The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has discontinued the use of required diversity, equity and inclusion statements in hiring, becoming the first top U.S. university to drop the ideological litmus tests on its own initiative after concluding that “they don’t work.”
MIT President Sally Kornbluth made the decision to abandon the DEI requirement for faculty hiring with the support of the provost, chancellor and all six academic deans, according to a statement to media outlets.
Ms. Kornbluth said that the university would seek to “tap into the full scope of human talent, to bring the very best to MIT, and to make sure they thrive once here.”
“We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work,” she said in the statement.
MIT’s DEI requirement involved more than signing a pledge to support diversity.
Applicants were told to write a statement showing that “you care about the inclusion of many forms of identity in academia and in your field,” including race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, age and “ability status.”
Candidates were also informed that “it may be appropriate to acknowledge aspects of your own marginalized identity and/or your own privilege,” but that the focus of the statement should be on what they have done in previous jobs and would do at MIT to advance the DEI agenda.
“Is that an ideological litmus test? I believe it is, especially when you start to see how these statements are used in practice,” Steve McGuire, a fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, wrote on the social-media platform X.
MIT’s decision to pull the plug on DEI drew applause from conservatives and free-speech advocates.
Former Harvard President Lawrence Summers said on X that “I was delighted to see my Alma mater MIT eliminate required diversity statements.”
“Of course achieving a diverse faculty, including on ideology, is important but requiring statements of fealty from faculty job candidates is an affront to almost every academic freedom value,” Mr. Summers said. “Harvard’s leadership knows that diversity statements are morally bankrupt. Whether they follow MIT’s lead is a test of courage for them.”
That said, MIT didn’t exactly trumpet its turnaround.
The Babbling Beaver, a satire site by “transgressive nerds at MIT,” first reported the university’s decision in a Saturday post.
“Quietly, in the dead of night, with neither announcement nor fanfare, MIT President Spineless Sally Kornbluth did the right thing,” said the Babbling Beaver. “MIT bans DEI statements.”
NEW: MIT has banned the use of DEI statements for faculty hiring and promotions.
— John Sailer (@JohnDSailer) May 4, 2024
This is huge, a turning point — the policy, functionally an ideological weed-out tool, is widely unpopular in academia, but MIT is the first elite private institution to pull the plug. pic.twitter.com/Ix3haXP4j9
The university first acknowledged the decision publicly in a Sunday statement to the UnHerd, a British news and opinion outlet, which called the reversal “momentous.”
A handful of red states have banned DEI statements at state universities, but the “decision at MIT is different — reform from within, prompted by a university president alongside deans and provosts, at a private institution,” said UnHerd writer John Sailer.
Dropping DEI statements for applicants doesn’t mean MIT has abandoned DEI entirely.
The university still has DEI initiatives embedded in its campus bureaucracy, such as the MIT School of Science Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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