RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/university-hiring-dei-diversity-checks-discrimination

In early 2021, Carma Gorman, an art history professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the designated “diversity advocate” for a faculty search committee, emailed John Yancey, the College of Fine Arts’ associate dean of diversity, seeking approval to proceed with a job search.

“I wanted to make sure that the demographics of our pool pass muster,” Gorman wrote. She noted that 21 percent of applicants were from underrepresented minority groups, with another 28 percent self-identifying as Asian.

“The 21% is enough to move forward,” Yancey replied, but he cautioned that concerns could arise depending on how the applicant pool was narrowed. “If 20 of the 23 URM applicants are dropped in the early cut,” he wrote, “then things don’t look good anymore.”

The exchange, which I obtained through an open-records request, offers a window into a diversity practice adopted at many universities. Documents I’ve acquired from institutions across the country—hiring plans, grant proposals, progress reports, and internal emails—show that routine diversity checks are now embedded throughout the hiring process, often enforced with serious consequences for searches that fail to “pass muster.”

This practice raises not only significant legal questions but also highlights how such policies can concentrate power in the hands of individual administrators, granting them effective veto authority over one of a university’s most consequential decisions: the hiring of tenure-track faculty.

In 2023, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 17, banning racial preferences and the employment of diversity officers. But just two years earlier, the situation at UT–Austin looked very different.

The documents tell the story. As diversity advocate, Gorman—coauthor of the annotated bibliography Decentering Whiteness in Design History—proposed a detailed diversity plan for her search committee. The plan, which I obtained via a records request, outlined a rigorous process for monitoring diversity at every stage of the hiring process.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/combatting-classroom-chaos/

On April 23, President Trump signed an executive order directing public schools to develop student discipline policies without considering race and ethnicity. The order states, “The Federal Government will no longer tolerate known risks to children’s safety and well-being in the classroom that result from the application of school discipline based on discriminatory and unlawful ‘equity’ ideology.”

The administration is justified in taking action. Restoring order to America’s classrooms requires reversing years of misguided federal policies that focused on racial quotas and therapeutic interventions. These policies have harmed academic achievement, endangered students, and made it more difficult for struggling students to get help. To succeed, the administration must respect local control while overcoming strong resistance from a deeply rooted education bureaucracy, whose radical agenda remains its primary goal.

Our current problems were intensified by a 2012 report from the Obama administration, which found that black students were “suspended, expelled, and arrested” at higher rates than white students. In response, the administration sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to state and local education agencies in 2014, warning of federal investigations if rates of “exclusionary discipline”—suspensions and expulsions—were racially disproportionate.

Not surprisingly, Obama’s redirect has been a disaster. Where schools have tried the racial bean-counting regimen, the results have been less than noteworthy. A North Carolina school districttried to improve discipline by implementing a policy that paid a non-profit over $800,000 to help develop. Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools had fewer suspensions during the school year and no expulsions, part of a broader shift toward “equitable discipline.”

However, the district reported a higher crime rate than the previous year. Critics say the changes have worsened conditions for students because disruption in class is not being addressed.

Surveys consistently show that student behavior has declined over the past decade, with school violence and overall classroom disorder now at all-time highs.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/the-persistent-presence-of-absence/

The fact that many children are ditching America’s public schools is undeniable. Most recently, Nat Malkus, Deputy Director of Education Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, reported that while chronic absenteeism spiked during the COVID pandemic, it remains a serious problem. In 2024, rates were 57% higher than they were before the pandemic. (Students who miss at least 10% of the school year, or roughly 18 days, are considered chronically absent.)

Malkus goes on to explain that in 2018 and 2019, about 15% of K–12 public school students in the U.S. were chronically absent—a number so high that numerous observers and the U.S. Department of Education are labeling it a “crisis.”

In total, nearly one in twelve public schools in the United States has experienced a “substantial” enrollment decline over the last five years

The problem is especially egregious in our big cities. In Los Angeles, more than 32% of students were chronically absent in the 2023-2024 school year.

In Chicago, dwindling enrollment has left about 150 schools half-empty, while 47 operate at less than one-third capacity.

Additionally, schools identified by their states as chronically low-performing were more than twice as likely to experience sizable enrollment declines as other public schools.

In February 2025, FutureEd disclosed that data from 22 states and the District of Columbia for the 2023-24 school year show significant differences across grade levels, with absenteeism particularly severe in high school.

“In most states, 12th graders have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism, often far exceeding state averages. In Mississippi, for example, the overall absenteeism rate was 24%, but among seniors, it soared to 41%. Several other states have senior absenteeism rates above 40%, with rates in the District of Columbia and Oregon exceeding 50%.”

FutureEd also reports that kindergartners have disproportionately high rates of chronic absenteeism.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/cornell-university-hiring-race-first-program

At Cornell University, faculty search committees adopted a series of checkpoints to ensure that job candidates were sufficiently “diverse.” Internal documents I’ve reviewed raise questions about whether the university unlawfully used racial preferences in hiring—and offer a revealing look at the tactics of Cornell’s social-justice advocates.

In 2021, Cornell received $16 million from the National Institutes of Health to help start its Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) program, aimed at increasing the faculty’s “compositional diversity” by hiring ten new professors. According to the program’s grant proposal and progress reports, its leadership team screened applicants at four stages—the initial pool, longlist, shortlist, and finalist slate—to ensure “as diverse a pool as possible.” These checkpoints aligned with the program’s stated objective: “Cornell University aims to increase the number of minoritized faculty in the biological, biomedical, and health sciences through establishing an NIH FIRST Program at Cornell University.” The university pledged to hire the ten new professors specifically from “groups underrepresented in their fields.”

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in hiring. Had Cornell restricted these faculty positions to certain racial groups, it would have plainly violated the law. The Cornell FIRST program was more subtle, prioritizing diversity throughout the search process rather than at the final hiring stage.

Still, the program’s carefully structured, four-stage process—explicitly designed to shape the racial composition of the candidate pool—raises legal concerns. “Each search will be governed by a clear process and 4 checkpoints,” the FIRST proposal notes, “to ensure that the search has as diverse a pool as possible.” The process is described step by step.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBSxdJttGkM

America’s Ivy League universities have long been hotbeds of censorship and intolerance. Unpopular views are deplatformed, unorthodox professors are cancelled and research prioritises PC fads over facts. Donald Trump has vowed to force universities to clean up their act – but is he helping on hurting? Here, Yascha Mounk – editor of Persuasion and author of The Identity Trap – argues that Trump’s campus diktats are only stoking a woke backlash. Free speech and reason are just as imperilled as ever, he says. The university could now be in its death throes. Watch, share and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/25/the-persistent-presence-of-absence/

The fact that many children are ditching America’s public schools is undeniable. Most recently, Nat Malkus, Deputy Director of Education Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, reported that while chronic absenteeism spiked during the COVID pandemic, it remains a serious problem. In 2024, rates were 57% higher than they were before the pandemic. (Students who miss at least 10% of the school year, or roughly 18 days, are considered chronically absent.)

Malkus goes on to explain that in 2018 and 2019, about 15% of K–12 public school students in the U.S. were chronically absent—a number so high that numerous observers and the U.S. Department of Education are labeling it a “crisis.”

In total, nearly one in twelve public schools in the United States has experienced a “substantial” enrollment decline over the last five years.

The problem is especially egregious in our big cities. In Los Angeles, more than 32% of students were chronically absent in the 2023-2024 school year.

In Chicago, dwindling enrollment has left about 150 schools half-empty, while 47 operate at less than one-third capacity.

Additionally, schools identified by their states as chronically low-performing were more than twice as likely to experience sizable enrollment declines as other public schools.

In February 2025, FutureEd disclosed that data from 22 states and the District of Columbia for the 2023-24 school year show significant differences across grade levels, with absenteeism particularly severe in high school.

“In most states, 12th graders have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism, often far exceeding state averages. In Mississippi, for example, the overall absenteeism rate was 24%, but among seniors, it soared to 41%. Several other states have senior absenteeism rates above 40%, with rates in the District of Columbia and Oregon exceeding 50%.”