Call me cynical, but as someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about issues of discrimination, prejudice, fairness, and community, I am no longer amused by performative acts of diversity theater.
While the people who wrote the Selection Criteria were well-intentioned, I've found that non-public hiring criteria often give an unfair advantage to applicants in the in-group, who are more likely to know what's expected. Any lack of transparency in hiring criteria generally disadvantages marginalized communities. As I've said elsewhere: The ad should give the true criteria on which you'll base your decision. Make the criteria and hiring procedures public and clear, and stick to them.
The algorithm's first filter was the Diversity Statement:
I. Diversity statements will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
(a) Does the applicant demonstrate an understanding of the problem?
(b) What has the applicant done for diversity?
(c) What are the candidates [sic] plans to promote diversity?
Only include candidates whose diversity statements demonstrate awareness of inequities and challenges, a specific plan to contribute to inclusive excellence activities, and/or a track record and measures of success.
I spent three years on a campus committee that during that time scutinized the hiring, promotion, tenure, or "merit review" files of nearly everyone on campus, so I had a lot of experience reviewing personnel files.
When I looked at the applications, it was a matter of only a couple of minutes before I found a blatantly plagiarized Diversity Statement. It was cobbled together nearly verbatim from Diversity Statements other people had posted on their websites, sample Diversity Statements posted by UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, and canned sentences on websites whose stated purpose was to create Diversity Statements.
I might have been tipped off by the non-Latino applicant's reference to "fellow Latino faculty" (the sentence was the same as one in Example 3 of this UCSD sample), but the essay had plenty of evidence that didn't pass the smell test.
Nonetheless, it did pass the diversity filter of members of the Hiring Committee, who claimed that the applicant's diversity statement addressed all the questions and passed the test (until I pointed out the plagiarism; of course the applicant's only penalty was not being offered that one job). Chatbots now make it even easier to fake Diversity Statements and harder to catch plagiarism.
How many applicants are getting positions using plagiarized Diversity Statements? How many with legitimate statements are passed over in favor of applicants with more impressive-looking plagiarized Diversity Statements? We seem to have created a system that rewards dishonesty.
I think that plagiarized Diversity Statements are not rare, and are usually not caught. The people who evaluate the statements are often untrained and unqualified to do so. In some cases, they themselves engage in discrimination, inequity, or unfairness, and are completely the wrong people to evaluate Diversity Statements.
Some of the Diversity Statements that are positively evaluated do more harm than good, by reinforcing the stereotype that women and minorities are underrepresented because they're not good enough to succeed without additional help.
One could argue that allowing only a small hiring committee to have any say in determining the Selection Criteria and hiring rubric violated the university's commitment to the principle of shared governance.
Based on my experience reading files, I think that hiring and promotion decisions should not rely on self-reporting by the candidate that is not independently verifiable. Doing so encourages not only BS, but also outright lying. We shouldn't reward people for bad behavior, and punish those who do the right thing.