Although requests for DEI statements in faculty hiring may be well-intentioned, they can actually undermine open inquiry by setting up ideological filters that exclude those who don’t share – or are unwilling to pretend they share – specific political opinions and worldviews. As emphasized in Open Inquiry U: Heterodox Academy's Four-Point Agenda for Reforming Colleges and Universities, eliminating ideological litmus tests of all kinds, including requirements for DEI statements, is a key step towards cultivating open inquiry and viewpoint diversity on campuses.

But how common is the practice of asking for DEI statements in faculty hiring, and what patterns exist among such requests?

Curious to know, we used AI to review 10,000 position ads for higher ed faculty posted in Fall 2024. The results are shown in Heterodox Academy’s latest research report, What’s Going On With DEI Statements in Faculty Hiring? Analysis of Faculty Job Ads from Fall 2024.

At the top level, we found that 22.3%, or over one out of every five, of the 10,000 faculty job advertisements analyzed requested some kind of DEI-related material as a part of the application process. In other words, about one out of every five faculty members hired within the last year probably had to espouse a particular set of political views to have a chance of landing the jobs they sought.

Our study also found that private institutions were more likely than public institutions to ask for DEI statements: nineteen percent of ads from public institutions requested DEI statements, compared to over 28% of ads from private institutions. This is not too surprising, given that there are many states which have banned DEI initiatives at public institutions. But there was also variation among public institutions, with West Coast and New England institutions requesting DEI statements at higher rates than other public institutions.

Interestingly, faculty jobs in STEM fields requested DEI materials at rates comparable to other disciplines, with 25.5% of STEM job ads requesting DEI statements compared to 23.5% of humanities ads and 24.8% of social science ads. There is a common perception that the humanities and the social sciences engage in DEI politicking more than STEM fields, but the numbers look pretty similar among all these areas. Professional and interdisciplinary fields such as business and law had the lowest share of DEI statement requests, at 11%.

We also considered the extent to which institutions specifically sought out viewpoint diversity among prospective faculty candidates, finding that about 15% of job ads mentioned viewpoint diversity or similar concepts. As institutions back away from DEI, future research into trends in “viewpoint diversity” related language in faculty hiring may indicate how universities are employing that concept.

Read the full HxA research report here to get a better sense of recent trends in ideological signalling in faculty hiring, and check out some of our upcoming events to learn how you can promote a culture of open inquiry at your own institution.