John Rosenberg writes for the Martin Center about college professors’ role in promoting diversity.
Ever since Justice Powell’s lone opinion in Bakke allowed the camel’s nose of “diversity” under the anti-discrimination tent, controversy has raged over preferential treatment awarded to college applicants of certain races.
Just as hurricanes often change direction after landfall, the diversity movement has recently taken off in some surprising new directions that deserve public attention.
First came the “diversity statements,” introduced by a smattering of institutions for promotion or tenure and sometimes for all new hires.
Both the prevalence and the required content of these diversity statements has expanded dramatically.
UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, for example, recently released Version 2.1 of a comprehensive “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Statement FAQs” attempting to justify why equity, diversity, and inclusion should “figure into faculty hiring and promotion” and laying out chapter and verse of what should be included in EDI statements. …
… In the beginning, “diversity” was limited to lowering admission standards for some black and Hispanic students so that a few more of them could be admitted to selective institutions. That was followed by similar but limited efforts to hire more black and Hispanic faculty. Now, however, it has expanded into a whole gestalt, complete with its own enforced creed. It increasingly casts a pall of conformity (ironically, the opposite of “diversity” as originally understood) over the entire academy.
