Over the next decade, <i>SFFA</i> will dramatically pare back this sort of thing. While decided in the context of college admissions, that case strongly suggests that, in general, “diversity” is an inadequate justification for race conscious hiring and admissions decisions.<p>There’s an important cert petition in the Supreme Court about whether institutions can use putatively race neutral means to achieve impermissible racial rebalancing, where there is evidence that the race neutral criteria are a proxy for race: <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/23-170.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/do...</a>. That’s already the general rule for discrimination law, but the Supreme Court may have to clarify that again here.<p>Some of these job postings may survive, if the evidence shows that the aim was really to get professors (of any race) to study in new, topical fields, rather than being a pretext for hiring more people of a particular race.
Several people have told me of experiences where more or less the same Diversity statement was graded differently for different candidates. In other words, the graders were googling the candidate and making a separate judgement on the person.<p>I think it would be helpful if the believers in DEI statements start using anonymous readers.
Somebody please explain why every academic department in the western world does this, without assuming any motive other than pure financial self-interest.