So Virginia Tech has dropped its wrongheaded proposal to require tenure candidates to demonstrate their commitment to diversity. That's all to the good, and as it should be.

But that's not the end of the story. The problem of imposing ideological litmus tests on faculty is not confined to Virginia Tech, nor is it confined to the tenure track. A reader describes how they do things at the University of Arizona:

A few days ago you posted FIRE's response to Virginia Tech's rescinding of "diversity" requirements for tenure-track faculty members. Here is a similar requirement, only it affects non-tenured workers at the University of Arizona.

Annually, we have to fill out a form titled "Performance Appraisal Review (Factors and Standards Format)." One's supervisor also fills out a section of the form after reviewing what the employee has written about his or her own job performance (e.g. I'm great and you're lucky to have me!). After a little back and forth, the supervisor will rate the employee's performance as either Unsatisfactory, Meets Expectations, Exceeds them, or Excellent. Very few people get rated in the lowest two designations.

Anyway, a "Key Performance Factor" for those who supervise others reads as follows:

"Assigns work to maximize group strengths; involves employees in the identification and solution of work-related problems; demonstrates a commitment to diversity in recruitment, hiring and management of people; welcomes, values and engages people of heterogeneous backgrounds, perspectives and experiences, is committed to building a departmental/collegial community in which people feel included, understood, and appreciated; promotes teamwork and cooperation, exercises discipline and resolves conflict fairly and constructively, trains, coaches and develops subordinates, delegates responsibility and authority."

I realize that this is not as weighty an issue as the one at Virginia Tech, but still, this pleasant sounding PC blabber could be used to unfairly fire or intimidate an employee on something along the lines of his being insufficiently "engaging" or "welcoming," etc.

I would guess that diversity benchmarks related to the evaluation of employee job performance are very widely embedded in many institutions of higher education.