Thread by @JohnDSailer

Thread: An understated trend in higher ed is the influx of faculty jobs that focus on race, gender, identity, and critical theory. These have become the hottest areas, the specialties most likely to land a job.

Here are a few from the first page of the MLA's job board.

Duke University is hiring two literature professors.

Ideal fields include critical race and ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, decoloniality and post-colonial theory.

Priority given to candidates in Latinx studies.

UC Davis Department of English is hiring a professor of Chicanx/Latinx literature.

Specializations: "Indigenous literary and cultural studies," "disability studies," "gender and sexuality studies," "environmental humanities."

Fairfield University's English Department is hiring in 20th and 21st Century Postcolonial Literature in English.

The job listing encourages a secondary focus on "anti/post/decolonialism" and "critical theory."

Wake Forest University, Spanish.

The department is "particularly interested in candidates whose critical perspectives are linked to the experiences of groups historically underrepresented in higher education in ways that inform and influence their pedagogical approach."

Dartmouth is hiring a professor of Native American Literature and Indigenous Studies.

Secondary fields: "women’s, gender and sexuality studies," "critical race theory," "queer theory," etc.

Again, these are just from the first page of a languages job board, basically a random sample, and yet a majority focus on identity, with ideologically-coded language.

Toronto, Assistant Professor, Inter-Asia Gender and Sexuality.

(See highlighted text.)

"The English Department at Southwestern University invites applications for a tenure-track position in Latino/a/x-Chicano/a/x literature and culture."

Colgate University, Assistant Professor of German.

"We are particularly interested in candidates with interests in environmental humanities, gender studies, art and aesthetics, or transnational/multiethnic and colonial/postcolonial cultures in German-speaking contexts."

Williams, Assistant Professor of German.

The department has "a particular interest in candidates who work in the areas of migration, race and anti-racism, post- and decolonial approaches, disability, and/or memory studies."

Of course, scholars should be able to study race and gender. Universities shouldn't ban scholars from focusing on critical race theory.

But when a majority of a random sampling of jobs are like these, it starts to resemble a political agenda.

Ohio State, Latinx Folklore.

Also Ohio State:

On top of that, of course, most of these roles require diversity statements.

At Bates College, candidates for a role in Japanese Language and Asian Studies must submit a statement on how their work advances "equity, inclusion, access, antiracism, and educational justice."

But for many roles, the whole job application is functionally a diversity statement. Like this position at St. Olaf College in African American Studies, which calls for a focus on "Black Feminisms."

This is only the beginning. Universities now regularly emphasize that they want to hire more people in these areas, in an effort to increase demographic diversity.

This kind of push influences every area of higher education.

Graduate students: to get a good job, emphasize race and gender.

English and German classes: taught by a scholar who focuses on race and gender, focuses on race and gender.

Faculty research: focuses on race and gender, and rewarded for that focus.

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