The decision by Virginia Tech to abandon a controversial proposal aimed at requiring faculty to engage in diversity-related activities, has prompted a larger debate on college campuses across the nation over what role, if any, should diversity work play in the evaluation of faculty members.

While many colleges and universities across the nation have long rewarded faculty members who voluntarily engage in promoting diversity on their respective campuses, the accolades often come in the form of monetary grants, certificates or awards and are not requirements that have to be met in order to secure tenure or gain a promotion in faculty rank.

But there are some faculty members and administrators who are pushing to make faculty diversity work a requirement for promotion, arguing that if academics are not forced to expand their comfort zones and scholarly interests, they simply won’t.

Still, when universities have tried to implement such policies, they have faced fierce criticism from faculty and from outside conservative and first amendment groups that argue such a requirement is too stringent and violates academic freedom. In the end, all of these institutions eventually backed away from their original proposal.

Diversity work, however, is still being considered and evaluated by tenure and promotion committees at institutions all across the nation, says Dr. Winnifred R. Brown-Glaude, an assistant professor of Africana studies at The College of New Jersey.

Brown-Glaude is the editor of Doing Diversity in Higher Education, a collection of case studies that examine diversity issues at 12 colleges across the United States.

“What we found was that faculty members viewed diversity work as an extension of their intellectual work and to separate the two is a false divide,” says Brown-Glaude, who adds that many institutions mistakenly treat diversity work as service to the college or university and such service is often weighted less than scholarly work.