More than one out of every five recently posted job advertisements for faculty positions asked for some sort of statement related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, according to a new report by the Heterodox Academy. It also found that many universities have responded to the backlash against DEI by substituting different phrases to describe their requests for statements of ideological commitment.
The Heterodox Academy surveyed more than 10,000 faculty position advertisements from the 2024-2025 higher eduction hiring cycle and found that 22.3 percent — a total of 2,269 — requested some form of a DEI statement.
“Although discussions about DEI statements often focus on standalone documents explicitly labeled as ‘diversity statements,’ our analysis reveals that requests for DEI-related information in faculty job advertisements take many different forms,” reads the report, which was published on August 4.
The report, titled “What’s Going On With DEI Statements in Faculty Hiring?,” reveals that DEI-related affirmations are requested in different formats that may help universities escape scrutiny and further avoid explicitly violating legislation outlawing DEI statements.
The higher-education institutions may ask job applicants to explicitly address their commitment to DEI in a cover letter, explain how DEI is relevant in a statement about their “teaching philosophy,” or describe in their research proposals how their academic work promotes DEI. In some cases, the institutions ask applicants to describe “their commitment to inclusion and belonging” somewhere in the application, but not in a specified portion of the submitted materials.
Some of the job positions surveys did not explicitly use the phrase “DEI,” but instead used “diversity,” “equity,” or “inclusion” singularly. For example, one job listing for a mathematics department included in the report asks candidates to submit a “statement of commitment to equity in the classroom.” Additional terminology used to elicit DEI-type statements includes the phrases “anti-racism,” “social justice,” or “cultural competency.” One job posting in a biochemistry department asked applicants for “a cover letter that addresses outreach and belonging or diversity efforts, CV, references, and research and teaching statements.”
Sometimes, the universities do not explicitly request a “diversity statement” but instead ask candidates to explain their “preparation to teach and mentor students from groups historically underrepresented in higher education,” describe their experience “working with diverse groups,” or summarize their previous success educating “students from diverse backgrounds.”
“From a research perspective, it suggests that simple keyword searches for ‘diversity statements’ might substantially undercount the prevalence of DEI statement requests in faculty hiring,” reads the Heterodox Academy report. “From a policy perspective, it indicates that narrowly-focused prohibitions against ‘diversity statements’ may be ineffective if institutions can simply reframe their requests as elements of other application materials.”
Just over 25 percent of job positions surveyed in STEM fields requested DEI statements, slightly greater than the 23.5 percent in the humanities and 24.8 percent in the social sciences. Only 11.1 percent of faculty job advertisements in professional or interdisciplinary studies — such as law, business, hospitality, clinical professions, and other applied field — asked for a DEI statement.
Nearly 30 percent of job listings at private colleges and universities asked for a DEI-type statement, while only 19 percent of job postings from public colleges and universities asked for such materials. Less than 3 percent of faculty job positions from community colleges asked for a DEI statement of some kind, while not a single faculty position advertisement at a tribal college or university asked for a DEI statement.
The Heterodox Academy notes in its report that the discrepancy may arise from recent legislative efforts that prevent public higher-education institutions from requesting DEI statements, such as the laws passed in Florida, Kansas, and North Carolina.
Notably, few of the solicitations for diversity statements mentioned intellectual diversity.
“Less often is diversity of viewpoint referenced in job ads, despite the benefits of an intellectually diverse academic community,” reads the report. “Focusing on the 2,269 academic job postings that requested DEI statements revealed that only 15.6 percent of them explicitly mention viewpoint diversity concepts.”
Some of the keywords the researchers used to identify job advertisements that asked about intellectual diversity included “viewpoint(s),” “ideas,” “perspectives,” “opinions,” “thoughts,” “beliefs,” “different perspectives,” “varied opinions,” and “range of viewpoints.”
Prior to the Heterodox Academy’s report, the American Enterprise Institute published a study in 2021 that reviewed approximately 1,000 faculty job advertisements from Fall 2020 and found that approximately 19 percent requested DEI statements.