After being championed by the University of California system in the 2000s as a way to diversify the academic workforce, universities across the country began integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statement requests as a part of their faculty application process. DEI statement requests typically ask prospective faculty applicants to address their commitment, values, and experiences related to DEI or related topics such as social justice, antiracism, and belonging.

As more institutions and departments adopted the practice of requesting DEI statements from faculty applicants, critics also began to take note. Opponents argue that DEI statements threaten academic freedom, function as ideological or political litmus tests, compel speech, and disadvantage applicants who embrace non-identitarian frameworks (Botvinick, 2026; Flier, 2019; Frey, 2024; Kang et al., 2016; Whittington, 2025). (Objections have been raised by students as well; e.g., Botvinick, 2026). Critics also claim the requirement encourages performative conformity rather than genuine diversity of thought and lacks evidence of improving student outcomes. At worst, critics allege that DEI statement requests effectively mask affirmative action hiring practices, which have been illegal in states like California since the 1990s and nationwide since 2023.

Despite sustained controversy, systematic evidence on the prevalence of DEI statement requests in applications for faculty jobs has remained sparse. Last year, HxA addressed this gap with a report analyzing DEI requests in faculty job advertisements from the Fall 2024 hiring cycle (Arnold et al., 2025). The present report adds newly collected data from the Fall 2025 hiring cycle, affording the most current prevalence estimates of DEI requests and an assessment of year-to-year changes.

Key Findings

1. Requests for U.S. full-time faculty job applicants to address DEI in their application materials (either standalone DEI statements, within cover letters, or within research teaching statements) have declined sharply, falling from approximately 25% in 2024 to 11% in 2025. This change represents a reduction of more than 50% in the share of job advertisements that mandate DEI-related statements or materials.
2. Thirty-seven percent of faculty job advertisements in 2025 don’t explicitly request that applicants address DEI in application materials, but still signal that a commitment to DEI will be valued.
3. DEI requests in 2025 vary by geographic region, being more prevalent in institutions in the Northeast and the West Coast. States with anti-DEI legislation generally exhibit lower rates of DEI requirements.
4. Requests to address DEI in 2025 vary substantially by discipline: faculty job advertisements in the social sciences and humanities are more likely than those in STEM and professional disciplines to request DEI statements or related application materials.
5. Private institutions continue to request DEI materials at higher rates than public institutions, though both have declined substantially from 2024.
6. DEI-related material requests have fallen across almost all Carnegie classifications in 2025, except for community colleges, where they have slightly increased from 2024 (from 4.8% to 8.3%).
7. Full-time faculty positions are far more likely to request DEI materials in 2025 than adjunct or part-time positions, where such requests are mostly absent.
8. The vast majority of faculty jobs requesting addressing DEI in application materials do not mention viewpoint diversity: Only 13% of faculty job ads requesting DEI-related materials mention viewpoint diversity, suggesting that universities continue to emphasize demographic diversity rather than other potential dimensions of diversity such as intellectual heterogeneity.