I'm probably speaking out of turn here because I went back and checked, and some faculty don't have this in their signature. So it's optional after all. Even still, leadership has asked us to put our pronouns in our signatures, so my perception was that it wasn't optional.

> Consider how asymmetric these affordances are.

I would soften both sides of your argument. On the one hand, it is considered a priority that to accommodate all students. Normalizing pronoun usage isn't a huge ask for anyone, dissenters are apparently accommodated, and trans customers (I'll refer to them as customers here to highlight that these accommodations are in fact made in the context of a transaction where large sums of money are exchanged) feel more visible and welcomed.

On the other hand, while the employer can apparently tolerate an employee who prefers not to put pronouns next to their name, it aspires not to hire people who outwardly express their political opinions about our paying customers during working hours, or in a way that would negatively impact revenues. This is the prerogative of all businesses. I'm using the employer/employee dichotomy to highlight the fact that this is in fact a job, where the expectation is that the employee will leave their politics aside.

So yes, the affordances are asymmetric, because the relationship between these groups and the institution is not the same. One is a paying customer, the other is an employee. Customer concerns are treated as a priority because education is a person-centric business. It's all about personal service to the customer. If a school gets known for a bad customer experience, that impacts enrollment which drives down revenues.

Conversely employee concerns are brought to HR and handled through internal channels. Otherwise employees abide by the institution's rules and procedures and are compensated with a salary and benefits.

I'm sorry if that offends your political sensibilities or strong and closely held beliefs, but they should be kept closely held in the context of your employment. The personhood of our customers is not debatable, because at the end of the day they are paying a large sum of money to attend our institution, and there's a lot of heavy competition out there. If that's picking winners and losers so be it. They're voting with their wallets so that's why they're winning.

I find this explanation unconvincing. If we take you at your word, then your institution would follow the preferences of the students even if they went in the other direction. Suppose the next cohort of students was against this pronoun protocol: not only do they eschew pronouns, they prefer for nobody else to specify them either, and they vote accordingly with their feet. Are you saying that you and your department would be prepared to reverse course on this issue and ask any faculty (including trans faculty, if there were any) not to specify their pronouns anywhere? Or even to reject faculty applicants who specify their pronouns during the interview process, for being too "political"? I doubt that the morals of the faculty are truly this flexible, nor should they be.

Market forces are real and I have no doubt that a loud contingent of students demand the practices you are describing. It is undoubtedly a difficult position to be in, and it is one I do not envy. But there must be a limit to how far customer focus can or should go. What if all of the students demand to get As? What if they demand that a math professor teach 2+2=5 or that a biology professor teach that biological sex is not a concept that has any basis in reality? At some point the faculty need to stand up for what is right and what is true.

And if the faculty and staff are not willing to do this, then other market forces will come into play like the article that we are commenting on. Public universities take public funds and are therefore accountable to the public, while private universities depend on alumni and donors. All of these people are entitled to have an opinion about whether they want to support this kind of behavior. You see the press turning this into "political football" that is causing you grief, I see it as a much needed check on institutions who have abdicated their responsibility to resist illiberal trends within their walls.

For a long time that was the case; Women and black people weren't allowed on campus for over a hundred years after the University's founding, but that all changed as generations churned.

> Suppose the next cohort of students was against this pronoun protocol: not only do they eschew pronouns, they prefer for nobody else to specify them either, and they vote accordingly with their feet.

I think changes like these happen at a longer timescale than cohorts. More like generations. We millennials are now teaching gen Z, and so obviously things are going to be very different from when boomers were teaching us. It will probably change again when Gen Z start getting faculty positions and gen "Alpha" (I had to look it up, who comes up with these?) start taking college classes.

> Are you saying that you and your department would be prepared to reverse course on this issue and ask any faculty (including trans faculty, if there were any) not to specify their pronouns anywhere?

I could see this happening, sure. Likely what would happen is people would complain, students would complain louder, and in the end they would get their way. Faculty would grumble, and then probably let their contracts lapse, while others who wouldn't find the situation so vexing would take their places and do their jobs.

> But there must be a limit to how far customer focus can or should go. What if all of the students demand to get As?

Grade inflation is a thing, so this is a real concern. Fortunately it's semi-checked by competing interests from our customers who appreciate that we maintain standards so that an A means something. But we're not immune from it, that's for sure. Squeaky wheels do often get grease when it comes to grades.

> What if they demand that a math professor teach 2+2=5 or that a biology professor teach that biological sex is not a concept that has any basis in reality?

Tenure and academic freedom play an important role here. Lord knows there's all kind of nonsense being taught on college campuses across the country. People can have different opinions on what constitutes nonsense; I'm sure there are topics I wish they'd shut up about that other people want taught, and topics I want taught that others would prefer be defunded and shut down. But you know what, I shrug and don't pay too much mind. I certainly don't go on about the "conservative bias" I see in many departments here. If people want to teach nonsense that's fine. If it has any utility or merit, they will attract funding, and students, and it will make our community better. We have people teaching things here that I consider to be actually far less coherent than 2+2=5. But I say, whatever, go for it. Teach away.

> At some point the faculty need to stand up for what is right and what is true.

We all are. Every single one of us. But that's why we have a marketplace, because not all of us can be right and true.

> Public universities take public funds and are therefore accountable to the public, while private universities depend on alumni and donors.

Private universities rely on all kinds of public funding to operate, not the least being public grant money. None of us are immune from public scrutiny, but in general the public better know what they are talking about if they want to leverage a criticism. If they want to open a dialogue, that can happen, but so far it seems like political and media firebrands are leading the charge, so a dialogue doesn't seem to be possible in this climate.

> All of these people are entitled to have an opinion about whether they want to support this kind of behavior.

Sure, and if they want a louder opinion so that they may be heard, they can spend more dollars. In the meantime, there are thousands of schools out there, and especially among the top schools, we are competing for the top students. And as it turns out, you can find the top students from almost any background. So when word gets out that school X is a welcoming and diverse environment, then it becomes easier to recruit top talent. If state schools get a reputation for being political playgrounds for whatever state governors or political parties, they will fall behind because they will fail to attract top talent from the new generation.

> I see it as a much needed check on institutions who have abdicated their responsibility to resist illiberal trends within their walls.

Respectfully, you've made it pretty clear you don't really know what's going on in the walls, so any assessment on how illiberal or not the activities are must be incomplete. The level of discourse in this entire thread is generally stunted because the HN commentariat is talking out of its depth. Software developers, web devs, people who have never been in academia aside from being a student, or haven't been in decades, are voicing their thoughts on what they think is happening in academia. These opinions seem to be fueled mostly by chatter in the right-wing media sphere, especially Tucker Carlson in recent days.

Absent from the entire conversation here seems to be people with first-hand experience reading and evaluating these DEI statements. I think I've noticed 2 other posters in the thousands of comments generated in the past 3 or so HN threads that hit the front page, who I would say have an accurate read on what goes on within academic walls. Everyone else seems to have somehow made up their minds about how these statements are used and what's in them, without reading a single one or asking anyone how they are actually used in practice. Instead you get people claiming as confidently and baselessly as ChatGPT that the whole practice is abjectly racist, illegal, unconstitutional - I've heard it all. You yourself said that you are dismissive of positive first-hand accounts because you assume they are just politically biased. There is zero curious inquiry going on surrounding this topic, and that should sound warning bells that this is just a political tornado.

I don't listen to Tucker Carlson, but I have been listening to what you have been telling me in this thread. From your own first-hand testimony I have learned:

- You have first-hand knowledge of faculty applicants who have been rejected on the basis of their belief that universal pronoun protocols are not necessary, or that they personally prefer not to volunteer their own pronouns.

- You do not count this as a political litmus test, instead you accuse the applicant of being political by having an opinion that is different from what students are demanding.

- You acknowledge that the institution is extending asymmetric affordances, and picking winners and losers on a charged topic, but rationalize this by citing market forces and a philosophy that the customer is always right.

Even if I had heard nothing else, that right there is the case for an illiberal trend. Some opinions are endorsed while others are rejected in the hiring process, and this is not based on any appeal to truth, fairness, or equal protection, but rather the arbitrary demands of the customer.

Respectfully, the fact that you would tell me all of this openly, but then think that I need right-wing agitation to consider this an illiberal trend, just reinforces to me how much of an echo chamber academia must have become. I'm sorry, but no amount of condescension on your part will convince me that this is ok.

> You yourself said that you are dismissive of positive first-hand accounts because you assume they are just politically biased.

I told you that I would credit such accounts if they came from someone who had significant disagreements with the dominant thinking on these subjects, and was able to be hired without hiding this.

It is little credit to the fairness of a process if the people who are aligned with the ruling school of thought find the process to be unburdensome.

To be clear I already admitted I was wrong about this after checking the other faculty signatures. The call to put pronouns in signatures wasn't mandatory. I certainly look very poorly at statements that go on and on about pronouns and rate them at the bottom, because as I said, we've already had this debate as a community, and a job application/interview is not the time nor the place for that debate to be rekindled.

> - You do not count this as a political litmus test, instead you accuse the applicant of being political by having an opinion that is different from what students are demanding.

Yes, and I don't see why that's a problem, because it wouldn't be tolerable in any other workplace to bring your personal political opinion into the interview. Imagine if I had an interview at BigCo and started complaining about capitalism, and how the CEO owner didn't work for his money, and that I feel he should reorganize the entire corporation so that workers controlled everything. Would you call me political for bringing those opinions to the interview, or would you call the owner political because he's forcing his capitalistic economic model on me?

> You acknowledge that the institution is extending asymmetric affordances, and picking winners and losers on a charged topic

It's not charged in our community. Just because the political Twittersphere goes crazy over some topic doesn't mean it's a big deal for everyone. Some communities can arrive at a different norm than others, and it's not "picking winners and losers" if that community starts rejecting outsiders who violate the community's norms. Sure it may be sad for the outsiders who wanted to participate, but it's not up to the community to accommodate the outsider's political sensibilities. I'm sorry you feel this is illiberal, but if it makes you feel any better, these standards were the result of intense community debate, and were voted on. At some point, things need to move on. We can't be in a perpetual debate about pronouns forever.

> Respectfully, the fact that you would tell me all of this openly, but then think that I need right-wing agitation to consider this an illiberal trend, just reinforces to me how much of an echo chamber academia must have become.

I have no idea what motivates you specifically, but it's not a coincidence that a furor of a thousand+ comments bubbled up here about DEI statements in academia at the same exact time the right wing media sphere also was very concerned about DEI statements in academia.

> I told you that I would credit such accounts if they came from someone who had significant disagreements with the dominant thinking on these subjects, and was able to be hired without hiding this.

That's definitely not me, but at the same time I doubt you've tried hard to seek these people out. Are you waiting for this person to drop in your lap? There are plenty of them out there, but they know not to bring their political opinions to a job interview. That always seemed like common sense to me, but it seems to now be a problem for some reason.

I was referring to prospective faculty, not current faculty. I saw your correction wrt current faculty, but this discussion is about hiring processes and how they act as political filters in the current climate.

> Yes, and I don't see why that's a problem, because it wouldn't be tolerable in any other workplace to bring your personal political opinion into the interview.

If you don't want to hear personal political opinion, don't require a personal statement on a contentious political issue as part of the application. It's as simple as that.

If you ask for a statement, but reject perspectives associated with the other side, then you have made it a political litmus test.

> Some communities can arrive at a different norm than others, and it's not "picking winners and losers" if that community starts rejecting outsiders who violate the community's norms.

If those norms are illiberal, then rejecting outsiders who violate those norms is also illiberal. Even if you debated and voted on them.

> it's not a coincidence that a furor of a thousand+ comments bubbled up here about DEI statements in academia at the same exact time the right wing media sphere also was very concerned about DEI statements in academia.

This is a site where people comment on current news stories. That said, diversity policy in business and academia is by no means a new or unusual topic of conversation here. In any case, it seems like some good evidence that this is actually a contentious issue that many people have genuinely strong feelings about.