization and get
denied for use of a public space that a "girls who code" org
has used, then a) you could sue for use of the space, citing
the girls groups' use, and win, or b) you could sue saying that
the girls group shouldn't be allowed to use it, and win.
bmelton wrote 5 hours 28 min ago:
That very much depends on the group.
Years ago, my wife founded two chapters of a national
organization who did "girls who code" sorts of things. There
was (to her) a surprising amount of infighting about how to
handle registrations from males. Leadership felt that men
should not be allowed to attend, but there were at least a
couple of chapter leads (including my wife) who felt that men
should be allowed to attend, but where spots were scarce,
they should be prioritized to women.
Disregarding the politics of it, there was definitely not a
shortage of men who were discouraged from signing up because
they were somehow icked out over the name. I'm sure some men
were, and I'm sure others probably deferred on the grounds
that they didn't want to take spots away from those for whom
the mission was intended -- but because the organization was
unwilling to publish official guidance for reasons I won't
bother to opine on, my wife was routinely in the position of
having to explain her attendance policies to men who had
signed up
II2II wrote 20 hours 16 min ago:
Note that they said:
> We went to community centers, after school programs, and worked
with other similar orgs like "girls who code."
This sounds like a fairly broad based outreach program. The
inclusion of an organization that supports girls is just one of the
avenues they used. There is nothing wrong with that.
Sometimes I feel like founding an organization called Men In
Science & Engineering Research, simply because the acronym (MISER)
would be a fitting parody for those who promote blind equality
(i.e. the type of equality that hoards the riches of science for
men).
MoltenMan wrote 19 hours 21 min ago:
I don't think there are really enough details on the parent
comment to judge it either way, but can't you at least see how
weird it is that 'Women in STEM' is very accepted but a 'Men in
STEM' program would never fly? Whether or not white men have
hidden advantages over non white men (and I'm not saying that
they don't! Simply that they are not clearly visible), it should
be very clear that there are large non hidden advantages for non
white / non male people, which is obviously going to foster
discontent, whether or not they are actually at a disadvantage in
the big picture.
As a similar example: my close Vietnamese friend met all of his
best friends and girlfriend in college in VSA, a Vietnamese club.
All of my non white friends went to 'Latinos in X' 'Asians in X'
etc. clubs. There were no equivalents for me! I don't resent
anybody for this (by dint of my personality I don't really care),
and in truth it was probably good for my cold networking skills
(perhaps widening the unseen advantage gap that I supposedly have
even further), but I also think it's difficult to look at this
and not understand why people are so discontent with DEI identity
politics.
kelnos wrote 12 hours 13 min ago:
> that 'Women in STEM' is very accepted but a 'Men in STEM'
program would never fly
That's because, in general, STEM itself is already a "Men in
STEM" program. We men don't need a program to get us excited
about pursuing STEM education & careers; that pursuit is
already there, and already common. It goes back to
innocuous-seeming things as young boys being given chemistry
kits for their birthday, while young girls are given dolls, and
continues all the way through teen years as boys are encouraged
to pursue STEM-related coursework in greater numbers than
girls, culminating in STEM careers being already full of men
with conscious or unconscious biases against women.
Creating a "Men in STEM" program would be a waste of time, and
would just be about scoring conservative political points.
bluecalm wrote 10 hours 36 min ago:
Your argument is based on the fact that more men naturally
gravitate towards STEM than women do. This doesn't mean there
aren't still men who could go into STEM but lack
motivation/opportunity/some other push. Maybe there are more
of them than there is women like that, maybe not.
You are saying it's ok to ignore all those men just because
already bigger % of men naturally go into STEM. This is just
discriminatory. Just because some people sharing some
characteristic with me do better (in this context) doesn't
mean I am in position to do better.
This is the mistake DEI proponents make. There is no "we
men", there are individuals and discriminating towards them
is not ok and also illegal.
evilsetg wrote 8 hours 47 min ago:
It's fun that you say 'naturally' when there have been
centuries of oppression and conditioning against women in
STEM.
dragonwriter wrote 19 hours 19 min ago:
> but can't you at least see how weird it is that 'Women in
STEM' is very accepted but a 'Men in STEM' program would never
fly?
I can see how it might seem weird to an alien who knew what men
and women were, but had no context for the existing state and
history of society.
I can't see how it would seem weird to anyone else, however.
klipt wrote 18 hours 50 min ago:
If you include biological and medical sciences in STEM, STEM
graduates have been majority female for decades.
Where is the DEI for men in the female dominated STEM
subjects?
dragonwriter wrote 4 hours 19 min ago:
> Where is the DEI for men in the female dominated STEM
subjects?
Thereâs actually quite a bit of outreach-type programs
aimed at getting them in the door, and a lot less after
that because despite women dominating degrees and
entry-level hires, men still disproportionately dominate
management and leadership roles.
punchfunk4lyte wrote 17 hours 28 min ago:
> If you include biological and medical sciences in STEM
Biological sciences are STEM of course. But if we're going
to extend the definition, why not include all fields that
involve technical skills? How about accountants and
lawyers?
I'm concerned that you only proposed adding medical and
nursing students because it's the only additional field
that would support your argument. That strikes me as
goalpost moving, so I hope it was just an omission.
jimbob45 wrote 15 hours 45 min ago:
Ermâ¦accounting is STEM via the M by many modern
definitions.
punchfunk4lyte wrote 15 hours 30 min ago:
Accounting is not a branch of mathematics.
kelnos wrote 12 hours 4 min ago:
Accounting is applied mathematics.
echoangle wrote 8 hours 31 min ago:
If that would make it count as STEM, you could just
rename STEM to M because STE is arguably all just
applied mathematics.
klipt wrote 17 hours 21 min ago:
Accounting and law schools are also graduating majority
women these days. Have you not been paying attention?
DEI keeps on saying "more women in universities! More
women in universities!" even though universities have
been majority women for decades now. It's a one way
ratchet that never stops.
dragonwriter wrote 4 hours 18 min ago:
> DEI keeps on saying "more women in universities! More
women in universities!"
No, âDEIâ doesnât keep saying that. Why are you
making up a strawman to fight?
punchfunk4lyte wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
Women were marginalized for millenia. Your
mother/grandmother wasn't allowed to open her own bank
account until 1974. It will take a long time to correct
for that. It's a ratchet from the perspective of our
very brief lives.
What's the theory of harm here? If we continue
educating women they may gain too much social mobility?
klipt wrote 13 hours 13 min ago:
> Your mother/grandmother wasn't allowed to open her
own bank account until 1974.
And your father/grandfather was enslaved by the
government to fight in the Vietnam war until 1975.
> What's the theory of harm here? If we continue
educating women they may gain too much social
mobility?
Blatant hypocrisy, you think 60% of college students
being women is good, but consider it horrible sexism
that at one time 60% of college students were men.
You don't want equality, you just want everything to
be female dominated.
punchfunk4lyte wrote 5 hours 50 min ago:
I actually don't care what the makeup of college
students is. It's useful to encourage women to
pursue education in order to promote equity. But
there isn't some magic proportion of men to women
graduates that I think we should be pursuing.
I don't want everything dominated by women, I just
recognize that the work of undoing their
marginalization is not complete.
kelnos wrote 12 hours 5 min ago:
Wow, way to make up words that the person you're
replying to never said, and then arguing with them.
Bad-faith arguments seem to be your shtick, given
your comment history on this post.
klipt wrote 3 hours 59 min ago:
This is a bad faith argument: "What's the theory
of harm here? If we continue educating women they
may gain too much social mobility?"
punchfunk4lyte wrote 2 hours 5 min ago:
If that's not your position, clarify what it
is. You're complaining about efforts to
encourage women to seek an education. What is
the theory of harm, if not that women shouldn't
be educated? Perhaps what I said was too snarky
of inflammatory, but I genuinely don't
understand what else it would be.
acdha wrote 18 hours 0 min ago:
Where is your data showing those programs donât exist?
For example, conservatives like to talk about the plight of
male nurses but even a cursory search shows that there are
exactly the kind of programs youâd expect to find.
tstrimple wrote 5 hours 6 min ago:
These people are very disconnected from reality. They
make wild claims like groups for men are illegal and
youâd never see a group dedicated to helping men in the
nursing field. The feminists would destroy it! And yetâ¦
URI [1]: https://www.aamn.org/
klipt wrote 17 hours 40 min ago:
What's the equivalent of "Girls Who Code" - "Boys Who
Nurse"? A club teaching First Aid to boys only? Does it
exist at the same scale that Girls Who Code does?
punchfunk4lyte wrote 17 hours 25 min ago:
You've never heard of programs to encourage men to be
nurses or teachers? I certainly have.
Here's what I found after a quick search. If you're
interested I'm sure you could research and find more
information. [1] > Only 12% of the nurses providing
patient care at hospitals and health clinics today are
men. Although the percentage of nurses has increased
â men made up just 2.7% of nurses in 1970 â nursing
is still considered a âpink collarâ profession, a
female-dominated field. [2] > A critical shortage of
male teachers continues to affect K-12 education across
America, with men making up just 23% of elementary and
secondary school teachers today, down from 30% in 1987,
according to the National Center for Education
Statistics. Belmont University's College of Education
is addressing this gender gap through intentional
recruitment, mentorship and innovative program design.
URI [1]: https://www.arizonacollege.edu/blog/men-wanted...
URI [2]: https://www.belmont.edu/stories/articles/2025/...
dllthomas wrote 18 hours 13 min ago:
> Where is the DEI for men in the female dominated STEM
subjects?
Is that rhetorical? Have you looked, or just assumed their
absence?
My cursory search seems to indicate that there are some,
although I don't have bandwidth to investigate in any depth
and I'm not sure just what criteria you'd want to use for
qualification.
MoltenMan wrote 19 hours 9 min ago:
Maybe I wasn't clear in my previous comment about what
exactly rubs me the wrong way, so here's an analogy: imagine
you went to school and the the teacher lined everyone up by
gender and handed out a cookie to everyone. And then she
handed out two extra cookies to all of the girls! You would
be annoyed! Does it matter that back at home guys normally
get 4 extra cookies every day? No, because as a guy, you
don't see or know this! (In this world brothers don't have
sisters and vice versa). And even if you do technically know
this because you've heard about it, you don't really
viscerally understand it because it's not really your lived
in experience.
So what is the solution? I can't say I know. But I do know
that these things very much breed discontentment and it is at
the very least important to recognize why.
dragonwriter wrote 4 hours 24 min ago:
I noticed that you have worked very hard in your strained
analogy to setup conditions which validate my original
statement:
âI can see how it might seem weird to an alien who knew
what men and women were, but had no context for the
existing state and history of society.â
kelnos wrote 12 hours 8 min ago:
If boys always get 4 cookies at home, and girls get none,
and then we go to school and boys get 1 more cookie, and
girls get 3 cookies, I'd think it was pretty weird that
boys get 5 cookies and girls only get 3.
> No, because as a guy, you don't see or know this! (In
this world brothers don't have sisters and vice versa).
In our world, men do know that women face barriers to
entering STEM education and STEM careers that men do not
face. Many men seem to ignore that fact, though, or
pretend it's not true, and I will continue to roll my eyes
at their annoyance about "Women in STEM" programs.
What a bizarre analogy...
com2kid wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
Imagine the teacher lines up all the kids, gives them
cookies, notices all the kids are boys, so the teacher puts
up a sign outside the girls restroom advertising free
cookies for anyone who attends math class.
Now the boys have cookies and the girls have cookies.
Except the cookies are not actually cookies, they just
represent what you'll learn by attending the class.
That is out reach.
I don't see jocks complaining about fitness outreach
programs to geeks. That'd be absurd.
But guys famously will complain about:
1. Women reading science fiction
2. Women watching science fiction on TV.
3. Women playing d&d
4. Women playing online games
5. Women writing code.
To be fair, many women are judgemental about male nurses or
even male teachers.
That type of idiocy has to stop both ways. Let people do
what they want to do.
jkelleyrtp wrote 18 hours 53 min ago:
I think a hallmark of 2025 is a resounding lack of empathy
and compassion from people. Maybe's it's smartphones,
social media, or some sort of existential doomerism.
To reframe your scenario: imagine you went to a school and
some of your classmates came from poor families and
couldn't afford clothes, food, or a laptop etc. To help
those students, the teacher used class funds to buy them
new shoes and get them a nice laptop to get their work
done. Do you still think it's unfair that you don't get new
shoes, laptop, or cookies?
The solution to your original question is to understand why
the teacher is giving girls 4 cookies and then just be
happy that more people get a fair shot at life.
MoltenMan wrote 1 hour 15 min ago:
I feel like you're glossing over my main point, which is
that this stuff 100% does breed resentment for the
average person, which is how we end up with people like
Trump (obviously there are many more factors to consider
but this is definitely one of them).
The difference between your scenario is just how visible
it is; I have never ever had somebody go up to me and say
'This opportunity is being given to you because you're a
white male'! If anything, it's the opposite! Did you know
I was not eligible _to apply_ for a single scholarship
for college a few years back, solely based on my race and
gender? It was pretty demoralizing!
Again, I'm not saying that I _haven't_ benefitted from
being a white male in some indescribable unknown way; but
unlike in your scenario, I cannot _see_ this. Think about
the average person, who goes their whole life seeing
others being handed stuff specifically because of their
race and gender and when they complain about it they
simply get told 'Do you have no empathy? Your life is
much better off than theirs!'
Again, who knows what the right solution is. But I don't
think that it's the status quo.
aabhay wrote 20 hours 21 min ago:
So what about the girl scouts, is that also discriminatory?
endomorphosis wrote 20 hours 10 min ago:
Yes, there was an entire supreme court case about that 30 years
ago, a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts I might add.
aabhay wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
That was against the boy scouts but the reverse lawsuit hasn't
been filed against the girl scouts to my knowledge.
That said, law in the US and oneâs opinions on what
constitutes discrimination are different things.
endemic wrote 20 hours 32 min ago:
So we shouldnât focus on helping a subset of people because doing
so is discriminatory to everyone else?
AnimalMuppet wrote 20 hours 30 min ago:
Well... if you're getting a grant to help group X (which is in
need), and you're not helping group Y (that is also in need),
that should be all right (one organization probably can't do
everything). But there maybe ought to be someone else getting a
grant to help group Y.
ashtonshears wrote 21 hours 10 min ago:
I appreciate your efforts to support community and people
ghiculescu wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
Reading this you would think the US is the only country in the world.
Why canât any other country - one thatâs more politically or
ideologically aligned - fund the PSF? It seems odd the gripes about the
US government and its ideologies as if thereâs no other options.
(Not an American.)
Kye wrote 21 hours 54 min ago:
It's a US-based organization discussing funding from the US
government. Why would you expect a different focus in an article
about that funding?
troyvit wrote 21 hours 21 min ago:
It's a good point that this is a US-based organization, but I don't
think the parent is looking for a different focus from this post.
Rather, they're asking that given Python's international influence
why aren't organizations from more countries (or the countries
themselves) contributing? My gut feeling is that it's because the
PSF isn't looking outside the US for those sponsors. Here's their
sponsor list btw:
URI [1]: https://www.python.org/psf/sponsors/
dang wrote 22 hours 6 min ago:
[stub for offtopicness / flamewarness / guideline-breakingness]
(this is a rough cut - I know there are other posts left in the thread
that arguably belong here, but this time I'm in a bit of a rush)
(please, everyone, you can make substantive points thoughtfully but do
so within the guardrails at [1] - avoid the
generic-indignant-flamey-snarky-namecalley-hardcore-battley sectors of
internet discourse - we're trying for something different here and we
need everyone to help with that)
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
socketcluster wrote 22 hours 12 min ago:
Wow. What luxury some people have to reject $1.5 million.
For that kind of money, I would put a large national flag in the
banner of the socketcluster.io website, I would relocate HQ to
whatever country and state they want. I would never utter the word
'diversity' for the rest of my life and upon receiving the money, I
would take a screenshot, frame it, put it up on the back wall of my
new office and I would pray to it every morning to give thanks.
sho_hn wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
> What luxury some people have to reject $1.5 million.
For a non-profit backing a community, an important goal is to
ensure the long-term sustainability and viability of the org,
because the community relies on it to keep infra working, legal
representation in place, and other vital needs.
Accepting those $1.5mio would have come with significant "we want
that money back" risk, as the post explains. At a $5mio annual
budget that could seriously destabilize a small org like this, from
the money shortfall to community unrest. Taking this money would be
irresponsible.
My two cents, as treasurer of another large FOSS non-profit.
MangoCoffee wrote 22 hours 18 min ago:
the original idea of DEI "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" is good
but it got twisted. it became the rally crying for the other side.
flumpcakes wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
I'm not sure that the USA has ever been in such a low standing with
the rest of the 'democratic world' in the last 100 years. That's not
saying the rest of the world has their stuff together, but it seems
that fundamentally un-American ethos is the new nationalist American
one that a 1/3 of the country wants.
What's happening guys?
bsder wrote 22 hours 14 min ago:
> What's happening guys?
The people who benefited from those who sacrificed for rights and
equality over the past century got complacent and lazy.
The current rhetoric is exactly the same as was used to
discriminate against my ancestors 100 years ago. The only
substitutions are the different slurs. Everyone who wants to talks
about race and immigrants should be required to listen to 8 hours
of radio programs from the early 1900s saying the exact same thing
about them and their ancestors.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a
prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty
to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude
is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his
guilt." -- John Philpot Curran, 1790
You fight or you lose. Every time; all the time. Politics is a
contact sport and you don't get to opt out.
munificent wrote 22 hours 33 min ago:
About 50 years of slow deliberate destruction of the country's
trust in institutions and trustworthy media and communications
systems and culture.
superconduct123 wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
I think people were worn down over many years by traditional
politicians and just wanted something different
And then someone came in and took advantage of that
spankalee wrote 22 hours 29 min ago:
This, and most people still don't realize it. It goes back to
Nixon and Roger Ailes.
munificent wrote 15 hours 21 min ago:
Yes, that is 100% the moment I had in mind when I said 50
years.
silexia wrote 23 hours 55 min ago:
DEI programs are fundamentally racist. You don't fix racism with more
racism.
SalmoShalazar wrote 23 hours 2 min ago:
How do you fix racism?
silexia wrote 16 hours 13 min ago:
Not by continuing to use racism, just flipped the other way. That
just created more resentment and anger, and eventually hate.
faefox wrote 1 day ago:
God, it is so humiliating to be an American these days. :(
add-sub-mul-div wrote 1 day ago:
You either think DEI is about taking jobs from white people and
giving them to undeserving others, or that the deserving are spread
across different races and genders etc. and we should capture that
better.
If you're in the former group just man up and say it, don't waste our
time with the equivocating, "so the government just doesn't want
people to discriminate and that's a problem???"
XCabbage wrote 1 day ago:
Uh, what?
There's no contradiction, or even tension, between these three
positions:
1. "DEI is about taking jobs from white people and giving them to
undeserving others"
2. "the deserving are spread across different races and genders
etc. and we should capture that better"
3. "so the government just doesn't want people to discriminate and
that's a problem???"
so what exactly are you trying to say?
ksynwa wrote 1 day ago:
How is there not a contradiction between 1 and 2? If 1 is true
then the jobs are offered to non-white candidates who are
undeserving. If 2 is true then the jobs are offered to non-white
candidates who are deserving.
XCabbage wrote 1 day ago:
I don't understand what you're trying to say. It's obviously
possible for the extremely weak claim made by statement 2 to be
true (i.e. for some non-zero number of "deserving" nonwhites to
exist and for existing hiring to not be a perfect meritocracy)
in the same universe where the sort of programs typically
labelled "DEI" tend to have anti-meritocratic effects. You seem
to be suggesting that if competent nonwhites exist, then
anything labelled DEI will automatically have the effect of
causing orgs to hire more competent people, but... why? There's
zero reason that should logically follow.
bakugo wrote 1 day ago:
> do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance
award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or
discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal
anti-discrimination laws.
So basically, the PSF wants to discriminate, the government doesn't
want them to do so, and that's a problem? Am I reading this
correctly?
dragonwriter wrote 1 day ago:
No, the PSF doesn't want to expose its finances to special risk
from the Trump Administrationâs attempts to paint inclusion as
discrimination as a pretext for exerting control that the law
itself does not justify over institutions receiving federal
funding, finding the risk:reward ratio unjustified for a $1.5M
grant. (Note that the actual term purports to prohibit only what
the law already prohibits, which is a clue that a naive reading
cannot reveal their motive, since under a naive reading they would
be equally risk for the behavior that would violate the terms
whether or not ot agrees to them or received the grant. So you have
to look beyond the agreement to the context of the behavior of the
Trump Administration in regards to the issue addressed in the terms
and federal funding.)
skrebbel wrote 1 day ago:
Oh come on.
The language means that if PSF at any point, maybe years from now,
at some conference or wherever maybe somehow supports or hosts a
panel about diversity and inclusion, the NSF can force them to pay
the money back, even though it's already spent. That's not "wanting
to discriminate", it's a free ticket for a rogue government to
bully the PSF without a good argument, if it ever sees fit.
Even if I were an angry right wing DEI-hater I wouldn't accept the
grant under these terms. If the government can just grab it back
whatever under vague accusations, the money is just a liability.
takluyver wrote 1 day ago:
Small correction: the restriction would only affect the PSF for
the 2 years the grant runs. That's still more than bad enough
when 'diverse' is in the mission statement, and of course they
might well apply for other grants, but in principle it can't be
applied 'at any point'.
skrebbel wrote 1 day ago:
Appreciate it. I still wouldn't take the risk tbh, not with the
current administration's terrible track record on stuff like
this.
mlinhares wrote 1 day ago:
Anyone that signs something like this either can't read or hired
lawyers that can't read.
jLaForest wrote 1 day ago:
No you are not reading this correctly, but I suspect that was
willful
bakugo wrote 1 day ago:
> No you are not reading this correctly
Okay, so can you help me interpret that correctly, then? What
other conclusion should I draw from this?
gdulli wrote 1 day ago:
You're free to disagree with anyone here, but playing stupid is
only a waste of time. It's not a difficult topic to understand
both sides of, regardless of where you come down.
f33d5173 wrote 1 day ago:
"Or" means at least one of multiple alternatives. Alteratives
contrast with each other, they differ. Of course, the original
author could be repeating the same thing for emphasis, but more
likely they are saying two different things. Since the second
thing is discrimination, the first thing, "DEI", must
necessarily not be discrimination. If they merely wanted you to
not discriminate, they could have just said "follows federal
anti discrimination laws" which are quite stringent.
bakugo wrote 1 day ago:
They are saying the same thing twice. They repeat themselves
specifically because certain groups hold a strong belief that
"discrimination" only goes one-way, and have effectively
twisted the meaning of the word in their minds.
The explicit mention of DEI is a way of saying "yes, that
means ALL kinds of discrimination, including the kinds you
may believe are morally correct".
f33d5173 wrote 1 day ago:
That may be what they mean, but it is a sufficiently
dubious interpretation that one can't reasonably use it to
obtain the funding unless clarification is provided by the
administration.
bilekas wrote 1 day ago:
This seems very un-American. The government dictating how you run
your business ?
> âdo not, and will not during the term of this financial
assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI,
or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal
anti-discrimination laws.â
Is that even legal to add such an arbitrary and opinionated reason to
a government grant?
I applaud them for taking a stand, it seems to be more and more rare
these days.
pbronez wrote 1 day ago:
Federal money always has lots of strings attached. The specific
rules differ by the specific funding vehicle. The main vehicle is
the Federal Acquisitions Regulation (FAR); you can review their
rule here: [1] This is basically the US Federal Governmentâs
standard Master Services Agreement (MSA).
URI [1]: https://www.acquisition.gov/far/part-52
prasadjoglekar wrote 1 day ago:
The "in violation of Federal Law" is crucial. You can argue it's
only there to cover the admin's ass, but Federal Law (the actual
statues) already prohibits any favoritism or discrimination on the
basis of skin color etc.
The prior admin made it so that their chosen DEI programs fit
"Federal Law". This admin has done a complete 180. Courts haven't
tested any of this yet. It's all a hammer being wielded by the side
in power.
ksynwa wrote 1 day ago:
> Is that even legal to
Does it matter for the Trump administration what is legal and what
isn't?
dragonwriter wrote 1 day ago:
> Is that even legal to add such an arbitrary and opinionated
reason to a government grant?
On the surface, it is simply a requirement that the grantee comply
with existing non-discrimination laws coupled with a completely
fictional example of a potential violation (âdiscriminatory
equity ideologyâ) provided as an example that happens to have an
initialism collision with a real thing. This is legal and (but for
the propaganda example) routine.
But... the text viewed in isolation is not the issue.
AlSweigart wrote 22 hours 56 min ago:
Agreed. And it is... quite revealing that many people in these
comments are so insistent to view the text in isolation.
zamadatix wrote 1 day ago:
> "[yadda yadda yadda] in violation of Federal anti-discrimination
laws."
Should not be a new or surprising statement at all in this type of
thing, let alone a question of if it's un-American.
rectang wrote 1 day ago:
Anti-DEI forces, once in power, turn out not to favor putative
âdiversity of opinionâ after all.
elgenie wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
Spelling things out helps with the euphemisms.
Anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion forces turn out to be
(gasp) against all of diversity, and equity, and inclusion.
iseletsk wrote 1 day ago:
No one takes them to jail; companies and organizations can run
however they want, unless they break laws.
It doesn't mean that the government that runs and wins on an
anti-DEI agenda should give them money.
ponow wrote 1 day ago:
Federal funding of research is un-American.
georgemcbay wrote 1 day ago:
> Federal funding of research is un-American.
Federal funding of research created the Internet that you are
posting this idiocy on.
drstewart wrote 1 day ago:
Oh really? So what pro-DEI requirements did the federal funding
for that grant require?
collingreen wrote 21 hours 21 min ago:
What does this even mean? Are you trying to imply that
funding for research that lead to the various tech powering
the modern internet was done only by organizations that never
before or since considered trying to source candidates from a
variety of places because they believe different viewpoints
have value?
Or are you trying to hang this entire thing on a definition
of DEI that somehow always and exclusively means illegal race
or gender based discrimination (I assume against white men)?
These conversations are so absurd sometimes. I'm baffled by
how spitting mad people can decide they are to fight these
straw men. Then I'm annoyed by (and suspicious of) the
overwhelming silence from most of these sources when it comes
to other obvious examples of racial discrimination or things
like the government trying to remove history books that
mention slavery.
These things don't look like good faith to me.
ipaddr wrote 1 day ago:
Before you attack the last poster, he does have a point.
Federal funding of powers that belong to states is unamerican.
ericfr11 wrote 23 hours 2 min ago:
I agree. The gvt should not care if DEI is used, or if
someone is gay or transgender m
justin66 wrote 1 day ago:
I understand what you're driving at but at this stage of the game
it's quite American.
mc32 wrote 1 day ago:
I think people defend anti discrimination or are against it
depending on how the anti discrimination policy discriminates
discrimination.
We always discriminate. We have to. But only some discrimination
is allowed and some are not allowed. The difference is what kind
of discrimination people feel is fair and unfair.
rectang wrote 1 day ago:
I agree that humans discriminate inherently, although I would
argue that what differentiates us is whether we struggle against
that impulse.
On some level, the idea that we all discriminate has the
potential to help us move beyond the "racist/not-racist"
dichotomy. (I prefer the formulation "we all discriminate" over
the dubious alternative "we're all racist".) But I'm not sure it
will ever achieve mass acceptance, because it activates the human
impulse to self-justify.
I dream that one day someone will come up with version of this
idea that is universally acceptable.
politician wrote 1 day ago:
Could you clarify that you're suggesting that "it's un-American"
for the government to require that the grantee not violate any of
its anti-discrimination laws?
dboreham wrote 1 day ago:
The fascist language is a no-op because it optimizes to: "don't
violate federal laws" which presumably is reasonable.
takluyver wrote 1 day ago:
I would imagine it is much easier to enforce as part of a grant
agreement that organisations have signed. Especially if the law
is either not really a law (yet), or it might be invalidated by a
court on free speech grounds. There's probably a reason someone
wrote it into the grant agreement, and that they're declaring DEI
stands for something other than the familiar Diversity, Equity &
Inclusion.
bakugo wrote 1 day ago:
> The government dictating how you run your business ?
Yes, these terms are usually called "laws", you might've heard of
them.
__alexs wrote 1 day ago:
> discriminatory equity ideology
Isn't that when you let your mates buy into your corrupt private
investment vehicles for cheap?
lingrush4 wrote 1 day ago:
I have no idea what point you think you're making, but this
happens all the time. Do you really think you should be obligated
to let strangers buy into your private business?
__alexs wrote 1 day ago:
Ah yeah you're right. What they actually mean is that DEI is
when you build so many equity preference multiples into your
term sheets the employee option pool becomes entirely
worthless.
calmworm wrote 1 day ago:
And do really think they think that?
btown wrote 22 hours 9 min ago:
More details on the underlying project that the grant would have
funded: [1] And for those who want to fund the security of one of the
few remaining independent foundation-led package ecosystems: [2]
URI [1]: https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-funding-statement.htm...
URI [2]: https://www.python.org/psf/donations/
URI [3]: https://www.python.org/sponsors/application/
AlSweigart wrote 22 hours 10 min ago:
> If we accepted and spent the money despite this term, there was a
very real risk that the money could be clawed back later. That
represents an existential risk for the foundation since we would have
already spent the money!
> I was one of the board members who voted to reject this funding - a
unanimous but tough decision. Iâm proud to serve on a board that can
make difficult decisions like this.
Kudos to Simon and the rest of the board. Accepting that money would be
more than a strategic mistake, it'd be an existential danger to the PSF
itself.
Kye wrote 22 hours 10 min ago:
>> "Our legal advisors confirmed that this would not just apply to
security work covered by the grant - this would apply to all of the
PSF's activities."
Given this, I could easily see work supporting the creation of less
biased models being used as an attack vector. They made the right call.
johnnyApplePRNG wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
This hurts two things at once: people and security.
Anti-DEI clauses push out under-represented contributors, and the lost
funding delays protections millions rely on.
Shame on the decision-makers who made that tradeoff.
sho_hn wrote 22 hours 15 min ago:
Bummer about the funding (and for a small org, almost more importantly
the wasted application work), but all around an excellent decision. And
a good reference for non-profit backbone.
Time to amp up my Xmas donation.
speakfreely wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
Choosing to advocate your personal political beliefs over the interests
of your organization should be grounds for dismissal.
acdha wrote 22 hours 12 min ago:
Exactly why they had to do this: the PSF mission statement is âto
promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to
support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international
community of Python programmers.â Letting a minority of Americans
limit them to the subset of people they consider politically correct
wouldnât be in keeping with that mission.
speakfreely wrote 17 hours 13 min ago:
There's nothing mutually exclusive about non-discimination and
diversity. They won't take the grant money because they want to
drive a politicized agenda, to the detriment of the Python
community as a whole.
acdha wrote 17 hours 2 min ago:
Speaking of politicized agendas, I note that you are asserting
without evidence that they have a secret motive other than the
one states while also assuming that the administrationâs
interpretation of the relevant contract language will be fair and
aboveboard despite the observed evidence.
gcanyon wrote 22 hours 17 min ago:
This is what happens when people who take things seriously take
seriously things said by people who donât take things seriously.
anon946 wrote 22 hours 17 min ago:
Note that many universities still have DEI offices. I believe that they
are interpreting as described here: [1] . So as long as they can show
that they are not doing any of those, they seem to believe that they
will be okay.
URI [1]: https://www.governmentcontractorcomplianceupdate.com/2025/08/1...
nsagent wrote 22 hours 19 min ago:
do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance
award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or
discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal
anti-discrimination laws.
The government can certainly add restrictions to the use of the grant
money, but applying that broadly over any actions the grantee performs
during that time is overreach. I wonder about the legality of that
condition.
lifeisstillgood wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
Six million is peanuts for guiding probably the most popular language
on the planet these days
I mean is OSS effective despite the funding problem, or if we gave
every maintainer a million quid, would they all stop making tough
decisions ?
I suspect that itâs the organisations that define the decision
quality - but thatâs just a hunch.
godelski wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
> The PSF is a relatively small organization, operating with an annual
budget of around $5 million per year, with a staff of just 14.
This might be the bigger story.
How many trillions of dollars depend on Python?
Yes, I mean trillion. Those market caps didn't skyrocket on nothing. A
lot of ML systems run on Python. A lot of ML systems are first
implemented in Python. Even with more complicated backends a Python
layer is usually available, and used. A whole lot of other stuff
depends on Python too, but the AI part is obvious.
This is the weird part about our (global![0]) economics that I just
don't get. We'll run billions of dollars in the red for a decade or
more to get a startup going yet we can't give a million to these
backbones? Just because they're open source? It's insane! If we looked
at projects like this as a company we'd call their product extremely
successful and they'd be able to charge out the wazoo for it. So the
main difference is what? That it's open source? That by being open
source it doesn't deserve money? I think this is a flaw we probably
need to fix. In the very least I want those devs paid enough that they
don't get enticed by some large government entity trying to sneak in
backdoors or bugs.
[0] it's not just the US, nor is it just capitalist countries. You can
point me at grants but let's get honest, $5m is crazy low for their
importance. They're providing more than 1000x that value in return.
[side note] I do know big companies often contribute and will put a
handful of people on payroll to develop, bug hunt, etc. But even if we
include that I'm pretty sure the point still stands. I'm open to being
wrong though, I don't know the actual numbers
[P.S.S] seems to parallel our willingness to fund science. Similarly
people will cry "but what is the value" from a smartphone communicating
over the Internet, with the monetary value practically hitting them in
the face.
BrenBarn wrote 13 hours 8 min ago:
Yes, it's crazy. I think a lot of people see it as a question of
"how can we give the PSF (or orgs like it) more money" but I see it a
bit differently. Basically if something like Python can arise and
become so effective and useful in so many ways with so little funding
(and even less in earlier stages), it suggests that money isn't
really the bottleneck here. What we need are people doing good work
with good motives and not chasing dollars.
That in turn suggests that a lot of money currently being spent is
wasted, or worse, used for ill. We would be better served by taking
all the assets of the Fortune 500 and distributing them widely to
tons of little groups. Some of those groups may turn out to be the
next Python, and for the ones that don't, well, we didn't waste much
money on them. Right now what we get instead is hundreds of billions
of dollars going to advertising algorithms.
The reason it's crazy that the PSF survives on $5 million isn't that
$5 million is crazy little, it's that too many other entities are
crazy big.
braza wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
> A lot of ML systems run on Python. A lot of ML systems are first
implemented in Python.
> That by being open source it doesn't deserve money? I think this is
a flaw we probably need to fix.
Independent of how one feels about the current US administration, I
do not think, as a non-American, that a particular government should
foot the bill for it, but in reality I know that no company will do
it in good will either.
I've been thinking a lot in terms of financing, but the current
system of grants, where some agency tied with the executive body will
approve or reject something, is fundamentally broken, as we can see.
In those cases of critical infrastructure, I think it's worth some
kind of minimum 1:1 deductible of pre-tax programs where the
foundations can apply, and then they could have their financing
without being at the whims of some branch of the executive.
godelski wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
> I do not think, as a non-American, that a particular government
should foot the bill for it
It is definitely a complicated problem but governments tend to but
good funding agencies for work that uplifts the broader society and
creates the foundation for new markets. That's the idea behind
science funding anyways. New science might not create a trillion
dollar business directly but it sure lays the funding for new multi
billion dollar companies and companies to skyrocket from 500bn to
5T market caps...
But my point is that a project like this is global. I want the US
putting money in. We're the richest and benefiting the most. But I
also want other countries putting money in. They should have a
vested interest too.
I think an interesting mechanism might be to use agencies like the
NSA. We know their red teams but what about the blue? I'd love for
the blue teams to get more funding and have a goal to find and
patch exploits, rather than capitalize on them. Obviously should
have a firewall between the teams. But this should be true for any
country. It might just be some starting point as it could be a
better argument for the people that don't already understand the
extreme importance of these types of open source projects.
> I think it's worth some kind of minimum 1:1 deductible of
pre-tax programs
Typically these projects run as nonprofit foundations. They're
already getting tax benefits. Though I think we can recognize that
this isn't enough and isn't remotely approaching the value.
It's definitely not an easy problem. Like what do you do? Tax big
companies (idk, an extra 0.1%?), audit to determine dependencies,
distribute those taxes accordingly? In theory this should be simple
and could even be automated, but I'm sure in the cat and mouse game
the complexity would increase incredibly fast.
But hey, it shouldn't just be America. Different countries can try
different ideas
The-Ludwig wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
Bold and right decision!
gip wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
DEI has become such a contentious term that we should consider retiring
it, in my opinion.
diego_sandoval wrote 5 hours 29 min ago:
The concept that it represents is contentious.
akimbostrawman wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
Renaming your ideological movement because most people don't like
what it stands for won't change peoples opinion.
rdtsc wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
Good for them for putting their money where their mouth is and standing
up for what they believe.
Also, this is a golden opportunity for multi-billion dollar tech
companies to also do the same and match or double the grant money in
support of PSF! Google, AWS, Microsoft, anyone?
WesolyKubeczek wrote 7 hours 52 min ago:
Canât. The money went to pay for the Trumpâs new ballroomâ¦
phlakaton wrote 22 hours 18 min ago:
Sorry, I think they're probably all out of funds after chipping in
for Trump's new royal ballroom.
actionfromafar wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
Somebody probably really wanted a spot in the new bunker beneath
the ballroom.
dragonwriter wrote 22 hours 22 min ago:
> Also, this is a golden opportunity for multi-billion dollar tech
companies to also do the same and match or double the grant money in
support of PSF! Google, AWS, Microsoft, anyone?
Doing so publicly would undermine the public efforts of the same big
tech firms to curry favor from the Trump Administration to secure
public contracts, regulatory favors, etc. (including the very public
scrapping of their own DEI programs), so I wouldnât expect it or
any other positive public involvement from them that would be
connected to this. Theyâve already chosen a side in this fight.
ModernMech wrote 22 hours 0 min ago:
> Theyâve already chosen a side in this fight
Yes they have, this is a time of choosing. So seeing which side
tech companies have chosen, tech employees can now also choose
accordingly.
To everyone here who spent the last decade making $400k+options at
these tech firms that are now funding this fascist administration,
we see you. You are making a choice as to which side you are on.
Remember doing and saying nothing is a choice.
tokioyoyo wrote 20 hours 9 min ago:
Iâm not American, nor Iâve ever lived there. But Iâm not
sure what an average Google/Meta employee is supposed to do?
Reality is, this is what an average US citizen wants. Itâs not
like the government was chosen without the support of majority or
something.
MiguelX413 wrote 2 hours 42 min ago:
They should organize.
spit2wind wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
The government was chosen with the majority, yes. That does not
mean that the majority should have its way with everything, nor
does it mean that everyone, even those who voted in favor at
that time agree and approve of current behavior. I mean, why
even hold another election if the majority voted for the
current administration? Oh wait...
hedora wrote 17 hours 45 min ago:
He got 47%, which is not a majority of the vote. Also, many
people decided to just abstain. He got something like 30% of
eligible voters to vote for him.
AlSweigart wrote 22 hours 23 min ago:
I mean, it's also just the plain common sense move: accepting that
money would just be putting a noose around their neck and handing the
other end to the Trump administration. (And there is a 100.0% chance
they'll just claw it back eventually anyway.)
It's a shame that months of NSF grant-writing work was completely
wasted though.
Terr_ wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
> putting a noose around their neck and handing the other end to
the Trump administration
Pretty much every "negotiation" with the Trump administration seems
to work that way: An iterated prisoner's-dilemma, where any
cooperation from you just means they'll betray you even harder next
time...
dekhn wrote 22 hours 5 min ago:
Take a look at MIT's response to the administration regarding the
University Compact ( [1] ). You can see that MIT has an
excellent understanding on how to reply. AFAICT the
administration did not reply furiously (if I missed their reply,
I woudl appreciate a link to it).
I can also predict the next step here: UT Austin is likely to
agree to the compact and will be given a huge monetary award
(although I don't think it's a foregone conclusion- they didn't
reply within the deadline which suggests that they are working
behind the scenes on an agreement).
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_for_Academic_Excel...
Terr_ wrote 18 hours 40 min ago:
I haveâfortunatelyâvery little personal experience with
being extorted by corrupt officials, but I'd wager another
facet is to try to ensure all communication is public and
recorded.
This forces them to cloak their real demands in something
deniable, and that means you can play naive and act like the
subtext was never seen.
nerevarthelame wrote 22 hours 24 min ago:
If those tech companies make a habit of funding "pro-DEI"
organizations, their contracts with the US government could be
jeoparized.
There's a reason that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all gave Trump
money to demolish the East Wing of the White House and build a
ballroom. And it's not their love of ballroom dancing.
hedora wrote 17 hours 21 min ago:
Also, Apple, and T-Mobile.
I thought Germany still frowned on policies like Trumpâs, though
I suppose demolishing the White House was on its todo list at some
point in the past.
VagabundoP wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
It is literally quid pro quo right now. you have to play the game
and I don't blame them as such.
But PSF doing this and not playing the game is really awesome. I
just hope they can fund themselves through other means.
EU should be stepping up more with funding for projects like this
as a replacement for US tech. Major secure reliable funding for
open source projects that EU infrastructure can be built on would
only increase our independence.
ModernMech wrote 18 hours 45 min ago:
> I don't blame them as such.
I do! Have you read Timothy Snyder yet? He warns that most of the
dictator's power is granted willingly. That's what this is, so to
the extent you believe they are blameless, their acquiescence is
in real terms making it so much worse:
"Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism
is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead
about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer
themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way
is teaching power what it can do." -- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny:
Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
With great power comes great responsibility. Yet somehow we've
created a society in America where power comes with no
responsibility at all except to enrich one's self and
shareholders. Zero responsibility to the Constitution and to the
country which gave them the necessary workforce, marketplace,
rule of law, military, courts, patent protection, police,
schools, universities, research funding, land, roads, shipping
lanes, trade deals, political stability, etc. to come to
fruition. Once you're rich enough, apparently it's fine to cast
all our institutions into the sea, because if not you might have
a rough quarter, or maybe you won't get that merger approved.
It's just playing the game, who can blame them?
Meanwhile, just to be clear about the game being played, food
stamps are set to expire for 40 million people this week, and
healthcare premiums are set to double in just a few months. I
don't believe tech corporations have any plans to help Americans
with their food and healthcare needs, despite being keen to chip
in for the ballroom gilding.
VagabundoP wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
I'm watching videos of ICE kidnapping a woman and her kids
while shes in their school, to be brought to god knows where,
that would not look out of place in the 1930s.
When you have a full time secret police that wanders the
streets kidnapping people, yeah that has a chilling effect,
people want to keep their heads down.
And its tricky, because they will ignore the huge protests, and
they want some sort of armed or civil disobedience when it
comes to their secret police because they are looking for
excuses to label them Antifa terrorists and escalate.
I don't see the obvious play here for Americans looking to
fight this. Maybe the Midterms could help, maybe if enough
local action, maybe the US to too big to cow like that, maybe
the blue states have enough independence to survive the federal
overreach, maybe Trump dies and MAGA dies with him.
Cheer2171 wrote 20 hours 54 min ago:
> you have to play the game and I don't blame them as such.
Not to Godwin the thread, but that is exactly what the executives
at IBM thought about their European subsidiary Dehomag in the
1930s. Soon they were custom building machines that organized the
logistics of the Holocaust.
They got away with it and kept all the profits and were exempted
at Nuremberg, for the same reason as all the rocket scientists:
America needed the tech.
throwway120385 wrote 19 hours 39 min ago:
Kind of like how we're building surveillance software and
social media analytics. The future is starting to look like
being hung with your social media posts and hunted using
everyone's Ring cameras.
int_19h wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
They don't have to play the game. It would lead to less profits,
sure. But we're talking about companies already sitting on tens
of billions of unused cash.
rdtsc wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
Good points. And I'd say that also falls into the "put the money
where the mouth is" category. We know where both of those things
are for them, so we don't have to have any illusions or fantasies.
paulsutter wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
If I'm reading that right, it looks like "do not and will not ...
operate any programs... in violation of Federal anti-discrimination
laws"
Did your lawyer say otherwise? Interested to understand
> We were forced to withdraw our application and turn down the funding,
thanks to new language that was added to the agreement requiring us to
affirm that we "do not, and will not during the term of this financial
assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or
discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal
anti-discrimination laws."
> Our legal advisors confirmed that this would not just apply to
security work covered by the grant - this would apply to all of the
PSF's activities.
nicole_express wrote 22 hours 23 min ago:
The current administration has taken, shall we say, a broad approach
to what they consider "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination
laws", this clause is suddenly interpreted very differently than in
past administrations despite the laws in question not changing.
Therefore, I can definitely see why the PSF's lawyers encouraged
giving this clause an extremely wide berth and pulling the grant
entirely.
paulsutter wrote 19 hours 22 min ago:
Then the brave thing is you accept the grant and let them take it
to court. Get a court ruling against them, which in our common law
system establishes case law
The administration can try to press charges, but they donât
control the courts
LauraMedia wrote 10 hours 31 min ago:
According to recent events of this US administration, there are
two things that could follow after a court decides in favor of
the PSF:
* They will ignore it and still claw back the money, with force
if needed
* They go higher and higher through the courts until it lands on
the table of the supreme court that conveniently sides with the
administration.
You can't win a fight in the system. Law is broken and not
reliable anymore.
ihaveajob wrote 22 hours 25 min ago:
The core sentence has an OR clause, which means if any of the 2
conditions happens (DEI promotion; violation of Federal
anti-discrimination laws), then they're in violation. Their stated
mission is directly in contradiction with the first part. Even if it
wasn't, I'd probably vote in the same direction, given the (let's
call it) volatility we are seeing with capricious interpretation of
executive privilege.
rileymat2 wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
> "do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance
award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or
discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal
anti-discrimination laws."
How does the legalese parse here? Does "violation of Federal
anti-descrimination laws" apply to the whole thing or just the
"discriminatory equity ideology" portion of the statement?
I ask, because being in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws
would be a problem whether or not you took the money.
BolexNOLA wrote 21 hours 10 min ago:
At the end of the day itâs about making sure any attempt to help,
acknowledge, or in any way highlight marginalized groups is branded
as discriminating against the administrationâs preferred (usually
but not always their own) demographic. The nuances donât really
matter to them, the goal is to make sure that happens every time. If
youâre talking about the wrong group in a way they deem âbad,â
they will ruin your life.
After all this whining about cancel culture for years and swearing up
and down that the government was going to start cracking down on free
speech, they have weaponized the government to do just that in the
name of protecting 1A. But itâs not just conservative cancel
culture, itâs straight up government censorship.
ModernMech wrote 21 hours 52 min ago:
It kind of doesnât matter, parsing legalese is for when thereâs
an active rule of law. We are in a time when POTUS can watch an ad he
didnât like, and raise taxes on everyone in the country over night
just because heâs pissed off. Do you think it really matters what
the actual words say? They are there as a stand-in for the kingâs
intentions, which may change with some $$$. Itâs not as a serious
legal contract. PSF might be just fine taking the grant and giving
half to Trump personally, but who knows?
dragonwriter wrote 21 hours 44 min ago:
Yeah, HN tends toward treating law as less dependent on human
application than it is under normal circumstances; with the current
practice drifting away from normal circumstances towards âQuod
rex vult, lex fitâ, that mode of analysis becomes far more
dangerously misleading.
daveguy wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
It parses however the Trump administration wants it to parse in any
particular context on any particular day. Their legal moves have been
a shit-show of incompetence and callous disregard for the law.
dragonwriter wrote 22 hours 9 min ago:
> How does the legalese parse here? Does "violation of Federal
anti-descrimination laws" apply to the whole thing or just the
"discriminatory equity ideology" portion of the statement?
âDiscriminatory equity ideologyâ seems intended to be an
expansion of DEI (its not the normal meaning of that term, but the
structure would be an odd coincidence if it was intended to be an
alternative) in which case the sentence should probably read:
â[...] that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity
ideology, in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.â (note
added comma after ideology).
If âDEIâ and âdiscriminatory equity ideologyâ were intended
as alternatives, the sentence should probably read:
â[...] that advance or promote DEI or discriminatory equity
ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.â (note
removed comma before âorâ)
In either case, the âin violation of federal anti-discrimination
lawâ clearly applies to the whole structure. To make it not do so,
youâd have to interpret the meaning as best expressed by:
"[...] that advance or promote DEI or, in violation of Federal
anti-discrimination law, discriminatory equity ideology.â
That is, that they were intended as alternatives, but also that the
âin violation of Federal anti-discrimination lawâ was misplaced.
But it really doesnât matter that much how you read it, when you
recognize that the whole reason it is in there at all is as
implementaiton of the policy in EO 14151, which characterizes DEI
(with its normal expansion, not the new one that looks like an
expansion but could be read as an alternative) as categorically a
violation of federal anti-discrimination law.
jrochkind1 wrote 22 hours 24 min ago:
Honestly who knows, i wouldn't even trust a lawyer's advice, this
administration has shown itself to not be a plain dealer or
trustworthy, and willing to weaponize whatever they want to punish
whoever they think needs punishing. Past experience of what should be
legally enforceable or not does not seem very reliable at present.
MallocVoidstar wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
I'd assume it parses however the US government wants it to parse.
readthenotes1 wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
Lawyers wouldn't have as much job security if commas didn't matter
some of the time
valiant55 wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
This administration is working very hard to make all lawyers
redundant. The law doesn't really matter if the court is at the
beck and call of the President.
elicash wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
On the one hand, the plain text of the language is not against DEI
practices in general -- only DEI practices that are "in violation of
Federal anti-discrimination laws."
On the other hand, the federal government has gone after law firms that
are not actually in violation of law and forced settlements due to
their DEI programs, so you can't actually trust that you won't be
hassled. Additionally, that you won't at minimum have the money clawed
back, even if the claims are meritless, as the administration has done
on Congressionally appropriated funds repeatedly as part of DOGE
efforts.
kube-system wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
The opinion of the current administration is that DEI is illegal, the
language is intentionally implying that DEI is illegal
discrimination, because that is the view they are trying to advance.
Grants are even being terminated for being related to any sort of
diversity topic.
actionfromafar wrote 21 hours 25 min ago:
Grants are terminated based on keyword matches.
bcherry wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
they'd have to be extra careful with cpython, it's got a lot of
include
cls59 wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
Agreed. I think the buried lede here is actually the clawback clause.
With that in the contract, this isn't a $1.5 million dollar grant,
it's a $1.5 million dollar liability.
If you take the money and spend it on research and development and
then get hit by a clawback, whether due to "DEI" or some other
reason, that is a financially ruinous event to somehow come up with
$1.5 million dollars that was already spent.
A shame and a waste as it sounds like the project would have been
beneficial outside of the Python ecosystem, had it been funded.
EbEsacAig wrote 21 hours 29 min ago:
> If you take the money and spend it on research and development
and then get hit by a clawback, whether due to "DEI" or some other
reason, that is a financially ruinous event to somehow come up with
$1.5 million dollars that was already spent.
This is it. The conditions / circumstances of the clawback are
irrelevant. If there's any possibility of a clawback, then the
grant is a rope to hang your organization with.
I don't think an NSF grant should be a trade, wherein your org
sells its mission / independence, and the NSF buys influence.
solid_fuel wrote 20 hours 17 min ago:
> I don't think an NSF grant should be a trade, wherein your org
sells its mission / independence, and the NSF buys influence.
This is the whole reason the administration is implementing these
policies. It's not just about political opposition to diversity
programs, it's about getting hooks into science funding as a
whole. With a clawback clause, the administration gets the
ability to defund any study that produces results they don't
like.
They'll use this to selectively block science across entire
fields - mRNA vaccines, climate studies, psychology - I fully
expect to see this administration cutting funding from anything
that contradicts their official narratives.
sho_hn wrote 22 hours 2 min ago:
As treasurer of a similar FOSS org, this is the correct take.
An important responsibility of the people running a FOSS
community's backing non-profit is to keep the org safe and stable,
as the community relies on it for vital services and legal
representation. A risk like that is unacceptable, even more than in
commercial business.
echelon wrote 21 hours 36 min ago:
Could the foundation take the money and sit on it in bonds or
some other safe instrument? Call it an "endowment"?
$1.5M at 4% is nice.
But I suppose the "proposal" means these funds come with a
distribution plan attached?
sho_hn wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
Typically in grant work you submit a complete proposal with
milestones and roles defined, and receive payout over time to
cover the costs in the plan, or some part of them. It's
earmarked money.
In more established non-profit areas there's usually also quite
some compliance overhead and audits to be passed, so this can
be someone's fulltime job on the org side. FOSS backing orgs
are typically smaller and less experienced, so donors have so
far found ways to make things easier for them and give more
leeway.
jcranmer wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
The text is:
> we "do not, and will not during the term of this financial
assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI,
or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal
anti-discrimination laws."
There's some ambiguity in syntax as to whether or not "in violation
of Federal anti-discrimination laws" attaches to "discriminatory
equity ideology" or "any programs that advance or promote DEI, or
discriminatory equity ideology." Given the (improper) comma before
the 'or', I'm inclined to lean towards an intended interpretation of
the former. That is to say, the government intends to read the
statement as affirming no advancement or promotion of DEI, regardless
of whether or not they violate any US laws.
(The current administration also advances the proposition that
advancing or promoting DEI itself is a violation of US laws, so it's
a rather academic question.)
endomorphosis wrote 20 hours 3 min ago:
its just that human beings aren't writing things using type safe
memory checked languages, but i'll just say that they're trying to
concatenate and distill a series of supreme court decisions into
public policy.
It basically boils down to:
A) Disparate Treatment is always in every case unlawful for any
reason except "legitimate business need"
B) "legitimate business need" is no longer including "diversity
equity and inclusion", but preferencing Female Gynocologists is
still going to be fine.
C) "Disparate impact" claims are no longer valid, unless remedy a
concrete discriminatory practice.
ModernMech wrote 22 hours 12 min ago:
The best and brightest are not working on these matters.They put
out work product with misspellings, misstatements, outright lies,
and ChatGPT hallucinations. We have to assume any mistakes are
unintentional. Maybe if youâre sued, the mistake gets you off the
hook in front of a judge, but you should expect to be hassled no
matter what the actual text says.
lotsofpulp wrote 21 hours 12 min ago:
> We have to assume any mistakes are unintentional.
I assume they are intentional. The whole point is to make
society less integrity based and more pay to play based. If
youâre sufficiently influential, then itâs a mistake that is
forgiven. If you arenât, then you suffer the consequences.
Itâs how it works in low trust societies. You haggle for
everything, from produce to traffic tickets to building permits
to criminal charges. Everything.
usefulcat wrote 15 hours 36 min ago:
"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law"
AlSweigart wrote 22 hours 26 min ago:
Who, in 2025, is still giving the Trump administration the benefit of
the doubt when it comes to the rule of law?
seattle_spring wrote 18 hours 30 min ago:
A non-trivial amount of people in this thread, sadly. Many of which
are leaving comments like this:
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45727967
lenerdenator wrote 22 hours 12 min ago:
Roughly half of the country, give or take.
dragonwriter wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
Roughly 40% supports Trump, but they are often quite loud about
putting other things above the rule of law.
Not sure why you think roughly 50% give him the benefit of the
doubt on dedication to the rule of law.
ThrowawayR2 wrote 19 hours 13 min ago:
From Democratic analyst David Shor back in March ( [1] ) : "The
reality is if all registered voters had turned out, then Donald
Trump wouldâve won the popular vote by 5 points [instead of
1.7 points]." So, not that it brings me any joy to say it but
it would seem more like 55%?
If anyone has any polling data to the contrary, I'd love to see
it.
URI [1]: https://archive.is/kbwom
dragonwriter wrote 3 hours 54 min ago:
âRegistered votersâ is not the same group as
âpeopleâ.
Winning by 5% (even assuming no third party votes) is 52.5%
(with 47.5% for the opponent) not 55%, if there are any
third-party votes, that gets even lower.
A piece written in March 2025 discussing a hypothetical for
the November 2024 election is not describing the state of the
world in October 2025.
ThrowawayR2 wrote 1 hour 7 min ago:
Unless the 40% number in your previous post was from
October 2025, that's plainly moving the goalposts. And
registered voters are the only people who matter since
anyone else can't cast a ballot.
Beyond that, the August 2025 (since October's aren't
available yet) poll numbers don't seem that much better.
That the Democratic Party approval is neck and neck with
the Republicans despite the Republicans' blatant corruption
and incompetence speaks volumes about how unpopular the
Democratic Party is. They need to reform drastically
before the midterms next year.
daveguy wrote 22 hours 6 min ago:
*Roughly 40% of the country, give or take. Don't be complacent.
gcanyon wrote 22 hours 14 min ago:
As Iâve said in the past: they need the benefit of the doubt on
everything; they deserve the benefit of the doubt on nothing.
dragonwriter wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
> On the one hand, the plain text of the language is not against DEI
practices in general -- only DEI practices that are "in violation of
Federal anti-discrimination laws."
EO 14151âthe policy of which the rewriting of the standard
anti-discrimination clause in this way is a part of the
implementationâcharacterizes DEI entirely as illegal discrimination
(but the new backformation âdiscriminatory equity ideologyâ is
not found in the EO, thatâs apparently a newer invention to avoid
the dissonance of using the actual expansion of the initialism while
characterizing it as directly the opposite of what it is.
IshKebab wrote 5 hours 27 min ago:
Does it define what DEI is? It seems very loosely defined to me so
it seems a bit crazy to talk about it in contact terms without
defining it more precisely.
usefulcat wrote 37 min ago:
The point is to muddy the waters, to sow uncertainty. To have the
ability to apply the law arbitrarily, as opposed to uniformly.
The absence of a specific definition very much aids that use
case.
bo1024 wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
Sure, but the executive order is not a law.
josefritzishere wrote 21 hours 26 min ago:
You say that confidently like that's an obstacle to executive
power in 2025.
dragonwriter wrote 21 hours 30 min ago:
The executive order is direction to executive branch officials,
including the ones who are responsible for applying the
cancellation and clawback terms in the agreement at issue, as to
how they are to perform their duties.
It is certainly relevsant to evaluating whether or not it is
worthwhile to apply for the grant. That sufficient litigation
might reverse an application of the policy in the EO that the
agreement text clearly highlights the intent to enforce as
inconsistent with the underlying law isnât worth much unless
the cost of expected litigation would be dwarfed by the size of
the contract award, and for a $1.5 million grant application,
thatâs...not very much litigation.
alfalfasprout wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
Reality: the trump admin has shown that the law doesn't matter in the
short term. If they think it's "DEI" they'll find a way to yank
funding/make an example out of an organization agreeing to this. Even
if they're legally in the wrong.
Years later courts may agree no federal anti discrimination laws were
violated but it's too late-- the damage has been done.
ModernMech wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
If itâs not âDEIâ then itâs âwaste fraud and abuseâ.
And if itâs not that then itâs âterrorismâ or
âtreasonâ.
BolexNOLA wrote 22 hours 3 min ago:
âAnti-semitismâ if it involves colleges in any way, donât
forget that!
adastra22 wrote 22 hours 34 min ago:
The conjunction used is "or". It could mean either.
elicash wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
My reading in context is different:
URI [1]: https://www.governmentcontractorcomplianceupdate.com/2025/...
adastra22 wrote 22 hours 20 min ago:
That's a different, non-governmental website?
pseudalopex wrote 20 hours 58 min ago:
That was labor lawyers interpreting a governmental memorandum
about the same issue substantially or precisely.
ggm wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
I would hope another funding source with no interest in this kind of
legalistic politics emerges. Conditionality like this is going to be
much more common for another 3 years at least.
Turning down money is the easiest thing in the world, if you have the
fortitude. I think a lot of organisations don't.
bitexploder wrote 6 hours 55 min ago:
It truly is not easy IMO. I am just picking a nit here but "if you
have the fortitude" is doing a lot of work. I ran a company for a
while and you not only have to have the fortitude, but principles and
an ability to weather the consequences of a choice like that. If you
are in a tough position and you have employees who are counting on
you and the business it is anything but easy. Even if you have
fortitude. These decisions can be existential. Of course there are
and should be red lines based on your ethics and morals, but none of
that is easy. To me it is very hard.
XCabbage wrote 1 day ago:
A point made deep in a comment thread by user "rck" below deserves to
be a top-level comment - the clawback clause explicitly applies ONLY to
violations of existing law:
> NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and
recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate
any program in violation of Federal antidiscriminatory laws or engage
in a prohibited boycott.
So there's no plausible way that agreeing to these terms would have
contractually bound PSF in any way that they were not already bound by
statute. Completely silly ideological posturing to turn down the money.
burkaman wrote 1 day ago:
Why was the clause included if it's completely redundant? PSF's
decision is based on the government's demonstrated track record of
what they consider to be "illegal DEI", not what the law actually
says. Grant cancellations have been primarily based on a list of
banned words ( [1] ), and of course nobody involved with any of the
thousands of cancelled grants has been charged with breaking a law,
because they haven't broken any.
Here's a list of math grants identified by the Senate to be
DEI-related because they contained strings like "homo" and
"inequality": [2] Here's the actual list of NSF cancelled grants: [3]
. You can also explore the data at [4] . There are 1667 in there, so
I'll just highlight a couple and note the "illegal DEI":
- Center for Integrated Quantum Materials
- CAREER: From Equivariant Chromatic Homotopy Theory to Phases of
Matter: Voyage to the Edge
- Remote homology detection with evolutionary profile HMMs
- SBIR Phase II: Real-time Community-in-the-Loop Platform for
Improved Urban Flood Forecasting and Management
- RCN: Augmenting Intelligence Through Collective Learning
- Mechanisms for the establishment of polarity during whole-body
regeneration
- CAREER: Ecological turnover at the dawn of the Great Ordovician
Biodiversification Event - quantifying the Cambro-Ordovician
transition through the lens of exceptional preservation
When the federal government cancels your grant and claws back money
you've already spent because they claim something innocuous is
illegal, knowing in your heart that they're wrong is not very
helpful.
URI [1]: https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/nsf-has-canceled-more-1500-...
URI [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1ioo2x9/database_of_w...
URI [3]: https://www.nsf.gov/updates-on-priorities#termination-list
URI [4]: https://grant-witness.us/nsf-data.html
XCabbage wrote 1 day ago:
> Why was the clause included if it's completely redundant?
It's not and I didn't suggest it was. It gives the NSF itself the
ability to litigate discrimination by grantees (in order to claw
back its funds) instead of only the people discriminated against
and the EEOC being able to do that. That's a real effect! But it
doesn't impose any new obligations whatsoever on PSF - just changes
the recourse mechanism if PSF violates legal obligations they
already had.
> When the federal government cancels your grant and claws back
money you've already spent because they claim something innocuous
is illegal
As far as I know this has not happened in any of the cases you
mention and _could_ not happen. Yes, grants have been cancelled for
dumb reasons, but nothing has been clawed back. Right? What would
the mechanism for clawing back the money without a lawsuit even be?
burkaman wrote 1 day ago:
I don't know if they've attempted to claw back any NSF grants
yet, but they have done this with EPA grants. There was no
lawsuit, they just ordered banks to freeze the funds and the
banks complied:
URI [1]: https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-green-bank-recipient...
XCabbage wrote 1 day ago:
Hmm. That'd be pretty nasty to be on the receiving end of (and
may well have been an outrageous abuse of executive power), but
still, an administrative freeze is temporary and is not in
itself a clawback. Even if it was a certainty this would happen
to PSF, it would still be worth it for $1.5 million!
burkaman wrote 23 hours 58 min ago:
It was not temporary. The victims spent substantial amounts
of money suing and still lost: [1] . Technically litigation
is ongoing but there is no reason to believe they will
succeed.
URI [1]: https://www.eenews.net/articles/appeals-court-says-e...
takluyver wrote 1 day ago:
And if someone at the NSF decides to terminate the grant & 'recover
all funds', does the dispute over the contract involve the same
burden of proof and rights to appeal as a federal discrimation case?
Someone wrote it into the grant agreement. It's a fair bet that they
think that has some effect beyond what the law already achieves.
XCabbage wrote 1 day ago:
The burden of proof is "on the balance of probabilities" in both
cases as far as I know, and there's no limit in principle on how
high a breach of contract case can be appealed.
Of course it has an effect, but that effect is giving the NSF the
ability to sue over a grantee's alleged breaches of discrimination
law, instead of that being limited to parties discriminated against
and the EEOCs.
7jjjjjjj wrote 1 day ago:
I think people are overlooking the most important part:
- Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to âclaw
backâ previously approved and transferred funds. This would create a
situation where money weâd already spent could be taken back, which
would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk.
They're saying the terms give the Trump administration what's
essentially a "kill the PSF" button. Which they may want to use for any
number of arbitrary reasons. Maybe the PSF runs a conference with a
trans speaker, or someone has to be ousted for being openly racist. If
it gets the attention of right wing media that's the end.
The "just comply with the law" people are being extremely naive. There
can be no assumption of good faith here.
pbronez wrote 1 day ago:
Regardless of how you feel about the specific issues here, itâs a
good example of why public policy works best when it targets one issue
at a time.
If you want to buy cyber security, just do that. Linking cybersecurity
payments to social issues reduces how much cybersecurity you can get.
Sometimes you can find win-win-win scenarios. There are values that are
worth enforcing as a baseline. But you always pay a price somewhere.
Anyway, I signed up to be a PSF member.
burnerRhodov2 wrote 1 day ago:
So, all these clauses where changed back in Feb/ March. They definitely
had to agree to the amendments on their grants, and they still had
funding until October 1st. So, I feel like this is revisionist history
because they would have been notified way before today to renew thier
grant.
So they signed the amendments and spent the money...
takluyver wrote 1 day ago:
It's not a renewal, it's their first application for government
funding, and they turned it down without accepting the terms. This is
all quite clear in the blog post.
its-summertime wrote 1 day ago:
> In January 2025, the PSF submitted a proposal to the US government
National Science Foundation under the Safety, Security, and Privacy
of Open Source Ecosystems program to address structural
vulnerabilities in Python and PyPI.
> It was the PSFâs first time applying for government funding.
It doesn't seem to be a renewal, and they seem to have applied before
the clauses were added.
- - -
Additionally, on September 29, 2025, the NSF posted
> The U.S. National Science Foundation announced the first-ever
Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open-Source Ecosystems (NSF
Safe-OSE) investment in an inaugural cohort of 8 teams
Implying that until that point, there was no distribution of funds as
part of Safe-OSE, so no prior years of funding existed
burnerRhodov2 wrote 1 day ago:
thats not true....
URI [1]: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/search.do?indexName=awardful...
its-summertime wrote 1 day ago:
All of those are marked as "PURCHASE ORDER", I don't think the
PSF applies for those. I don't think they are what one would
consider funding
burnerRhodov2 wrote 1 day ago:
Grants are at the bottom.
takluyver wrote 1 day ago:
The grants to the 'University of Georgia Research
Foundation'?
burnerRhodov2 wrote 23 hours 44 min ago:
rip... You are right. Sorry. I exported it into excel and
just looked at the column... interesting they have the same
UEI?
etchalon wrote 1 day ago:
Donated, and happy to.
It's shocking how fast this administration has gotten institutions to
abandon their beliefs, and ones that don't should be rewarded.
talawahtech wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks for posting this. I just made a donation to the PSF.
di wrote 1 day ago:
For some context on the scale of this grant, the PSF took in only $1M
in "Contributions, Membership Dues, & Grants" in 2024:
URI [1]: https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2024/
aspir wrote 1 day ago:
This isn't good for the PSF, but if these "poison pill" terms are a
pattern that applies to all NSF and (presumably) other government
research funding, the entire state of modern scientific research is at
risk.
Regardless of how you, as an individual, might feel about "DEI,"
imposing onerous political terms on scientific grants harms everyone in
the long term.
eadmund wrote 17 hours 53 min ago:
Is the restriction on grantees not violating federal law a new one,
or has it been around for ages?
chermi wrote 21 hours 37 min ago:
I'm not taking a stance, I just want to point out that the previous
grant system (the "dei" one) could very easily and justifiably be
seen as "imposing onerous political terms" on funding as well. You
could say the pendulum motion has too large an amplitude.
insane_dreamer wrote 16 hours 1 min ago:
it never had a claw back clause -- that is the real problem here.
And we've seen that the Trump admin is willing to actually claw
back granted funds.
not at all the same
GemesAS wrote 21 hours 37 min ago:
Prior to the current administration there's been a ratcheting up of
political influence / social engineering on science grants as well.
The last DoE Office of Science grant I applied to had a DEI
requirement that was also used during screening. My preference would
all this political influence be dialed down.
insane_dreamer wrote 15 hours 59 min ago:
Did it have a claw back clause? If not, then it's quite different
than the current situation?
Also, DEI in recruitment / screening can be important to ensure
that the results of the study apply not just to the majority
demographic. It's just common sense.
rs186 wrote 19 hours 24 min ago:
Seems you comment agrees with the parent.
JPKab wrote 22 hours 38 min ago:
The "poison pill" terms are not at all a new thing. They have
existed for a long time, and were one of the main drivers of the
highly aggressive "guilty until proven innocent" cancel culture
within academia, where a PhD gets accused non-credibly, is
blackballed from NSF funding, exiled from academia, and years later
it's discovered they were innocent of the charges.
philipallstar wrote 1 day ago:
It would be very good for the PSF if it can get grant money without
DEI things. Before you needed to have them to get much of a look-in.
Now it can spend the money on important stuff like packaging. uv is
amazing, but also a symptom of the wrong people stewarding that
money.
politician wrote 1 day ago:
The requirement that grantees not violate existing laws is common in
Federal grants. Taking umbrage with the DEI coloration on this
entirely reasonable and standard requirement is absurd. There could
be a long laundry list of such clauses that all have equally zero
weight ("don't promote illegal drug trafficking", "don't promote
illegal insider trading", ...).
takluyver wrote 1 day ago:
If it has zero weight, why would the grant agreement specifically
highlight it? I would guess it's much easier to enforce a
particular interpretation of the law via a grant agreement than
having to argue it in court.
eirikbakke wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
The "rule against surplusage": Where one reading of a statute
would make one or more parts of the statute redundant and another
reading would avoid the redundancy, the other reading is
preferred.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_interpretation
dragonwriter wrote 21 hours 40 min ago:
Grant agreements are not statutes but contracts, and canons of
statutory interpretation do not apply to contracts.
eirikbakke wrote 21 hours 25 min ago:
Perhaps a better source (but IANAL):
"Judges frequently invoke anti-redundancy principles in the
interpretation of legal language, whether it appears in
classic private-law documents such as contracts or classic
public law-documents such as constitutions and statutes."
Redundancy: When Law Repeats Itself, John M. Golden (2016)
politician wrote 1 day ago:
> Why would the grant agreement specifically highlight it?
I would humbly suggest that it mentions this particular example
because the NSF administrator serves under the pleasure of the
Executive and they have been tasked to demonstrate that they are
following the orders of the Executive branch.
However, the inclusion of this specific example confers no higher
priority than any other possible example. It has no weight; it is
inoperative.
counters wrote 1 day ago:
If it's inoperative then it shouldn't be in the language of the
grant. Full stop.
The language itself also overly broad. The stipulation from the
grant didn't just cover activities funded by the grant itself.
In the very language quoted on the PSF blog, they needed to
affirm that as an organization they "do not, and will not
during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any
programs that advance or promote DEI." Read that again. The
language expressly states that they cannot operate ANY programs
that advance or promote DEI during the term of the award. So if
a PSF member volunteers with PyLadies, would that count as
"advanc[ing] or promot[ing] DEI?"
In the real world, no one would _ever_ sign a contract with
this sort of poison pill on it. If something like this was
found buried in a contract I was evaluating with my lawyer,
we'd immediately redline it as overly broad and overbearing.
dragonwriter wrote 21 hours 37 min ago:
> If it's inoperative then it shouldn't be in the language of
the grant.
Itâs not inoperative. A contract requirement that is
redundant with a legal requirement still has separate effect
(that is explicit here since this clause is a basis for both
cancelling an award that has already been made and clawing
back funds that have already been disbursed, separate from
any penalties for the violation of the law itself.)
> In the real world, no one would _ever_ sign a contract with
this sort of poison pill on it.
If by âthis kindâ you just mean âincorporating existing
legal obligations separately as contract obligations with
contractual consequencesâ, every government contract has
multiple such clauses and has for decades.
If by âthis kindâ you mean more narrowly incorporating
the specific anti-DEI provisions and partisan propaganda
about DEI inside the clause also incorporating existing legal
requirements, Iâm pretty sure you will find that most
federal contracts that have had their language drafted in the
last few months have something like that because of agency
implementations of EO 14151. How many people are signinf
them...well, I would say look at whoever is still getting
federal money, but given the shutdown thatâs harder to
see...
davorak wrote 1 day ago:
> It has no weight; it is inoperative.
You are claiming that if the PSF took the grant and the NSF, or
the president, decided the PSF was promoting DEI they would not
be able to claw back funds?
takluyver wrote 1 day ago:
OK, I accept that as a possible reason why it might be written
there even if it has no weight. But it still seems very likely
that it's easier to terminate a grant - and harder for the PSF
to argue against that - than to actually prosecute DEI work and
prove in court that it's illegal.
politician wrote 21 hours 51 min ago:
You say, paraphrasing, "It's harder to prove that a DEI
program violates Federal anti-discrimination laws than it is
to simply terminate a grant to an undesirable grantee."
Ok. Suppose that's true. The government can terminate grants
that don't include that language equally as easily -- and,
indeed, I just found that there are multiple current cases
against the government for doing exactly that: health grants
[1], solar grants [2], education grants [3].
Is your point is that the inclusion of this inoperative
language makes it easier than it already is for the
government to cancel grants and to defend against the
subsequent lawsuits until the plaintiffs are pressured into
compliance from lack of funding? [1] [2]
URI [1]: https://coag.gov/press-releases/weiser-sues-hhs-kenn...
URI [2]: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy...
URI [3]: https://www.k12dive.com/news/state-lawsuit-Education...
flufluflufluffy wrote 1 day ago:
They do apply, also for NIH funded research. I work in healthcare
research and all the investigators I know have had to go to great
lengths to whitewash their grant proposals (you canât use the word
âgenderâ for example, you must say âdifferenceâ instead of
âdisparityâ, etc etcâ¦)
Itâs absolutely bonkers. However most of the researchers I work
with are operating under a âappease the NIH to obtain the grant,
but the just do the research as it was originally intendedâ
approach. It not like the federal government has the ability (or
staffing - hah!) to ensure every single awardee is complying with
these dystopian requirements.
nxobject wrote 22 hours 28 min ago:
> However most of the researchers I work with are operating under a
âappease the NIH to obtain the grant, but the just do the
research as it was originally intendedâ approach. It not like the
federal government has the ability (or staffing - hah!) to ensure
every single awardee is complying with these dystopian
requirements.
It's also the same program officers stewarding grant administration
after administration, anyway. I don't mean this negatively: they're
broad but still subject matter experts, parachuting in new people
would be administrative malpractice, and they know just as much
what conclusions can and can't be drawn from an analysis plan.
dragonwriter wrote 21 hours 13 min ago:
> It's also the same program officers stewarding grant
administration after administration, anyway.
Historically, yes; as well as firing leadership and moving
decisions usually made further down the chain up to the new
leadership, this administration has also fired a lot of the
existing grant reviewers in most of the big health an science
grant-issuing agencies (and probably smaller ones, too, but those
would have made fewer headlines) as part of the political purges
of, well, a lot of the federal civil service earlier this year.
zitterbewegung wrote 1 day ago:
Also, I don't get that an Organization such as the PSF operates at a
$5 million dollar budget which quite arguably provides Billions or
even Trillions in revenue across the Tech sector.
bgwalter wrote 1 day ago:
PSF money does not really go into development. Some inner circle
members have been sponsored to do maintenance work, but Python
would be largely the same with zero donations.
SalmoShalazar wrote 23 hours 10 min ago:
Pretty bold statement with no evidence.
lumpa wrote 21 hours 8 min ago:
Here's some evidence that he is, again, badmouthing the PSF
without a good reason:
URI [1]: https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-psfs-2024-ann...
bgwalter wrote 21 hours 2 min ago:
Surely you mean "they are badmouthing". Enough to be expelled
from the PSF.
Some official report from the PSF does not invalidate decades
long observations. I see increasingly that programmers rely
on PDFs from foundations and official statements from
bureaucrats rather than look at the source code.
aspir wrote 1 day ago:
This is an unfortunate state of all open source. The entire
economic model is broken, but PSF is one of the better
operationalized groups out there.
Not to completely change the topic, but to add context, the Ruby
Central drama that has unfolded over the past few weeks originally
began as a brainstorm to raise ~$250k in annual funds.
numbsafari wrote 1 day ago:
The direction of political winds shift over time. An organization
like the PSF cannot assume an open-ended liability like that. DEI
today, but what tomorrow? As we have seen, political leadership in
the US has shown itself to be unreliable, pernicious, and vindictive.
US leadership is undermined by the politicization of these grants.
That is something that members of this community, largely a US-based,
VC-oriented audience, should be deeply, deeply troubled by.
xeonmc wrote 23 hours 42 min ago:
I wonder, how likely do you think there would be a retaliatory
threat of revoking PSFâs nonprofit status for a perceived snub in
rejecting the offer?
polski-g wrote 17 hours 48 min ago:
It could be revoked if they are found to engage in illegal
discrimination-Solidified by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1983
case Bob Jones University v. United States. based on public
comments made by board members, such evidence seems replete.
elevation wrote 23 hours 10 min ago:
The IRS has withheld 501(c) status from the presidentâs
perceived adversaries before[0]. But I havenât heard of 501(c)
status being revoked.
[0]:
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
pbiggar wrote 22 hours 21 min ago:
The Trump administration is definitively coming after 501c3s. I
run a nonprofit and all the movement around us has been
preparing for this since these laws were first announced.
Ironcically, the laws to investigate nonprofits were first
proposed under the Biden administration to attack the Palestine
movement, and like most things in the Palestine movement, they
were quickly turned against the rest of the country.
URI [1]: https://www.wired.com/story/the-trump-administration-i...
rat87 wrote 22 hours 32 min ago:
I don't think that's a good summary of what happened.
From your wiki link
> In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS),
under the Obama administration, revealed that it had selected
political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive
scrutiny based on their names or political themes. This led to
wide condemnation of the agency and triggered several
investigations, including a Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) criminal probe ordered by United States Attorney General
Eric Holder. Conservatives claimed that they were specifically
targeted by the IRS, but an exhaustive report released by the
Treasury Department's Inspector General in 2017 found that from
2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal
keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny.
> The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration's audit
found (page 14): "For the 296 potential political cases we
reviewed, as of December 17, 2012, 108 applications had been
approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been
denied, and 160 cases were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days
(some crossing two election cycles)."[11] Bloomberg News
reported on May 14, 2013, "None of the Republican groups have
said their applications were rejected."
The IRS took some stupid shortcuts by trying to look at
keywords (including those linked to liberal causes) for more
scrutiny of if they met the criteria of a non profit. There's
no evidence this was done based on partisanship and it did not
cause any groups to be rejected
mgraczyk wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
"The FBI stated it found no evidence of "enemy hunting" of the
kind that had been suspected, but that the investigation did
reveal the IRS to be a mismanaged bureaucracy enforcing rules
that IRS personnel did not fully understand. "
potato3732842 wrote 6 hours 55 min ago:
Even the people buried deep in the most podunk regulatory
department you've never even heard of are smart enough to
re-order the priority list on a change of administration.
They don't need to be told and there is no paper trail. They
just know what's good for their boss's boss's boss's boss^n
is good for them and that kicking a potential hornet's nest
is bad for them.
And even if you personally want to hassle someone with
friends in the right places, what are the odds every other
leaf of every other part of the organization(s) does? There
will always be someone who has no morals and wants to climb
the ladder who's happy to read between the lines and drop the
ball.
It's just how it is. On some level, I'm not even sure this
is a bad thing. If the executive can't change prioritization
implicitly then the organization is either stupid or
unaccountable.
mikeyouse wrote 22 hours 33 min ago:
The sad irony is that the staff understood it perfectly, the
organizations were not legitimate 501c groups (since at the
time we had enforceable rules around political activity by
nonprofit groups) but through extremely bad faith
investigations where Congressional republicans literally
forbade the IRS from reporting on their barring of climate
and âprogressiveâ groups when investigating the
âscandalâ so that even today people mischaracterize it as
an example of IRS political targeting.
URI [1]: https://thehill.com/policy/finance/154584-ig-audit-o...
djoldman wrote 1 day ago:
> These terms included affirming the statement that we âdo not, and
will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate
any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity
ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.â
(Emphasis mine)
I'm curious if any lawyer folks could weigh in as to whether this
language means that the entire sentence requires the mentioned programs
to be "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws." If so, one
might argue that a "DEI program" was not in violation of a Federal
anti-discrimination law.
Obviously no one would want to have to go to court and this likely
would be an unacceptable risk.
rck wrote 1 day ago:
Not a lawyer, but the NSF clause covering clawbacks is pretty
specific:
> NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and
recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award,
operate any program in violation of Federal antidiscriminatory laws
or engage in a prohibited boycott.
A "prohibited boycott" is apparently a legal term aimed specifically
at boycotting Israel/Israeli companies, so unless PSF intended to
violate federal law or do an Israel boycott, they probably weren't at
risk. They mention they talked to other nonprofits, but don't mention
talking to their lawyers. I would hope they did consult counsel,
because it would be a shame to turn down that much money solely on
the basis of word of mouth from non-attorneys.
dragonwriter wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think you are misunderstanding the surface requirements,
but I think you are mistaking âwould eventually, with unlimited
resources for litigation, prevail in litigation over NSF cancelling
funds, assuming that the US justice system always eventually
produces a correct resultâ with ânot at riskâ.
rck wrote 1 day ago:
I can imagine that a very risk averse lawyer would have pointed
out the costs and uncertainties of litigation in cases like this.
But if I were in their shoes and I really cared about the money,
I would have pressed that lawyer to show examples where the
clawback clause had been invoked since Jan 20. I'm not sure it's
happened, which seems relevant to estimating the actual risk.
Interestingly, they may get more in donations than they would
have from this grant, so maybe that needs to be including in the
risk estimate as well...
dragonwriter wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
> But if I were in their shoes and I really cared about the
money, I would have pressed that lawyer to show examples where
the clawback clause had been invoked since Jan 20.
And the lawyer would be able to present hundreds of cases
covering billions of dollars of federal grants, cancelled since
Trump issued EO 14151 setting in black and white the
Administration's broad crusade against funding anything with
contact with DEI and declaring the DEI prohibition a policy for
all federal grants and contracts, under different grant
programs, many of which were originally awarded before Trump
came back to office and which would not have had DEI terms in
the original grant language. They'd also be able to point out
that some of the cancellations had been litigated to the
Supreme Court and allowed, other clawbacks had been struck down
by lower courts and were still in appeals.
rck wrote 23 hours 22 min ago:
Yeah it looks like about 1500 grants: [1] But if the concern
is about the provision allowing NSF to claw back funds that
have been spent by the organization then the question
remains: has that happened? Right now if you search for terms
related to NSF clawbacks, most of the top results refer to
the PSF's statement or forum discussions about it (like this
one). I can't find any instances of a federal clawback
related to DEI. If that had happened I would assume that the
response from the awardee would have been noisy.
URI [1]: https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/nsf-has-canceled-mo...
wrs wrote 1 day ago:
If it was simply an agreement that the recipient wonât violate
Federal law, it wouldnât need to be stated (how could the intention
be otherwise?). So I read it as an agreement to an interpretation
that doing those things would violate the law.
pavon wrote 1 day ago:
Or more specifically a warning that the administration intends to
interpret the law in that manner, whether it is true or not. PSF
could easily spend more than $1.5M in a lawsuit to challenge that
interpretation if their grant was clawed back, so financially it
isn't worth taking the money.
dragonwriter wrote 1 day ago:
> If it was simply an agreement that the recipient wonât violate
Federal law, it wouldnât need to be stated (how could the
intention be otherwise?).
Statements about not breaking specific existing laws are common in
government contracts in the US (at all levels), functionally, they
make violating the law a breach of contract. This enables the
government to declare a breach and cancel the contract without the
litigation that would be required for even a civil penalty for
breaking the law, forcing the contractor to litigate for breach of
contract (claiming that they did not breach the contract so that
the government cancellation was itself a breach) instead.
Using a fantasy (âdiscriminatory equity ideologyâ) with an
initialism collision with a common inclusivity practice (DEI),
combined with recent practice by the same Administration, is
clearly a signal of where the government intends to apply the
guilty-until-proven-innocent approach in this case.
wrs wrote 1 hour 53 min ago:
Yes, thatâs what I meant, stated more clearly. The contract is
spelling out behavior that both sides agree up front that they
consider a violation of the law, so you canât claim that you
didnât think you were breaching the contract because you
didnât think you were violating the law.
politician wrote 1 day ago:
> I read it as an agreement to an interpretation that doing those
things would violate the law.
The Executive branch can make any claim it wants, but the Judiciary
branch has the authority to decide what a reviewable claim means.
acdha wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
Does the DOJ or PSF have more money for lawyers? If the answer
isnât the latter, the PSF is quite reasonably concluding that
regardless of how a fair court might rule it would be financially
perilous to attempt to stick up for the law, especially when a
Republican supreme court has a fair chance of inventing another
pretext for denying victory or allowing maximal harm to be done
before acknowledging the law.
politician wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
Ok? But that wasn't the OP's argument. Did you reply to the
wrong thread?
acdha wrote 21 hours 36 min ago:
No. I was just pointing out that your downplaying of the
risks in this thread is too cavalier: I believe they think,
as do I, that even the cost of testing the legality of a
particular interpretation would be crushing for a small
non-profit.
politician wrote 4 hours 5 min ago:
If your point is that corporate lawyers tend to see
monsters behind every blade of grass, I agree. This is what
they are paid to do. If I am a cavalier, it is to calm this
community, to point out that they are over-indexed on this
language and that it is the courts jurisdiction to decide
what is meant.
There is no language that will magically prevent a
government from canceling a grant and requiring a grantee
to pursue relief from the court. This type of guarantee
does not exist.
fn-mote wrote 1 day ago:
The GP's point is that it puts recipients in the position of
having to argue that something they agreed to is invalid. This
presumably places a higher burden of proof on the company.
In the absence of such a statement, the first claim would need to
be "the DEI program your company runs is against federal law",
which could then be tested in the courts.
politician wrote 1 day ago:
> The GP's point is that it puts recipients in the position of
having to argue that something they agreed to is invalid. This
presumably places a higher burden of proof on the company.
Understood; while I disagree with the GP's point, I do
appreciate your response.
I don't believe such example clauses raise the threshold for
the defense against a claim given that there could be
practically unlimited number of such examples. I don't believe
that any such example so highlighted creates an effective
higher priority than any other possible example under 14th
amendment equal protection grounds.
sega_sai wrote 1 day ago:
Great job from PSF ! Taking the stand rather them submitting themselves
to dictatorial/thought-policing terms.
NeutralForest wrote 1 day ago:
That's what we like to hear! Read to the end and donate!
paloblanco wrote 1 day ago:
1.5M is a laughably small number compared to the value that financial
institutions extract from just having PyPi available. I know my
company, not financial but still large, has containers hitting it every
day. How do we get these groups to fork over even just a small amount?
globular-toast wrote 11 hours 56 min ago:
A business will always tend towards taking the maximum and giving the
minimum. Believing anything else is wishful thinking at best and
naive at worst.
So you have to increase the minimum. This could be achieved by
contract, ie. not allowing free pulls like Docker have done, or by
convincing companies that support PyPI and the like is the minimum.
Unfortunately the latter would involve companies thinking and
planning for the future, which is massively out of fashion.
int_19h wrote 20 hours 37 min ago:
From what I've seen in large tech companies, if they bother to do
anything at all, you get a token "open source fund" which is then
divvied up between different projects, often according to employee
feedback. However the money is peanuts so it's clear that this is not
a long term support strategy but just a way to placate the employees
and say that "We PROUDLY support Open Source!" etc.
Also (and ironically), in the past, this kind of stuff often did have
a DEI component of its own. Meaning that a fair bit of that fund
would go not to high profile projects, nor to the ones that company
actually uses the most, but to whoever can put together a proposal
ticking the most "diversity" boxes.
Either way, the point is that companies are simply uninterested in
extending any sort of meaningful support, nevermind doing so in
proportion to utility derived. And, honestly, why would they?
Economically speaking there's no upside to it so long as you can
enjoy the benefits regardless and rely on others to prop things up.
And ethically speaking, large organizations are completely and
utterly amoral in general, so they will only respond to ethical
arguments if these translate to some meaningful economic upsides or
downsides - and the big corps already know from experience that they
can get away with things much worse than not contributing to the
commons. It's not like people will boycott, say, Microsoft over its
recent withdrawal of support from Python.
arusahni wrote 1 day ago:
The PSF and several other organizations that provide public package
registries wrote an open letter [1] announcing a joint effort to make
this situation more sustainable. I'll be interested to see where it
goes.
[1]
URI [1]: https://openssf.org/blog/2025/09/23/open-infrastructure-is-n...
paloblanco wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks! I want to bring this up as a discussion point when I get
the chance at work.
I can't find a date on this letter - is it recent?
coloneltcb wrote 1 day ago:
Get your company to take the Pledge:
URI [1]: https://opensourcepledge.com/
abnercoimbre wrote 1 day ago:
I'm rather baffled at the spike in HN folks missing obvious
dates. You're not the first..
paloblanco wrote 1 day ago:
I'm on mobile and missed it. My bad for the spam.
wahnfrieden wrote 1 day ago:
The website hides the date on mobile
dsissitka wrote 1 day ago:
I wonder if they're mobile. Here the URL is truncated and over
on openssf.org/blog they don't show the date unless you switch
over to desktop view.
di wrote 1 day ago:
It says "September 23, 2025" right at the top.
wahnfrieden wrote 1 day ago:
The website hides the date on mobile
fn-mote wrote 1 day ago:
The date is at the top of the letter and in the url...
September 2025.
bugglebeetle wrote 1 day ago:
Makes me wonder what strings were attached to that Allen AI NSF grant.
I noticed that they were suddenly using more hawkish language around
China.
metafex wrote 1 day ago:
Now that's what a backbone looks like.
theschmed wrote 1 day ago:
Read to the end. Ways to financially support this important work can be
found there.
kristjansson wrote 1 day ago:
Step One: get them to a better payment processor than PayPal! I waded
through it, but that's a high friction funnel.
danbrooks wrote 1 day ago:
I made a donation. Props to the PSF for standing up.
DIR <- back to front page