Faculty Hiring

Hiring diverse candidates and creating an inclusive and equitable climate has emerged as a top priority for the scientific community. Diversity statements are a common but unexamined tool for recruiting a more diverse workforce. We surveyed more than 200 experts in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from US academic institutions to synthesize strengths and limitations of diversity statements and to develop guidelines for using such statements in faculty hiring.

The diversification of applicant pools constitutes an important step for broadening the participation of women and underrepresented minorities (URMs) in the workforce. The current study focuses on recruiting diverse applicant pools in an academic setting. We test strategies grounded in homophily theory to attract a diverse set of applicants for open faculty positions.

This chapter shows how academic hiring practices—including the beliefs, values, and biases around “merit” and “fit”—perpetuate racial inequities by leaving unexamined and unquestioned the shared, racialized assumptions that guide hiring, recruitment, screening, and evaluation. The chapter provides a framework, grounded in Bensimon’s concept of “equity-mindedness,” to redefine “merit” and “fit” in terms of racial equity and justice.

Various concerns regarding the vitality and racial/ethnic composition of the academic profession have prompted new study of faculty search committees and hiring paradigms, most notably examining the term “ft” in candidate appraisals. Yet no study utilizes a candidate evaluation framework to investigate whether or not faculty members truly assess for ft, or if these assessments stife diversifcation processes, especially in light of pervasive institutional eforts to reform faculty hiring.

This narrative and integrative literature review synthesizes the literature on when, where, and how the faculty hiring process used in most American higher education settings operates with implicit and cognitive bias. The literature review analyzes the “four phases” of the faculty hiring process, drawing on theories from behavioral economics and social psychology.