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MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED NOV. 27–A NUMBER OF INTERESTING COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME
They are explicit about their criteria, which confirm Professor Thompson's comparison of this to a loyalty oath. It's really quite shocking, especially if this grading system has any impact on hiring decisions. Does anyone know how these "grades" on diversity statements are actually used? You may post anoymously, but use a valid e-mail address (which will not appear).
Dear Professor Leiter,
The use of diversity statements for screening of applicants for open posiitons has crept into the Berkeley hiring strategy in the past round of hires. I am in a large multidisciplinary group dealting with the Environment. The faculty range from humanities, social science, biology, to physical science. Last year, we had an open posiiton in the "environment". The search committee used the diversity statement as the first cut for further consideration of candidates for the position: i.e. if the candidate did not have a stellar diverstiy and inclusion statement and plan, they were discarded regardless of thier scientific and teaching skills.
I registered objections to this for the following reasons: (1) Our Academic Personnel Manual (section 210) which is the basis for all academic hiring and promotion decisions, has a nebulous aspirational statement about diversity (one that has undergone a recent revision), but I think there is agreement it is not required for tenure or promotion, while the standard research, teaching and service remain the fundamental criteria. (2) The diversity screening clearly impacts foreign applicants (who are unaware of this development) and those in physical science. I asked our own Academic Senate (via the Chair) to discuss this. I was told the Senate had conducted a spirited discussion on this, I have not received an outline or minutes of what was discussed.
We are still in what can be considered an uncertain rollout of this new idea, and how to implement it. However, I have already seen it used as the equivalence of a loyalty oath in terms of its requirement for consideration for hiring. Our next hiring announcements will hopefully have less strongly worded statements, but the general sentiment will still likely remain.
I'm glad they make these criteria public. It will make it easier for politically heterodox applicants to lie convincingly. Although misrepresenting one's track record is no doubt unwise, no one should feel at all guilty about misrepresenting their opinions in one of these statements. The requirement is both unfair to applicants and harmful to the intellectual community at the universities that require them.
Such diversity statements are used all over the UC system. For certain job searches, they are used as an initial screening outside the department, with only candidates who receive 4's going to the department search committee at all. In other cases department committees must first get "diversity training" in which they are taught to read each candidate's diversity statement before looking at their qualifications. But these practices do not even reflect what is the real lie at the core of the diversity statements. They are billed as questions about candidates' "contributions to diversity" but are really ways to suss out what race, ethnicity and/ or gender the candidate is. Thus, searches are considered successes, not when the university hires stellar researchers who can also teach a diverse student body, but when the search increases the diversity of the faculty. UC's "Advancing Faculty Diversity" program is quite explicit about all of this.
I'm all for making academia inclusive – like any other decent academic or human being, I suppose. But is this a reasonable approach? First off, I'm not sure grad schools offer diversity training (not in Europe as far as I know). Second, and more importantly, as others have pointed out, people want jobs, so people will say whatever will help them getting jobs – and the whole thing is turned into a big lip service exercise.
What strikes me is that the criteria talks about *volunteering* – we all know that the workload in academia is already quite heavy. I like to use my private time for myself – to either spend time with friends and family, engage in other interests and participate in other (political) groups (which do not necessarily focus on diversity – eg. Environmental causes). Expecting some specific, unpaid, activities inaq a candidate’s free time to even consider them for the job seems rather exploitative. Also it puts additional stress on those who are already facing other hurdles eg people from a lower income background (eg some people work while undergraduates to afford studying, they would have little time to volunteer).
Perhaps unwisely, I wrote an honest diversity statement for my job applications that required them this cycle. It's alarming to hear that some search committees are using them as a first cut. Can anyone confirm whether this is happening in philosophy departments?
Perhaps it’s the holiday, but I’m surprised more people have not been commenting on this matter. I googled university diversity statements the other day, and a casual look at the first few pages of links suggested many universities have them and require them from job applicants. I have heard talk at my university about requiring them internally, for promotions. Many people think of them as somewhat valuable or merely an annoyance. However, if diversity administrators or, as in the business world, if HR depts use them to screen job applicants, then they pose a serious threat to the self-governance and independence of academic depts and programs. They are also somewhat outrageous. Imagine requiring job or program applicants to express their views on Truth, Justice, and the American Way. It’s hard to imagine a serious statement that does not spend a page or so just clarifying how these vague but loaded terms are to be understood. Similarly, it’s hard to imagine a serious diversity statement that does not spend time analyzing what the term might mean. But we all know not to recommend this to grad students sending out job applications.
It’s hard to be against justice or decency or treating people with respect. But we are already required as professors to do this. Contributing to “diversity and inclusion” must involve something more. If so, an obvious question is whether that something more would be a political program that might not be something one may require people to accept as a condition of employment. All this seems so obvious. It seems obvious that we ought to be very alarmed by these diversity statements.
Just last week we witnessed the somewhat predictable outrage in response to the announcement that New York University at Shanghai would be henceforth requiring domestic (i.e. Chinese) students to take a required 'patriotic education' course in order to graduate in China (in common with students at other Mainland universities). What fuels this outrage is no doubt the sense that Western institutions such as NYU Shanghai compromise themselves when education is politicized in this way, and that doing so exceeds the degree of what western institutions will tolerate . But incidents like the above at Berkeley make we wonder whether we are really entiled to such a sense of outrage, given the creeping politicization of our own educational system.
"However, I have already seen it used as the equivalence of a loyalty oath in terms of its requirement for consideration for hiring."
Is the thought that the requirement is a mechanism of selection that favors people with certain political views? If so, the claim of equivalence is too strong. If people with expertise in philosophy of maths were more likely to have certain political (say, conservative) views, requiring candidates to have an AOS in philosophy of maths would be a mechanism of selection that favors people with conservative views. But no one, I assume, will think that this is enough to claim that the requirement is being used as the equivalence of a loyalty oath.
If I've missed the point, let me know. But it is not at all clear to me what supports the claim of equivalency.
I would have thought Professor Amundson's point was that if a high score on the diversity statement is required to make the first cut, then this means a candidate must profess allegiance to a very particular vision of "diversity" and its importance, which most candidates probably do not share. The "diversity statement" thus becomes a declaration of loyalty to the vision of diversity embodied in the Berkeley criteria for getting a high score on this statement.
I teach at an elite private university and am currently on a search committee for a junior position. We do not use diversity statements. We are however very strongly encouraged to seek out underrepresented minorities (URM's in the jargon) when we hire. Diversity statements would make that easier, and would cut down on combing through the materials for some indication of URM status, or worse, googling. So, there's that. I am in favor just for convenience sake. This is the world we live in, and not a hill I feel like dying on.
What I find disturbing is the criterion rating how well applicants relate their discussion of diversity to the specific challenges Berkeley faces. First, it's impossible for applicants to know this in any detailed way prior to teaching there; second, and more importantly, it forces applicants to tailor yet another piece of their job market materials, greatly extending the time they expend (now not only do we have to research course offerings and departmental activities to tailor cover letters, but apparently we're already expected to research university demographics, attrition rates, and so on). Finally, our placement officer insisted the diversity statement should be no more than a page; it seems impossible to fulfill all of these criteria at the level of detail they're requiring in just one page. Are applicants who did not mention Berkeley in their diversity statements given a 1 on this criterion?
It shocks me that concerns about diversity should be shifted from the hiring side in terms of conducting a fair process to having candidates prove that they fulfill some sort of ideal that employers must assume that they already embody. Besides the snobbish assumption of superiority on the part of employers it shifts the presumption of guilt that candidates aren't committed to diversity on to prospective employees until they prove otherwise. The result will most likely be that goals of being truly diverse will be undermined by both sides of this ill-considered transaction.
For what it's worth, these things are not limited to California, or even the US. The University of British Columbia required one that was very similar to the UC system form in its application materials for a position in political science recently, for example. I assume that this isn't idiosyncratic to political science there, but is a general requirement now at UBC. I'm not sure if other Canadian universities have caught this particular bug or not, but it has certainly spread to some degree.
As a PhD program applicant, I was asked to write submit diversity statements with several of my applications. The majority were optional and attached to special fellowships, but one or two were required—some of these were under the guise of a “personal history” statement, but it was quite clear what they were really asking. I found the whole thing distasteful, particularly since most grad program applicants, especially the ones applying straight out of undergrad, probably haven’t had the time or means to, as others have pointed out, do much volunteering, or otherwise be in a position to work towards diversity in any context, leaving them stuck describing their own identities. Effectively, then, asking it of grad program applicants seems to be a means of getting them to to identify their minority status so that the department can look good for having admitted a diverse cohort.
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