Mandatory DEI statements are becoming the norm in academic hiring

I don't know how "right-wing" became a slur, but it's unhealthy for people to hold their opposition with such low regard.

Progressive politics (typically left-leaning) is the idea of making "progress" (read: change), so most issues raised if not implemented or occurring already, will occur in the near future.

Conservative politics (typically right-leaning) is the idea of conserving the current way of life, but they are rarely successful and only serve to slow down policies. Conservatism for the most part is a mostly liberal position. Most honest people would agree there is a great advantage to making change slowly and carefully - all the longest living institutions (up until recently) survived by doing this.

The problem in the US is that conservatism is also conflated with lots of other random ideas, like religion and right-wing policies (anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, etc). There's no way to vote for the parts you like without voting for the parts you don't like.

Once again, the purpose of a DEI statement is not to articulate how much you agree (or disagree) with progressive ideology. Doing either will sink your application.

The point of the essay is to describe how you handle on the job challenges related to diversity, because they are not abstract. Discussions of trans kids, sick people, blind people, wheelchair bound people, etc. are abstract to many here on HN, because meeting and serving the needs of such people is not part of the daily job description of the commentariat here. But it is part of the daily job of a professor, so it’s essentially addressed in the job application. Could you imagine giving your political views during a C++ coding interview? DEI statements are no different.

Just because the political parties have made diversity into a political issue, doesn’t mean it’s a political issue in our department during the hiring process. We never talk about candidates with any political colorings, only about their ideas and experience related to the job.

The key mistake many posters here are making (including you) is assuming this process is carried out by political actors looking to implement an agenda. Maybe you can find instances of that (as you can anywhere), but it’s mostly people just looking to hire a colleague, and trying to find the best one. It’s not political. Consider yourself lucky that political parties haven’t turned your hiring process at your job into a political football. I didn’t ask for this grief.

> What is a salient position? If only one world view is credited as being "salient", then it is a de facto political litmus test.

The salient position is that: the classroom is diverse, and that creates challenges in teaching. Any denial of that is to deny the reality of the job. That’s not a political litmus test, that is a job qualification test. Every member of the faculty knows this to be true from experience, from the famously conservative prof in the bio department, to the purple haired feminist in the sociology department. To deny this on your application is to telegraph you are willing to put your own political feelings ahead of the realities of the job.

Moreover, when an applicant parrots anodyne platitudes about how they treat every student equally, they neglect an opportunity to set oneself apart by highlighting experience in this area. For instance pronouns are a hot button issue. Some applicants will make some big deal about pronouns not being necessary, and we will have to reject that application because we all have our pronouns in our signatures. Not for political reasons, but because we have many trans students, and it makes things easier for everyone when pronouns are used upfront; when you have a Frank on your roster who is wearing a dress and lipstick and goes by Francine, having a protocol of pronoun visibility reduces friction in the classroom. It makes Francine feel welcomed and it helps her classmates as well. It’s a net win for everyone, and so political options about tans and pronouns are just not needed. You may feel political about pronouns, but our acceptance and usage of them is a practical matter for us because we have trans customers. Therefore arguments from a political position have no place in a DEI statement. You can argue that they aren’t practically needed, but that will go against our experience.

Feel free to hold whatever political opinion you want. Like I said, the bio prof is famously conservative. But you should keep your politics to yourself, especially during the application process. I believe that’s universally applicable advise.

Does it help female students, knowing that they have to accommodate this misogyny?

But I can guarantee that at least some of your female students are scoffing at the misogynistic idea that "woman = lipstick and dress and she/her pronouns".