The Arizona Board of Regents announced that it would be dropping a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) pledge across all job applications at publicly funded universities on Tuesday.
The announcement comes after a report by Goldwater Institute, a “free-market public policy research” organization, found that up to 80 percent of faculty positions at such institutions came attached with DEI statements, notably Arizona State University (ASU) as well as Northern Arizona University (NAU) and the University of Arizona. At the former, 81 percent of postings had such stipulations, while at NAU, the figure was 71 percent.
One example Goldwater pointed to was the search for a non-tenure track assistant teaching position in mechanical engineering “with a required diversity statement” at NAU. The same school created another application for a similar position that requested “a statement of teaching philosophy including evidence of teaching effectiveness or interest and commitment to diversity and inclusion (recommended two pages).”
At ASU, two postdoctoral research fellow openings — one in the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies and another in the Department of Physics — included similar requirements. “A statement addressing how your past and/or potential contributions to diversity and inclusion will advance ASU’s commitment to inclusive,” the fifth component of the applications demanded after the usual requirements of a cover letter and letters of reference.
“DEI offices have appropriately come under intense scrutiny recently, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard and the University of North Carolina. College administrators and state lawmakers should anticipate that the racial preferences of these offices violate the new decision,” Goldwater Institute senior fellow Jonathan Butcher told National Review on Wednesday afternoon. “In Arizona, school officials appear to be scuttling policies such as loyalty oaths for job applicants, while in places like Texas and Florida, lawmakers are defunding the departments — all of which bodes well for students from all races and ethnicities.”
Opposition to mandatory DEI statements on job applications has been growing in Arizona. Steven McGuire, a member of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson blasted the practice in an Arizona Republic op-ed in July, denouncing the policies as “coerced speech.”
“Of course you want teachers and employees who are going to be open to working with people of all different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences,” he said. “But what often happens with these statements — it becomes a kind of ideological litmus test,” the two wrote at the time. “They communicate to people there’s a right way to think if you want to work here.”
“Unfortunately, DEI’s stranglehold in public universities extends far beyond forcing faculty job applicants to pledge allegiance to progressivism — across the country, a bloated apparatus of DEI administrators seeks to enforce ideological conformity in every aspect of campus life,” the Goldwater Institute noted in an official statement on Tuesday.
“The left is trying to use diversity statements and DEI bureaucracies to suppress political dissent before it even appears on campus.”