We Know Diversity Statements Are Political Litmus Tests

From 2016 to 2022, most University of California campuses participated in an experimental program, funded by the state Legislature, to use diversity, equity, and inclusion statements as the first cut in faculty-applicant pools. According to UC’s guidelines, the purpose of diversity statements is for applicants to explain what they have done and plan to do to serve underrepresented-minority people on campus — specifically, African Americans, American Indians, and Hispanics/Latinos.

Such policies are informed by a series of politically charged assumptions. The first assumption is that such groups have been more oppressed than other racial or ethnic groups in California; the second is that oppression has caused the groups to be represented in numbers lower than their proportions of the California population; the third is that increasing their representation is central to UC’s mission; the fourth is that proactive, race-conscious policies are necessary to hire members of the groups. Each of these assumptions should be open to debate. Instead, the university has assumed that all have been proved and then jumped to a fifth and final assumption: that UC can and should refuse to hire otherwise-competitive applicants for insufficiently endorsing the preceding assumptions.

By making political values the sole criterion at the initial hiring stage, UC-faculty searches strayed from the American Association of University Professors’ bedrock 1915 “Declaration of Principles,” which states that scholars have a duty to remain neutral and not act in the interests of any particular segment of the population. “If the universities are to render any … service toward the right solution of the social problems of the future,” the document reads, “it is the first essential that the scholars who carry on the work of universities shall not be in a position of dependence upon the favor of any social class or group, that the disinterestedness and impartiality of their inquiries and their conclusions shall be, so far as is humanly possible, beyond the reach of suspicion.” Rather than uphold the neutrality principle, the university explicitly demands that faculty not be disinterested when it comes to underrepresented minorities. Requiring candidates to serve all students equally, in compliance with federal antidiscrimination law, is entirely appropriate; requiring them to grant preferential treatment to specific groups whose underrepresentation is of political concern is not.

In fact, rubrics used by some UC campuses (and adopted by universities nationwide) to evaluate diversity statements penalize applicants who promote neutral principles. For example, applicants at UC-Berkeley were assigned the lowest score of 1-2 (on a five-point scale) if they believe in treating all students equally rather than giving special consideration to underrepresented-minority people.

In addition to the initial screening for conformity with left-wing political values, a series of DEI policies have reshaped, or at the very least reinforced, the faculty’s perception of what is appropriate to believe with regard to racial inequality. The DEI policies stipulate that diversity be considered an integral part of all faculty members’ research and teaching, the establishment and expansion of DEI offices, the use of mandatory diversity statements in faculty searches, the creation of opaque bias-reporting systems, the requirement that faculty participate in diversity-related trainings, and the introduction of equity advisers into academic departments. Cumulatively, these policies convey UC’s institutional stance on the causes of — and remedies for — racial disparities. And in case there was any confusion, the university’s partisan statements on the Black Lives Matter movement and on the Supreme Court’s affirmative-action decision make clear that UC attributes racial disparities to systemic/institutional racism, which administrators pledge to fight by granting special considerations to underrepresented minority people.

One way university leaders are making good on their promise is by penalizing UC faculty for speech that was perceived as insensitive to members of underrepresented minority groups. Here are a few examples:

• Gordon Klein, an accounting lecturer at UCLA, was placed on paid administrative leave for denying students’ demands for a “no-harm” final exam following the death of George Floyd.
  
• William (Ajax) Peris, a political-science lecturer at UCLA, was subjected to a review by the university’s Discrimination Prevention Office for presenting Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” and clips from a documentary on racism, both of which included a racial slur.
  
• Yoel Inbar, a job candidate for a position at UCLA, was effectively vetoed by graduate students who took exception to misgivings he had expressed in a podcast more than four years earlier about the uses of diversity statements in hiring.
  
• Ilya Shapiro, while under paid suspension as executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, was shouted down by students at the University of California’s law school in San Francisco, because he criticized President Biden’s pledge to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.
  
• Edward Livingston, a clinical professor of surgery at UCLA Health, was condemned by the administration for questioning the discourse surrounding structural racism.
  
• At UC-Davis, the chancellor and a vice chancellor issued a defense of mandatory DEI statements after Abigail Thompson, a professor of mathematics, wrote an opinion essay referring to the requirement as a political litmus test.
  
• At UCLA, the anthropology professor P. Jeffrey Brantingham was ostracized and targeted for sanction by his colleagues over his research on urban crime and predictive-policing techniques.
  
• Keith Fink, a lecturer at UCLA who taught “Sex, Politics, and Race: Free Speech on Campus” and criticized the administration’s handling of free-speech issues, was notified that, for unspecified reasons, his contract was not being renewed.
  
• Val Rust, an emeritus professor of education at UCLA, had his course altered by the administration after graduate students complained about a “toxic” racial climate in which Rust’s grading methods were considered a form of microaggression.

And these are just the incidents we know about. Most instances of silencing are probably not publicized. Because records are inaccessible or not kept, we will never know how often UC faculty have been penalized for intentionally or unintentionally undermining DEI, let alone how many have refrained from voicing their concerns for fear of penalties. Similarly, we will never know how many otherwise-qualified candidates for faculty positions were rejected for insufficiently embracing left-wing assumptions about DEI, or how many otherwise-qualified candidates did not apply because they anticipated being rejected for refusal to conform. An empirical investigation of this topic is sorely needed, though one suspects that the UC would do everything they could to block such an inquiry. After all, in recent months they have delayed or refused the release of crucial faculty-search details, even though disclosure is required by the Freedom of Information Act. Interviews with 100 UC faculty members suggest that dissenting views about the impact of DEI culture are not uncommon, but those who hold them are wary of how they will be received.

How did UC become engrossed by DEI politicization? In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, which banned affirmative-action programs in public education and employment. Ever since, the university’s administration has committed itself to finding legal workarounds to increase the number of underrepresented minority students and employees at all levels. To circumvent Proposition 209 and achieve its political goals, UC has embraced DEI activism, which requires abandoning principles of neutrality if those principles are thought to perpetuate racial inequities.

Yet despite these efforts, disparities persist. Rather than reassess left-wing assumptions about the causes of, and remedies to, inequality, the university’s administration doubled down, expanding its DEI policies. As a consequence, faculty members (the vast majority of whom already lean left) were increasingly incentivized to discuss contentious issues, particularly race, from a left-wing perspective. The policy of evaluating DEI statements to make the initial cut in faculty-hiring procedures was the worst affront to neutral principles and most likely functioned as an ideological filter, creating a cohort of UC faculty members who are even more ideologically homogeneous than their predecessors were in 2016. One suspects that today, current and prospective professors whose views may be perceived as undermining DEI are more socially stigmatized and professionally penalized than ever, whereas those whose views align with the university’s DEI commitment are praised, hired, and funded.

How can UC resist political conformism? At a fundamental level, the administration ought not expect, let alone seek to manufacture, equal representation of groups on the basis of any demographic characteristic, including race. The causes of social inequality, the remedies to inequality, and the extent to which inequality is itself a problem are all matters of empirical and philosophical debate. Therefore, the university should not take a position. Instead, it ought to welcome faculty members who offer a diversity of perspectives on the nature and value of diversity.