Harvard Law professor urges university to ‘abandon’ DEI statements: ‘Ideological pledges of allegiance’ [Video]

A Harvard Law School professor is urging the Ivy League university to eliminate mandatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) statements that force faculty and staff to “toe a political line.”

In the Harvard Crimson column “Mandatory DEI Statements Are Ideological Pledges of Allegiance. Time to Abandon Them,” contributing opinion writer and professor Randall L. Kennedy said requiring hires in higher ed to sign diversity statements “poses a profound challenge to academic freedom.”

These requirements, he said, often tell applicants to submit a statement of teaching philosophy that includes a description of their “orientation toward diversity, equity and inclusion practices.”

Kennedy, who works as the Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School, claimed these statements are essentially “pledges of allegiance” that “enlist academics” to adopt tenets of the DEI movement through “soft-spoken but real coercion.”

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