Original title: Faculty Evaluations of DEI Statements for Academic Hiring
Nathan Honeycutt · September 2026
Many universities now require job applicants to submit diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, statements. However, researchers knew very little about how professors actually judge these letters. To test this, researchers had professors review different types of DEI statements. Some statements described efforts supporting race, ethnicity, or gender. Others focused on different topics, such as different political viewpoints, rural backgrounds, or family income. Professors consistently scored the alternative statements much lower. They viewed candidates who wrote alternative statements as less skilled, less hireable, and less likable. Reviewers were also far less likely to pass these applicants through initial screening. The harshest penalties hit applicants who only discussed viewpoint diversity, while essays focused solely on rural or socioeconomic diversity also suffered. Results for disability diversity were mixed.
You are reviewing applications for a community service award. One applicant describes feeding the homeless but never uses the phrase 'helping the poor.' Another uses that phrase repeatedly. Even though both do the same work, you judge the first less worthy. Here, faculty evaluated diversity statements and penalized those that did not mention race or gender, even when they addressed other important kinds of diversity like rural or socioeconomic background.
These findings matter because they reveal a hidden bias in academic hiring. Faculty evaluating DEI statements may unconsciously penalize candidates who address forms of diversity other than race and gender, such as viewpoint or socioeconomic diversity. This could narrow the range of diversity perspectives brought into academia and undermine the very goals DEI statements are meant to advance.
The findings are limited to the specific types of alternative diversity statements tested (viewpoint, rural, socioeconomic, disability) and to the context of faculty evaluating written statements for initial screening, not actual hiring decisions. The mixed results for disability diversity suggest the effect may not hold for all dimensions. The studies do not establish how these biases play out in real-world hiring processes.
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Faculty Evaluations of DEI Statements for Academic Hiring — Nathan Honeycutt — PsyArXiv — doi:10.31234/osf.io/mwt5r_v4
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.