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."

The Washington Post Editorial Board calls for the end of DEI statements in faculty hiring.

It argues that the policy has led in practice to "ideological policing." That's a big deal—focusing on how the policy plays out in real life, not in some imagined best-case scenario. In practice the ideological policing is impossible to deny. Here are just a few examples of how "DEI contributions" are evaluated, as shown by public records.

Here’s a wild example: At Texas Tech, a DEI evaluation of biology job candidates show one being penalized for not properly describing the difference between equality and equity.

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

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.”

A thread of threads.

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…

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.”

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.

https://twitter.com/TrevonDLogan/status/1737478290359599343

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.

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!