The College Fix

Candidates should be prepared to fight racism

A cybersecurity and engineering professor position at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis does not include just an understanding of how to build secure networks and combat foreign threats — it may also require an understanding of Ibram Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones’ work.

IUPUI’s assistant professor of cybersecurity job description asks applicants to take a firm commitment to antiracism. The job, housed in the engineering and technology department, is best suited for “candidates who will not only enhance our representational diversity but whose research, teaching, and community engagement efforts contribute to diverse, equitable, and inclusive learning and working environments for our students, staff, and faculty.”

“IUPUI condemns racism in all its forms and has taken an anti‐racist stance that moves beyond mere statements to interrogating its policies, procedures, and practices,” the public university said. “We hope to identify individuals who will assist in our mission to dismantle racism so that everyone has the opportunity to succeed at IUPUI.”

The public Indiana university includes a similar demand for other posted positions, including a job as an assistant professor of occupational therapy.

IUPUI has an “Action Committee” tasked with combating racism on campus, a disease, it said, worse that coronavirus.

Its website starts with a quote from an activist and writer named Roxane Gay.

“Eventually, doctors will find a coronavirus vaccine, but [B]lack people will continue to wait, despite the futility of hope, for a cure for racism,” Gay said. “We will live with the knowledge that a hashtag is not a vaccine for white supremacy. We live with the knowledge that, still, no one is coming to save us. The rest of the world yearns to get back to normal. For [B]lack people, normal is the very thing from which we yearn to be free.”

“As a university, IUPUI has the unique opportunity to examine its actions and policies, laying bare how the brutality of systemic racism is translated into higher education’s daily practices, expectations, predictions, decision-making and regulations that target Black and other people of Color,” the committee said.

MORE: ASU applicants must show commitment to diversity, inclusion

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