Loyalty Oaths Return with Faculty “Diversity Statements”

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | March 29, 2017 | George Leef

[reaganaut1]

One of the worst features of America in the 1940s and 50s was the persistent demand for national loyalty oaths. In those days, people were expected to declare their support for the U.S. and if they didn’t, they could be blackballed, expelled, or otherwise punished.

The ideological fervor for conformity abated for decades, but has recently returned on our college campuses in the form of mandatory “diversity statements” by faculty members and especially prospective faculty members. The difference is that instead of having to pledge adherence to America in its battle with communism, the new pledge is adherence to the “diversity” agenda in its battle against a color-blind, merit-driven academia.

This recent paper by the Oregon Association of Scholars illuminates the problem of mandatory diversity statements. While the paper focuses chiefly on schools in the Oregon higher education system, it observes that more than twenty major universities and systems across the nation now require diversity statements for hiring or promotion, including the University of California, Carnegie-Mellon University, and Virginia Tech.

Traditionally, faculty candidates have been evaluated on the basis of four documents: a cover letter, their curriculum vitae, research statement, and teaching statement. Now, a fifth document is being added—a statement in which the individual expresses his or her commitment to “diversity.” That is, how important it is to the individual, how he or she acts to further diversity, and so on.

[Da Coyote]

It is long past time for a separation of STEM faculties from the rest in ALL of our universities.

I am sick and tired of the terms “academic” and “professor” being applied to the ill educated and obviously low achievement idiots currently infesting the marshmallow major departments in the vast majority of our universities.

[Steve_Seattle]

I’d like to see the full text of these “diversity statements” to know whether prospective teachers or students are required to express SUPPORT for LGBTQ issues, as opposed to merely agreeing not to discriminate against various classes of people. If so, it amounts to an unconstitutional religious test.

[tbw2]

Diversity statements are closer to the requirement for any middle class or higher position in the Soviet Union to be politically correct, take constant political education/indoctrination classes and be supervised by political officers/checkists whose job was to make sure everyone was in absolute agreement with approved truths.
It is a manifestation of the communitarian principles in social justice that you aren’t individuals but merely part of a group, group struggles in place of class struggles.

[GOPJ]

A pledge to support ‘freedom of expression’ is honorable - a pledge to demand adherence to ‘diversity ideas - academic fashion du jour’ - is nuts.