Michael Chang

The University of California system announced today it will remove “stand-alone diversity statements” from its hiring process to avoid evaluating applicants on issues outside their expertise. As FIRE has long argued, requiring applicants to pledge allegiance to a specific interpretation of DEI too often becomes an ideological litmus test, stifling debate on inherently politicized concepts. This is an important shift in practice for much of the UC system. Its most prestigious campus, Berkeley, used diversity statements to eliminate over 670 candidates from a pool of 893 in 2018. While faculty should not have to endorse DEI, it would be equally bad to mandate they affirm values like “patriotism” or “capitalism,” or to demonstrate opposition to DEI initiatives. Focusing on candidate qualifications over ideological commitments is a massive step forward for one of America’s premier public university systems. Universities are charged with fostering the free exchange of ideas and producing knowledge. For that to happen, faculty must be judged on their academic merit, not on whether they align with popular sentiment. FIRE will continue to monitor academic freedom and the rights of faculty members to express themselves across all of the system's campuses.