To the Editor:

Len Gutkin’s recent conversation with three of my colleagues on AAUP’s Committee A, “Academic Freedom’s Fierce Internal Fracas” (The Chronicle Review, November 21), was substantive and important. In the course of it, Gutkin quoted David Rabban’s magisterial recent book on academic freedom, where he tells a story about my law school, in 2012, editing my friend Lisa Pruitt’s diversity statement to delete “her description of her white, rural, and working-class backgrounds and references to her scholarship about rural poverty.” Since Rabban got that story from an article of mine, perhaps I can add how my account ends:

[I]n her articles and elsewhere, Pruitt continued to argue why ‘scholarship explicitly about class and the mentorship of first-generation students [should] qualify as contributions that promote “diversity.”’ Whether due to her arguments or not, UC Davis now sponsors a First Generation Advocates program in its Law School, with mentors that include not just Professor Pruitt, but also the school’s Dean and Senior Associate Dean. The university-wide Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion now touts the program’s achievements. At its best, the open-endedness of terms like ‘diversity’ can lead to intradisciplinary debate about what kinds of contributions to prioritize and value. Doing so treats diversity ... on par with research and teaching contributions, where approaches once dismissed can gain favor within a given discipline over time.

In the spirit of finishing stories, it’s also worth nothing that in his book, Rabban — grudgingly, and with great regret — actually concludes his analysis of diversity statements by agreeing with me that universities which require them don’t violate the First Amendment, at least when they go about it the right way.

Brian Soucek
Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Fellow
UC Davis School of Law