Following months of criticism from Harvard faculty and prominent donors, the elite university announced it would no longer require diversity statements for its Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).
If you are applying for a tenured position at Harvard, submitting a DEI statement is not required; as Stephen McGuire, a fellow at the American Board of Trustees and Alumni Association, pointed out, applicants will be asked to submit a “work statement.”
A candidate for a tenured professorship at Harvard University could use the statement to describe his or her “efforts to strengthen the academic community, including departments, institutions, and professional societies.”
Harvard Law Professor Calls on University to “Abandon” DEI Statement as “Ideological Pledge of Allegiance”
Following months of criticism from Harvard professors and prominent donors, the elite university announced it would no longer require diversity statements from FAS. (Getty Images)
Our original Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) statement reads: [DEI] And a sense of belonging.”
Harvard’s School of Letters told Fox News Digital that it has “expanded its approach to learning about candidates for academic positions by requiring a broader and more substantial disclosure of their work history as part of the hiring process.”
“With this decision, FAS is realigning its hiring process to its long-standing standards for tenured and tenure-track faculty positions,” the statement continued. “These standards include excellence in research, teaching/advising, and service, which are the three pillars of professorial appointments.”
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a historian at Harvard’s Kennedy School, criticized the decision, arguing that removing DEI language from the application process “may discourage some of the strongest DEI advocates from applying to Harvard, given the broader context of this change.” The Boston Globe report.
Former Harvard University Dean Lawrence Summers celebrated the news on Monday. (Getty Images)
Former Harvard University Dean Lawrence Summers celebrated the news on Monday.
“I am pleased that Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences has dropped the practice of requiring diversity statements and replaced them with statements about university service,” Summers wrote.
“This should signal a major shift toward a stronger emphasis on academic values and identity in personnel decisions,” he continued, adding that “Harvard is finding its way back to getting its core values right.”
Christopher Rufo, an anti-DEI activist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, called the decision a “small victory” in a post on X on Monday.
“This is a small victory, but it shows that our campaign is gaining momentum,” he wrote. “We will not stop until the entire DEI organization is dismantled and salted.”
Elite university drops DEI hiring requirements: ‘It doesn’t work’
Harvard’s decision comes shortly after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became the first elite university to remove a DEI statement from its faculty hiring process.
“The requirement to submit a diversity statement will no longer be part of applications for any faculty position at MIT,” a university spokesperson told Fox News Digital at the time, adding that the decision was made by Dean Sally Kornbluth with the support of the assistant deans, the president and all six faculty chairs.
“My goal is to maximize human talent and attract the best people to MIT and enable them to thrive here,” Kornbluth said. “We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but coercive speech infringes on freedom of expression and doesn’t work.”
Fox News’ Teny Sahakian contributed to this report.
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