NEW: The National Science Foundation is currently giving $10 million to implement a DEI-focused hiring program at universities in Maryland, Texas, and North Carolina.

Exclusive docs show how this fellow-to-faculty scheme discriminates by race/sex—and favors scholar-activists 🧵
Run through the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC)—and named “Re-Imagining STEM Equity Utilizing Postdoctoral Pathways,” or RISE UPP—the program was designed to foster “recruitment, engagement, and transition to faculty roles for minoritized postdoctoral scholars."

VIDEOS: The University of California System spearheaded a special side-door hiring scheme for scholars committed to diversity.

But at UC Riverside, multiple professors raised serious concerns about the model—namely, that it pushes an ideological agenda. 🧵🧵🧵 In 2023, Douglas Haynes, a UC System vice provost, appeared on aUC Riverside panel on the President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.

In Q&A, several professors raised the issue. “What I wonder about is whether there is an ideological litmus test," said Steven Brint.

NEW: The University of California's "President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program" serves as a faculty hiring model for universities around the country.

It also creates big problems for academic freedom, and professors have increasingly sounded the alarm. 🧵 David Turner is an assistant professor in UCLA’s school of public affairs.

In his spare time, Turner does community activism, having co-founded the “Police-Free LAUSD Coalition,” a group that calls for wholesale police abolition.

1/ UC Davis is still investigating Jemma Decristo for these ⬇️⬇️ comments.

My reporting shows: UC Davis recruited Decristo through a postdoc program that gives special favor to scholar-activists.

Here are a few other beneficiaries of the vast scholar-activist pipeline. 🧵🧵🧵 2/ Here’s how it works: these fellows are 1) hired through a less-competitive process focused on diversity and then 2) heavily favored for a tenure-track jobs at the conclusion of the postdocs.

Its a side door into the faculty lounge—very convenient for admin pushing an agenda.

NEW: Days after the 10/7 Hama attack, UC Davis professor Jemma Decristo posted threateningly (⬇️⬇️) about "zionist journalists."

It rightly sparked outrage. But an even bigger story is how Decristo was recruited to a tenure-track job at UC Davis in the first place 🧵 Today I’m introducing a series of investigations (@CityJournal) on the scholar-activist pipeline.

For years, universities, private foundations, and federal agencies have furnished a well-funded career pathway for scholar who hold an activist vision for higher education.

NEW: Louis Galarowicz (@nasorg) and I have acquired a trove of records from University of Colorado, Boulder, that show how the entire university coordinated to advance a system of brazen race-based hiring.

The receipts are pretty astonishing... 🧵 @NASorg We acquired the approved/successful proposals for the university's large-scale diversity hiring program. Here are a few examples:

The College of Engineering & Applied Sciences said its cluster hire had “the goal of doubling our underrepresented faculty in the college.”

NEW: According to emails I've acquired via records request, Dana Renga, Ohio State's Dean of Arts and Humanities, enthusiastically approved a faculty search committee report that boasted about blatant race-based discrimination.

🧵🧵🧵
As I’ve previously reported, an OSU search committee, hiring a professor of “black France,” stated it was "essential" to hire a “visible minority.”

“We thus chose three Black candidates” for on campus interviews, the report states.

I talk to a lot of professors who hesitate to publicly push back against institutional madness.

It makes sense. Universities can make their lives miserable.

But two recent examples should inspire dissenters. Faculty who take a stand hold more card than one might think...

🧵🧵 Yesterday, a University of Michigan physics professor called out the president and board of regents — directly, in a public setting — for supporting what he described as blatantly discriminatory programs.

A truly remarkable statement.

At the University of Michigan, a large-scale hiring program only recruits scholars who show a “commitment to DEI.”

In practice, its a career pipeline program for scholars in activist disciplines—like “trans of color epistemologies” and “queer of color critique."

🧵🧵🧵


After the New York Times published on Michigan’s DEI bureaucracy, the university scrubbed (❗️❗️) the Collegiate Fellows Program directory from its webpage.

But I saved archived links.

Here’s what the much-celebrated initiative looks like in practice.

At the NIH, the Distinguished Scholars Program hires scientists who show a “commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Through a public records request, I’ve acquired redacted NIH hiring documents that show what this criterion looks like in practice.

🧵 Note, the NIH's former chief DEI officer emphasized that this program does not limit hiring based on race or sex—because, as she puts it below, “legally we cannot.”

Instead, it purports to boost diversity by proxy, hiring scientists who value DEI.

But...

NEW: The University of Michigan has hired over 50 professors via initiatives led by its chief diversity officer, Tabbye Chavous.

In records I've acquired, U-M boasted that, for these hires, diversity statements serve as a near-perfect proxy for racial preferences. The University of Michigan Board of Regents may soon ditch DEI. In the unfolding drama, Chavous plays a central role. Her vision for higher education hangs in the balance.

In my latest, I unpack the FOIAed record, which sheds light on that vision.

city-journal.org/article/univer…

NEW FOIA DOCUMENTS: a UW professor discusses her department's policy of "prioritizing DEI" in the hiring process. This, she says, is "operationalized as focusing on increasing hiring of URM candidates." Earlier in that thread, when discussing how to rank candidates, search committee members ask whether the department has a policy on BIPOC candidates, like it does on URMs.

NEW: The University of Michigan Board of Regents has asked its president for a plan "to defund or restructure" the Office of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion—according to the UM faculty senate chair.

In an email, the chair says the board could vote on the plan early next month! The email, which was addressed to the faculty senate, calls on faculty to defend DEI at an institution that has sunk millions into a sprawling social justice bureaucracy.

It also quickly blames and dismisses @nickconfessore's recent NYT piece ("a tendentious attack").

In 2022, a paper drawing from “critical whiteness studies" analyzed how "whiteness" shows up in Physics 101—concluding that, among other things, the use of whiteboards perpetuate whiteness in physics.

Here's what's crazy: this "research" was funded by the federal government.
🧵 2/ But first: what's Critical Whiteness Studies?

Per the article, it's a research framework that starts with the assumption that omnipresent, invisible whiteness pervades our ordinary interactions and institutions to ensure "white dominance."

As official policy, the Los Angeles Community College District requires faculty to complete an in-depth DEI evaluation and self-reflection.

A truly remarkable document. Quasi-religious. Take a look at some of the questions. 🧵 First, faculty have to "recognize the impact of racial and social identities in creating oppression and marginalization" and to describe their "commitment" to "anti-racist perspectives."

It's worth noting that the California Community Colleges system has been explicit about its definition of "anti-racism," which in good Kendian fashion is far from merely opposing racism.

The MacArthur Foundation just announced its 2024 fellows. In addition to eight hundred thousand no-strings-attached dollars, these awardees can now flaunt the (unofficial) title of “genius.”

Two thirds won this honor for work on race, sex, or identity. (🧵)





This year’s “geniuses” (yes, I know, the MacArthur foundation doesn't like that title) include a “performer working in the cabaret tradition” who has been “at the forefront of Trans visibility and activism since the early 1990s.”

1/ Harvard and MIT ended mandatory DEI statements for hiring faculty. Yet a mirror image of the policy is gaining traction in federal grant applications.

The NIH, perhaps most notably, has begun rolling out mandatory "Plans for Enhancing Diverse Perspectives." 2/ These plans essentially require grant applicants to describe their efforts to advance diversity and inclusion as they put together their research proposal.

This is how DEI statements in hiring are typically framed. The biggest issue comes in the evaluation.

SCOOP: The NIH is giving $250m to universities to hire medical scientists who show “an interest in DEI.”

The NIH says the program doesn't “discriminate against any group.” Public records tell a different story.

As one email put it, “I don’t want to hire white men for sure." The NIH FIRST program funds “cluster hiring” at universities and med schools around the country.

The program follows a popular model, reasoning that universities would hire minorities as a byproduct of heavily weighing DEI statements. On paper it bars racial preferences.

NEW: For hiring new professors, Columbia University recommends valuing “contributions to DEI” on par with “research.”

The sample evaluation tool also weighs DEI more highly than teaching.

That’s an especially wild default given how Columbia defines “contributions to DEI"... 🧵 Columbia provides an in-depth rubric for assessing DEI credentials. Which, of course, is pretty important if DEI might carry the same weight as research.

Take a look. The rubric gives a low score to candidates who are skeptical of racially-segregated “affinity groups.”

Do universities discriminate against white candidates? Yes. Especially when hiring professors focused on identity/social justice.

These positions give universities plausible deniability for race-based hiring, which is common in academia.

I have receipts. 🧵 It’s worth remembering the academic job market’s total saturation in positions focused on race, identity, and social justice.

Things like "indigenous Siberian studies" and classics with a focus on "race, racism, and Greek & Roman studies."

NEW: Yale University’s department of molecular biophysics and biochemistry requires all job applicants to submit a DEI statement.

Here's the evaluation rubric, which shows the exhaustive DEI criteria for assessing any scientist hoping to work in the Yale department. It's a remarkable document, which puts a thumb on the scale for progressive sensibilities.

Scientists get points for understanding the “challenges faced by underrepresented minorities”—likely to favor those fluent in the language of "microaggressions" and "implicit bias."