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.
Why the backlash against diversity statements now, especially from the liberal bastions of elite academia? 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.
Why the backlash against diversity statements now, especially from the liberal bastions of elite academia? An observer could fairly ask, “What took so long?” Ultimately, the diversity-statement requirement clashed too jarringly with values that academics still profess to defend, even if their actual commitment is questionable: academic freedom and free expression. As Randall Kennedy, a Harvard law professor and self-described “scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice,” put it, “DEI statements … essentially constitute pledges of allegiance that enlist academics into the DEI movement by dint of soft-spoken but real coercion: If you want the job or promotion, play ball—or else.” Kennedy argued that the diversity-statement requirement “implicitly discourages candidates who harbor ideologically conservative dispositions” and “[weeds out] candidates who manifest opposition to or show insufficient enthusiasm for the DEI regime.”
If a liberal Harvard law professor recognizes the danger these statements pose to academic freedom and free expression, surely many other non-conservatives see the problem. A 2022 survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) found that 56 percent of “moderate” (read: leftist) faculty agreed that the diversity statement was an “ideological litmus test,” and a sizable minority of “liberal” (read: left of Mao) faculty (26 percent) also endorsed this judgment.
Diversity statements thus made a relatively uncontroversial target to demonstrate liberal concern for the excesses of DEI without opposing DEI altogether. The statements smacked of loyalty oaths, which recalled McCarthy-era requirements that academics denounce communism. Liberals could safely oppose diversity statements while maintaining the importance of the larger DEI project. As the Washington Post editorial board wrote, “DEI programs can have an important place. They should not be abolished or undermined—as red states such as Florida and Texas have done.” Diversity statements, however, “advance their declared objectives at too high a cost.”
Diversity-statement bans may leave the DEI regime largely intact. Thus, the canceling of diversity statements, while welcome news for higher-ed reformers, provides an opportunity for the higher-ed establishment to declare “mission accomplished” while leaving the DEI regime largely intact.
Furthermore, despite on-the-record avowals from schools that they have abandoned diversity statements, disturbing reports indicate that some of these same institutions are burying diversity-statement requirements within the application process, away from online application systems that the public can scrutinize. The Goldwater Institute, where I work, published a report in 2023 that revealed that over 80 percent of faculty openings at Arizona State University (ASU) required diversity statements. In response to this report, the Arizona Board of Regents declared that henceforth all faculty openings in the Arizona public-university system would not include diversity statements. But David Glasser, a reporter for the College Fix, found that a list of second-round interview questions for faculty candidates at ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences included the following query: “ASU is committed to advancing diversity and equity and providing opportunities to students in traditionally disadvantaged groups. What experience do you have with doing this in your current position? How do you hope to translate that experience for our student demographic in particular?”
Almost certainly, other institutions are adopting the same strategy: insist publicly that diversity statements have no place in hiring while continuing to engage in ideological DEI screening by other means. Merely eliminating a formal diversity-statement requirement will do very little to free campuses from DEI’s grip. Higher-ed reformers must seek to roll back the DEI regime on all fronts.
I would argue for three key measures. First, those with oversight responsibility for public universities should use subpoenas and open-records requests to ensure that hiring committees are not hiding DEI statements and questions anywhere in the process. As shown by ASU’s scofflaw behavior, this scrutiny is necessary even for institutions that have disavowed diversity statements. For private institutions, boards of trustees and alumni groups must demand fidelity to a stated policy that prohibits diversity statements. This requires informed trustees and alumni who are willing to question administrators rather than simply rubber-stamping their policies.
Second, state legislatures that have not already done so should adopt the Goldwater Institute and Manhattan Institute’s policy that abolishes DEI bureaucracies. Crucially, this reform contains language that would expressly prohibit diversity statements and the hidden diversity question that ASU asked of candidates. The reform states that no public institution shall “grant preferential consideration” to a job applicant “for opinions expressed or action taken pertaining to another individual or a group of individuals in which the institution’s consideration is based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation of those other individuals.” In other words, a hiring committee cannot give a candidate a leg up because the candidate commits to serving a particular identity group. Of course, institutions could ignore this prohibition, but at least the law would provide a means to act against the discrimination that diversity statements encourage.
Reformers should use open-records requests to ensure that hiring committees are not hiding DEI questions anywhere in the process. Third and finally, state legislatures and boards of state universities should adopt Goldwater’s Freedom from Indoctrination Act, which addresses the prevalence of DEI mandates in graduation requirements. The ideological litmus test in diversity statements has contributed to an extremely lopsided faculty, with 60 percent of American faculty identifying as liberal or far-left and only 12 percent identifying as conservative or far-right. This imbalance leads to general-education programs and core curricula that require activist DEI courses but lack basic education in American history and civics. A recent report by Speech First found that 67 percent of major universities require DEI courses. The Freedom from Indoctrination Act prohibits public institutions from imposing these DEI graduation requirements on students. And, importantly, this policy also requires institutions to include instruction in American civics as part of their general-education programs. A course that fulfills this civics requirement must include “an understanding and appreciation for the basic principles of American constitutional democracy and how they are applied under a republican form of government” and “significant use of the nation’s essential founding documents,” such as the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers.
This curricular reform addresses two issues with diversity statements and their consequences. First, the policy prevents the faculty and administration, many of whom remain loyal to DEI, from forcing students to sit through academically unserious DEI courses just to graduate. Second, the civics requirement will necessitate hiring faculty to teach the course. Although by no means guaranteed, the requirement that students read the important founding documents will likely attract teachers less inclined to the activist tenets of DEI than those in other academic fields. This curricular requirement could work in tandem with the establishment of centers of excellence that promote understanding of Western Civilization and American principles, such as the University of North Carolina’s new School of Civic Life and Leadership. Eventually, perhaps, these reforms could work to reduce the severe ideological imbalance we currently see on campus.
Moves against required diversity statements are welcome developments, but simply removing these statements from the formal hiring process will do little to roll back DEI and restore institutions of higher ed to their foundational missions. Higher-ed reformers must keep up the pressure to confront DEI in all forms, including within the hiring process and the curriculum.
Originally published by The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Republished with permission.
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