The requirement that applicants for faculty positions submit a “diversity statement” along with other materials has swept across American higher education. How big a problem is this?
It’s huge. That’s the only conclusion you can draw from this Minding the Campus article by John Sailer.
One might say, “Well, so what if the gender studies department wants to consider applicants who are devoted to the DEI ideology? Serious students will just steer clear of it anyway.” Sorry, but it isn’t just the academic cotton candy that has been overrun. It’s also in fields such as biology.
Sailer focuses on the use of diversity statements in Emory University’s biology department. He writes, “Emory’s biology department does not merely value diversity statements heavily. It also evaluates them in a way that will almost necessarily punish candidates for their opinions on social and political issues. The department perfectly illustrates the crux of the argument against diversity statements: that they constitute a sort of ideological litmus test, a violation of academic freedom.”
Why should people care about violations of academic freedom? Sailer explains: “But a more basic fact is more concerning, namely that researchers in critical areas of science are being selected based on criteria so deeply unrelated to science. The implications for health science alone are worth considering. Now, some researchers who work on drug development and cancer treatments could be passed over because they are not sufficiently enthusiastic about diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
In a market, the fact that some competitors choose to discriminate against good people on irrelevant grounds creates profit opportunities for those who just want the best workers. Major League Baseball was an illustrative case. But higher education is not a competitive market, so will there be any incentive for schools to hire great candidates passed over by schools like Emory? If not, society loses out when potentially great teachers and researchers are compelled to look for work in fields where their rejection of “wokeness” is not a liability.