DOCUMENTS: Through a records request, I have acquired the University of Missouri's rubric for evaluating diversity statements.
As usual, the rubric proves the critics' point: DEI evaluations invite viewpoint discrimination.
As it turns out, Mizzou routinely uses diversity statements in hiring.
According to its Inclusive Excellence Plan, the College of Arts and Science has expanded its use of the statements. The college of agriculture has committed to using them for “all faculty applications.”
Mizzou’s Division of Biological Sciences (why is it always biology?) heavily weighs diversity statements.
Its website advertises its “equal weighting of the research, teaching, and inclusion and equity statements" in the first round of faculty job application reviews.
Meanwhile, Mizzou’s training on “Best Practice for Inclusive Excellence in Faculty Hiring” encourages hiring committees to assess job candidates’ contributions to DEI using a pre-established rubric.
Again, the Mizzou rubric I obtained through a FOIA request perfectly illustrates how diversity statement policies invite viewpoint discrimination.
Though innocuous-sounding, the phrase “diversity, equity, and inclusion” doesn't imply a set of neutral values.
In practice, it implies a set of controversial views about race, gender, and social justice. Again and again, this is demonstrated by university DEI initiatives.
By now, it should be obvious that diversity statements will inevitably function as ideological litmus tests—and huge failures of priority.
Unfortunately, they’re alive and well at the University of Missouri.
Read the full story, and take a look at the rubric, at @MindingCampus. Through top-quality research and reporting, we're documenting the ways that DEI has invaded higher education to the detriment of our public and private universities.
NEW: Universities across the U.S. have embraced diversity checkpoints in faculty hiring.
Administrators monitor the demographics of applicants throughout the process, with consequences for searches that don't "pass muster"—according to a trove of records I've obtained.
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In one email—acquired via a records request—UT Austin professor Carma Gorman asked diversity-dean John Yancey whether her search committee’s pool was sufficiently diverse to advance.
The dean said yes, but if the numbers dropped “then things don’t look good anymore.”
At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the Human Resources director would send weekly “diversity of the pool reports,” which would continue up to the selection of finalists.
If the makeup was deemed “insufficient,” more administrators would get involved.
DOCUMENTS: At Cornell, search committees that were hiring biomedical scientists had to pass four "checkpoints" to make sure their pools were "sufficiently diverse."
"That certainly looks like a Title VII violation," one legal expert told me when discussing the program.
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In 2021, Cornell received a $16 million NIH grant for the Cornell FIRST hiring program—aiming, in the proposal’s words, to "increase the number of minoritized faculty" at Cornell and beyond.
I acquired a trove of documents that show how this played out.
According to a proposal and set of progress reports, the program's leadership team screened applicants at four separate stages—the initial pool, longlist, shortlist, and finalist slate—to ensure “as diverse a pool as possible.”
DOCUMENTS: The University of Michigan’s “anti-racism and racial justice” cluster hire wrapped up last year—recruiting at least 20 new professors.
I’ve acquired the proposals via a record request. They show how U-M aggressively hired social justice activists.
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For a cluster focused on the arts, a proposal declares that the new faculty will teach students to become "change agents," as art should aim to "challenge policies" which "perpetuate white supremacy."
The cluster search in "data justice" was especially aimed at recruiting scholars in critical race studies," decolonization, and racial capitalism.
Adding: "UM needs to show these new faculty that we believe that it is not the job of the oppressed to reform the oppressor..."
My take: because in that time, universities launched huge ideologically-charged faculty hiring schemes.
But these schemes are legally vulnerable. They came hand-in-hand with overt discrimination.
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I’ve acquired hundreds of documents describing the inner workings of social justice university hiring schemes.
Just in my capacity as an investigative journalist, I’ve found dozens of examples of universities seemingly violating civil rights law—and hiring based on race.
1) “Our aim is specifically to hire a Black, Indigenous, or Latinx faculty member.”
At the University of Colorado Boulder, the Faculty Diversity Action Plan funded special faculty position, if departments could demonstrate how the role would enhance diversity.
Many of the roles created through these programs were overtly ideological, like the one for a German studies professor who examined fairy tales, folklore, and fantasy through a “critical race studies perspectives.”
When @ and I acquired the proposals, we found that many just openly stated the intention to discriminate.
— “Our commitment, should we be successful with this application, is to hire someone from the BIPOC community.”
— “This cluster hire has the goal of doubling our underrepresented faculty in the college.”
— “[This search] emphasizes hiring Black, Indigenous, Asian American, Latinx, and Pacific Islander faculty”
— “We have an urgent and qualified need for BIPOC femme/women of color faculty in an Africana Studies focus who will contribute to the social science division thematic cluster hire in racism and racial inequality.”
Today, I argue that the challenge of higher education reform can be boiled down to one issue: the talent pipeline.
If we rewire the academic talent pipeline, the reform movement will succeed. If not, no other list of policies will suffice.
2/ Universities have long provoked criticism. But acute mistrust is a recent trend. Ten years ago, 57% of Americans had high confidence in higher ed, and only 10% had “little or none.” Today, only 36% have high trust, and 32% have low-to-no confidence.
What changed?
3/ The rise of what I call the “scholar-activist pipeline” helps explain the shift.
Over the past decade, universities—from Columbia to Ohio State to UVA to Texas A&M to CU Boulder—invested aggressively in ideologically-charged hiring schemes, recruiting 100s of new professors.