To the editor: Whereas I don’t dispute Duncan Hosie’s rivalry that requiring variety statements within the College of California college hiring course of can devolve into “ideological litmus assessments — bureaucratic hurdles cloaked within the rhetoric of inclusion” and that failure “to repeat the appropriate orthodoxies” may imply that “your candidacy was useless on arrival” in some departments, I disagree together with his conclusion that universities are higher off not utilizing them as part of the hiring course of (“Why liberals ought to have fun the top of variety statements at UC,” March 26).
All three segments of public greater training on this state — the UC, the California State College and the group faculties — serve a various array of scholars who carry with them a wide range of life circumstances and experiences. We serve returning college students, mother and father, veterans, worldwide and first-generation college students, lots of whom work part- or full-time, in addition to economically deprived college students and people who have confronted challenges and difficulties of many sorts.
As I’ve served on quite a few college and administrative searches on the CSU system, campus, school and division ranges, I’ve discovered variety statements to be helpful instruments for screening candidates for interviews.
It’s my expertise that administrative and school candidates whose statements are largely performative and which lack perception into the differing wants of the various scholar populations we serve rightly don’t transfer ahead within the course of.
Like all device, variety statements in hiring processes can be utilized inappropriately and even abused, however as with every device, we must always give attention to utilizing them successfully to additional worthwhile targets somewhat than eliminating them totally as a result of they’re misused by some.
John Tarjan, Bakersfield
