FIRE attacks AAUP over its views on DEI statements

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the most powerful organization of American academics, issued a statement a while back ditching its previous opposition to boycotts of universities. Such boycotts were no longer, said the AAUP, violations of academic freedom.  Although their statement didn’t mention Israel, it was clear that their statement was meant to put the AAUP’s imprimatur on boycotts of Israeli institutions and academics.  It was wrongheaded and reprehensible.

But wait! There’s more! Now the AAUP has issued a new policy (pdf here) that it’s okay to use DEI statements to evaluate candidates for hiring, retention, tenure, and promotion. DEI statements, they say, are closely connected to academic freedom (academic freedom is the right of faculty to teach whatever they want, within reasonable limits, and to work on whatever they want):

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.² 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.

This is misguided because it okays ideological litmus tests that are the real purpose of DEI statements. Everyone in academia knows that, regardless of what the AAUP says, if you submit a statement saying that you will treat all students equally and fairly, regardless of race, your application or promotion goes into the dumpster.  And this is regardless of whether the DEI standards were confected by “faculty governance.”  And if you want to recruit, hire, and retain a “diverse faculty” (and of course they mean “racially diverse”), you can simply broaden your search, putting some emphasis on minority candidates and thus getting more of them into your pool. But you don’t have to hire or promote them on the basis of race, a move that is probably illegal but hasn’t yet been tested in the courts. Deemphasizing merit in favor of ethnicity—or fealty to a certain ideology—is never a good thing to do.

Anyway, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (the familiar FIRE), has issued a pretty splenetic statement criticizing the AAUP for its new stand. The article is called “The AAUP continues to back away from academic freedom,” and it’s on the mark.  As Special Counsel Robert Shibley writes:

The AAUP insists academic boycotts and DEI hiring criteria won’t threaten academic freedom — as long as everyone is always super careful.

In its latest statement, the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure notes that “some critics” (Hey, that’s us!) contend the use of DEI criteria and mandatory diversity statements in faculty hiring and evaluation can

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.

With the exception of the word “allegedly,” this is a pretty fair description of the main problem with mandatory DEI statements.

FIRE is careful to consider each such policy individually, as not every statement requirement is the same. But in general, when employees or job applicants are required to pledge or prove their allegiance to a school’s interpretation of DEI concepts, we object precisely because ensuring that allegiance is the stated goal of the policy. From the perspective of the policy authors, that’s not a bug, it’s the key feature.

Shibley adds this:

Schools adopting DEI requirements want to filter out people who don’t or can’t agree to act upon the institution’s specific set of views in the classroom and in their service work. If colleges and universities didn’t care whether applicants agreed with their conception of DEI, why would they bother to ask applicants to demonstrate that agreement?

. . . . FIRE isn’t alone in our observation that these policies can operate as ideological filters — many faculty think they do, too. A 2022 FIRE survey found faculty were almost evenly split on whether DEI statements in hiring were a justifiable requirement for a university job (50%) or are an ideological litmus test that violates academic freedom (50%). While that’s bad on its own, a whopping 90% of conservative faculty, the group most likely to dissent from prevailing campus views on DEI, viewed such statements as political litmus tests. The Washington Post’s Editorial Board cited the survey in an op-ed arguing that “[w]hatever their original intent, the use of DEI statements has too often resulted in self-censorship and ideological policing.”

So are these critics right? The AAUP’s answer is a firm “not necessarily.”

The statements are, of course, political litmus tests. Berkeley used them by giving numerical rankings to three aspects of the statements (past involvement in DEI, philosophy of DEI, and a candidate’s plans to advance DEI), and simply throwing away those statements whose scores weren’t high enough—that is, “progressive” enough.  They didn’t even consider academic merit. And that is an ideological litmus test. Those tests are illegal.

Shibley finishes by excoriating the AAUP:

The AAUP’s transformation into just another political organization is highly discouraging. America needs an AAUP that is willing to go to the mat to defend professors even when they have something unpopular to say. More than members of any other profession, academics have reason to understand that they may someday be the first to grasp an unsuspected and perhaps unwelcome truth. Since 1915, the AAUP has been the traditional first stop for those who find themselves facing trouble for doing so. If the organization continues on its current course, it is hard to imagine that remaining true for much longer.

Finally, over at my colleague Brian Leiter’s website, he also takes issue with the AAUP policy and quotes his earlier opposition as well as some from a professor from Bates College:

Oh how the mighty have fallen; Committee A of the AAUP used to be a reliable defender of academic freedom, but since its capture by the enemies of academic freedom, it has been going downhill fast.   The latest absurd statement in defense of “diversity statements” reflects pretty clearly the influence of UC Davis law professor Brian Soucek (a member of Committee A), whose mistaken views we have discussed many times before (see especially).   Let me quote the appropriately scathing comments of Professor Tyler Harper (Bates College) from Twitter:

The AAUP statement insisting that mandatory DEI statements are compatible with academic freedom—and not political litmus tests—is ridiculous. DEI is not a neutral framework dropped from the sky, it’s an ideology about which reasonable people—including people of color—disagree.  I have benefited from and support affirmative action, and there are some things that fall under the rubric of DEI that I agree with. But pretending that DEI is not a political perspective or framework—when only people of one political persuasion support DEI—is a flagrant lie.  Evaluating a professor’s teaching with respect to their adherence to a DEI framework is a clear violation of academic freedom. DEI is not some bland affirmation that diversity is important and all people deserve accessible education. It’s a specific set of ideas.

Professor Harper adds:  “Recent events should have made clear that professors, particularly those of us on the left, must defend academic freedom without compromise, even when we disagree with how others use that freedom. When academic freedom is softened, we are always the ones who end up losing.”

Leiter adds:

DEI is an extramural social goal, just as much as being pro-America in MAGA-land is.  Committee A is dead.  We are fortunate that both FIRE and the Academic Freedom Alliance are actually still defending academic freedom.   I would encourage all readers to resign their membership in the AAUP.  It’s a disgrace.

Well, I’ve never been a member, so I couldn’t resign, but I would if I were a member.  The AAUP is indeed a disgrace, capitulating first to anti-Israel sentiment and now to those who want academics to show fealty to the tenets of progressivism.

Some day someone is going to challenge diversity statements in court. That hasn’t yet happened because someone with that kind of “standing” would lose any chance to be hired or promoted. But if some day some brave person does object, and can prove that he or she was hurt by an inadequate DEI statement, the case will work its way up to the Supreme Court, which will rule that DEI statements are illegal.