Former Boston-based Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier, MD, waded into the debate over faculty candidate diversity statements this past weekend, calling the requirement "an affront to academic freedom," according to Inside Higher Ed.
Many universities, including UC Los Angeles, are requiring prospective faculty candidates to write diversity and inclusion statements, which describe their interest in and work on promoting equity, diversity and inclusion. A UCLA spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed the goal of such statements is to make the faculty candidate evaluation process more explicit and to "gain better information about a candidate's contributions to diversity and equal opportunity."
Here are four things to know:
1. Dr. Flier, who served as dean of Harvard Medical School from 2007-16, tweeted Nov. 11: "Requiring [diversity and inclusion] statements in applications for appointments and promotions is an affront to academic freedom, and diminishes the true value of diversity, equity of inclusion by trivializing it." His comments were in response to a recent article by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education that similarly criticized the necessity and use of equity, diversity and inclusion — or EDI — statements.
2. Dr. Flier's comments drew both support and criticism from other academics in the field. Some responses cited Harvard's own issues with weighing diversity in admissions — an issue that's currently being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
3. In a Nov. 11 email to Insider Higher Ed, Dr. Flier said the reaction to his initial tweet was "vastly bigger than any [reaction] I had before," and that many of the negative commenters "missed the point, and misunderstood why I was taking the view that I did." He said his primary issue with such statements is that the faculty hiring process, which "should mainly be an objective evaluation of a faculty member's accomplishments and reputation will now potentially be influenced by a politically contentious set of factors that will likely be gamed. And even more, this opens up academic assessment to even further inroads from political influences, which was well known in prior history."
4. However, the UCLA spokesperson told the publication EDI statements do not alter the main criteria for evaluating faculty candidates and that the practice "differs little from comparable requirements throughout higher education for a teaching statement or statement of research interests."
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