PSA from a non-econ friend who recently served on an interdisciplinary search cmte: Econs need to step up our game in mentoring our students to write useful diversity statements. 1/n
Their hiring cmte used diversity statements for an initial screen of applicants. Very few econ candidates made it thru. She was completely bewildered by how bad their statements were. 2/n
After hearing how her field (psych) approaches such statements, I see at least 3 issues in econ: (1) We generally advise students not to 'waste' much time on these other statements. All that matters is the JMP and the letters, amirite? 3/n
(2) We don't typically work with our students to craft good diversity statements (or teaching statements or research statements) for their applications. See #1. Apparently this is common in psych. 4/n
(3) As a discipline we don't talk about the value of spending time as a grad student or junior faculty member caring about or working towards diversity/inclusion. I think this is changing, but we are not giving our students the vocab or experience to write these statements. 5/n
I have mixed feelings about some of this -- do we really want diversity statements to be carefully crafted to say all the right things, with little sense of their sincerity? Helping students write good ones for their apps has the feel of teaching to the test. 6/n
But if other disciplines are doing it, then our students are at a disadvantage if we don't. And we can hope that guidance on writing statements will have some benefit in terms of conveying to students that these issues are actually important. V curious what other econs think! 7/7
PS -- I put a ton of time into diversity initiatives in econ but I'm still not sure I could write a "good" diversity statement if I sat down to do so right now. This isn't all about lack of experience/ideas. It's lack of practice w this particular format. /1
Econs tend to think of such statements as "cheap talk" and don't value them much ourselves. But it turns out others do value them! This is surely true of folks in higher ed administration too, so seems relevant for tenure/promotion as much as hiring. /2
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