[whatshisface]

The requests are worded in a way that makes people think they're ideological because (as far as I can tell) the people who added it to the requirements were heavily influenced by their ideological commitments. The statements are then reviewed by volunteers taken from the broader community, who aren't going to rate "contributions to diversity" too highly if they're described with an extreme degree of force.

If the people writing the calls wanted the same things as the people reviewing the submissions, they would say, "tell us about your experiences with normal HR tasks."

[garden_hermit]

In almost every case I've seen, the statements are in fact worded in terms of specific contributions. The most general terminology I've seen is requesting the candidate to explain their role "advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion"—to which the best statements respond with (1) their experiences with diverse classrooms/staff, and (2) their specific strategies for approaching these issues.

I have not really encountered instructions that I would misconstrue to be an ideological litmus test, and the majority of submissions that I have reviewed do not in fact talk about the candidate's ideological priors.

[whatshisface]

Calling it diversity is a huge ideological presupposition. Two white guys can create a hostile work environment for a third, there's nothing diversity specific about it. This is reflected in the way everyone thinks about it - you're not checking to see whether the experiences they're describing crossed the right identity boundaries, you're judging it according to the wrongs dealt and the submitter's sense of balance.

[garden_hermit]

Institutions tend to define diversity broadly, including diversity in terms of race, nationality, gender, socioeconomic status, and so on. I don't talk much about race or gender in my own statements, instead focusing on first-generation students and socio-economic status. This seems not to have hurt me.

I get that the way people think about these statements is different than the way they actually are; I just think people are wrong and that their impression is informed by social media. If it helps, I would be happy to rebrand "DEI Statement" to "Don't be an asshole and also try to keep the peace with everyone Statement".

[whatshisface]

I think we agree although there's a slight miscommunication, you're not actually including socioeconomic status in your rephrased statement. Like we would both say, if there were three identical twins and two of them were picking on the other, that would merit the exact same intervention as if they weren't identical twins.