“Chief diversity officers” are hot commodities on college campuses lately, with nearly 30 prominent academic institutions creating such a position in the last five years. The trend reflects academia’s redoubling of its efforts to carve up its population of students and faculty along lines of race, ethnicity, and gender, all in the name of “social justice” and ”equal opportunity.” According to Inside Higher Ed, “Where others work on issues of diversity as a matter of second or third priority, chief diversity officers engage matters of diversity as a matter of first-priority.” Because, clearly, with all the things wrong in higher education today, what universities really need to do is make “diversity” a higher priority.

Here’s a snippet of the job description:

The CDO should have an excellent command of all aspects of diversity issues in higher education, including faculty recruitment and retention issues, identity development, access and equity, diversifying the curriculum, assessing the educational impact of diversity, measuring the campus climate, and the policy and legal dynamics of affirmative action and diversity in higher education. Furthermore, a CDO must be comfortable leveraging the social justice, educational benefits, and business case rationales for discussing diversity’s importance.