https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/01/why-universities-should-get-rid-of-dei-statements/
Many U.S. universities, including MIT, our alma mater, now require Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) statements in applications for tenure-track professorships, and even for graduate students. In many cases it is the first filter for applicants, so you may be the new Einstein but if your DEI statement says something like, “I treat all people equally regardless of race or gender,” you will be out of luck. As discussed below, that isn’t what is meant by DEI, which demands fealty to equity – that is, equal outcomes – not equal opportunity free of discrimination.
Mandatory political pronouncements such as the anti-Communist oaths of the 1950s and 1960s were long ago ruled unconstitutional by U.S. courts. And given the recent Supreme Court decisions regarding affirmative action and freedom of speech, mandatory DEI statements should also be eliminated.
What is DEI, and why might there be objections, legal and ethical, to it?
Let’s start with the words themselves. Here is what Google (via Oxford Languages) says for Diversity: “the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.”
Note what is not there: anything about a range of different ideas or viewpoints. But it is new ideas that will define future progress, not superficial differences such as skin color, ethnicity, or gender. And how does this comport with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s invocation to judge men not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character? Have we abandoned that?