> The "ideology" is actually that diversity and inclusion are important to think about at all!

(I appreciate you taking the time for this discussion.)

Yes, I fully agree that this is an ideology. This is where the problem is.

You presented (elsewhere) several examples of bad behavior that happens in a student body (racial slurs, sexual harassment, etc.) I think everybody agrees that this behavior needs to be "managed" and the professor needs to at the very least be prepared when this happens. One way to handle this situation is to offer incoming professors a pamphlet describing various situations likely to happen and suggestions on how to deal with them.

You cross the ideological boundary when you start labeling these issues as DEI, and this is where the animosity starts, including animosity from me.

What's so bad with using the DEI label? It's just a name, right? What's in a name? Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus, and all that.

The problem is that by now DEI is an industry that has convinced half the American public that the other half is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. Under the name of DEI, I have been subject to all sort of indoctrination claiming that I am inherently racist, that I am unconsciously believing that women suck at math and I need to do something to fix this problem, etc.

The effect of this nonsense on workplaces is disastrous. You have black people here on HN saying, "I was getting along with everybody and now everybody thinks I am a diversity hire". I have been called a racist for suggesting that we (a cloud provider) have no right to know what customers are doing with the services we sell them. (I am racist because customers may use such services for "racist" causes.) Companies have explicit DEI goals, and I have seen at least one VP committing to meet with two "minoritized" employees per quarter in order to meet his bar for support for DEI. I can hardly think of anything more offensive than effectively saying "you are a black woman, I don't give a crap about you, but I need to spend 30m with you to get my bonus". And don't get me started with the impact of all this nonsense on hiring.

The bullshit level around women in tech is particularly ridiculous. Everybody believes that "science" proves that there is a bias against hiring women, and the DEI training provided this paper by Zingales et al. as a proof: https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/12/4403.full.pdf From a bullshit toy example where a bunch of students are asked to simulate hiring women for a simple math task, everybody is now inferring nefarious behavior in the real world. What's really funny about this paper is how they choose the specific task: "Although there is some evidence of a sex difference in mathematics performance (5, 6), which is shrinking over time (7), there is no sex disparity in performance on an arithmetic task such as ours (8)." [See Discussion section] So what these guys are really saying is: women can't do complicated math [5, 6], so we pick the trivial task of adding a bunch of numbers, which [8] proves that even women can do. The very article that complains about bias is predicated upon the fact that the bias is, in fact, justified and grounded in science.

I don't think I have to say that I regard all of the above as complete bullshit, both the paper and all its references. In my professional experience, the women I have interacted with were on average better than the dudes. But this is the nonsense that is sold as DEI these days. It doesn't solve any problems, and it creates needless tensions.

You seem to be under the impression that DEI is just a way to learn to deal with difficult situations. If you really believe this, maybe look outside your department?