Diversity statements started to be commonly required for applications for university faculty positions starting in the 2010s. These statements—often one- to two-page essays detailing a candidate's commitment to advancing diversity, enquiry, and inclusion goals in their academic work—have been a fierce topic of debate. On the extremes, one side sees diversity statements as simply asking faculty candidates to demonstrate how they advance the university’s values. The other side sees them as thinly veiled ideological filters in hiring.

Although the exact origin of the use of diversity statements in hiring is unclear, the UC system is often noted as a key driver in their national adoption. Megan Zahneis writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Many scholars credit the University of California system with bringing diversity statements to national prominence. The system revised its policies in 2015 to note that “contributions in all areas of faculty achievement that promote equal opportunity and diversity should be given due recognition” in the promotion and tenure processes. Several of its campuses had undertaken pilot projects putting that policy to work in faculty searches.

After a decade, following intense controversy over the use of these statements in hiring, the UC system has officially put an end to the practice.

On Wednesday, March 19, UC System Provost Katherine Newman wrote in a letter to her Provosts and Executive Vice Chancellors that, “After thoughtful review, the Board has directed President Drake to take action to ensure that diversity statements are no longer required for new recruitments.”

Although the UC system has never maintained an official policy on diversity statements in faculty hiring, many departments and programs have.

Heterodox Academy has been a consistent critic of the use of diversity statements in hiring. There is little evidence that requiring DEI statements has made faculty hiring more fair or improved student experiences. Importantly, diversity statement requirements pressure applicants to align with specific ideological views, regardless of their personal beliefs, effectively functioning as compelled political speech. As Steven Brint, a professor and co-chair of the HxA Campus Community at UC Riverside, said to The New York Times on the issue, “They encouraged a performativity. People knew the right thing to say.”

In her letter, however, Newman makes an important point with regard to scholars or anyone else doing legitimate, related work on diversity issues. She notes Academic Personnel Manual 210 that allows faculty members to “submit descriptions of relevant academic achievements” related to “inclusive research practices,” teaching practices that “support the success of all students,” and other related activities. She goes on:

To be clear, stand-alone diversity statements will no longer be permitted in recruitments. However, consistent with federal and state law, the University should, and will, continue to provide due recognition to prospective or current employees who wish to share how they have contributed to inclusive excellence.

This move—to eliminate any requirement of diversity statements from hiring but not banning prospective and current faculty from discussing diversity-related scholarship and teaching in their other materials—is a good one, and a possible path forward as diversity statements are removed from hiring practices in the academy.

There’s a lot of room for positive change by removing these litmus tests from job searches. For example, HxA members and Campus Community Co-Chairs at CU Boulder, Matthew Burgess (now at U. Wyoming) and Peter Newton wanted to improve faculty hiring practices in their own department. But instead of simply spotlighting the problems with current application requirements, they also proposed a new idea.

In early 2024, the faculty of the Department of Environmental Studies at CU Boulder voted unanimously that all future faculty job advertisements would no longer require diversity statements and would instead ask candidates to submit a service statement in addition to the usual research and teaching statements. Burgess and Newton explained that service statements are a progressive, legal, ethical, and constructive alternative to diversity statements for multiple reasons:

• Service statements align with what’s expected of a successful faculty member.
• Requiring service statements signals the value of service.
• Service statements allow applicants to discuss DEI if they want but do not require them to do so.

The policy change was narrowly defeated by faculty vote the first time it was proposed. But working collaboratively with a faculty group who initially opposed the policy change, a revised version was developed together. At the second attempt, the policy proposal passed with little discussion.

“We consider it a small but significant shift of the needle toward a more fair, ethical, legal, and liberal hiring process,” said Burgess and Newton.

As general diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are being dismantled with legislation at both the state and federal levels, it’s important to note that HxA does not take a position on many applications of DEI initiatives because many are outside our purview.

HxA is focused on promoting open inquiry and viewpoint diversity on campuses. Rather than taking a sledgehammer to all “DEI” (a now amorphous concept), we take each application of DEI under consideration when determining its impacts on open inquiry in the academy.

The UC system dropping diversity statements in hiring is good news for American higher education. We hope to see more systems ending political litmus tests in the hiring of their faculty, too. It will be critically important that one set of litmus tests not replace another.

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Editor’s note: The case study of CU Boulder was first summarized on HxA’s website.