How DEI Is Supplanting Truth as the Mission of American Universities An obsession with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion threatens students, professors, and the very credibility of higher education in the U.S. By John Sailer
https://www.thefp.com/p/how-dei-is-supplanting-truth-as-the
One of the things The Free Press has been doing since its inception is documenting and exposing how many of our most important institutions—medicine, the media, the law—are increasingly being captured by an ideology that is hollowing out their core functions.
Today, John Sailer, a fellow at the National Association of Scholars, tells the story of how that’s happening at American universities across the country.
You don’t have to have ever stepped foot on a college campus to care about the revelations in today’s piece. Because as we’ve seen again and again, what happens on campus doesn’t stay there. It’s just a preview of what’s coming for the rest of us. — BW
In June 2020, Gordon Klein, a longtime accounting lecturer at UCLA, made the news after a student emailed him asking him to grade black students more leniently in the wake of the “unjust murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.”
Klein’s response was blunt. It stated in part:
Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota. Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we’ve been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half?
He went on:
Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the “color of their skin.” Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK’s admonition?
Thanks, G. Klein
Klein’s response enraged students. They organized a petition to remove him that quickly gained nearly 20,000 signatures, resulting in the professor being placed on leave and banned from campus. But the story got national attention, and a counter-petition signed by more than 76,000 people demanded his reinstatement. In less than three weeks, Klein was allowed to return to the classroom.
Yet his encounters with what UCLA calls Equity, Diversity and Inclusion were far from over.
Just under a year later, Klein, the author of a textbook on ethics in accounting, was up for a merit raise. For the first time in his 40 years at UCLA, Klein told me he had to submit a statement on equity, diversity, and inclusion. UCLA had adopted this as a promotion requirement in 2019, and now demands that all faculty members express how they will advance these principles in their work, and how their mentoring and advising helps those “from underrepresented and underserved populations.”
Klein inquired of the EDI office just what groups of students they meant. When they failed to reply, he wrote a dissent he made available to me, which reads in part:
“I find it abhorrent for the University to encourage faculty members to classify and prioritize students based on their group identities. I intend to continue helping all students equally, regardless of their backgrounds.”
Although his previous teaching evaluations were sterling, and he had received prior merit raises, this one was declined. Klein has brought suit against UCLA.
The struggle between Klein and UCLA represents a major shift in the mission of higher education in America.
The principles commonly known as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) are meant to sound like a promise to provide welcome and opportunity to all on campus. And to the ordinary American, those values sound virtuous and unobjectionable.
But many working in academia increasingly understand that they instead imply a set of controversial political and social views. And that in order to advance in their careers, they must demonstrate fealty to vague and ever-expanding DEI demands and to the people who enforce them. Failing to comply, or expressing doubt or concern, means risking career ruin.
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. They now take part in dictating things like hiring, promotion, tenure, and research funding.
More significantly, the concepts of DEI have become guiding principles in higher education, valued as equal to or even more important than the basic function of the university: the rigorous pursuit of truth. Summarizing its hiring practices, for example, UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering declared that “excellence in advancing equity and inclusion must be considered on par with excellence in research and teaching.” Likewise, in an article describing their “cultural change initiative,” several deans at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine declared: “There is no priority in medical education that is more important than addressing and eliminating racism and bias.”
DEI has also become a priority for many of the organizations that accredit universities. Last year, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, along with several other university accrediting bodies, adopted its own DEI statement, proclaiming that “the rich values of diversity, equity and inclusion are inextricably linked to quality assurance in higher education.” These accreditors, in turn, pressure universities and schools into adopting DEI measures.
Much of this happened by fiat, with little discussion. While interviewing more than two dozen professors for this article, I was told repeatedly that few within academia dare express their skepticism about DEI. Many professors who are privately critical of DEI declined to speak even anonymously for fear of professional consequences.
The Invention of DEI
How has this fundamental shift taken place? Gradually, then all at once.
For decades, university administrators have emphasized their commitment to racial diversity. In 1978, Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell delivered the court’s opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, taking up the question of racial preferences in higher education. Powell argued that racial preferences in admissions—in other words, affirmative action—could be justified on the basis of diversity, broadly defined. Colleges and universities were happy to adopt his reasoning, and by the 1980s, diversity was a popular rallying cry among university administrators.
By the 2010s, as the number of college administrators ballooned, this commitment to diversity was often backed by bureaucracies that bore such titles as “Inclusive Excellence” or “Diversity and Belonging.” Around 2013, the University of California system—which governs six of the nation’s top 50 ranked universities—began to experiment with mandatory diversity statements in hiring. Diversity statements became a standard requirement in the system by the end of the decade. The University of Texas at Austin in 2018 published a University Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, which began to embed diversity committees throughout the university.
Then came the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020. The response on campus was a virtual Cambrian explosion of DEI policies. Any institution that hadn’t previously been on board was pressured to make large-scale commitments to DEI. Those already committed redoubled their efforts. UT Austin created a Strategic Plan for Faculty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity, calling for consideration of faculty members’ contributions to DEI when considering merit raises and promotion.
White Coats For Black Lives, a medical student organization that calls for the dismantling of prisons, police, capitalism, and patent law, successfully petitioned medical schools around the country to adopt similar plans, including at UNC–Chapel Hill, Oregon Health & Science University, and Columbia University. In some cases, administrators even asked White Coats For Black Lives members to help craft the new plans.
All at once, policies that previously seemed extreme—like DEI requirements for tenure and mandatory education in Critical Race Theory—became widespread.
Saturate the Campus
The upshot is that the entire experience of higher education—from earning a college degree to seeking a career in academia—now requires saturation in the principles of DEI.
Many American college students are now required to take DEI, anti-racism, or social justice courses. At Georgetown, all undergraduates must take two Engaging Diversity courses. At Davidson College, the requirement goes under the title of Justice, Equality, and Community, which students can fulfill by taking courses like Racial Capitalism & Reproduction and Queer(ing) Performance. Northern Arizona University recently updated its general education curriculum to require nine credit hours of “diversity perspectives” courses, including a unit on “intersectional identities.”
DEI is also becoming a de facto academic discipline. In 2021, Bentley University in Massachusetts created a DEI major. Last year, the Wharton School announced its introduction of a DEI concentration for undergraduates and a DEI major for MBA students.
Meantime, the open faculty position listings at universities across the country illustrate how a focus on race, gender, social justice, and critical theory can be crucial to landing a job. Last year, the University of Houston–Downtown sought an instructor in Early Modern British Literature, including Shakespeare, with a preferred specialization in “critical race studies.” At Wake Forest University, an applicant for assistant professor of Spanish should be someone “whose critical perspectives are linked to the experiences of groups historically underrepresented in higher education in ways that inform and influence their pedagogical approach.” Williams College recently sought an assistant professor of German who works “in the areas of migration, race and anti-racism, post- and decolonial approaches, disability, and/or memory studies.”
These imperatives often come from the top. In May, the Board of Governors for California Community Colleges (CCC), the largest system of higher education in the country, decreed that every employee—faculty, staff, and administrators—must be evaluated for their “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” competencies. Each district in the system ultimately decides how to enforce the new rule, but the Chancellor’s Office released a list of recommended competencies. It suggested faculty create a curriculum that “promotes a race-conscious and intersectional lens” and advocate for “anti-racist goals and initiatives.”
Ray Sanchez, faculty coordinator of the academic success centers at Madera Community College, sent me a document published by the system that describes how to incorporate DEI into curricula. “Take care,” the document declares, “not to ‘weaponize’ academic freedom and academic integrity as tools to impede equity in an academic discipline or inflict curricular trauma on our students, especially historically marginalized students.”
It is telling that the CCC system warns against taking academic freedom too far—especially for the sake of avoiding “curricular trauma.” After all, a successful liberal education inevitably involves challenging students’ unquestioned assumptions, an experience that is unsettling by design. Applying the language of trauma to this enterprise pathologizes learning itself.
In higher education, academic freedom is sacrosanct, a vital tool for facilitating the pursuit of truth. But now the CCC treats academic freedom with suspicion. “If we need to be culturally responsive in the classroom, well, what does that look like? We have it right here,” Matthew Garrett, professor of history and ethnic studies at the CCC’s Bakersfield College, and a rare public critic of the system’s new policy, told me about the document. He added, “You can’t weaponize academic freedom.”
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