Under pressure, in the form of ridicule and exposure, from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the National Association of Scholars, Virginia Tech President Charles Steger has announced that the mandated reporting of contributions to “diversity” for tenure candidates, discussed here, is no longer being considered.
Diversiphiles need not be overly disappointed, however. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning, although tenure candidates will no longer be required to contribute to “diversity,” they will still be rewarded for doing so.
The university has a long list of activities that professors can include in annual reports of their work as evidence of a commitment to diversity, including taking part in diversity-awareness workshops, helping to recruit and serving as mentors to female students and students from racial-minority groups, and incorporating diversity-related scholarship into their teaching. Professors can still report such activities but will not be required to do so.
Still, voluntary diversifying (if doing something for which you will be rewarded counts as voluntary) is much better than mandatory diversifying, and F.I.R.E. and NAS deserve much credit.
