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.
The NIH funds DEI-related hiring in the biomedical sciences through multi-million dollar grants to universities around the county.
I've acquired hundreds of records related to this program—which I discuss in-depth in today's WSJ. A thread to highlight a few of those records. /1
NIH FIRST funds DEI "cluster hiring" at universities and med schools. A core requirement of the program is that every scientist hired submit a “diversity statement,” an increasingly controversial policy.
What does this look like in practice? The records speak for themselves. /2
Cornell University’s grant proposal describing how it will evaluate its hard-science job candidates: “Note that the statement on contribution to diversity will receive significant weight in the evaluation.” /3
The Utah Senate just passed a bill that in effect ends DEI in state universities. Now's probably a good time to recall what DEI has actually looked like in the state, especially since outlets like the Salt Lake Tribune have tried their best to “debunk” the major criticism.
The most salient example comes from the University of Utah’s School of Medicine—and its response to a group called White Coats 4 Black Lives.
In 2020, the University of Utah School of Medicine effectively adopted a DEI plan called for and created by White Coats 4 Black Lives (WC4BL).
WC4BL is a radical student activist organization. I use the word "radical" sparingly but it’s undeniable here. The organization — which boasts chapters at about 70 medical schools — calls for defunding the police, abolishing prisons, and an identitarian form of socialism. But really, it’s best to hear the organization in its own words.
The fist page of its Vision and Values statement for example asserts that “dominant medical practice in the United States has been built on the dehumanization and exploitation of Black people.”
WC4BL asserts that anti-racism requires “dismantling fatphobia,” “Black queer feminist praxis,” “the redistribution of power and resources (including reparations.”
The group asserts that white supremacy is a global colonialist project and calls for resistance against “Israeli Apartheid." That “the destruction of racial hierarchy, created for the purpose of exploitation, whiteness, and white supremacy, requires dismantling racial capitalism altogether.”
It also argues that policing originated from slave patrols and for the removal of police from hospitals.
It instructs the readers that “Cisheteropatriachy” is a European invention “intimately connected to colonialism and white supremacy,” and decries requiring a therapist letter for trans surgeries.
It’s been an interesting year. My writing primarily focused on institutional capture in higher ed. Put simply, DEI.
Now more than ever, the issue is front and center.
So consider this both a highlight reel and list of (self) recommended pieces.
The issue is especially relevant right now, as journalists like @FareedZakaria have decried higher ed's mission creep, and @bariweiss and @sullydish have called for the end of DEI.
I’ve aimed to shine a light with my reporting. So without further ado…
@FareedZakaria @bariweiss @sullydish 1. For @bariweiss, I started the year with “How DEI Is Supplanting Truth as the Mission of American Universities.”
Drawing from more than two dozen interviews, the piece gives a sweeping overview of the how DEI policies have dominated higher ed.
In this new Crimson piece, several Harvard students are quoted saying, basically, that Claudine Gay has to go.
One said she was initially sympathetic to Gay, but now thinks her plagiarism embodies “the opposite” of “the values of Harvard College.”
Another: “Stepping down would be a humble offering to the university's future.”
And here’s one of Crimson’s editorial editors:
“It's hypocritical for the university to apply one standard to students and another standard to faculty - and perhaps even a third standard to
Claudine Gay.”
A dean at OSU's College of Arts and Sciences—where, until recently, every search committee had to get dean approval on extensive "diversity faculty recruitment reports" in order to move forward with job interviews—laughs at the idea that admin pushes politicized hiring.
Keep in mind: Ohio State's admin has gone further than any other university I know of to push politicized, DEI-focused hires.
Its RAISE Initiative alone promised to hire 150 new faculty members focused on race and "social equity." Here's the OSU president's description.
Thus, last year, almost all of the jobs in OSU's College of Arts and Sciences focused on race or social justice.
Things like “race in the philosophy of science," physics with a focus on "educational equity," archeology with an focus on decolonization and queer theory.
Today, the University of Arizona faculty will consider adding a minor in "Emancipatory Education."
It'll cover topics such as "Indigenous methodologies," activist approaches to research, and "Critical and postmodern (and decolonial) approaches to understanding gender."
Thread
Potential classes to complete the minor will include:
Leadership for Social Justice
Theories of Inequality, Oppression, and Social Stratification
Whiteness and Education
Activism in Higher Education
Indigenous Statistics and Survey Research
Decolonial Thinking
and more!
Here are the proposed learning outcomes.
They include applying "critical, postmodern, and emancipatory concepts," developing "praxis-based" concepts for "social-justice based" interventions, and articulating the "importance of emancipatory education."