Think of it this way.
The job requires the holder to interact with students, who will come from various different backgrounds and have various different characteristics. Part of the holder's job is to treat them fairly.
Which is true of pretty much every job, but sure, none of that is controversial.
If a candidate is opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion in that environment, then that means they don't think certain people should be there, and don't think people should be treated equally, depending on their backgrounds & characteristics. They've essentially expressed a belief system at odds with the requirements of the job.
If a candidate was opposed to those things, sure. Now find a candidate in any of the material cited that actually opposes those things, as opposed to (among other things) segregation (segregated dorms and graduations are already a thing in some areas).
It's like saying "if you oppose the Ten Comandments being displayed in classrooms, you must hate Christians" or "if you're opposed to zionism, you must be an anti-semite." There'd certainly be overlap in those cases, but any action/belief can be opposed for any number of reasons. Not all those reasons are identical.
So yeah, it's not 'value neutral', but we're talking about a value that shouldn't realistically be disputed. In the same way that "don't be a twat" is also not a value-neutral position, yet I'd be fine with excluding a candidate if they expressed that they were going to act like a twat.
Not being a twat is pretty value neutral. Of course, what counts as being a twat is going to vary from person to person.
You see, you've just cribbed this straight off the article, as the justification they give. But is it really true?
There's nothing to suggest otherwise.
Sure, any person could be lying about any given thing. That's true of life in general - Bob might oppose X, give Reason A, while his actual reason being Reason B. I might accuse you of lying about your biology teacher, because you haven't given me any proof. I won't accuse you of that, because there's nothing in the statement or scenario that suggests you're lying.
It doesn't need to test political beliefs at all. It requires a candidate to demonstrate competence. My biology teacher at school was a Biblical creationist. And yet he faithfully taught us evolution as scientific fact because his job required him to.
We're well beyond "basic competence" in what's being described though. Your biology teacher being qualified to teach biology (so, evolution, for instance), would come under basic competence for the field. Believing in the positions required of DIE, however, is very much outside the field, and if we're focusing on student's needs, I'm assuming that would include students who don't believe in evolution and/or are personally hurt by the idea that we're risen apes rather than fallen angels (yes, Pratchett reference, sue me).
A candidate doesn't have to believe, deep down, that black people should be allowed to go to university. But they damn well can be required to understand that it is university policy that black people should be allowed to go to university, and that black people should be treated as full and equal members of the academic community when they get there. The candidate can be expected to understand that academic staff might be expected to demonstrate, via theory or experiential practice, of how they will be part of that university mission to ensure that black people have free and fair access to university and treatment when they get there.
That was...oddly specific. And highly extreme.
Okay, sure, no-one would disagree with what you said. But again, to use actual examples, does believing that (and most people would believe that) require you to also support elements such as segregated dorms/graduation ceremonies? Or to use another example, replace "black" with "Maori" - no-one I know of would claim Maori aren't equal, does that mean we should also include Maori spiritual beliefs in science? Or, according to you, any objection to such incorporation must, by definition, be motivated by racism? It's a sleight of hand - instead of engaging with the actual argument, just take the most extreme position there is, attribute it to the person, and voila, you've won.
You can portray DIE as this innocent lamb, but it isn't. For instance, while I know this isn't 1:1, as someone who's delivered children's activities, if the staff told me that I had to start treating children differently based on certain traits, I don't know if I could do that, in large part due to ethical reasons, in part due to historical, in part due to professional.
Universities are places of education. What makes a good teacher? Protip: it's not being a "genius". It's about understanding one's subject to a suitable level, and then ability to explain, describe, to mentor, support, guide. Skills of empathy, communication, etc. Ethical values. The ability to effectively deal with and relate to your students as humans and learners.
All true.
And that includes ability to deal with the diversity of the student body.
Great. So how do you "deal" with it? Because as has already been laid out, ways of "dealing" with it include practices that would have been considered discriminatory 60 years ago.
One might compare with the sea change in medical education ~20-30 years ago when the profession realised that hiring a ton of people almost entirely on intellectual merit without bothering to check their ethics and communications tended to end up in a ton of malpractice or patients not trusting their physicians enough to take their treatments.
Again, this sounds like basic competence.
Yes, they do need to make diversity a big deal. Their paying customers expect it, for a start. And allied to that issue of their customers, where universities have not approached minorities and diversity with sufficient care and attention, it's caused them a huge amount of trouble: disputes, financial costs, and reputational damage. They've got a really big justification to care.
I think universities (at least in the US) have already done plenty of reputational damage to themselves already. Berkley was mentioned in the article, remember the Weinstein affair? Y'know, where diversity principles demanded days of absence of certain groups?
Again, this is some really fucked up idea of what's being asked for. Universities absolutely do not have to let the Grand Duke of the KKK teach at their university because he happens to have a doctorate. No, they cannot let a lecturer step into a classroom and abuse the black people as n*****s and the women as b****es and the homosexuals as f*****s because it would harm academic free expression and the "diversity" of the staff.
Again, argumentum ad extremum.
Come on, I know you're smarter than this. You've jumped straight to the most extreme examples possible, instead of engaging with any actual arguments on this thread or any other article. Everything you've described would come under abuse, it has nothing to do with academic expression.
But if we're talking about staff diversity, it's already well known that universities aren't diverse in staff - certainly not in terms of viewpoint.
Now, Absent has already equated anyone right of centre to being a Nazi, I'll give you the credit of assuming that you know life is much more complicated than that.
In case you're wondering, I don't think universities (or any institution) should be obliged to hire people of certain belief systems, but that includes everything else.
Universities are professional workplaces that can have reasonable professional expectations of their workers. Up to an including requirements for them to demonstrate appropriate respect for the students.
Again, no-one's disagreeing with that. What constitutes "appropriate respect?" And how much respect should students give in return? What do DIE statements have to do with respect?