The Boston Globe reported on Harvard’s decision to ban mandatory diversity statements. In recent years, many universities required applicants to the faculty to write a statement demonstrating their fealty to diversity, equity and inclusion. One of Harvard’s most prominent African-American professors—Randall Kennedy of the Harvard Law School—wrote an opinion piece in the campus newspaper opposing the requirement as a breach of academic freedom. Other universities, including MIT and the University of North Carolina, have already dropped the diversity pledge, likening it to a loyalty oath.
Less than five years ago, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences followed a trend that was then sweeping across American higher education. It instituted a requirement that professors who wished to work at Harvard submit an essay explaining how they would advance “diversity, inclusion, and belonging” in their work.
On Monday, the university’s largest division announced it had reversed course, eliminating the requirement after receiving “feedback from numerous faculty members” who were concerned about the mandatory statements.
A seemingly routine part of academic hiring, diversity statements have become the focus of intense scrutiny as universities grapple with the question of whether well-intentioned efforts to diversify the elite ranks of American institutions have sometimes collided with other core values of academia.
“By requiring academics to profess — and flaunt — faith in DEI, the proliferation of diversity statements poses a profound challenge to academic freedom,” Randall Kennedy, a scholar of race and civil rights at Harvard Law School, wrote in an April op-ed in the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper.
That essay was widely read in academic circles. It was also cited approvingly in a recent Washington Post editorial that criticized mandatory diversity statements and praised the recent decision by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to ban their use…
In an announcement Monday, dean of faculty affairs Nina Zipser, said that going forward candidates for tenure-track positions would be required to provide a more broadly focused “service statement,” instead of a statement focused specifically on “diversity, inclusion, and belonging.” A service statement could include a candidate’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, but is not required to focus on those topics….
Ryan Enos, a Harvard political scientist and director of the Center for American Political Studies, said he generally pays little attention to diversity statements when vetting candidates. “You got the impression that they reflected more about candidates knowing the right things to say rather than an actual commitment to improving the department on diversity and other matters,” he said.
Of course, critics of the decision complained that universities were backing down from their commitment to diversity due to political harassment by rightwing politicians who object to diversity. But where values are deeply embedded, they are unlikely to disappear.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
would some person brighter than myself please tell me what is wrong with diversity (fostering a sense of universal worth),equity (giving everyone a fair shake), and inclusion ( making everyone feel like they have something to offer to the collective culture).
The example given in the Harvard Op Ed is about providing a DEI statement that was required in the Harvard School of Education. As a retired professor of education, I’ll try to speak to this matter as succinctly as I can, since I’m pressed for time right now. That means I’ll have to take the opposite stance for now though and leave the rest for another time, because I think DEI statements in colleges of education make a HUGE amount of sense. That’s because schools of education train people to become teachers of ALL students, not just those who are advantaged in our society.
Prospective teachers need to be aware of the gross inequities that have been faced by historically marginalized groups, including people of color and those with disabilities. They must also be prepared to make accommodations for individual differences, both within and across groups, as well as demonstrate a commitment to not discriminating against students for being different.
I think it’s important not just for people being trained to teach kids from birth through high school though. I think it should apply to all professors as well, since they are teachers, too, but unlike professors of education, most other professors have had absolutely no formal training in learning and teaching. In my experience, typically, they just learn about these things in Professional Development activities (PDs) for faculty that are provided by colleges –and driven by a university commitment to DEI.
ECE: you present good arguments for DEI as a policy.
Thank you, Roy!
Your predicate disqualifies me, but I’ll respond anyway.
Diversity statements aren’t just a pro forma affirmation that a candidate agrees it is important to “give everyone a fair shake.” That sort of response in a diversity statement will get you eliminated from consideration.
For an example, here’s a sample rubric that that Cal Berkeley provides faculty search committees to help them grade diversity statements (which are referred to there as statements of a candidate’s contributions to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging). It gives examples of what kind of statements deserve low grades, medium grades, and high grades.
https://ofew.berkeley.edu/academic-recruitment/contributions-deib/sample-rubric-assessing-candidate-contributions-diversity
Someone who uses “vague statements such as ‘the field of History definitely needs more women’ without offering further examples or specifics” should get a low grade.
Someone who says that affinity groups might not be good “because it keeps them separate from everyone else” gets a low grade, because the correct opinion is that affinity groups are good.
Diversity statements also require candidates to discuss their own track record of advancing DEI. According to the Berkeley rubric, a candidate who “only mentions activities that are already the expectation of faculty as evidence of commitment and involvement (for example, ‘I always invite and welcome students from all backgrounds to participate in my research lab, and in fact have mentored several women’)” should get a low grade. Whereas a candidate will get a high grade if they have “Organized or spoken at workshops or other events (depending on career stage) aimed at increasing others’ understanding of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as one aspect of their track record.”
Diversity statements also ask candidates to describe how they plan to further DEI if they are hired. Someone who says they will “ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same'” will get a low grade.
These things are not simply about ensuring candidates are going to give all students a fair shake or treat everyone the same or make sure all students feel included. They’re about making sure new hires are on board with a very specific ideology.
“These things are not simply about ensuring candidates are going to give all students a fair shake or <b>treat everyone the same…</b>”
The point is to NOT treat students as if they are all exactly the same, because people have differing histories, disadvantages, personal strengths and needs for supports, etc. It’s about equity and justice, not equality. In my classes, I regularly used this graphic to demonstrate the matter:
Yes, I know, that’s the “correct answer” according to the ideology. A faculty candidate who believes that all students should be treated the same without respect to their race, gender, or ethnicity will bomb the diversity statement portion of the application.
If clicking on the graphic I provided does nothing to enlarge it, as happened to me, you can find it at the Library of Virginia located here: https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/https___i.pinimg.com_originals_99_d2_1d_99d21da9e6a68f9e82222c727fe1c5d3.jpg
You see just “ideology”, while I see harsh realities that people have had to contend with that did not magically disappear over time, including developmental differences which could be ameliorated by providing a range of supports, as with the smallest child in the picture.
Prior to DEI, people who had disabilities were commonly denied entrance to public schools across America –through the late 90s in my city– despite legislation to ensure them a free and appropriate public education. It took multiple lawsuits and a court monitor to finally get that enforced here.
It may be that reasonable people can disagree about whether this is ideology and what the “harsh realities” require. But that is the point. Requiring candidates to affirm their allegiance to principles that are properly the subject of debate and discussion is akin to a political loyalty oath.
Jon Stewart had a segment this week about how the media presents this as people living in different realities, but that there aren’t different realities, there is only one reality (he invoked the multi-verse as an exception, which got a big laugh from the audience). And it is the media’s job to look at facts and evidence and present that reality, not to simply present this as two different “realities”.
I don’t know if flerp! believes the “principles” to be debated and discussed are whether some people, because of their race, gender or ethnicity, have disadvantages or not. I hope that what his comment meant was that there should be a debate and discussion about the pros and cons and various ways to address this reality that even Randall Kennedy acknowledges. Kennedy doesn’t believe DEI statements are a good way to address these disadvantages, but he isn’t denying the reality.
But the right wing Republicans seem to believe that it is debatable that people are disadvantaged because of their race, gender or ethnicity. And they want to debate THAT. Not ways to address to reality.
There is a value to a discussion about the good and bad ways to address reality, and maybe universities requiring DEI statements from candidates isn’t a good way. But the discussion could be about other alternative ways that are better.
Let’s please not shut down the discussion of how to address these disadvantages by making reality “debatable” in our apparently multi-verse world.
BTW, people without empathy or a moral compass, who are driven primarily by the almighty dollar and/or a desire for power, like tRump and a lot of his MAGATS, might look at the graphic I provided and, instead of relating to the needs of the children, claim that supports would be extraneous and barriers should not be removed because the kids ought to be paying money to watch the game.
This came up in my classes. However, it’s irrelevant, because that could easily be local teams at a neighborhood soccer field, where no one is charged to watch the games (as we’ve had in several neighborhoods where I’ve lived).
Roy, you asked an excellent question. I have relatives who are in academia and they don’t see DEI requirements as a huge problem.
Is there a right wing Republican politician in this country – including Donald Trump – who would not claim that they “ignore the varying backgrounds of their students [or employees or friends] and ‘treat everyone the same’”?
That’s the kind of pablum the right wing embraces while more thoughtful folks understand that it usually means that the manufactured “merits” that are easy for privileged white people (especially men in some fields) to demonstrate and are harder for everyone else to demonstrate are valued very highly. And I don’t mean GPA and test scores. Connections, recommendations, mentors are what matters.
Ask any female scientist how easy it was to be mentored by professors in the 1950s or 1960s or even decades later. Ask people who aren’t white. The subtle discouragement was real.
If you read Randall Kennedy closely, he recognizes that racism is real.
“It is important to remember that the DEI ethos did not emerge from nowhere — it emerged from a laudable determination to free academia of attitudes and practices that impeded potential contributors for prejudicial reasons, thereby depriving institutions of higher learning of useful talents.”
Kennedy still seems to support making sure that those students who face those barriers are actively helped. He doesn’t seem to trust requiring DEI statements to help hire professors who will help change the university culture, so I am not sure how he thinks changes in these attitudes or practices is going to happen.
Requiring DEI statements is such a fake problem, despite the fact that it has become fashionable for some academics to treat it as if it was a very huge and serious problem – they get so much attention if they do.
Fine, let’s get rid of DEI statements. Whew, what relief now those mayhem-causing DEI requirements that have been the ruination of universities are gone. DEI requirements have turned universities into a place that hires the most unqualified, barely literate, incompetent professors who have no business mentoring any student, instead of those wonderful folks who were hired when universities recognized what “merit” really was. Having the right connections and mentors. And passable academic credentials which did not have to be higher than every single other applicant, as long as they were “good enough” so that their connections, mentors and recommendations made them far more deserving.
Right wing Republicans can embrace that!
Thinking of diversity, equity, and inclusion as concepts composing a system, this question arises: What is the fundamental property of the DEI system that no concept has?
On the other hand, if diversity, equity, and inclusion compose nothing more than a collection of concepts, then what is the point of DEI? Could any one concept be necessary and sufficient? If so, which one? Why?
I have no answers, just questions.
you are my kind of person.
thanks for all the discussion. When and if I get a chance, I will read more closely what everyone said.
Great news and hopefully more institutions follow Harvard and MIT.
I really hope they don’t, especially in schools of education.
I taught children in regular ed, compensatory ed (Head Start & State PreK, both for low income kids –often children of color & speakers of languages other than English), as well as Special Ed for the first 25 years of my career. Then I reurned to college for more degrees and, at the urging of my professors, I taught college for the next 25 years. I cannot tell you how many students I had there who strongly resisted DEI, because, they typically said, they were not planning to teach kids with disabilities. kids from low-income families, children of color. etc (they were usually the white college students who came from advantaged backgrounds). Well today, those kids are virtually everywhere and they are in need of teachers who are open to serving them and prepared to recognize, assess and accommodate their needs.
BTW, I’m white and had an advantaged background myself (and I know I was lucky). I have nothing against those who come from similar circumstances. Many folks I know who are also from white well-to-do families honestly empathize with less privileged people, and some like me aim to remedy the human condition, so I know personally that people with advantages don’t have to turn out to be racists, xenophobes, or other kinds of people haters.
I see what we do as taking action because we genuinely care about humanity, not as ideology or politics.
I assumed as much. Commenters here are almost invariably white and college educated.
Requiring statements of their fealty to diversity, equity and inclusion poses a profound challenge to a reality based on sort and separate, dominance and submission, and ruled and rulers. Mouthing endless streams of pseudo platitudes doesn’t change a power structure that demands inequality in order to exist. Institutions of the state rank and order system don’t produce a diversity of rule. You cannot mission statement diversity, equity, and inclusion into a system. It’s there or it isn’t. DUH…
Corollary to Murphy’s Law:
Put into practice, a basically good idea will be exaggerated to the point where it creates an issue as bad as than the one it was intended to solve.
so you are in favor of being inclusive, but not asking prospective faculty to declare that their intentions are to be inclusive.?
I’m in favor of being “inclusive” — according to my understanding of the concept — but beyond basic principles, inclusivity is a highly subjective property, & when made into a requirement that must be proven measurably, is subject to the human perceptions of whomever is charged with applying the rating. Is my understanding of “inclusivity” consistent with yours?
How is it decided who’s qualified to rate another’s definition of, or commitment to, inclusivity? According to what standard? Are the arbiters applying the standard strictly enough? Enough for whom? Which group’s — or individual’s — standard is most equitable? Are they second-guessing themselves, with the best intentions, into applying it too strictly?
One of the greatest challenges in social sciences is the attempt to quantify perceptions that by their nature can only be approximated indirectly by observing & interpreting behavior or responses to subjective questions. As much as we’d like it to be otherwise, some elements of human interaction aren’t conducive to precise, mandated absolute measurement. Bureaucracies don’t like this, but we just have to do the best we can & hope we arrive at an acceptable consensus.
From the last paragraph: “Of course, critics of the decision complained that universities were backing down from their commitment to diversity due to political harassment by rightwing politicians who object to diversity. But where values are deeply embedded, they are unlikely to disappear.”
Of course, what Diane Ravitch means here is that she supports coerced statements of support for the dogma of DEI, i.e. a loyalty oath to a current left-wing fad. Most readers of this blog are fine with loyalty oaths, provided those oaths proclaim loyalty to DEI. In practice, DEI means enforced quotas for hiring and admissions based on immutable characteristics rather than academic merit. So, for example, the UCLA Medical School admits students who struggle to succeed in basic medical school coursework. Mediocrity in K-12 education is now the norm across the nation, and many people in that field want the same standards applied in all other occupations. Fine, you can go to the DEI doctors; I’ll go to those who are actually well-qualified, whatever their skin pigmentations and their reproductive anatomy.
Lots of personal opinions and assumptions were posited here, such as the claim that “Mediocrity in K-12 education is now the norm across the nation.”
DEI does not mean that teachers must give passing grads to students who do not learn the content in their courses. It means teachers should make greater efforts to help students learn, especially if they’re already at a disadvantage and/or are struggling. Many schools, including colleges, have added programs to help with that. For example, at a college where I taught, they established a Student Success Center for any student wanting guidance and/or supports. Sometimes attendance at such programs is required by schools.
Since DEI, a lot of things are in place not only to maximize student learning, but also to gauge it, including required assessments, because we do NOT want incompetent students graduating with phony degrees claiming they are proficient when they are not. That’s why programs may require comprehensive exams, either written, oral or both, before graduation. (I have 4 degrees and I had to pass both.)
Betsy Clark,
I don’t support mandatory statements of support for DEI. Such statements, like loyalty oaths, may be insincere and mouthed just to give the right answer. I personally believe that institutions should aim to be D, E, and I. But I do not believe in hiring people solely because of their race, religion, ethnicity, etc.
Since you assumed that I support mandated statements, which I do not, I question your comprehension skills.
Diane, I’m not sure I share the same views as you on this. That’s because at one of the public colleges where I taught for 6 years while I was working on my doctorate, a position as chair of my department opened up, since our current chair was leaving, and she recommended me for the position. So I applied and interviewed for it, but they hired an outside person instead, who had never taught college before, whose highest educational level was a master’s degree & who didn’t have the kind of teaching experience in education that our program trained students for (which I had).
My current chair was really furious and told me that the woman was hired just because she was a minority (Hispanic). I struggled with it because we didn’t have many Hispanic students, but I believed in Affirmative Action, so I tried to be understanding and I said it was okay. I soon realized though that when it happens to you personally, it’s a real challenge to not feel discounted and disappointed, and I could relate to minorities who had experienced discrimination. But that also made me wonder how fair Affirmative Action really was for all involved, so I’ve been on the fence with that ever since.
ECE,
I understand how disappointed you must have felt.
I believe that D&E&I are important because for so many years, well-qualified people of color were passed over because of bias.
But when a candidate is chosen for hiring or promotion, the candidate with clearly superior qualifications should get hired or promoted, without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, gender or sexual orientation.
Thanks for your understanding and the clarifications, Diane. I think I can agree with that now, too.
I figured I was probably going to be asked to train the new chair at that college, which did not sit well with me, so I resigned. Fortunately, I could afford to do that because I had also been teaching courses for years at the private university where I was getting my doctorate. Then, shortly afterwards, I got a full time job at the private college where I earned my first degree, so the timing was good and it all worked out OK for me.
I do think schools should drop these mandatory diversity statements. Young scholars, especially young scholars with children, have very little spare time, and doing well on rubrics like the one Flerp posted, requires them to spend it on diversity issues. I think it might be better for a climate scientist to devote her spare time to promoting legislation to fight climate change. A biologist might more usefully devote his spare time to promoting habitat preservation. With mandatory diversity statements, the climate scientist and biologist would damage their careers if they choose to spend their spare time on those causes.
This is a bit off topic, but I ran across this while reading about the various protests on campus. It is the Portland Teacher’s Union guide to teaching and organizing for Palestine. I thought folks here might be interested.https://assets.nationbuilder.com/pdxteachers/pages/2051/attachments/original/1716589490/Know-Your-Rights_PPS-Workers-Resource_FINAL.pdf?1716589490
lol, on the first page of the PDF:
“Support of BLM is not a political statement”
Go to the BLM web site and among the first things you see:
“10 years later, our vision hasn’t changed. Defund the police.”
and
“Black Lives Matter Endorses and Helps Create the Ceasefire Now Legislation”
TE,
That’s an awful statement. One-sided. Almost the definition of indoctrination.
Looks like they killed the link.
I glanced at this a bit and made a mental note to come back and look closer but as I said, they’ve taken down the link. So I’m forced to look at it on Chris Rufo’s Twitter account.
https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1798459712327106857?s=46&t=vV_4bJ7GuABaalzetJofQA
Diane is spot-on. Total indoctrination. I would think a school that used materials like this was a religious school, or a cult. I hope it wasn’t used much.
This is an ECE nightmare to me! It’s very scary propaganda aimed at children, and there’s nothing about it that is developmentally appropriate for kids in PreK and K.
Sorry they took that link down. Here are the accompanying teaching resources that the Portland teacher’s union posted: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRtBsmgPFIHStJSi3l8K7NXlQ3vJE1fxTFBHOblNKi8JFXmM8ifBXwC90KsMr4ffDYajTTXdWQZUtQN/pub
I hope this will stay up long enough for people to look.
I think a commitment to including all students in learning is unquestionably necessary. Whether the rubric describing a good response leads in that direction is a matter I will have to consider. I generally hate rubrics made by admin people, but I suppose I can be persuaded
From the mid 90s through 2020, I taught at several colleges and I was never asked to sign anything whatsoever regarding the implementation of DEI. I was in faculty PDs where it was often discussed, but no one ever required a loyalty pledge. I supported it because I believe in it.