Thread: For faculty seeking promotion and tenure, the UNC School of Medicine requires both "positive contribution(s) to DEI efforts" and a DEI statement.
The school has tried to downplay these requirements, but its own P&T documents reveal the obvious compelled speech issues.
According the the promotion and tenure guidelines, these "DEI efforts" include:
Participating in "advocacy groups," engaging in "health equity" research, "promoting social justice," and creating "curricular content that uses inclusive concepts."
As an appendix shows, at best, the requirement turns all faculty into adjunct DEI officers.
Recommended DEI activities include: applying "material learned in DEI trainings," giving "social justice-focused lectures," presenting on DEI topics at conferences, building DEI curricula
This policy was prompted by the school's "Task Force for Integrating Social Justice Into the Curriculum," which issued a list of far-reaching DEI recommendations.
Even after pushback, the school mostly defended those recommendations, including the those that compel speech.
The P&T guidelines also link to a list of example DEI statements. While a few are more benign, some include overtly ideological language.
In effect, the sample letters suggest to faculty that they should embrace these concepts (e.g. "intersectionality") or risk losing promotion.
The second letter mentions the school's Safe Zone training. I attended one of these trainings last year.
It was essentially a crash course in the ideology of gender self-identification. (Complete with a nod to pediatric transition.)
In short, the UNC School of Medicine has implemented a promotion and tenure policy that violates academic freedom and creates serious issues of compelled speech. And on top of that, the policy rewards the promotion of a ludicrous ideology.
NEW: At San Diego State University, an intern training program teaches students how to challenge the “colonizer logic of work”—thanks to funds from the Mellon Foundation.
Through a records request, I acquired the grant proposal. It's possibly the worst internship prep ever. 🧵
The project's proposal lays out a simple rationale:
➡️Ethnic, women's, and gender studies students are seen as “unwilling or uncapable” of participating in the “hegemonic workforce.”
➡️This “deficit model” means the students end up underemployed.
The project’s solution: help students secure internships and then teach them to “resist” this “deficit model.” Specifically, by teaching them to resist the “colonizer logic of work,” “question specialization,” and retain “allyship.”
The remarkable thing about discrimination in higher ed: so much of it was documented. Approved in official records. Talked about in emails. All subject to FOIA.
Like this email, where a University of New Mexico professor just says: "I don't want to hire white men for sure."
Here's a search committee report from Ohio State saying: "We decided as a committee that diversity was just as important as perceived merit as we made our selection."
Here's an report from the University of Washington which concluded that its psychology department just blatantly discriminated by re-ranking finalists so the first choice wouldn't be a white woman.
NEW: During one hiring cycle at Ohio State, 60% of new arts and humanities faculty jobs fell in the “DEI” category, according to emails I obtained.
This was after OSU announced it would hire “100 underrepresented and BIPOC hires in all fields of scholarship.”
🧵on my latest.
In 2021, Ohio State’s then-president Kristina Johnson announced an initiative to hire 50 scholars focused on “social equity” and 100 “underrepresented and BIPOC” hires in all disciplines.
Documents I’ve acquired, reported in @CityJournal, shed light on how that played out.
@CityJournal The documents reveal how administrators were keeping tabs on the hiring spree.
In November 2022, an OSU diversity dean said over email that she wanted to meet with the finalists for a DEI-focused faculty job: professor of “indigenous knowledges.”
Last week, the DOJ released guidance for federal funding recipients.
The memo—which clarifies how nondiscrimination law should be applied—is a huge development for universities. A lot of their worst policies are looking more fragile than ever. 🧵
2/ The DOJ specifically highlights the use of racial proxies. Hiring on the basis of "cultural competence" or using diversity statements is unlawful if the purpose is to give an advantage to specific racial groups.
This is an even bigger deal than it might seem.
3/ Universities often take on large-scale hiring programs that select for an emphasis on "equity."
Inevitably the programs recruit ideologues. More importantly, this criteria is justified because it's seen as a way to favor minorities. It's right there in their own documents ⬇️
NEW: Around the country, college deans monitor finalist slates, shortlists, and applicant pools for faculty jobs. If a list isn't "diverse," a search can be outright cancelled.
I've acquired a trove of records that show who bankrolled this practice: the federal government.
🧵
As I’ve previously reported, these checkpoints give administrators diversity-based veto power in hiring (see ⬇️⬇️⬇️ for examples).
But the practice didn’t emerge organically. At many universities, it was adopted as direct result of National Science Foundation (NSF) funding.
Here’s what those grants look like.
In 2003, Case Western Reserve University received one of the early NSF ADVANCE grants ($3.5 million).
As a part of the grant, “deans could send a list back to the department if it did not reflect the diversity of the national pool.”