The Fora: A Higher Education Community

QuoteM.I.T. Will No Longer Require Diversity Statements for Hiring Faculty
Applicants were required to explain how they would enhance diversity. Free-speech advocates and others said that requirement enforced groupthink.

QuoteThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology said on Monday that it would no longer require candidates applying for faculty positions to write diversity statements, which have been denounced by conservatives and free-speech advocates as forcing a kind of ideological conformity.

In their statements, generally a page-long, candidates were required to explain how they would enhance the university's commitment to diversity.

Such statements have become enshrined in faculty hiring at many elite public and private universities, as well as in corporate life. Academics have defended them as necessary in judging whether a faculty member can reach out to an increasingly diverse student body.

In announcing the change, M.I.T.'s president, Sally Kornbluth, said diversity statements constituted a form of compelled speech that do not work.

"My goals are to tap into the full scope of human talent, to bring the very best to M.I.T. and to make sure they thrive once here," Dr. Kornbluth said in a statement. "We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don't work."

M.I.T. and Dr. Kornbluth have been under scrutiny by House Republicans for the university's handling of antisemitism accusations. In December, Dr. Kornbluth testified alongside two other presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, in a congressional hearing on antisemitism, which helped lead to Dr. Gay and Ms. Magill's resignations. And M.I.T., like many other campuses, has struggled to handle an increasingly intense pro-Palestinian encampment.

Diversity statements have long been opposed by conservatives and many academics as enforcing a kind of ideological conformity. M.I.T.'s decision to drop them could embolden other universities to take a second look. A 2021 study by the American Enterprise Institute found that selective universities were more likely than less selective ones to require such statements.

M.I.T., whose students are required to immerse themselves in science and technology courses, has been in the forefront of pushing back against measures that some say could dilute the rigor of its education. After the pandemic, it was among the first universities to restore standardized testing in admissions, saying that it helped predict academic success.

The practice of screening candidates for their diversity statements, sometimes before considering their academic qualifications, has been attacked as particularly corrosive in the sciences, where maintaining academic rigor in research projects can actually be a matter of life and death. Dr. Kornbluth is a research cell biologist.

Dr. Kornbluth made the move to remove diversity statements with the support of other top officials, including the provost, chancellor, all six academic deans and the vice president for equity and inclusion, according to her statement.

It was not immediately clear whether jobs beyond faculty positions would require diversity statements, or whether this was a first step in dismantling M.I.T.'s broader diversity, equity and inclusion infrastructure.

To supporters, diversity statements are an important tool, now that the Supreme Court has banned race-conscious admissions, in creating a more welcoming environment for students of every background and ethnicity, and bringing in different life experiences to the classroom.

But diversity, equity and inclusion programs have come under concerted attack by conservatives, as well as free-speech advocates and some academics who say they stifle open inquiry.

"They require faculty to endorse or apply specific positions on race, gender and related issues as if they are beyond question, and as if a professor who disputes them is ipso facto incompetent," the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression says on its website.

Quote from: FishProf on Today at 10:01:49 AMHello Dr. Fishprof,
I am interested in your [Behavior of Underwater Basket Weavers] course during the summer I semester. I do have a family vacation planned from June 12th - 23rd. If this prohibits my ability to succeed in your course please let me know. I am willing to make up any work and or complete any work while on vacation as well.
Thank you,
STU

Hmmm.  Six week filed-based course in which we meet 2x a week = 12 class meetings, and you are going to miss 3.  Yes, that is going to make it hard to succeed.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on May 05, 2024, 05:21:47 PMIHE: Virginia County Defunds Community College Over SJP Film Screening

Lower Deck:

QuoteAfter Students for Justice in Palestine showed a movie on campus at Piedmont Virginia Community College, a local county suspended funding for the college.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on May 04, 2024, 02:34:20 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on May 04, 2024, 07:44:55 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on May 03, 2024, 08:57:21 PMAnd for the record, I think one can be anti-occupation and anti-occupied Palestine without being antisemitic.  Israel has things to answer for and America should stop supporting her until she becomes a humane state.  Oh, and Hamas is a terrorist organization.

However, we have been marching, screaming, occupying, and fighting police for close to a hundred years if you count the Bonus Army of 1932.  MLK prevailed because of his maturity in the face of oppression.  Now we have kids occupying their very vulnerable college campuses, resisting when given lawful commands by the police, and then crying to the media when they are arrested.  And many people have a specific kneejerk reaction, "The students were peaceful," as if that gives them the right to break the law.

We need a new cultural imagination to meet our challenges.  I don't think the old system is working any more.

Well said. What I think many young people don't get is that MLK modelled his actions on Gandhi, and both of them saw that their protests were only a pointer to the social change that would inevitably happen in a basically moral society. No protest had to achieve specific, short term results. The impatience of protests now requires that they have concrete, immediate outcomes, so the disruption has to escalate until they win.

"Getting out the message" has been replaced by "getting in peoples' faces until they cave."

Well, to be fair, MLK and Gandhi led disruptive movements.  I mean, the point of protest is to make people uncomfortable and to make the news.

QuoteBut they were also involved in a lifelong fight against institutionalized oppression and for their own and their peoples' civil rights, and they both paid the ultimate price.  I've never thought it right to point to the "entitled" or "rich" kids as if it's their fault that their parents are wealthy or to talk about "elite" students as if it is an accusation to be accomplished enough to get into an Ivy, or any college, for that matter.  But we also have to acknowledge that the price the students are paying is pretty cheap, even if they are arrested, and their chants such as "This is what democracy looks like" are cliche, a little facile, and not the ostensible point of their protest. No matter what happens in Palestine or their college campuses, these kids are going to be fine. Then I would be careful about martyring students or professors.  It is bad optics to see cops in riot gear----they look like your typical bad guys in video games or sci fi films----but the police don't want to get hurt, and who can blame them?  I'd armor-up too.  Then I read stories from professors who have no sympathy for a late paper or a missed exam but who are then outraged by police officers upholding the law, hypothetically speaking, of course.  And being a kindly professor is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

I just don't see the analogous situation between the great era of protest in the '50s through '70s that garnered so many ethical changes in our society and the situations now.  I think we have copycat kids who, while I agree with their stance, are enacting a paradigm that is rather self-serving.   

QuoteAfter Students for Justice in Palestine showed a movie on campus at Piedmont Virginia Community College, a local county suspended funding for the college.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on May 05, 2024, 09:20:43 AMT1 and the report for real today. And hopefully a nap, too.