AAUP releases statement defending DEI in higher education

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released a new statement last week, proposing diversity, equity, and inclusion criteria for what it calls “faculty evaluation.”

The statement specifically mentions DEI statements as useful tools for increasing and maintaining faculty diversity and defends critical race theory and gender studies. 

“Colleges and universities can utilize DEI criteria, including DEI statements, that require faculty members to demonstrate the professional competencies necessary for realizing diversity goals, including the recruitment and retention of historically underrepresented students,” the association says in one of its policy recommendations.

The association comprises faculty members at colleges and universities across the country.

“This committee rejects the notion that the use of DEI criteria for faculty evaluation is categorically incompatible with academic freedom,” the Wednesday, October 9 statement says. “To the contrary, when implemented appropriately in accordance with sound standards of faculty governance, DEI criteria—including DEI statements—can be a valuable component in the efforts to recruit, hire, and retain a diverse faculty with a breadth of skills needed for excellence in teaching, research, and service.”

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Many colleges and universities require diversity statements. A 2021 study determined that roughly one-fifth of university jobs require applicants to submit such statements.

AAUP’s statement challenges the idea that requiring faculty applicants to demonstrate commitment to DEI is the same as requiring an encompassing view.

“Criticisms of DEI statements and other criteria often conflate social and institutional values with imposed orthodoxies,” it says. “Sweeping or abstract criticisms of DEI criteria fundamentally—and often deliberately—misunderstand and misrepresent this distinction.”

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Later in the statement, the AAUP comes to the defense of identity-based studies.

“It is crucial to consider how such attacks can easily reinforce and indeed fuel portrayals of entire fields and disciplines—including ethnic studies, critical race theory, and gender studies—as ‘political’ and ‘ideological’ projects and not serious subjects or research disciplines,” it says.

Many states have moved to ban public funds from going toward diversity, equity, and inclusion over the last year, including Florida, Texas, and Utah.

In response, colleges and universities have dismantled DEI offices and ceased to require DEI statements. Identity-based students groups can no longer receive funds from public universities. 

For example, the University of Alabama’s student government eliminated its “Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” replacing it with the “Vice President for Belonging and Wellness.”

Campus Reform contacted the American Association of University Professors for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.