[PlanetKR] Short Survey on Diversity and Inclusion in KR

Vladimir Lifschitz vl at cs.utexas.edu
Fri Oct 8 01:00:05 UTC 2021


Dear Judy,
Dear Markus,
Dear Sean,
Dear Gabriele,

Thank you for taking the time to comment on my message to Vanina.  I was
sorry to learn from Sean's email that his life in Texas brought him so
much pain.

I must point out, on the other hand, that much of what Judy and Sean
wrote about is not directly related to my question.  I wanted to clarify
what prompted us to create the administrative mechanism described in the
policy document--was it an incident at one of KR conferences?  Then
I agree that creating the positions of Diversity and Inclusion Officer
and DI Chairs is justified.

But there is another possibility: maybe we are simply doing what
everyone else is doing this year.  If this is what is happening then we
need to think about this initiative twice.  The tendency to suspect
bigotry in every organization by default, without evidence, is
widespread today, but it is irrational and unhealthy.  This is a bad idea
whose time has come, to use John McCarthy's expression.

This is why my question is important.

Best wishes,
Vladimir

-- 
Vladimir Lifschitz
Department of Computer Science    Office:  (512) 471-9564
University of Texas at Austin     Fax:     (512) 471-8885
2317 Speedway, Stop D9500         E-mail:  vl at cs.utexas.edu
Austin, TX 78712-1757, USA        WWW: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~vl





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