Yale wants science profs to 'promote DEI through teaching'

"Diversity" statements are out for job applicants at MIT: Would-professors won't have to pledge their loyalty to Diversity Equity and Inclusion to be considered.

“We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work," said MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth.

These statements serve as an "ideological litmus test," says the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). An upcoming study finds that applicants who write about socioeconomic or intellectual diversity lose points. Only race, ethnicity or gender are acceptable.  

"The last thing academia -- or the country -- needs is another incentive for people to be insincere or dishonest," editorializes the Washington Post. Universities are supposed "to encourage a free exchange of ideas, seek the truth wherever it may lead, and to elevate intellectual curiosity and openness among both faculty and students" -- not engage in "ideological policing."

The stakes can be high, writes the Post. In a faculty search at Berkeley, "75 percent of applicants were screened out of consideration — irrespective of criteria such as teaching ability and research skills.”

While Republican-dominated states are trying to lay off DEI staffers at state universities, elite private schools aren't emulating MIT, writes John Sailer of the National Association of Scholars on The Free Press. Not yet, anyhow.

Yale wants biophysics and biochemistry professors to place "DEI at the center of every decision," according to its website, Sailer writes. Every job advertised links to a rubric that tests candidates’ “knowledge of DEI and commitment to promoting DEI,” their “past DEI experiences and activities,” and their “future DEI goals and plans.”

The "exceptional" candidate will have a “clear and detailed plan for promoting DEI through teaching,” he notes. Anyone who expresses doubts about microaggressions, implicit bias and systemic racism need not apply.

"Diversity statements raise serious issues about free expression, and they also signal an ill-advised shift in priority — away from disciplinary excellence and toward social activism," writes Sailer.

Cornell's DEI policies are "corrupting" its science, math and engineering hiring, according to a report by the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, writes Carl Campanile in the New York Post. Twenty-one percent of applicants in a recent faculty search in a hard-science field were rejected because their views were deemed ideologically suspect, according to the alliance.