The AAUP goes all in for DEI

You know what DEI is, and in case you don’t know AAUP, it’s the American Association of University Professors, the most powerful association of faculty in the country. After dropping their longstanding opposition to academic boycotts, presumably so schools and people could boycott Israel at will, they’ve now pulled another woke-ish and academically harmful move: they’ve issued a statement called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Criteria for Faculty Evaluation” (pdf here).  It’s more or less what you think: a statement that diversity, equity, and inclusion should be an important basis for hiring and promoting faculty. Some excerpts:

The Association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure views the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) criteria in faculty recruitment, promotion, and retention within this broader vision of higher education for the public good. Since the 1990s, many universities and colleges have instituted policies that use DEI criteria in faculty evaluation for appointment, reappointment, tenure, and promotion, including the use of statements that invite or require faculty members to address their skills, competencies, and achievements regarding DEI in teaching, research, and service. Such criteria are one instrument among many that may contribute to evaluating the full range of faculty skills and achievements within a diverse community of students and scholars.

Some critics contend that such policies run afoul of the principles of academic freedom. Specifically, they have characterized DEI statements as “ideological screening tools” and “political litmus tests.” From this perspective, DEI statements are sometimes thought to constitute unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and a threat to faculty members’ academic freedom because they allegedly require candidates to adopt or act upon a set of moral and political views. This committee rejects the notion that the use of DEI criteria for faculty evaluation is categorically incompatible with academic freedom. To the contrary, when implemented appropriately in accordance with sound standards of faculty governance, DEI criteria—including DEI statements—can be a valuable component in the efforts to recruit, hire, and retain a diverse faculty with a breadth of skills needed for excellence in teaching, research, and service.

But objections to DEI by myself and others aren’t based on whether it impinges on “academic freedom”—the freedom of faculty already hired to work on or teach pretty much what they want without interference. Or, as Wikipedia puts it:

Academic freedom is the right of a teacher to instruct and the right of a student to learn in an academic setting unhampered by outside interference. It may also include the right of academics to engage in social and political criticism.

DEI, in contrast, at least as the AAUP construes it, is a program to hire people with the aim of achieving equity (equal representation of all groups).  DEI programs in place aren’t much concerned with viewpoint equity, despite what the statement says, but rather with the AAUP’s undescribed elephant in the room: ethnicity (race) and sex.  When they speak of a “diverse faculty,” they mean racially diverse, not diverse in viewpoint. (One could argue that viewpoint diversity is the most important thing to emphasize, but I’ll leave that aside.) And DEI is certainly an “ideological litmus test”. What else do you think required or invited DEI statements are when used for hiring or promotion? If you don’t write something in line with the progressive view of DEI, you will sleep with the academic fishes.  We know this from seeing how those statements are actually used in academia.

Ergo, DEI initiatives are indeed a political litmus test, requiring fealty to the view that characteristics like ethnic background or sex can outweigh merit in hiring, promotion, or tenure.  Of course nobody wants bigotry in these processes, but it’s strongly disputed about whether one should preferentially hire people to increase the diversity of race or sex. Indeed, the Supreme Court has just outlawed race-based admissions to college, and if that is illegal, so will be race- (or sex-) based and promotion.

If DEI programs were just there to ensure that there was no bigotry that held people back in universities, that would be fine. But it’s not: it’s a program that puts background above merit, is based on dubious premises like “implicit bias,” and is divisive, setting up a hierarchy of people based on their immutable characteristics. And, by placing merit lower than background, it leads to the decline of academic standards (see here for more arguments). In general, DEI programs haven’t worked, and are being dismantled throughout America.

The AAUP keeps issuing these weaselly statements that give their imprimatur to things they won’t say explicitly: it’s okay to boycott Israel, and we should have hiring in which race and sex can outweigh merit.

As one sign of how DEI is ruled out in my school for hiring and promotion, we have the Shils Report, whose summary is this:

On 15 July 1970, the Committee on the Criteria of Academic Appointment was appointed by President Edward H. Levi. This Committee was charged with writing a report that would become the basis for evaluating faculty up for promotion. The Shils report dictates that faculty at the University of Chicago must display distinguished performance in each of the following criteria when being considered for promotion:

• Research
• Teaching and Training, including the supervision of graduate students
• Contribution to intellectual community
• Service

This Committee understood that unless such high standards existed and were used, the University would – indeed – become a pantheon for dead or dying gods incapable of attracting the best minds from around the world.

There is nothing in here about viewpoint diversity, much less equity and the use of sex and ethnicity as criteria for promotion (these same criteria apply to hiring).

The reason for the AAUP’s new statement may be seen in the its insistence that one of the reasons for issuing it is to counteract Republican legislation (they don’t say that explicitly, of course):

Debates about the appropriateness of DEI criteria cannot be understood in isolation from the current political context of higher education in the United States. Wholesale opposition to the use of DEI statements has often gone hand in hand with partisan legislative and other efforts to restrict or ban certain subjects of research and teaching—especially in fields and disciplines that expressly address histories of inequity.⁵ A recent AAUP joint report with the AFT analyzes more than ninety-nine bills representing direct political interference in higher education that have been introduced in more than thirty state legislatures. The report notes four trends: (1) limiting teaching about race, gender, and sexuality (so-called divisive concepts bills); (2) requiring intellectual and viewpoint diversity statements and surveys; (3) cutting funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts; and (4) eliminating tenure for faculty members.⁶ Thus, attacks on DEI have played an integral part in the partisan political playbook to turn back the clock on advances that have been made toward the goal of diversity in the faculty, student body, and areas of study. Furthermore, it is crucial to consider how such attacks can easily reinforce and indeed fuel portrayals of entire fields and disciplines—including ethnic studies, critical race theory, and gender studies—as “political” and “ideological” projects and not serious subjects or research disciplines. When entire fields and subjects related to the study of race and gender, for example, are not considered “intellectual” pursuits, both academic freedom and DEI as social and institutional values are compromised, and the charge of orthodoxy gains purchase. This not only affects the fields and subjects traditionally tarred as ideological but also compromises the progress of knowledge by thwarting interdisciplinary exchange and endangering the very mission of higher education.

But forget about politics. The authors of this statement, probably comprising social scientists and people in the humanities, don’t seem to realize that yes, entire fields of study (the “studies” areas) have indeed been compromised and made into vehicles to push progressive propaganda on students. If you think that a department of race, diaspora, and indigeneity won’t be teaching students what ideological views are acceptable, I have some land in Florida to sell you.

The AAUP statement is “progressive,” but it’s too late. DEI is already crumbling, both in academia and the corporate world.