UMass Boston "Quietly" Cancels DEI Statement

Look, mama! We're on Fox News!

It all started when our brave and stunning leadership started requiring all faculty candidates to submit a loyalty oath to the gods of DEI. The goal was, undoubtedly, to follow in the footsteps of Berkeley, who used an elaborate matrix to pre-screen any applicants who, heaven forbid, “always invite and welcome students from all backgrounds to participate in their research lab”. You know, those far-right wing extremists. While unlike Berkeley the DEI statements were not used to pre-screen the applications before their academic qualifications were even looked at, we are sure that given enough time our Leadership would have taken that route… If only the far-right hostile organization FIRE hadn’t got word and gone on a mission to block the valiant effort.

At first our Leaders did what they do best! Deny, deflect, disengage:

A university spokesperson told Fox News "UMass Boston is fully committed to following the best practices guiding recruiting and hiring of faculty."

"We will continue to comply with all applicable employment laws pertaining to the hiring of our faculty and will continue to support our faculty’s Constitutional rights while we embrace our diverse community at UMass Boston”

But FIRE quickly caught on and FIREd back:

"UMass Boston tried dodging the issue for several months," explained a FIRE representative to Fox News.

After a lengthy back and forth between FIRE and our Leaders, we are sad to announce that our administration no longer requires a DEI statement for any faculty position.

Admittedly, we should have noticed earlier, but we didn’t think much of it at the time; After all, DEI was cleverly built into all the job descriptions for a faculty position. They were all about critical inclusion, environmental justice, critical security, Indigenous research methodologies, race and gender equity in education, anti-racism and social justice in curriculum development, the sociology of race and ethnicity, Black Feminisms, Black Queer Studies, Black Trans Studies, Queer of Color Critique, Indigenous Studies, the psychology of Latiné communities, critically conscious, equity-minded, and asset-based approach to advancing equity and racial justice in higher education.¹

But alas, now we know there were other powers at play and the DEI statement requirement was quietly canceled.

Oh wait… Quietly?

Then how come they are all over Fox News?

It seems like the more our Leaders run away from trouble, trouble is attracted to them like flies to manure.

1. We did not make any of these words up. They are all in our faculty job listings.