Senior left-leaning Harvard law professor denounces 'DEI regime' and 'ideological litmus tests'

Randall L. Kennedy, 69, is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard University, where he has taught courses on criminal law and the regulation of race relations for four decades. Although the black South Carolinian describes himself as a "scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice," even he can no longer stomach his university's "DEI regime."

Kennedy penned an opinion piece Tuesday for the Harvard Crimson, stressing that compulsory DEI statements pose "a profound challenge to academic freedom" and ought to be scrapped.

The senior academic observed in the article, which was part of the school's Council on Academic Freedom's bi-weekly column in the Harvard Crimson, that among the documents required of applicants interested in an assistant professor position at the Harvard Graduate School of Education was a "statement of teaching philosophy that includes a description of their 'orientation toward diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.'"

Kennedy noted that such requirements are not exceptional but rather increasingly the rule at Harvard and other once-respected academic institutions. Additionally, he suggested that this matter of signaling ideological compliance is no longer a passive affair but rather an engaged process by which applicants "profess — and flaunt — faith in DEI."

According to the leftist professor, Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning's "how-to page [on crafting a DEI statement] mirrors the expectation that DEI statements will essentially constitute pledges of allegiance that enlist academics into the DEI movement by dint of soft-spoken or real coercion: If you want the job or the promotion, play ball — or else."

Kennedy was referencing a document released by the Bok Center entitled, "Composing Your Diversity Statement." The document appears to suggest that the kind of research and instruction that would qualify applicants as believers is that which would help advance the radical identitarian agenda animating the DEI movement.

For instance, it asks the following questions:

• "Does your research examine historical or contemporary issues of social inequality?"
• "Does your research enhance our understanding of power and privilege and their impact on marginalized communities?"
• "Does your research foreground the experiences and issues of marginalized communities, whose lives have been invisibilized because of research methods that privilege dominant social groups?"
• "Do you acknowledge racial trauma and the impact of white supremacy and anti-Blackness on the culture of higher education in your courses?"
• "Do your readings, course materials, and guest speakers feature people who are diverse in terms of race, gender, sexual identity, nationality, and ability?"

The document also lists various DEI priorities such as "changing the historical legacies, belief systems, and institutional practices that unequally structure social relations in the academy" and prompts applicants to build their own profession of DEI "faith" using elements of the movement's broader creed.

"Playing ball entails affirming that the DEI bureaucracy is a good thing and asking no questions that challenge it, all the while making sure to use in one's attestations the easy-to-parody DEI lingo," wrote Kennedy.

When speaking to podcaster Lex Fridman in May 2023, Kennedy made a similar case, noting that those asked to write a DEI statement are being asked "to say 'I'm down with the diversity, equity, and inclusion ethos, program, policy, campaign. And here's what I've done that shows that I'm down with this program and therefore I'm okay."

The professor further indicated Tuesday that DEI statements and the corresponding regime serve to maximize "leftist conformity" on campus.

"It does not take much discernment to see, moreover, that the diversity statement regime leans heavily and tendentiously towards varieties of academic leftism and implicitly discourages candidates who harbor ideologically conservative dispositions," added the professor.

Extra to killing academic freedom and perspective on campus, Kennedy suggested the "DEI regime" abets cynicism, both about the motivations behind diversity statements and also about the "cottage industry of diversity statement 'counseling' that has popped up to support the initiative."

Kennedy stressed that there ought to be no ideological commitments asked of prospective hires, intimating that his leftist peers and underlings would alternatively "howl" were Harvard to ask "a candidate for a faculty position to submit a statement of their orientation towards capitalism, or patriotism, or Making America Great Again with a clear expectation of allegiance."

"By overreaching, by resorting to compulsion, by forcing people to toe a political line, by imposing ideological litmus tests, by incentivizing insincerity, and by creating a circular mode of discourse that is seemingly impervious to self-questioning, the current DEI regime is discrediting itself," Kennedy concluded.

The Harvard Crimson also ran an article Tuesday by Edward J. Hall, the Norman E. Vuilleumier Professor of Philosophy, which suggested DEI statements are worthwhile and Kennedy's ire is misplaced.

"Furor over diversity statements in hiring is a red herring," wrote Hall. "I share my colleague professor Randall L.Kennedy’s anger. But I think we should direct that anger at its proper target: not diversity statements themselves, but rather the horribly distorted view that has taken hold about what they should contain."

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