Why Academic Freedom Needs DEI
The Critical Legal Collective | 5 December 2024 | LPE
Earlier this fall, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released a statement on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Criteria and Faculty Evaluation.” The statement offers the AAUP’s take on “DEI Statements” – the common term for statements that document a professor’s contributions to a more diverse, equitable or inclusive department, institution or society. Within days, Brian Leiter, a well-respected legal scholar with a popular academic blog, called the AAUP a “disgrace,” “now irrelevant to the fight for academic freedom.” As a collective of critical scholars acutely concerned about escalating attacks on academic freedom, the post caught our eye. What could have warranted such searing condemnation? Did the AAUP lack nuance? Overstate the case for DEI statements? Cede faculty power? Enable attacks on university independence, faculty speech and student protest?
The answer to each of these questions is “no.” Far from abandoning academic freedom, the AAUP thoughtfully explained (a) why DEI contributions are intrinsic to faculty merit, (b) why DEI Statements offer a common-sense tool to obtain this merit-based information; and (c) why the use of DEI Statements to credit such contributions need not undercut academic freedom. Our aim here is to defend each claim. Before doing so, however, we first clarify our view of academic freedom…