Opinion: Why ask applicants for a diversity statement?

By Jim Moore, Professor Emeritus of Industrial and Systems Engineering at USC Viterbi

Epstein Department Colleagues,

The sentence in the solicitation below, “Applicants are encouraged to provide a succinct statement on fostering an environment of diversity and inclusion.,” gives me great pause. 

A so-called voluntary statement of this sort will not be voluntary in practice. The department is asking for a diversity statement, and you are fully expecting one.  Labeling the submission “voluntary” makes the department and the school appear manipulative, even a little cowardly.

My experience is that, at least in the case of our department, these statements are involuntary in fact in addition to practice. When applicants we like have shown the audacity not to submit one to the department, perhaps because they consider the request unprincipled in the current climate, the department has gone back to such applicants to ask for a statement. I expect this is not inevitably the case, but I have seen us do it. It behooves the organization to examine why we do this.  

We all want more representation in the academy from multiple groups. It is a big tent. If applicants invest their attention in promoting this outcome as an aspect of their service, good for them, more power to them. Still, what elevates this focus sufficiently for the department to call it out relative to other service activities, or relative to teaching and research?

Is this a litmus test intended to identify commitment to a particular point of view? I know the department as a group well enough to believe that it is not, with a few exceptions; but any applicant responding to the department will suspect that it is a political litmus test. Why put them in this position? Does this help the department to recruit, and if so how?  How would the department react to an applicant who focuses on view point diversity, or who insists on never elevating identity above merit and performance in resource or personnel decisions because they find doing so morally deficient, or who asserts that focusing on equitable outcomes is wrong-headed because what matters is equal opportunity?  

What would the department think of an applicant with this perspective?  Would these positions weaken or strengthen an application? Why?  

Suppose the department gets diversity responses you like, whatever they are. How do you trade these off against the teaching, research, or the quality of the scientific ideas presented in the application? Would you? If not, then why ask applicants for a diversity statement?

Is inviting a voluntary diversity statement just pro forma language intended to satisfy the Engineering Dean’s office? If the department is responding to the Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs, you have no way of knowing the Dean’s position. The Vice Dean goes his own way on diversity matters and the Dean does not want to know the specifics of his choices.  The Dean works hard not to know. Plausible deniability is his favorite state of being.

Wanting some insight into an applicant’s capacity for open-ended, divergent thinking is quite reasonable, even prudent, so long as you have a sense of what you are looking for. Why be so restrictive with respect to the question you put to applicants for faculty positions? Why not invite a voluntary statement on a matter of contemporary importance outside of the discipline?  There is plenty of room for an identity-based response in such invitation, but you might instead get something important.