Diversity-Statement Bans Don’t Go Far Enough. Reformers should keep up the pressure to ensure anti-DEI compliance on campus.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | July 24, 2024 | Timothy K. Minella

[karpov]

Near the end of this academic year, two elite universities announced the elimination of one of the most prominent symbols of the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) apparatus on campus: the dreaded “diversity statement” for academic positions.

If you were an academic on the job market during the past decade, you couldn’t escape this ubiquitous requirement. It seemed nearly every job opening, from assistant professor of history to dean of an engineering college, asked applicants to write a statement discussing their experience with DEI and their commitment to advancing it. In some cases, hiring committees reviewed the diversity statement first, before even considering a candidate’s scholarship and teaching. At UC Berkeley, up to 75 percent of applicants were eliminated from consideration based on their diversity statements alone.

The first half of 2024 saw a cascade of diversity-statement cancelations. The trend started with state legislatures that acted to ban the requirement in state universities. Legislators in Idaho, Utah, Alabama, Kansas, and Indiana all passed measures to end the practice in hiring and admissions. These states followed the lead of Florida, Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina, which had adopted similar policies.

Then, in May, MIT became the first elite private university to end the practice in question. Less than a month later, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences also announced that applications for tenure-track positions would no longer require diversity statements.

[Ed Condon]

Let’s let the “Peter Principle” do its job.

[Gen.Blather]

There’s a real problem with DEI in government contracts. It opens up the idea of thought crimes. No kidding. I was accused of “incorrect political thoughts” at General Dynamics and threatened with dismissal.

[Boomer]

Make it a criminal offense so that the person doing the job and their immediate supervisor are arrested for a felony crime with up to 5 years in prison.