Posted on 06/04/24
| News Source: Washington Times
The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences announced that it will scrap diversity statements in hiring, eliminating the requirement for tenure-track applicants to submit what critics have decried as ideologically motivated loyalty oaths.
Dean of Faculty Affairs and Planning Nina Zipser said in an email Monday that the decision to drop the “diversity, inclusion and belonging” mandate came after feedback from “numerous faculty members” who found the statement “too narrow,” according to the Harvard Crimson.
The Harvard FAS, the university’s largest faculty organization, had previously required a statement from job candidates on their “efforts to encourage diversity, inclusion and belonging, including past, current and anticipated future contributions in these areas.”
The move comes as Harvard struggles to recover from a year in which the university faced sharp criticism of what critics said was rising campus antisemitism sentiment triggered by the Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, a climate traced to the anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian DEI culture in academia.
Last week, Harvard announced that, as an institution, it will no longer take positions on hot-button social and political issues, citing a faculty-led working group that recommended against making “official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.”
Public universities have rolled back their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in response to legislation in GOP-led states, but Harvard’s decision to pull back shows that even famously liberal colleges in solidly blue states are having second thoughts about DEI.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first leading private institution to dump its DEI requirement in hiring, saying last month that the “compelled statements” impinge on academic freedom and “don’t work.”