Any form of serious peer-review needs to have a rigorous screening process to choose those who are going to reviewing.
This guideline is obvious at face value but has clearly not been followed in SIGCSE given the situation being discussed.
If not already provided, a mandatory training for reviewers to keep elitism and bias in check in their review notes is necessary. Proof of the need for such a training comes from Reviewer 3’s note on Panelist/Presenter Considerations that managed to both disrespect the abilities of the panelists while simultaneously disrespecting their panel’s subject of K-16 education. With the growing number of professional environments and workplaces that already have DEI training, is there any reason SIGCSE and all other programs including peer review should not have the same for their reviewers?
Reviewers blinded by elitism and biases are quite literally impeding advancement in their chosen field by not engaging with the full content of a panel such as this. This fact stands regardless even if one were to ignore or downplay the immorality of bias and elitism, as is likely to happen in the CS social environment of “not going against the grain” and “quiet rage” emphasized by Dr. Washington.
The Reviewers here have clearly done little more than a cursory glance at the panel, with Reviewer 2 not being able to notice the clearly stated “benefit to the community” that the panel gives quite clearly in the abstract and panel goals. This highlights the need for reviewers to be selected for or further trained in actually engaging with the content they are reviewing, and aiming to understand it before they comment on it rather than just throwing out a few comments in order to move onto the next thing to review. When you talk to someone, do you want them to listen actively or just listen to respond? We need to apply this idea to peer review.
To truly reduce reviewing bias the reviewers would have to be just as diverse a group as those being reviewed, and not just a bunch of white dudes. This would improve the peer reviewing experience for all, not just for those who are currently disadvantaged by it, because a more diverse review staff means more comprehensive reviews possible due to the varying backgrounds of the reviewers. Is this not always the goal in any review process, such as a jury in court?
Going above the reviewers, the program chairs and all who had to read and engage with the peer reviewers’ notes are just as much to blame for the reviewers' final comments going through. At every point in the chain of command there needs to be the authority, the ability, and the training to at the very least alert a higher up when something as blatantly biased as this is written and passed through the review chain.
Peer review only works under the condition of the reviewers being as unbiased as possible and ceases to work the minute their biases or elitism sway their judgement.