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Essay asks students to describe ‘a time when you contributed toward making a work environment or organization more welcoming, inclusive, and diverse’

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology still requires a diversity, equity and inclusion essay for some students despite banning DEI faculty statements last spring.

The requirement by MIT’s Sloan School of Management has drawn criticism from scholars, students, and alumni, with some accusing the school of being hypocritical for failing to eliminate all DEI mandates.

Eric Rasmusen, a board director of the MIT Free Speech Alliance, said he is disappointed that the DEI essay is still part of graduate students’ application.

“What the Sloan inquiry about an applicant’s political views shows is that it isn’t enough for a college president to say ‘DEI statements won’t be required’: the message has to get down to the hundreds of low-level bureaucrats who actually run the university,” Rasmusen said in an email interview with The College Fix.

“The Sloan School, where I myself TA’d as a PhD student, is literally at the far end of MIT geographically,” Rasmusen said. “Apparently the message hasn’t gotten down to Professor [Catherine] Tucker, the Executive MBA Faculty Director. I hope she will make the change shortly.”

The Fix reached out to Tucker and MIT’s media relations office for comment twice in the past two weeks, asking about ending the DEI essay, but did not receive a response.

Currently, the Sloan School of Management requires Executive MBA applicants to write a 200-word “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” essay about “a time when you contributed toward making a work environment or organization more welcoming, inclusive, and diverse,” according to the application website.

The essay requirement remains in spite of MIT President Sally Kornbluth’s decision to eliminate DEI pledges from faculty applications since they “impinge on freedom of expression,” The College Fix reported in May.

Timothy Minella, a fellow at the Goldwater Institute, a conservative thinktank in Arizona, first drew attention to the application requirement in a recent post on X.

MIT trumpeted its decision to end “diversity statements” for faculty job applicants.

But MIT is still requiring student applicants to pledge fealty to DEI through diversity statements.

Watch what universities do, not what they say, when it comes to DEI. pic.twitter.com/3cA7Gz5j5V

— Timothy K. Minella (@TimMinella) January 6, 2025

Spencer Sindhusen, president of MIT Students for Open Inquiry, said he was surprised to learn MIT demands prospective graduate students adhere to DEI.

The sophomore majoring in management and political science told The Fix the requirement doesn’t make sense after MIT “abolished” the DEI faculty pledge last May “because of its encroachment on the freedom of expression.”

“I assume expectations differ for students – i.e. MIT might still believe a ‘diverse’ class composition is worthwhile for certain social ends, whereas talent matters more for faculty because it impacts the quality of teaching and research,” Sindhusen said. “The dissonance vis-a-vis free expression puzzles me, though.”

He also said the elite Massachusetts institute still has work to do to end censorship and preserve free discourse.

“MIT leadership should continue to work in good faith with the MFSA and any relevant groups to support the freedom of expression,” Sindhusen said in an email. “Administration also should support—or not interfere with—student affairs that appropriately advance the cause. As the leader of a free speech organization on campus, I appreciate that they’re doing well in that regard.”

He said MIT also must reform its student admissions process because there is a systemic “campus culture issue.”

“We shouldn’t focus on diversity for diversity’s sake. We need to focus more on talent and the diversity thereof, which would likely translate into intellectual or ideological diversity as well,” Sindhusen said.

MORE: MIT bans mandatory DEI statements in faculty hiring

Peter Bonilla, executive director of the MIT Free Speech Alliance,  told The Fix he would like to see administrators examine where “DEI goals may in practice clash with free expression and freedom of conscience.”

Although Bonilla said he admired Kornbluth’s decision to get rid of DEI faculty statements, he is concerned about other DEI “conflicts” still lurking around the university.

Bonilla said he thinks MIT needs to shift gears in its approach to protecting campus free speech.

“MFSA has issued a comprehensive set of recommendations for how MIT can improve its overall climate for free expression,” Bonilla told The Fix in a recent email. “These include adopting a position of institutional neutrality as several of its peers have done recently, as well as educating staff on the importance of free expression and viewpoint diversity.”

Sindhusen said despite the DEI essay, he is “optimistic” about MIT’s preservation of campus expression and freedom of speech.

He said Kornbluth has made great strides this year to partner with campus free speech groups and work to eliminate “the tension between DEI and free expression.”

“Nationally, we’re seeing the pendulum swing back quite exponentially, and the Trump administration is about to begin … For the foreseeable future, I don’t see any substantial pressure for more DEI,” Sindhusen said.

He said MIT’s Civil Discourse Project has helped to support free speech on campus. The project enables faculty and staff to openly debate “controversial issues of the day” as well as hear from a variety of speakers, according to the MIT Concourse website.

“But more viewpoint variety among students can be valuable, too, especially when it comes to offering communities of support no matter what side of the aisle they might fall,” Sindhusen said. “I understand this can be mechanistically challenging, but more efforts should be made to achieve it.”

The student leader said he is concerned about speaking freely on campus due to the campus favoring of leftist political views.

“Like most elite colleges, MIT has a vastly left-leaning student body, which isn’t inherently problematic vis-a-vis free speech. However, what I and a few others have faced is getting browbeaten or ostracized for speaking our minds or hosting events, which discourages honest expressions or exchanges of ideas,” he told The Fix.

MORE: Professor’s lawsuit against ASU’s DEI training may proceed, judge rules

IMAGE: MIT Sloan School of Management

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