by Shelby Kearns
Yale University academic departments have implemented efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Academic departments including anesthesiology, history, and mathematics have diversity statements or dedicated pages for diversity on their websites. The Yale Math Statement on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) says that “the department has convened a standing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) committee that meets regularly.”
The math department conducted a climate survey in 2021. “Survey responses highlighted the need for a more diverse faculty, with increased interactions among all members of the department and increased awareness of DEIB issues,” the survey description reads.
A section of the department’s DEIB statement outlines efforts to diversify faculty. The process, which is “confidential” and difficult “to give many details about,” starts with communicating with other institutions to build a diverse applicant pool.
The math department also posts openings on a job board and invites candidates to a discussion.
“In the last two or three years this approach has been particularly successful and brought to the department a stunning group of mathematicians of the highest level, including two women, bringing the current total number of women in the senior faculty to three,” the description says.
The department website lists 22 senior faculty members.
Yale has overarching DEI efforts for all its students. A website on “Belonging at Yale” lists DEI resources and includes a Resources on Antiracism page. A section on reading suggests “Ibram X. Kendi’s Antiracist Reading List.” Kendi is the author of the 2019 non-fiction book How to Be an Antiracist.
A critique of Kendi’s book by author and political commentator Andrew Sullivan in New York Magazine accuses it of “deliver[ing] a message of total ideological simplicity.”
“Inequity is defined as any difference between any ethnic groups in their average outcomes in any field of life or work,” Sullivan wrote. “Liberal values are therefore tossed out almost immediately.”
In one of Yale’s “DEI and Belonging learning opportunities,” a panel that “featured five university administrators” discussed free speech. “Over the past few years, there has been much debate about the tensions between protecting free speech and creating an inclusive environment on university campuses,” an event description reads.
Campus Reform has reported on challenges to free speech at Yale. In October, Yale Law School “invited two U.S. Circuit Judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch to speak” as other judges “boycott[ed] Yale law clerks due to free speech concerns.”
At another Yale Law School event “on freedom of speech,” protestors “brandished signs and shouted obscenities.”
“Their actions led one professor to tell them to ‘grow up,’” according to Campus Reform’s report.
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Shelby Kearns graduated with a bachelor of business administration in business honors from Texas A&M University. While at Texas A&M, she obtained minors in philosophy and Arabic studies. Shelby graduated from the University of Chicago with a master’s in the Humanities with an emphasis in English literature.
Photo “College Students” by Keira Burton.
