Applying for academic jobs is, as any graduate student will tell you, very nearly a job itself. When I was on the market in 2013, compiling, submitting, and tracking applications consumed my time, even though most of my countless applications were all variations on the same theme. But one application package was different: In addition to the standard cover letter, CV, and writing sample, Christendom College required a separate statement in support of the college’s Catholic mission and identity.
This request, though unusual, made sense. Christendom is a fiercely independent confessional college and a bastion of conservative Catholicism. It refuses all federal funding in pursuit of its educational apostolate, and its faculty make a yearly profession of faith and oath of fidelity. Thus the orthodoxy of the faculty is central to the mission of the college; its students, alumni, and donors expect nothing less. As a practicing Catholic, I was happy to write the statement and overjoyed to accept the job.
Less than a decade has passed since I was on the job market, but the world has changed dramatically. What was peculiar to Christendom in 2013 has become common practice in 2021. It is now difficult to find a job posting in the humanities that does not require some sort of profession of faith—albeit in a radically different creed.
Consider this recent job posting from my alma mater:
Purdue University’s Department of History is committed to advancing diversity in all areas of faculty effort including discovery, instruction, and engagement. Candidates should address at least one of these areas in a separate diversity and inclusion statement, indicating their past experiences, current interests or activities and / or future goals to promote a climate that values diversity and inclusion.
This is, all things considered, a relatively benign example of the genre, a fact perhaps attributable to Purdue’s identity as an agriculture and engineering school, its location in conservative Indiana, and its current leadership (Mitch Daniels, the school’s president, is a former GOP governor and dark horse presidential candidate). But despite all this, Purdue’s history department believes that a commitment to diversity and inclusion is necessary for a candidate who hopes to teach the history of medieval science.