MIT’s banning of diversity statements now official

The other day, taking as my source the publisher of the MIT-centered satirical site The Babbling Beaver, I reported on the Beaver’s claim that MIT had become the first major university to ban diversity statements. Although the site is snarky and not every assertion it makes is true, the publisher affirmed that this one was.

But because of the site’s satirical overtone, several miscreants wrote me that there was no confirmation that the DEI claim was true (I did have some confirmation, but it was confidential). One such miscreant even started his email with “What are you doing with your blog, Jerry?”, a sentence that is both uncivil and inaccurate (this is of course not a “blog,” but a “website”).

But the important thing is that the Beaver’s claim is indeed true: MIT has banned diversity statements. It’s confirmed in the article below by John Sailer at Unherd (click headline to read):

From Sailer:

On Saturday, an MIT spokesperson confirmed in an email to me that “requests for a statement on diversity will no longer be part of applications for any faculty positions at MIT”, adding that the decision was made by embattled MIT President Sally Kornbluth “with the support of the Provost, Chancellor, and all six academic deans”.

. . .This is momentous. The pushback against diversity statements has succeeded almost exclusively at public universities in red states, encouraged or enacted by lawmakers. Conservative states such as Florida, Texas, and Utah have passed laws banning diversity statements at state universities. Some appointed state university leaders, such as the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, have also barred the practice.

The decision at MIT is different — reform from within, prompted by a university president alongside deans and provosts, at a private institution.

It’s very possible that more private universities, and state universities in blue states, will eventually follow MIT’s lead for one basic reason: a significant number of faculty from across the political spectrum simply cannot stand mandatory DEI statements. Last month, Harvard Law School’s Randall Kennedy — a self-described “scholar on the Left committed to struggles for social justice” — described the general sentiment: “It would be hard to overstate the degree to which many academics at Harvard and beyond feel intense and growing resentment against the DEI enterprise because of features that are perhaps most evident in the demand for DEI statements.”

I’d say a statement by “an MIT spokesperson” is evidence enough that the school has deep-sixed diversity statements.  I’ve always opposed them because they constitute compelled speech (your statement has to be “progressive” or it won’t fly), and because if they’re used to show that you’re socially committed, well, there are other ways of doing stuff for society besides furthering DEI. For example, you could work at a soup kitchen for the poor, or tutor illiterate adults, both activities that I have done but wouldn’t give me DEI credits.

But MIT’s getting rid of such statements is, as Sailer said, “momentous.”

The College Fix reports it, too (click below to read), but all it does is repeat what it’s in Sailer’s article as well as in the Babbling Beaver article. Nothing new there.