https://www.city-journal.org/article/michigans-radical-faculty-program
At the University of Michigan (UM), professor Jessica Kenyatta Walker specializes in “critical food studies” and helped develop “in-class activities” on the “racialization of food in the United States.” Professor Adi Saleem’s recent book, Queer Jews, Queer Muslims: Race, Religion, and Representation, focuses on “triangulating the Jewish-Muslim dyad with a third variable: queerness.” Jennifer Dominique Jones, meantime, teaches courses in “Black Queer Histories” and “Black Intimacies.”
These scholars share more than an affinity for critical theory: each was hired through the university’s Collegiate Fellows Program. Established in 2016, the CFP hires postdoctoral fellows who show a “commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The fellows are guaranteed a tenure-track position after two years, bypassing the rigors of a normal competitive job search.
Michigan has previously touted CFP as a success. But after the New York Times published a critical feature on the university’s DEI bureaucracy, UM quietly removed its web directory of faculty hired through program. That directory, accessible through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, lists a total of 44 faculty members. (The UM faculty claim the program has now recruited 55 scholars.) A close look at these scholars and their areas of research demonstrates the perils of screening faculty for their commitment to “diversity.”
Unsurprisingly, CFP administrators heavily favored scholars who conduct their research through the lens of race and gender. Former fellow Rovel Sequiera, now an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies, specializes in “global feminist, queer, and trans studies.” Jonathan Cho-Polizzi, assistant professor of Germanic languages and literature, lists “Activism & Radical Diversity” as an area of interest. Margo Mahan, assistant professor of sociology, focuses on the “racial and nativist origins of US domestic violence law.”
