NEW: After Trump’s inauguration, the University of Michigan School of Nursing axed all its DEI programs.

Or so it appeared—until we dug deeper.

Turns out the school just renamed its DEI office the office of “community culture.” And all its DEI programs are still in effect.🧵
Amid Trump’s blitzkrieg of executive orders, a "diversity" tab with links to DEI resources was removed from the school’s homepage. And pages with "DEI" in the title were renamed and purged of the offending adjective, according to web archives we reviewed.

SCOOP: The University of Illinois was sued today over a slew of race-based hiring programs that discriminate against white scholars.

The lawsuit shows how faculty hiring—and the paper trail it generates—could be an easy way for the Trump administration to go after DEI.🧵 The plaintiff, Stephen Kleinschmit, a former professor of public administration and data science at the University of Illinois Chicago, alleges that he was fired for raising concerns about the programs.

SCOOP: The Department of Education today canceled $15 million in federal grants that were used to fund diversity programs at three universities, the latest move in the Trump administration's efforts to defund DEI.

The grants were spent on DEI trainings and an “equity” center.🧵 The universities—California State University, Los Angeles; Virginia Commonwealth University; and the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota—had received a series of grants for their education schools under the Biden administration.

SCOOP: Brown University Medical School now gives "diversity, equity, and inclusion" more weight than "excellent clinical skills" in its promotion criteria for faculty."

The criteria say DEI is a "major criterion." Clinical skills, by contrast, are only a "minor criterion."🧵 Doctors who reviewed the criteria were alarmed, saying they reflect an unusually frank admission that merit is taking a back seat to DEI.

"This is as stark as it gets," said Bob Cirincione, an orthopedic surgeon in Hagerstown, Maryland.

NEW: Many states and cities now have bias reporting systems for citizens to report each other for "hate speech."

Oregon's hotline solicits reports of "offensive jokes" and even logged the Israeli flag as a bias incident when I reported a display of one.

Wokeness is not dead.🧵 In the name of collecting "data" on so-called "bias incidents," at least a dozen Democratic jurisdictions, including eight states, have set up hotlines and portals that let people report their fellow citizens for protected speech. freebeacon.com/policy/inside-…

EXCLUSIVE: Amy Wax has sued the University of Pennsylvania for race discrimination, arguing that Penn punishes speech that offends racial minorities but not speech that offends Jews.

Here is a table from the complaint, which was filed in federal court this morning.🧵 The complaint, obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon, advances a novel legal theory that could have major implications for universities as they brace for the incoming Trump administration.

NEW: Amy Wax told UPenn last week that she will sue the university for race discrimination if it does not drop the sanctions against her.

She's arguing that by punishing speech that offends racial minorities—but not speech that offends Jews—Penn violated civil rights law.🧵 Penn has until December 19 to "conclusively disavow" the penalties. "Should you fail to do so," her attorney wrote in a letter to Penn, "Professor Wax will file suit against the University."

NEW: The top neuropsychology organizations in North America may soon adopt training guidlines that call on clinicians to use "social justice frameworks," fight "systemic oppression," and pursue "equitable and just scientific knowledge."

Board certification is on the line.🧵 The guidelines are the product of two years of meetings between the field’s main professional groups and could reshape the entire discipline.

Neuropsych is the branch of medicine that diagnoses brain injuries, including concussions, by administering tests of cognitive function.

NEW: ~40 departments at the University of Illinois Chicago have pledged, in writing, to hire faculty based on race.

One department justified its quotas by claiming that minorities "have a greater sense" of the "nature of teaching."

Here's how UIC is openly flouting the law:🧵 In September 2022, the Department of Industrial Engineering made a bold promise to UIC's Office of Diversity, Equity, and Engagement: From then on, the department said, 50 percent of all faculty hires would be either women or minorities.

NEW: In a required class for first-year medical students, UCSF praised an anti-Israel protest that shut down the Bay Bridge, delayed the delivery of donated organs, and put UCSF's own patients at risk.

If you find that hard to believe, wait till you see the other lessons.🧵 UCSF has a mandatory unit on "justice and advocacy in medicine," which covers "issues like racism, ableism, and patriarchy" and spans six weeks—more than the amount of time spent on basic anatomy or cardiovascular health.

Those six weeks contain some shocking material.

EXCLUSIVE: In 2007, Kamala Harris plagiarized pages of Congressional testimony from a Republican colleague.

And in 2012, she plagiarized a fictionalized story about sex trafficking—but presented it as a real case.

It's not just one book; it's a career-long pattern.🧵 On April 24, 2007, Harris testified before the House Judiciary Committee in support of a student loan repayment program. Virtually her entire testimony about the program was taken from that of another district attorney, Paul Logli of Winnebago County, Illinois.

NEW: Harvard punished a Taiwanese student, Cosette Wu, who disrupted a talk by China's ambassador.

But it declined to punish a Chinese student who forcibly dragged Wu from the event.

After video of the assault went viral, Harvard even gave that student a letter of apology .🧵 Wu got in all of 20 seconds of heckling before a student from China grabbed Wu and, in an incident that the university's police department logged as an assault, ejected her from the event.

NEW: The dean of Michigan State's College of Education, Jerlando Jackson, plagiarized extensively over the course of his career, per a new complaint, raising questions about his fitness to lead one of the top teacher training programs in the country.

This is a big one.🧵
The complaint includes nearly 40 examples of plagiarism that span nine of Jackson’s papers, including his Ph.D. thesis, and range from single sentences to full pages.

NEW: Penn tried to buy Amy Wax’s silence by offering her a deal: it would water down the sanctions against her—and take a pay cut off the table—provided she kept quiet about the case and stopped accusing the university of censoring her.

As you might guess, Wax refused.🧵 It was Wax’s refusal to take the deal that prompted Penn to announce Tuesday that it was suspending her for a year at half pay and stripping her of an endowed chair.

NEW: The Department of Health and Human Services is investigating two programs at the Cleveland Clinic that offer preferential care to minorities, the first such probe by an agency that has been loath to police racial preferences under the Biden-Harris administration.🧵 HHS announced last week that it had launched an investigation of the clinic’s Minority Stroke Program, which is dedicated to "treating stroke in racial and ethnic minorities," and its Minority Men’s Health Center, which screens black and Hispanic men for disease.

NEW: The University of South Carolina required all students to affirm the value of "diversity and inclusion" as part of a mandatory training this summer.

Then, when I reached out for comment, USC claimed the training was "optional" despite telling students it was "required."🧵 In a module on "Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging," which included 10 multiple choice questions, the training asked students how "diversity and inclusion help create a healthy, positive campus environment."

NEW: The RNC has sent letters to election officials in six swing states urging them to monitor Vot-ER, the nonprofit that helps doctors register their patients to vote, for possible violations of election law.

This is the Dem-aligned group registering patients in psych wards.🧵

Addressed to secretaries of state in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada, the letters argue that Vot-ER is "weaponizing the healthcare system" for partisan ends and "threatening … election integrity" with its materials.

NEW: Robin DiAngelo tells her "fellow white people" that they should "always cite and give credit to the work of BIPOC people who have informed your thinking."

But she appears to have plagiarized numerous scholars—including two minorities—in her doctoral dissertation.🧵 "When you use a phrase or idea you got from a BIPOC person," DiAngelo says, "credit them."

But according to a complaint filed last week with the University of Washington, where DiAngelo received her Ph.D. in multicultural education, she hasn't always taken her own advice.

How bad are hate speech laws in the UK? Saying "it's OK to be white" can result in a harsher sentence than child pornography.

@abigailandwords found numerous cases in which UK judges jailed thought criminals while letting actual criminals off the hook.

The list is shocking.🧵 Judge Benedict Kelleher sentenced a man to 18 months in prison for chanting "who the fuck is Allah?" He gave a lighter sentence to a man who physically assaulted a police officer.

NEW: Two professors on Columbia's top disciplinary body were involved in the unlawful encampment that upended campus life in April and led to the resignation of Columbia president Minouche Shafik, raising questions about the school's ability to keep order in the coming term.🧵 The professors, Joseph Slaughter and Susan Bernofsky, sit on the university senate’s rules committee, which helps set rules governing campus protests as well as the process for enforcing them.

NEW: Doctors at Seattle Children's Hospital were forced to attend a racially segregated DEI training that claimed black people are "systematically targeted for demise" and pressed white docs to "tap into their repressed racial memories" to develop a white "race-consciousness."🧵

Held in August 2022, the training was mandatory for the gastroenterology department and divided participants into three "racial caucuses"—a white caucus, a black caucus, and a "Non-Black POC Caucus"—to "minimize harm to our black learners and facilitator."