One of the big moves by the academic Left has been the use of required ‘diversity’ statements for faculty and prospective faculty. They are a means for the DEI enforcers at colleges and universities to screen out anyone who isn’t enthusiastic about the progressive agenda. They don’t want any dissenters, just as the Politburo didn’t want any dissenters.
Writing on Law & Liberty today, Harvard history professor James Hankins runs through his thinking on the diversity statements pushed by Harvard’s EDIB (equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging) office. As he explains, he had an AI program come up with something bland and probably acceptable but then decided to write his own statement reflecting his true views.
Savor this paragraph:
Since, however, you require me, as a condition of further employment, to state my attitude to these “values” that the university is said to share (though I don’t remember a faculty vote endorsing them), let me say that, in general, the statement of EDIB beliefs offered on your website is too vapid to offer any purchase for serious ethical analysis. The university, according to you, espouses an absolute commitment to a set of words that seems to generate positive feelings in your office, and perhaps among administrators generally, but it is not my practice to make judgments based on feelings. In fact, my training as a historian leads me to distrust such feelings as a potential obstacle to clear thinking. I don’t think it’s useful to describe the feelings I experience when particular words and slogans are invoked and how they affect my professional motivations. It might be useful on a psychoanalyst’s couch or in a religious cult, but not in a university.
Read on to find out what Hankins thinks about that omnipresent cliché “diversity is our strength” and much more.