Dive Brief:
- The University of Michigan will no longer allow its colleges or departments to request diversity statements from faculty candidates during the hiring, promotion or tenure processes.
- The new policy follows an October report from a faculty working group recommending the university end the solicitation of standalone diversity statements and instead ask faculty members to incorporate information about their DEI efforts into their teaching, research and service statements. The University of Michigan on Thursday did not enact the latter recommendation.
- The Michigan flagship previously did not have a diversity statement policy set across its three campuses, and individual academic units could solicit such statements at their discretion. This allowance “reflected the decentralized and heterogeneous culture of the university,” the university said Thursday.
Dive Insight:
Colleges will sometimes request DEI statements from prospective or current employees as a means of evaluating their experiences with and commitment to diverse student populations.
However, such statements have increasingly become a point of contention, as conservative policymakers and some free speech advocates have asserted they mandate a certain way of thinking and infringe on faculty’s right to free expression.
In turn, supporters say DEI statements center diversity in a majority-White profession and can help campuses become more welcoming to a wider spectrum of people.
In June, Provost Laurie McCauley called on eight faculty members to evaluate the university’s use of diversity statements. The resulting working group spent the next several months reviewing relevant research and weighing peer institutions policies. It also conducted a faculty survey that garnered almost 2,000 responses.
In its announcement, the university said the statements have been “criticized for their potential to limit freedom of expression and diversity of thought on campus.”
The statements as currently enacted have the potential to do just that, the faculty group’s final report said when explaining the recommendation to eliminate standalone diversity statements.
However, the faculty group argued that the information in some diversity statements could be valuable to the hiring and promotion process.
“Well-written diversity statements contain reflections of how identity has shaped a faculty member’s approach with their students, how they work with their colleagues, and how they interact with society,” their October report said. The report also argued that well-written statements do not require faculty to express their identity or take stances on “socially-charged issues.”
It also noted “the positive ways in which a faculty’s personal identity supports the mission of U-M should not be underestimated; collection of this information should not be rejected outright because of potential misuse.”
The group recommended that the university add DEI-related prompts to other faculty research, teaching, and service statements, which are used in the hiring and promotion process. For instance, a prompt for a teaching statement could ask faculty how they create inclusive classroom environments.
It also proposed creating new trainings to show faculty how best to convey and evaluate their DEI efforts.
One member of the eight-person faculty group, Professor Chandra Sripada, issued a dissenting report Wednesday.
He urged the provost to disregard the working group’s recommendations to incorporate DEI-related questions in teaching, research and service statements.
Additional DEI prompts would “substantially ramps up, rather than reduces, ideological pressure on faculty” and would effectively ask faculty members to craft three diversity statements instead of one, Sripada wrote. He also argued that any trainings would inevitably be “ideologically skewed.”
“Opportunities now exist to pivot to alternative approaches to DEI that deemphasize person-level identities and experiences and put the focus on policies at the institution-level — for example, programs for dramatically increasing numbers of low-income students — that have a strong track record of making a real difference,” he wrote.
Michael Liemohn, a professor of climate and space sciences, criticized Sripada’s report shortly thereafter.
“Unbeknownst to the rest of the working group, it was sent directly to the Provost without input or deliberation by others,” Liemohn wrote in a rebuttal. He also alleged Sripada’s dissension was submitted at the last possible moment, and that the other seven members of the group were only made aware of its existence two days later.
Liemohn defended the original recommendations, and the purpose of DEI more broadly.
DEI statements, he wrote, allow applicants to show that they have “done their homework” regarding a specific position and on the university’s structures, resources and opportunities.
“A criterion within a faculty search could (should!) be that applicants are excited about these core values of the University and motivated to engage in enhancing these values once here. This evidence might be within their CV, but it is even clearer when written out in a personal narrative,” he wrote.
