A math professor who objects to diversity statements

A math professor who objects to diversity statements
theatlantic.com

“I grew up in the Soviet Union, where people had to affirm their fealty to ideals, and the leaders embodying those ideals, on a daily basis,” he told me. “As years went by, I observed the remarkable ease with which passionate communists turned first into passionate pro-Western liberals and then into passionate nationalists. This lived experience and also common sense convince me that only true conformists excel in this game. Do we really want our math departments to be populated by conformists?”

Barvinok insists that it isn’t diversity to which he objects. Any coerced statement, he says, would trouble him as much. “Even if one is required to say ‘I passionately believe that water would certainly wet us, as fire would certainly burn,’” he wrote in his resignation letter, “the routine affirmation of one’s beliefs as a precondition of making a living constitutes compelled speech and corrupts everyone who participates in the performance.”'

It was a common theme in Soviet Union that to advance academically you had to produce work that somehow endorsed communism and communists, but especially Marx and Lenin. Despite the fact that Lenin was a mass murdering terrorist, he was idealized by the regime as a near god in Soviet Union. It was also clear to many thinking people that the communist regime is oppressive and absurd. Yet you had to comply if you wanted to have a meaningful career.