The goal of enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion enjoys overwhelming support across the academy. Initially an outgrowth of the 1960s civil-rights movement, efforts to increase the limited participation of African-American students and faculty in higher education took root. By the end of that decade, through programs often referred to as affirmative action, many institutions of higher learning were actively seeking to identify, admit, and graduate more minority students. Fifty years later, such programs are virtually universal in higher education. They have evolved in the names they bear, the groups they seek to serve, and their organizational context and impact. Most institutions now consider diversity, broadly defined, a requirement for excellence.
Much remains to be done, but progress cannot be denied. For instance, the number of women in the medical and science work force has increased drastically during my professional lifetime. When I entered medical school in 1968, women represented 5 to 10 percent of the entering class. Today that number has grown to nearly 50 percent — and women now attain success and garner leadership roles in every area of the profession. The number of women at the highest academic ranks still trails their share of the population, but in addition to residual bias, this could result from career choices and the long periods required for career maturation and turnover of senior positions.
As biases and barriers diminish, programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion continue to grow, professionalize, and gain influence. In the process, fresh issues arise: Have the terms retained their original meanings, or acquired important new connotations? Have the programs changed their goals to adapt to current realities? Do they advance the same values today that initially accorded them broad support? Might some elements of current advocacy impede rather than advance widely shared goals, or even bring unintended negative consequences?
My attention was drawn to these question by the University of California at Los Angeles’s recent announcement of a new policy requiring faculty members to document activities in support of diversity in dossiers used to evaluate all appointments and promotions. According to the policy, “all regular rank faculty searches must require candidates to submit an ‘EDI Statement’ that describes the candidate’s past, present, and future (planned) contributions to equity, diversity, and inclusion.” Moreover, “UCLA will implement a similar practice in the context of ladder rank faculty promotions beginning in the 2019-20 academic year.”
As a supporter of the original goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, my skepticism toward this policy surprised a number of friends and colleagues. But it is entirely inappropriate to require diversity statements in the process of appointment and promotion. Such requirements risk introducing a political litmus test into faculty hiring and reviews.
Many faculty and administrators regard the new policy as a healthy, consciousness-raising signal to promote support for diversity, a perspective that I understand. Signaling institutional values is a valid tool for modifying behavior. Institutions should be free to encourage faculty members to support diversity during their careers, through hiring, mentoring, and other professional activities. Scholarly work exploring diversity-related issues can be highlighted, and a voluntary section of dossiers addressing diversity would be fine. So why object to a policy that many view as admirable?
During nine years as a medical-school dean, I oversaw nearly a thousand professorial reviews assessing the research, teaching, service, and reputation of senior members of the faculty. Maintaining the objectivity of these reviews is essential to the integrity of the academy, though I fully recognize the imperfections of the process. It’s the responsibility of academic leaders to vigorously counter inappropriate biases and to guard reviews from ideological interference. This is a surprisingly challenging task, since what appears objective to one person may look ideological to another.
While the recent UCLA policy is far from the loyalty oaths deployed at the University of California during the McCarthy era, it’s not unreasonable to be concerned that politically influenced attestations might begin to re-emerge in the current hyperpartisan political environment, either in response to politically driven demands for faculty members to support populist or nationalist ideas, or from within the increasingly polarized academy itself. Since progressive/left identifications are dominant in the academy, especially in the humanities and social sciences (as well as in administration), politically influenced litmus tests could easily arise in that sphere.
Dialogue is uncommon, overt criticism virtually taboo.
Most in the academic community, including myself, see efforts toward greater diversity and inclusion as essential to the core commitments of a humane and liberal society, such as eliminating inappropriate barriers, creating equal opportunity, and displaying tolerance and respect for group differences. But the key terms — diversity, equity, and inclusion — are rarely defined with specificity, and their meaning has been subtly shifting. That’s a serious problem, especially if diversity efforts are to be a criterion for faculty evaluation. The term “equity,” for instance, can imply equality of opportunity or equality of outcome — two quite different things with distinct policy implications. The concept of “inclusion” might imply the welcoming of diverse groups and perspectives, or it might involve the avoidance of microaggressions and the creation of safe spaces — two controversial goals. The lack of definitional clarity of key terms creates confusion, suspicion, and disagreement.
One way to understand the problem is to examine the academic literature regarding equity and inclusion today. This literature, though not uniform, often incorporates key elements of a theoretical corpus known as “critical race theory,” little known to many academics outside of the social sciences and the humanities. It emphasizes structural racism, white privilege and supremacy, microaggressions, economically driven power relationships, and intersectionality. At the level of policy, it favors “race conscious” rather than “color blind” approaches to remedies.
My goal here is not to critique or evaluate the precepts of critical race theory. But it is obvious that these ideas and policy frameworks are not politically neutral. Rather, they map onto the left/progressive wing of the political spectrum, and their claims are arguable and highly contested. This ideological context is hardly subtle, but many academics appear not to appreciate its pervasiveness. The resulting ambiguity makes it difficult to debate proposed policies, which are portrayed as reflecting common decency even as they are increasingly linked to a particular leftist ideology.
Academic evaluations are critically important. When concepts of ambiguous or contested meaning are included in the process — without clear guidelines as to how they will be interpreted and weighed — things can easily go astray. Reviewers and administrators typically operate behind a wall of confidentiality. Depending on their perspectives, politically influenced litmus tests — unrelated to academic accomplishments and potential — could easily develop. This would most likely occur first in the humanities and social sciences, where such perspectives are already well entrenched, but the practice would quickly spread. Of course, advocates of critical race theory and social justice don’t see the pervasive influence of these ideas as a threat to academic freedom, while those who question them often do.
Diversity and equity principles and programs should be reviewed to clarify the current intended meaning of terms and the goals of policies, with open community dialogue. At the moment, honest dialogue about the goals and consequences of these initiatives is uncommon, and overt criticism is virtually taboo. Skepticism tends to be voiced privately or in small groups rather than in public forums. Self-censorship is the rule. When institutional leaders issue statements about diversity, they are typically anodyne, vague, and euphemistic, reflecting the highly charged context in which they will be received and interpreted. There is exhortation, but little serious engagement with specific policies and goals.
When first launched and for many years thereafter, diversity programs advanced laudable goals that, as generally understood, remain widely endorsed today. But injecting mandatory diversity statements into academic reviews is a bad idea. Though well-intentioned, such statements will open the door to political influence, which should be anathema. The meanings of “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” require clarification, and where appropriate, debate. We must re-examine programmatic initiatives to ensure that they align with clearly articulated definitions and principles. If we fail at this necessary task, the progress of recent decades could stall or reverse — and we could undermine fundamental academic values that deserve our vigilant protection.
