On some faculty position advertisements, colleges and universities require applicants to include a statement or supplemental materials about their experiences, viewpoints, and intentions regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in higher education. Heterodox Academy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocates for increasing “viewpoint diversity” in academia, has released a new report regarding the prevalence, distribution, and characteristics of DEI statement requirements among faculty job ads for the 2024-2025 academic year.
The report’s authors examined over 10,000 faculty job postings and found more than one-fifth (22.3 percent) requested DEI-statements or materials. Private institutions were more likely than public institutions to request this information, and public institutions located in coastal states were more likely to do so than those in the Southeast and Midwest. Some 42.8 percent of baccalaureate colleges requested DEI materials.
Notably, requests for DEI statements were found at similar rates regardless of faculty disciplines, challenging assumptions that these topics are limited to certain areas of study. About 25.5 percent of STEM postings, 23.5 percent of humanities advertisements, and 24.8 percent of social science postings requested materials relating to applicants’ DEI experiences.
DEI statement requests were varied depending on institutional type. Some public institutions in states with bans on the use of DEI statements in hiring processes asked their applicants to include such information in cover letters or statements about their teaching philosophies. Additionally, only 15.6 percent of DEI requests mentioned “viewpoint diversity.” According to the report authors, this suggests that requests for DEI information are focused on “demographic diversity rather than intellectual or ideological diversity.”
