John Sailer
@JohnDSailer
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Senior Fellow and Director of Higher Education Policy @ManhattanInst. Opinions my own.
Joined May 2020
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. 🧵
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NEW: The Texas A&M University System has ended the use of DEI statements in both admissions and faculty hiring. “No university or agency in the A&M System will admit any student, nor hire any employee based on any factor other than merit.”
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NEW: MIT has banned the use of DEI statements for faculty hiring and promotions. This is huge, a turning point — the policy, functionally an ideological weed-out tool, is widely unpopular in academia, but MIT is the first elite private institution to pull the plug.
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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. 🧵
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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."
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In the NYT, @powellAtlantic notes that UC Berkeley carried out a cluster hire—eliminating 75% of faculty job applicants based on DEI statement alone. The second photo is Berkeley's own description. Universities around the U.S. have embraced this model. A quick thread.
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The New York Times notes that many California universities publicly post their rubric for assessing DEI. Berkeley’s gives a low score if you say you prefer to “treat everyone the same.” . Remarkably, this rubric is used across the country. Here are just three examples.
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Actual quiz question at UT Austin: Which group is most likely to violate others' rights with "violence, deceit, irresponsibility, and a lack of remorse?". Answer: "wealthy white men.".
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The term “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) is meant to sound unambiguously beneficent. But many of the professors I spoke with understand that DEI instead implies a set of controversial political and social views. My latest in @TheFP. 🧵.
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I don't think many will admit this, but for a lot of those in academia, maybe even a majority, I suspect the reaction to Trump's order on DEI was a big a sigh of relief.
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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. 🧵
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Dozens of psych students signed this letter demanding UCLA not hire Dr. Yoel Inbar. After that, he didn't get the job offer he was almost certainly going to receive. His main offense: expressing skepticism about DEI statements. In his words, "It is not clear what good they do."
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Andrew Sullivan calls for a wholesale end to DEI. "End DEI in its entirety. Fire all the administrators whose only job is to enforce its toxic orthodoxy."
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UPDATE: After I published my article in @WSJopinion, Texas Tech University announced that it has ended its use of DEI statements.
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‼️‼️‼️. University of Michigan has banned mandatory DEI statements. Watershed moment. Michigan spearheaded the practice of diversity statements—and encouraged other universities to use them. Now, it’s the first “blue state” public university to nix them.
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NEW: University of Utah has ended DEI statements. The university’s president told administrators yesterday to eliminate “any type of diversity statements or similar practices” in the application or hiring process.
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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.
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BREAKING: In his testimony at the Wisconsin state house today, University of Wisconsin system president Jay Rothman announced that he’s ending the use of diversity statements in hiring throughout the system.
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The chief diversity officer at the NIH just announced she's retiring at the end of the year. I suspect this is the first of many such departures.
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We can’t understand what’s going on at universities right now without understanding what's happened to faculty hiring. I’ve become convinced that this is the crux of so many issues in academia today. After investigating and writing on faculty hiring for over a year, I’ve found.
“Every day the universities wake up and break the law.” . That's how I began my recent seminar for Stanford's Classical Liberalism Initiative.
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BREAKING: A university spokesperson has officially confirmed to me that MIT will no longer use diversity statements in faculty hiring—making it the first elite private institution to backtrack on the controversial policy.
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THREAD: The rapid, all consuming growth of DEI is not limited to universities in progressive states. Many “Red State” universities are creating bureaucracies that entrench scholar-activism and distort the basic purpose of higher education. The most obvious example: Texas.
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Wow! Randall Kennedy of Harvard Law School argues for abandoning DEI statements, calling them ideological pledges of allegiance. He argues many academics feel an "intense and growing resentment against the DEI enterprise," and that DEI statements reveal the heart of the issue.
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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. 🧵🧵.
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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. 🧵
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Thread: Universities increasingly require DEI statements for not only hiring but also promotion and tenure (see below). In many cases, the rubrics for evaluating those statements test for whether candidates display the right "values." . For example, UC Berkeley's rubric.
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NEW: The NIH is spending nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to promote the use of diversity statements in faculty hiring. Through public records requests, I’ve acquired the DEI statement rubrics used for two NIH-funded faculty hiring programs.
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Colleges often reward job applicants for their “contributions to DEI.” Records I acquired show exactly how that worked for many departments at Ohio State. For example, "Dr. [redacted] also identifies as 'a first generation, fat, queer scholar of color.'". A quick thread.
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NEW: The University of Tennessee has required every school and administrative unit to produce a “Diversity Action Plan,” effectively mandating the creation of hundreds of DEI policies at every level of the university. We have acquired those plans. Thread:
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Last month, Duke University hosted a symposium on sexual and gender minorities. I attended, sitting through about ten hours of sessions, and wrote about it here: .
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Half the faculty jobs in history over the last three years focus on ethnic identity, 35% on African American history. And this doesn’t account for the jobs focused on social justice/equity. Based on what I’ve seen, this is a good picture of what’s going on throughout academia.
The #1 story in the US History job market, over the last ten years, is the overall decline in tenure-track job openings. But the #2 story is the change in which jobs are being offered. The US History market in 2011-13 compared to 2020-23, with data from the Academic Jobs Wiki:
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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.
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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.
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NEW: Professor Matthew Garrett was fired by Bakersfield College for criticizing a racial climate task force. Now, he’s receiving a $2.4M settlement. Matthew was smeared by his college and punished for his protected (and reasonable!) speech. The settlement is a win for higher ed.
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This is totally brazen and on its face a ridiculous thing to say. And here the professor is making students say it for quiz credit. "Hint: They also happen to hold the most social power and because of that can get away with the most wrongdoing.".
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NEW: At Texas Tech, each search committee in the biology department was required to submit a report on how they evaluated job candidates’ diversity statements. Through a records request, I’ve acquired these reports. I explore them @WSJopinion.
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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.
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NEW: The University of Houston System has ended the use of DEI statements in hiring and promotion. "[W]e will not support or use DEI statements or factors in hiring or promotion anywhere in the University of Houston System."
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@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.”
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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". 🧵
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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. 🧵🧵🧵
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SCOOP: Allegations of a “coverup” of widespread “discriminatory hiring” erupted at a recent University of Washington faculty meeting. I’ve obtained the audio. Here's a quick thread for context.
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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.”
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Scientific excellence, moreover, clearly takes a backseat in the program. A reviewer says of one candidate: “Excellent scientist but not particularly distinguished in the area of diversity in science.”. Another: “Unimpressive diversity statement, good scientist…”
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NEW: The University of Missouri System will no longer use diversity statements in faculty hiring. In an email on Friday, President Mun Choi also said that the Mizzou would no longer use its "diversity faculty hiring rubric."
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@NASorg @WSJopinion One of the most remarkable troves of public records I've ever received, the implications here are far-reaching, both for the university and for federal policy. Read our full analysis, with full context, in the Wall Street Journal.
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REPORT: White Coats for Black Lives is a medical student organization, boasting more than 70 chapters at medical schools around the country. Its goal: to inject identity politics into medical education. And it has succeeded. I explain in @cityjournal.
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Another candidate mentored several minorities, but in their application, their “details on mentoring focused mostly on scientific accomplishments rather than diversity commitment.”. They were deemed a "mediocre" candidate.
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. the records I acquired show—first of all—that NIH applicant reviewers repeatedly highlight gender and minority status. Here's an example, in the section soliciting positive and negative comments on the potential NIH scientists.
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Across the country, new faculty jobs increasingly require a narrow specialization in race, identity, social justice, and critical race theory. And of all places, Ohio State University might be the worst offender in the nation. 🧵.
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@NASorg Another example:. The Renewable And Sustainable Energy Institute proposed a specific candidate—who it noted was “an outstanding BIPOC scholar” who would increase the program’s “domestic Faculty of Color. ”
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This is blowing up on MedTwitter. An academic medical center would never publicly endorse an even watered down version of this statement. Many make enormous efforts to do the exact opposite. Yet, because one person holds the wrong opinion, academic medicine is "not safe."
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A large number of student protest groups have now used this image. Paragliders like these were used to massacre innocent people in Israel. The image comes from the National Students for Justice in Palestine's "Day of Resistance Toolkit"—itself a highly disturbing document. 1/
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That brings to mind an episode from the University of Washington. In the summer, a professor stood up at a meeting and—while others tried to shout her down—directly confronted several administrators over allegedly wide-spread illegal hiring.
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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.
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@powellAtlantic For a 2021 cluster hire in psych, Vanderbilt University's received over 400 job applicants. The search team cut the pool to 50-60 based on DEI statements alone. They used Berkeley's rubric—the one that penalizes candidates who for saying they want to "treat everyone the same."
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“Female [redacted] physician scientist,” “URM scientist,” “URM female scientist.”. These references appear consistently throughout the records, raising obvious legal questions. Again, the NIH's chief DEI officer said the program cannot legally limit hiring based on race/sex.
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This is the way to do it. Other university systems should take note. “Today’s System-wide directive standardizes faculty and staff applications, limiting them to a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statements about research and teaching philosophies, and professional references.”.
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@powellAtlantic Here's a full writeup @unherd. I conclude: . As a consequence of these measures, trust in higher education will likely continue to fall, owing in part to a sense that some views are simply not tolerated.
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Notre Dame's School of Architecture has bulked up its DEI efforts, hiring a new DEI director. When one grad of the school tweeted criticism of those efforts, the dean of the school sent a letter accusing that alum of racism and sexism, and calling for a large scale denunciation.
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This is an OSU search committee on its proposed finalists:. The committee was "keenly aware" of the need to hire a "visible minority," and "thus chose three Black candidates," declaring that "diversity was just as important as perceived merit as we made our selections.". 🧵
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@NASorg As we argue in the @WSJopinion, racial preferences went hand-in-hand with ideological preferences. Notice that this proposal to hire a German studies scholar touts how she's both a woman of color and has an expertise in “anti-racist pedagogy” and “decolonizing German Studies.”
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@NASorg Another example:. The Department of Journalism told the admin in its proposal that “Our commitment, should we be successful with this application, is to hire someone from the BIPOC community…”
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A University of Minnesota professor went on a digression denying that Hamas committed rape, suggesting the idea is rooted in a racist trope, in a talk that was a part of her application for a dean of DEI position.
NEW @J_Insider via @HaleyCohen19:. ”University of Minnesota professor who denied Hamas atrocities on Oct. 7 a candidate for school’s top DEI job”. “Sima Shakhsari attended an on-campus rally, where she was seen chanting, ‘Globalize the Intifada’”
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Downplaying scientific excellence is bad enough. But here’s the bigger program: the records reveal an ideological bias. Throughout, scientists are lauded for using the language of identity politics, and punished for not espousing the right understanding of diversity.
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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.". 🧵🧵🧵
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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. (🧵)
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NEW: University of Washington violated non-discrimination policy, according to an internal UW report acquired by the National Association of Scholars.
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Thread: An understated trend in higher ed is the influx of faculty jobs that focus on race, gender, identity, and critical theory. These have become the hottest areas, the specialties most likely to land a job. Here are a few from the first page of the MLA's job board.
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NEW: On May 12, I was going to speak on DEI at the Medical College of Wisconsin, alongside Sen. Ron Johnson and State Rep. Dave Murphy. Last night, the president of the college announced he has "rescind the use" of the its facilities for the event, citing disruptions and safety.
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There's an unmistakable mandate to reform universities. Anyone who stands up (against ideological capture, against unlawful hiring) has more leverage, and more allies within higher education, than they might think.
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NEW: At the University of Kansas, a new center aims to recruit “scholar-activists” to help fight “anti-trans bills.”. It also seeks to “transform the academy” while advancing a “theory and practice of transgender liberation"—according to records I've acquired. 🧵🧵🧵
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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.
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Bernard oversaw the NIH FIRST program, which gave universities $5-15 million grants for DEI-focused hiring. One grantee captured the ethos of that program in an email I acquired through FOIA: "I don’t want to hire white men for sure.".
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."
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NEW: The UNC Board of Governor's Committee on University Governance just passed a motion preventing compelled speech in admission and hiring. The motion will be taken up by the full board next month. This policy will considerably limit or even prohibit diversity statements.
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NEW: The Idaho State Board of Education, which oversees Idaho's state universities, has just banned the use of "diversity statements" in faculty hiring.
The Idaho State Board of Education has followed our recommendation to ban coercive “Diversity Statements” in public universities. The board passed a resolution “Prohibiting…diversity statements from candidates applying for employment at Idaho’s four-year public universities.”
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@NASorg Another example:. “We have an urgent and qualified need for BIPOC femme/women of color faculty,” the Department of Ethnic Studies stated, adding that the scholar should contribute to a “thematic cluster hire in racism and racial inequality.”
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NEW: The UNC System is going to vote on repealing its DEI policy. The current policy mandates DEI officers at every UNC institution. It would be replaced by a new rule emphasizing academic freedom/nondiscrimination, which will lead to "reductions in force and spending."
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An article on DEI cluster hiring quotes one university dean, who describes the process in detail. Her response to the charge that she was hiring based on race: "I absolutely am!"
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Faculty and admin at University of Colorado, Boulder, brazenly discriminated through its diversity hiring program. But the public records @louisgalarowicz and I acquired (⬇️⬇️⬇️) show a much more pernicious after-effect: an ideological agenda. 🧵
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But in grant proposals, for projects funded by the NIH, universities repeatedly and openly state they'll restrict who they hire on the basis of race. Vanderbilt University Medical Center promises to hire 18-20 "Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander" scientists.
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@NASorg These are just a few examples, the list goes on and on. The College of Media, Communications, and Information’s cluster hire, meanwhile, emphasized "hiring Black, Indigenous, Asian American, Latinx, and Pacific Islander faculty…”. But also note the disciplinary focus.
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A huge shout out to @RussellNobile of Judicial Watch, who helped me get these records un-redacted (see below). Some of the remaining redactions raise yet more questions. With the NIH, you often have to go the legal route, and Russ is pushing for more.
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DOCUMENTS: The Ohio State University’s College of Engineering requires diversity statements for jobs in computer engineering, architecture, and even nuclear engineering. Conveniently, it lists a rubric for evaluating these statements right on its website.
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@TheFP In a short time, DEI imperatives have spawned a growing bureaucracy that holds enormous power within universities. The ranks of DEI vice presidents, deans, and officers are ever-growing. Princeton has more than 70 administrators devoted to DEI. Ohio State has 132.
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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!
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Thread: For faculty seeking promotion and tenure, the UNC School of Medicine requires both "positive contribution(s) to DEI efforts" and a DEI statement. The school has tried to downplay these requirements, but its own P&T documents reveal the obvious compelled speech issues.
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@powellAtlantic The NIH is funding DEI cluster hiring at universities around the country—to the tune of $241 million. For every job created through the grant, DEI statements mandatory and heavily weighed. When I FOIAed the DEI statement rubrics used by two of the grantee institutions, I
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That’s the University of South Carolina, the University of New Mexico, and the UMASS Chan School of Medicine — all using or adapting the Berkeley rubric. As I explain today @unherd, what happens in California rarely stays in California.
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Evaluating faculty for their commitment to DEI is just an intuitively bad policy, and very unpopular. I predict many more universities—even private institutions and colleges in deep blue state—will follow MIT’s example.
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NEW: Here's the email from University of Missouri President Mun Choi announcing the end of diversity statements. "We’ll also no longer use the diversity faculty hiring rubric that was developed in 2018."
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@BillAckman @Harvard Universities across the country now heavily prioritize DEI in faculty hiring, establishing litmus tests the likely violate the first amendment. It’s a scandal, and the key to understanding what happening in higher ed right now.
We can’t understand what’s going on at universities right now without understanding what's happened to faculty hiring. I’ve become convinced that this is the crux of so many issues in academia today. After investigating and writing on faculty hiring for over a year, I’ve found.
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As I wrote in WSJ, the distorted priorities of American academia often have roots in the federal government. In the end, the NIH has helped fund the thriving scholar-activist career pipeline.
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A grad student in the shoes of David Austin Walsh might think they have the right formula: even if you’re a white guy, just specialize in the right things, then you'll have at least a shot. That is verifiably incorrect. Universities very explicitly say these.
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@powellAtlantic In 2020, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center lead a cluster hire—noting its commitment "to ensuring that all candidates hired share our commitment to diversity, antiracism, and inclusion.". The guidelines for writing a DEI statement notes that that might including
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Today CNN did a segment on Texas Tech's decision to stop using diversity statements in faculty hiring, citing my report.
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At times, the ideological orientation of these NIH assessments becomes explicit. Here, a candidate is praised for understanding “structural racism" and "intersectionality.". (Well, specifically, the "impace" of intersectionality).
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Very interesting. A top research university leader tells NYT that admin used student activists to boost DEI programs (and implicitly, the staffers' careers). Reminder: whenever a group becomes unassailable, it becomes a battering ram.
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