That’s your own very personal definition. I’ve been accused of not assimilating when I spoke a language other than English in public with my mother. (I come from a multilingual family.) So no, most people wouldn’t define “assimilation” as “understanding” whatever it is you’re trying to say by that.
By @EyeVeee 's definition of “assimilation” as “understanding”, the accuser in this example is the one who is not “assimilating” to the fact that some people may speak languages other than English.
But that is presumably not the definition of “assimilation” that the accuser uses, which is more of a negative one that attempts to suppress others’ freedom to exhibit cultural aspects that do no harm to others.
Interesting that Warren Buffet focuses only on merit.
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In its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Berkshire [Hathaway] explicitly states that it does not consider diversity when hiring board members: “Berkshire does not have a policy regarding the consideration of diversity in identifying nominees for director. In identifying director nominees, the Governance Committee does not seek diversity, however defined. Instead, as previously discussed, the Governance Committee looks for individuals who have very high integrity, business-savvy, an owner-oriented attitude and a deep genuine interest in the company.”
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The problem is that business diversity and diversity in Uni admissions are not the same thing. Business diversity is designed to incorporate people with different experiences and different backgrounds who have different perspectives and approaches, come from different cultures, with the ultimate result to make better management decisions and to design and improve products and services.
Uni diversity, by contrast, has the outward goal of creating a racial diverse/sexual identity diverse cohort by relaxing admission standards for certain URMs and tightening them for ORMs. Sometimes SES is considered too. These more superficial diversity factors are a poor proxy for diversity of thought, which is the core of business diversity.
The actual goal is business/marketing based. Some prospective students have unstated preferences about the racial/ethnic composition of the college in terms of it affecting desirability to them (many do not want there to be “too few” of their own kind, although “too few” can vary). So to maximize marketability to prospective students, the university wants “enough” of each to avoid “too few” for any group becoming negative marketing to students of that group.
For gender, some prospective students want there to be roughly equal numbers of each gender, so that factors into college marketability.
Marketability to other persons or entities of interest, such as donors, political pressure groups (whether they protest, lobby, or sue), government entities, etc. can also play into what a college wants to do here.
It may not be possible to satisfy all persons or entities of interest regarding this topic.
@tpike12 - That quote is only from at the board of directors level. I wonder if that extends to regular employees.
@tpike12 The problem is that “very high integrity, business-savvy, an owner-oriented attitude and a deep genuine interest in the company” can mean exactly what anybody wants it to mean.
I do not see “merit” there, I see opinion. How do you objectively measure whether one person has more “integrity” than another? Of course, if you think that people do not assign integrity based on race, ethnicity, religion, class, or geography, you are living in a bubble. Then there is “business savvy” which can mean anything that an HR person wants it to. There are dozens of ways to measure this, each just as legitimate as the next, and you can choose whichever one you want to make sure that a applicant will succeed or fail. Then there is “owner oriented”. That is extremely difficult to ascertain, unless they shoot their mouth off about how they are in the job just for themselves. Otherwise you need to be a mind reader. As for “deep genuine interest in the company”, that is something else that requires the ability to read minds. You can try determining it by interview, but everything an applicant says can be interpreted multiple ways, and from that, you can reach any conclusion that you want. Basically, for every one of those measures of “merit” can be manipulated to make any applicant look good or bad, unless an applicant is so obviously the opposite of any of those.
This is all the worst parts of “holistic admissions”.
Board of Director candidates for high-profile companies are not found through HR. They are generally already known throughout the industry, and initially vetted for the position through endorsements from mutual contacts.
Diversity for the Berkshire board means not having a Harvard MBA.
Berkshire is a bad example of corporate structure and governance. They have a few dozen employees at the corporate center, with the rest of their 400,000 people spread out in its businesses. One of the largest is GEICO, which has a diversity page on its website. https://www.geico.com/careers/about-geico/corporate-culture/diversity-at-geico/
In many ways, Warren Buffett is the moral compass of American Business. His honesty and transparency might not always be appreciated, but it always delivers wisdom.
Not sure.
Sure companies have different criteria for their hiring decisions and some is subjective. What Buffet is saying is that genitalia, skin color, sexual orientation or any other form of diversity are NOT criteria they use to determine who is the best fit to be on the Board.
Getting a solid college prep education in high school is important and can make a huge difference in college. My son went to a state school after going to a very rigorous private prep school. He could have finished college in 2 1/2 years easily with the AP credits he had amassed and the academic were easy for him due to his background. It allowed him to go directly into a specialty field in college without academic concerns. He had all the basic academic courses out of the way.
Stuy is free. And it gives the student a top notch education. A lot of the NYC public high schools have too many distractions to get that type of education. The base one gets at Stuy or any such school is valuable regardless of where that student goes to college afterwards, or goes at all
Harvard is in trouble because it put diversity before meritocracy, Buffett does not.
I find it interesting that the greatest investor of my lifetime doesn’t buy into the common mantra that “diversity is our strength”. Does that make him a secret racist or sexist? Not necessarily.
Has he successfully selected Board Members to help guide his company? Obviously. And if you are an investor in his company all you care about is making sure the company remains profitable.
@sciencenerd “what about the advantages non-minorities usually have (i.e., legacy, connections, etc?)”
I think that the percentage of “non-minorities” (you mean white people? white men only?) that actually (you said “usually”) have legacy status at Elite universities is still a very small percent of “non-minorities “. Ditto for “connections”. The poverty RATE is higher for minorities, but the number of poor white people is greater than that of poor black people, for example.I have 25 first cousins who never went to college. Most have grand or even great-grandchildren by now, and I don’t know that many of them went either. My Dad was the ONLY one in his family that saw (not SENT, just passively observed) more than half of his underfed white children go to college. Some didn’t finish until their thirties. The last is a 43 yr old who has been taking one or two classes at a time for years while working 6 days a week.
So I think it is even a privilege to be in a position to feel sorry for other people based on the supposed lack of opportunity due solely to skin tone. Sometimes I think all the people who bring every difference in outcomes back to race really need to get out more. Legacies are NOT all non-minority, ditto privileged or connected. The world is slowly widening the colors of privilege, but it doesn’t mean much to people like my cousins, or their kids. They have no money, their connections are blue collar union, they don’t have a family structure that supports educational striving. I don’t know if they are smart - they don’t seem to think so.
Board members are hired for a specific mission - to create the strategy to grow their firms and provide governance for management. With a clear mandate, it’s a lot easier to use specific criteria to hire people. They often pick a mix of people- very successful people in large firms- from business, government, education etc. so they have more feelers and lookouts for long-term threats to and opportunities for the firm. None of that involves ‘diversity’.
It all comes down the specifics. Assuming that I had the luxury of choice, and a wide enough skilled applicant pool , would I use racial/ethnic diversity hiring criteria in a medical practice? Yes, because it would likely improve patient care for a variety of reasons. In a surgical practice? No because it would make little difference and the skill of my practitioners is far more important.
The value judgments of the two may not be all that different, but Harvard is trapped by having to share an enormous dataset that a BOD doesn’t have.
Buffett saying that he hires the best may well include diversity, we don’t know. What he freely states it’s not THE driver. Harvard subtly argues something very similar. The difference is a measurement component that suggests “unfairness”. Harvard is being sued because statistically, groups can argue they are not admitting the “best” (by the numbers). Buffett isn’t hiring the smartest people on the planet, he’s hiring what he feels is the best person to deliver value. Harvard will argue (I think) that picking someone with background A and a 1450 SAT builds a stronger community than picking another person with background B and 1580. The second person says “my measurables are better, thus I’m being discriminated against”.
I think you can argue they are both doing what they feel is best for the organization. Best may include meeting regulated, financial, and cultural requirements. When you tell 95 people out of 100 you don’t want them in your club, you’re going to make a lot of people unhappy.
That’s a pretty big jump. The company’s policy is only on how they elect Board members not other regular level employees. I’m willing to bet they do try to diversify for non-board members.
Heck isn’t one of his business philosophies “diversification of investments”?
@sciencenerd - You’re probably right, I imagine the board gives their companies a lot of freedom to operate as they see fit, but it’s pretty clear what he believes for the area he manages.
Mayor DiBlasio’s plan to change the testing process for NY elite public high schools has failed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/nyregion/specialized-schools-nyc-deblasio.html
In our County we have Magnet Public High Schools that one can apply for.
There is a test that students take.
They allocate slots to these HS by
- You have to get a minimum score on the test
- Two Students from each sending district get a slot
- The rest of the slots go to the highest scoring students regardless of district
So kids from disadvantaged towns get a shot, but kids from more advantaged districts also get a chance even if they are not 1 & 2. I think it is a pretty fair way to go.