It seems that the academic job market might have gone totally to the dogs since I last took an interest in it:
Faculty job postings are increasingly asking for diversity statements, in addition to research and teaching statements. According to the University of California at San Diego website, “[t]he purpose of the [diversity] statement is to identify candidates who have professional skills, experience, and/or willingness to engage in activities that would enhance campus diversity and equity efforts [emphasis added].”
I sincerely hope this is not true and nobody as doing this crap other than the notoriously stupid administration of the UC. Because this is absolutely vomit-inducing and only tremendous desperation could force a miserable academic to participate in this travesty.
Shit, I just ate and now the breakfast wants to come back up and meet this horrible news head-on.
Clarissa's Blog 
I am chairing a search committee and the order came down from on high that–in addition to the usual statement of teaching philosophy–every candidate must submit a statement on how they will contribute to diversity and student success. In addition, my dean decided to lengthen the usual diversity boilerplate in the job ad. Since some of the venues that we advertise in charge by the line, adding that verbiage cost us real money.
It’s all just verbiage for the sake of verbiage, not action. It’s basically masturbation for administrators.
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My previous attempt at a post didn’t show up. In short, I’m not at a UC, but we just started requiring faculty job applicants to include a statement about how they will contribute to diversity and student success. Were I posting under my real name I would say that this is a great and important thing that will help our campus make great leaps forward over the course of the next five year plan. Since I’m posting this anonymously I’ll say that it’s stupid, and all it does is force the applicants to produce boilerplate.
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I so agree. It’s dumb, ridiculous and humiliating.
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But there’s a certain kind of administrator who just eats that shit up.
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That’s true. But academics don’t have to pander to administrators.
This morning I was one of the people conducting an interview. An administrator had given me a list of questions. I threw it in the trash and asked my own questions. And the sky didn’t fall down. 🙂
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We can’t get our search approved unless we agree to require all of the candidates to submit one of these statements. The requirements for the candidates’ application package are posted online, and they’ll see if we don’t list a diversity statement as a requirement. It’s as simple as that.
When you’re talking to a person behind closed doors, without a recording device, you can ask whatever questions you want. But when we produce a written ad with a list of requirements, we have to list whatever documents the Dean wants or the search will be canceled.
And this Dean has drunk deeply of the diversity kool-aid. They demanded that we add more diversity boilerplate to the job ad, and there was nobody above the Dean demanding it. The Dean went beyond the requirements of the campus Diversity Office because they wanted to. If we didn’t add that boilerplate the evidence of our refusal would be out there in public for everyone to see, and then the search would be canceled.
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This sounds very freaky. That’s one obnoxious dean. You have my sympathy!
But at least now I know that academics are not always to blame for this.
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Well, since we’re not legally allowed to require that people disclose their race and sexual orientation, I view diversity statements as a way for people to ask the unaskable question. Certainly a gay person or a minority will say, “I will bring diversity to campus and support diversity on campus because of my OWN diversity,” (if they are in fact “diverse” in the way the administration means) and therefore, administrators can say, “Oh look, we are interviewing (at minimum) non-white, non-straight people! Aren’t we awesome!?” without having to ask the questions about the applicant’s own diversity (or not).
When I’ve applied for jobs, it has been mostly liberal enclaves (California, Oregon, etc.) that ask for diversity statements. Red states (that I’ve applied to) haven’t asked yet — at least at the places I’ve applied.
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It seems like a backdoor way to get people to disclose what committees they will “volunteer” to be on.
It was very obvious to me as a student which professors taught material as an extension of their own specialities and personal interests and which were checking boxes. It was also obvious which professors were interested in helping students in their academic pursuits and who couldn’t be bothered.
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If I’m helping a student to get funding or opportunities they won’t normally get, I don’t do it because I want to pad my portfolio. I do it because it is right. It’s not for sale. It’s not like, “Hey, I need 2 more blacks and 1 more lesbian to make my job application look really nice.” I don’t want to be that kind of person, it’s disgusting. And like you say, students know anyway.
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Obviously what they really want is to practice affirmative action without admitting it. If somebody is a member of an under-represented group, somewhere in their diversity statement they will almost certainly say “As a woman in engineering…” or “As a member of the LGBT community…” or “As a person of color…” And then the search committee will have the information that they need.
Remember, gender might be obvious from name in many cases, but not always. Is Chris a woman or man? What about Pat? Or Xiaoyu?
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“f somebody is a member of an under-represented group, somewhere in their diversity statement they will almost certainly say “As a woman in engineering…” or “As a member of the LGBT community…” or “As a person of color…” And then the search committee will have the information that they need.”
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I don’t remember whether it was a UC or not (it might have been), but I do remember having to write a “Diversity Statement” when I was applying for undergrad back in 2008… I am pretty sure it was a UC, but I’ve manged to block it from my mind, and my college applications are no longer on my hard drive, so I can’t double check. So it is not an entirely new phenomenon, though perhaps is new for faculty.
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I’m not sure I understand. What can a prospective student write in a diversity statement?
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In the 1990’s California outlawed race-based affirmative action. However, they didn’t explicitly outlaw taking disadvantage into account. As a result, the UC system started asking applicants to write a separate essay, besides their main application essay, in which they talk about overcoming hardship of some sort.
When high school seniors were asked to talk about the hardships in their lives, some of them did indeed talk about growing up poor, disabled, etc. Others talked about being picked on by kids at school, or mom and dad liking their siblings better, etc. This was all predictable.
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