Briggs Answers His Mandated Diversity Inclusion & Equity Loyalty Questions

It's job search time. Here are the questions the university's HR department insists every applicant answer.

I preview my answers for you here. You are welcome to copy these for your own loyalty oath.

Question One

How do you think about diversity, equity, and inclusion [DIE], including factors that influence underrepresentation of particular groups in academia, and the experiences of individuals from particular groups within academia?

How I think about Diversity, Inclusion & Equity (DIE) is this: it is one of the most asinine, harmful and destructive ideas ever invented by academia, which when you consider they also invented feminism and scientism, it is really saying something.

There will always be "underrepresentation" of groups in academia, and in any community. It is impossible to have "one of each" everywhere, and attempting that which is impossible is insane. Forcing people to DIE means there will certainly be an "underrepresentation" of those able to do the job of professing truth.

Indeed, when you DIE, there will be an "overrepresentation" of those who cannot, and so resort to professing falsehoods. This was merely terrible when these people were shunted off into Studies departments, where they could be watched and monitored, but now they will be everywhere, therefore standards will begin their long slide into a black hole.

I think the experiences of those who are "underrepresented" in academia are as interesting as those who are "wellrepresented", which is to say, not interesting at all. If a professor is running about the campus looking for people who boast of her victim characteristics, she will not be doing her job, but rabble rousing. Universities should not hire rabble rousers.

Or that same professor might sit and lament, "They only hired me because I am a victim!" She would be right, and glum about it, and it would make me sad to think of her forlorn state, and I don't like to be sad.

Question Two

Have you been involved in activities to advance or promote a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment or institution? We note that activities could be large and organized or they could be specific and very personal. Please tell us the role that you played, what you did, what happened and what you learned from the experience.

I have never tried to get any institution to DIE, and I have never promoted any individual to DIE. Though now that many bad institutions and people are on the path to DIE, I wish they would hurry up and do it so that they can be replaced by good institutions and people who do not wish to DIE.

That's not to say I haven't learned anything from the experience of watching elites pressure people to DIE. I have. I learned that people pushing DIE are either addled ideologues unable to think of the consequences of their actions, or are just simple people swept up in culture that hates its traditions and history, and who believe they are doing the right thing. That they are wrong and will never be able to see it until it is too late also makes me sad.

Question Three

Coming into a new institution will involve changes and being busy! Please let us know how you plan to integrate DIE into your role as a faculty member, including new or existing initiatives you would like to be involved with.

I sure like to be busy! And to use exclamation points! These bring out my feminine side.

I plan on integrating DIE by identifying all colleagues who are devoted to it, and then I will stay far, far away from them. I will inform all my students that I believe DIE stands for differential integral equations, or something like that, which will frighten the bad ones away.

I expect that one or more students will come to me and say "I want to DIE, and not do homework like the others." And I will tell that student, "That is what you should do then. But please do it with somebody else."

Do I get the job?

DIE DIE!

These questions were taken from AEI's new report "Other Than Merit: The Prevalence of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statements in University Hiring", which is hilarious in many ways.

Regular readers already knew of university loyalty oaths, so they come as no surprise to us. And we've seen that these political tests have, as all bad ideas do, have seeped out of universities and into public companies.

What's funny here is that (as one source summarized):

...the statements are significantly more common at elite schools than non-elite ones; and that jobs in STEM---science, technology, engineering, and mathematics---are just as likely as jobs in the social sciences to require a diversity statement from applicants.

The last finding surprised Paul, the director of research at the Educational Freedom Institute, who told the Washington Free Beacon it was a testament to the sway of DEI ideology in academia. He and Maranto had hypothesized that the more empirical a field, the less likely it would be to use "soft" criteria when evaluating applicants. But when they actually ran the data, that hypothesis collapsed.

"The most surprising finding of the paper is that these requirements are not just limited to the softer humanities," Paul said. "I would have expected these statements to be less common in math and engineering, but they're not."

So long, Higher Education, we hardly knew ye.

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