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May 5, 2024 - 4:00pm
In what’s likely to be a watershed moment, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has ended the use of diversity statements for faculty hiring, making it the first elite private university to backtrack on the practice that has been roundly criticised as a political litmus test.
On Saturday, an MIT spokesperson confirmed in an email to me that “requests for a statement on diversity will no longer be part of applications for any faculty positions at MIT”, adding that the decision was made by embattled MIT President Sally Kornbluth “with the support of the Provost, Chancellor, and all six academic deans”.
The decision marks an inflection point in the battle over diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in higher education. Since at least the late 2010s, diversity statements have been ubiquitous in faculty hiring, sometimes carrying serious weight in the selection process. As one dean at Emory University put it while describing her approach to hiring, “Diversity statement, then dossier.”
MIT embraced the diversity statement trend. In late 2023, the university’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering sought an assistant professor “in fields from fundamental nuclear science to practical applications of nuclear technology in energy, security and quantum engineering”. Applicants were required to submit “a statement regarding their views on diversity, inclusion, and belonging, including past and current contributions as well as their vision and plans for the future in these areas”.
Such requirements have long been controversial, and the basic argument against them is simple: “diversity, equity, and inclusion” has come to connote a set of controversial views about identity, power, and oppression. Universities which require scholars to “demonstrate” their “commitment” to DEI can easily invite ideological screening, as well as potentially unlawful viewpoint discrimination. Many groups thus oppose the diversity statements on the grounds of academic freedom and free expression.
At MIT, these arguments seemed to have won the day. In a statement provided to me via email, president Kornbluth notes: “We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”
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SubscribeUntil the DEI Commisars are fired, and the “Oppression Studies” departments are expelled from the academy, not much will change
Why does diversity scare you so much? Are you afraid that you can’t compete on a level playing field?
That’s the point isn’t it – DEI does not create a level playing field, it enforces the opposite.
Why do you use this ridiculous name?
Old timer, evidently.
Exactly.
Especially as Unherd has now has a policy of only allowing real names. I always use mine, except where sites don’t allow this for various reasons.
“As you know, UnHerd only permits the use of real names in the comment section to promote personal and constructive discussion. Should you wish to change your initials displayed, this can only be done by modifying the name we hold on file for you by contacting the team.”
Do you ever actually read an article before commenting? It’s about ENFORCED diversity, stupid.
“It’s more than a narrow issue of free expression and compelled speech. Diversity statements don’t merely create an orthodoxy. They create a uniquely bad orthodoxy, one that is corrosive to civic life and inimical to true higher education.”
DEI doesn’t promote diversity, or equality, and it isn’t inclusive. Especially when your employment depends on swearing allegiance – that’s scary.
DIE aims to create a stifling intellectual and cultural conformism, not diversity!
Why have Oxford and Cambridge made serious exams for degrees pretty much voluntary ? Is it because otherwise the students mainly allowed in for DEI reasons might fail .
Clear out DEI – excellent development.
Gone are the days when getting a degree meant having a well-paying job unless you are now in a very select set of fields (STEM). United States colleges have become an extremist liberal birthing ground. If you fail to see them as such, you’ve already drunk the Kool-Aid. The faculty and students work feverishly, convincing each other they are right and that what they do has value, upending the very original basis of this country’s creation and even the University’s origination (Harvard was a Seminary, they actually believe in God anymore?). You thought inflation was bad; these bastions of liberal indoctrination have tuition that far outstrips any hope of paying for them without extreme loans. Loans there are so horrendous that the government is now trying to appease them by canceling in every way it can. The colleges teach young people to hate the USA, hate white people, hate this and that, and charge them 10x what their parents were charged, and then they graduate with a worthless piece of paper that will not help them get a job. No Thanks.
“requests for a statement on diversity will no longer be part of applications for any faculty positions at MIT”
Faculty is great; now do staff.
They realise they’ve pushed it too far, too fast. But the Fabian playbook of incremental institutional takeover will continue. Two steps forward, one step back.
Let’s acknowledge this as a small victory, better than nothing, but it’s important not to kid ourselves. The biggest mistake you can make is taking a Marxist at their word.
We need to tackle this at the worldview level, and get enough people to see how much they’ve been duped by psychopathy masquerading as compassion. Then we’ll get meaningful, sweeping reforms that reclaim the institutions.
I still have hope, as we all should. Evil can only corrupt. Goodness can create, develop, and sustain. We just need to stand up for what’s right!
I fully agree: we should remain hopeful, a manifestation of our humanity since time immemorial. We owe it to the countless generations that’ve gone before to us to stand up for what sustains and enhances us all; to give ourselves a chance of a future.
We can disagree on what the source of hope might be, and even whether such things as “evil” and “goodness” exist other than their expression through human actions. The changing institutional awareness of MIT as expressed through this action is an unmitigated good, and allows science to be pursued for the greater good of all.
Reassuring to see such a groundswell of support emerging at last. The counter counter-culture.
“compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”
“It would be hard to overstate the degree to which many academics at Harvard and beyond feel intense and growing resentment against the DEI enterprise because of features that are perhaps most evident in the demand for DEI statements.”
If only there had been someone warning left-wing academics about the dangers of compelled speech for the last 40 years.
Regrettably, Left Wing academics are not dissimilar from Left Wing politicians they exist within a Left Wing echo chamber. Voices outside these hallowed walls are dismissed as racist, white supremacist,and all the many epithets of Left Wing exclusivity.
The iorny-> if you don’t embrace the “sanctimonious” dogma of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion you are Demonized, Excluded and Intolerable.
DEI is its own special form of racism which makes it so insidious.
Insidious and ubiquitous…
I am generally skeptical of identifying watershed moments, but I agree with the author. MIT is a very Ivy League school and this move will eventually convince others to follow. Compelled speech is the backbone of any authoritarian movement. Simply acknowledging that DEI statements are compelled speech is a big damn deal IMO.
A pedant notes:
MIT is not a member of the Ivy League. Neither in the strict sense of participating in the Ivy League athletic conference nor in the general sense in which the term is often used to refer to those 8 universities which are members.
Jimbo doesn’t care for facts. He’s all about his feelings and those feeling are usually rage about whatever is happening in the world.
He doesn’t know what the Ivy League is but he is very angry about it!
Triggered much?
Not by you, sport!
Agreed, but the sentiment is correct. MIT was recently ranked #1 in the QS World rankings and regularly come in the top 5 in various others. Once the top US institutions start to reject this nonsense the others will follow.
Its far more destructive than nonsense. It is cultural Marxism aimed at weakening higher education by assaulting academic rigor.
You saved me one pedantic post. But perhaps we can all agree that MIT is an elite and prestigious institution, which like Stanford is commonly ranked ahead of several Ivy League schools.
So this guy claims to have an email from “an MIT spokesperson” – which only he has seen of course – and has decided that a minor policy change in hiring policy, should that actually be true, is “momentous”?
Do you people understand why everyone laughs at you when you get carried away with this junk? We know you are dumb – I mean, you guys think Trump is a genius! – but you just keep proving it to us day after day!
In my experience it is unwise to claim to know what other people think.
Everyone? You’re displaying your nostalgia for the good old days of the Soviet Union.
Thank God. I remember the story of the physics professor who applied to the University of Texas, Austin. All the university wanted was his DEI statement. There was no interest in where he was educated, his qualifications and experience, his published papers. Nothing but DEI. He withdrew his application.
Do you morons really believe this nonsense?
What price cat’s meat? 😉
Thank God. The Stalinists can be defeated.
No, they can’t. They just go underground, only to re-emerge with each new generation. Authoritarianism, in one form or another, from the left or from the right, will always be with us. It’s the default. It takes great and continuous effort to hold it at bay, and free societies tend to become complacent about this, providing openings for authoritarian actors to re-emerge. We’re in such a period.
Wise and well expressed comment!
That’s a bold statement Andrea. I’m going to have to think about that for some time.
I thank you for raising such a profound framing of our predicament!
You’re absolutely right. It’s an eternal struggle. Much like anti-corruption. But they can be defeated in battle and contained in war, provided we are always be prepared to fight.
A sigh of relief. The wait took too long. The damage done in the meantime is significant. The best faculty left, Strong candidates overlooked in searches. Almost a decade of weakened education.
I hope Unherd commissions someone to write a longer piece on MIT’s decision re DEI statements. Why did the MIT president make this decision and fall out of step with peer institutions? The author of the current article notes she is “beleaguered”. Is that because of her DEI stance?
I’m trying to figure out if this decision by MIT signals the start of real change in academia or if it’s just an atypical stance that will likely be reversed?
Perhaps she doesn’t want to get fired – the barbarians are at the gate.
I searched thru the NYTimes and (surprise, surprise) found nothing about it!
“It’s very possible that more private universities, and state universities in blue states, will eventually follow MIT’s lead for one basic reason: a significant number of faculty from across the political spectrum simply cannot stand mandatory DEI statements”
IMO, that is a fair point but I wonder of the issue doesn’t go deeper. Is there any indication as to what extent DEI statements have hurt recruitment, retention and donations?
If I were faced with such idiotic demands to basically agree with the group think “or else” – I would simply fill paragraphs of the trite they wanted to hear in the first place.
These tests prove nothing in reality
Diversity Statements are silly. They are in effect an instruction that you must state you believe something to be considered.
Amazingly very few applicants make a statement that they dont hold such beliefs .
The extraordinary stupidity of demanding such statements clearly exposes those requiring the statements as very very stupid- certainly not fit to work in a University.
Such a great point!
DEI hasn’t been of much use to East Asian students who brought and won a court case against universities which required them to have higher entrance grades than other minorities.
Women are leading so many of these ‘woke’ institutions and it’s women largely who are supporting ‘wokeness’ in the Democratic Party. Why and when did they become so neurotic and intolerant?
Well Cathy, this is where we tread on delicate ground. Whilst very many individual women in academia have always prioritised rationality above all else. However, the rules of women’s social discourse in the current era, even in academia, are significantly, and materially, more focussed on perceived demonstration of open ended compassion.
As universities have become progressively more female orientated, the long term effect is that even the most rationally minded of both sexes are relentlessly bullied into the full spectrum social justice compliance.
It’s a subject worthy of open and honest discussion by people who value the positive collaboration of men and women to sustain and grow society together.
Did you not read the article. A women ended them at MIT.
But they think they are acting ‘virtuously’ – that’s the rub.
Probably not – they are in thrall to a delusion created by activism and forces they have no awareness of.
Meaningless as long as universities maintain huge DEI offices stacked with toadies still committed to the absurdity.
The scum elevation of the unwashed and incompetent thru the DEI mechanism cannot be destroyed quickly enough. DEI is a movement which enshrines the truth that specific groups (blacks, hispanics) are not able to compete without assistance.
This is good news, of course, but it would be much more meaningful if MIT said not “we love diversity but will now find other ways to pursue it” but instead “diversity is irrelevant to great science and engineering research and education and we will no longer pay it any attention.”
When we get *there*, we’ll really have hit the watershed moment. As long as we maintain the polite fiction that the color of your nuclear scientist’s skin matters, we remain mired in historical lies and ideological corruption.
Many field and track competitions, sports and music genres are overwhelmingly dominated by black people. They are extremely successful in these pursuits. Why?
Many fields of mathematics, science and literature are overwhelmingly dominated by white people. They are extremely successful in these pursuits. Why?
Institutional racism?
I’m amazed anyone thinks this is anything but having gotten caught, realizing they’ll need to be a bit more stealthy in the future. Do you really think all the admin, faculty and staff realized the error of their ways and are changing their ideological thinking?
That Congressional hearing was like the four-by-four it takes to get the attention of a mule.
Good news, but this is just a very small correction. I still think the situation is hopeless.