Who Cares About Diversity?
12th November 2022
All across the Academy, schools are requiring “Diversity Statements” as a condition for new hires. Everyone has to submit a statement explaining how they are going to contribute to “diversity”. What you’re supposed to do in these, and what everyone damn well knows you’re supposed to do, is (i) talk about your race, gender, and other “identity group” traits that it would be illegal for the university to explicitly ask you about, and (ii) talk about your activism on behalf of left-wing identity politics. Note: If you write a statement merely explaining how you will scrupulously avoid discriminating, or explaining how you will contribute to intellectual diversity, your application will be tossed in the trash. No university will say this out loud (yet?), but, again, everyone knows that.
These Diversity Statements, as a recent commentator notes, are the secular version of the Statements of Faith long used by religious schools.