This column from the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed section is going around our University’s “heterodox” faculty, and paints a dire picture of what happens when DEI goes to extremes. The upshot: at Ohio State University (OSU), a public school, DEI is so pervasive in the hiring process that faculty get hired largely on their DEI statement, with academic merit a secondary consideration. People apply for professor jobs frantically tout their DEI credentials, including intersectionality, and the statements are so extreme that they make you cringe.
Not only that but, as in all such programs—DEI statements were required until recently for all appointments in OSU’s College of Arts and Sciences—getting hired depended on conforming to a certain type of DEI: the Kendi-an “antiracism” program. You can’t use Dr. King’s “character versus skin color” assessment: that’s a one-way ticket to not getting the job. It’s ironic, then that the “diversity” bit of DEI really means conformity to a received ideology—something not lost on author John Sailer, a senior fellow at the National Association of Scholars.
I’ve been wary of quoting (or even reading) WSJ op-eds, as they’re predictably conservative. But that was dumb of me: although I’m a liberal, I need to challenge my ideas as much as does a conservative. And a good way to do that is read what’s considered “good” conservative opinion. After all, I read the New York Times op-eds, which are just as predictably liberal. So I make no apologies for quoting this one, especially because it’s mostly facts and not opinion.
To see the damage that a vigorous DEI program in hiring can wreak on academic quality, click the headline below, or you can also find it archived here.
Sailer used a public-records request to get his hands on over 800 pages of “Diversity Faculty Recruitment Reports,” i.e., reports on every job candidate that were required to be submitted to the administration from search committees. And what is in those reports will curl the soles of your shoes (unless you’re wearing Louboutins). Sailer’s words are indented.
In February 2021, then-president Kristina Johnson launched an initiative to hire 50 professors whose work focused on race and “social equity” and “100 underrepresented and BIPOC hires” (the acronym stands for black, indigenous and people of color). These reports show what higher education’s outsize investment in “diversity, equity and inclusion” looks like in practice. Ohio State sacrificed both academic freedom and scholarly excellence for the sake of a narrowly construed vision of diversity.
Each report required search committees to describe how their proposed finalists “would amplify the values of diversity, inclusion and innovation.” Some reports were dutiful and bureaucratic; others exuded enthusiasm. All were revealing. Racial diversity was touted as a tool to achieve viewpoint diversity, but viewpoint conformity often served as a tool to meet de facto quotas. One report said a candidate would “greatly enhance our engagement with queer theory outside of the western epistemological approaches which would greatly support us both in recruitment and retention of diverse graduate populations.”
It’s embarrassing to see the candidates, desperately wanting jobs, touting their intersectionality or, if they were the white males at the bottom of the heap, trying to confect some DEI credentials:
Other committees valued political ideology as an end in itself. In a search for a professor of chemistry, the report notes that one candidate’s “experiences as a queer, neurodivergent Latinx woman in STEM has provided her with an important motivation to expand DEI efforts beyond simply representation and instead toward social justice.” Another report concedes that “as a white male” one proposed finalist “does not outwardly present as a diversity candidate.” In his defense it notes that he recently published on critical race theory.
In some cases, the DEI statement was weighted equally, or nearly equally, with academic merit:
In some cases, committees evaluated diversity statements through an explicitly ideological lens. A committee searching for a professor of freshwater biology selected finalists “based upon a weighted rubric of 67% research and 33% contribution to DEI.” To evaluate the statements, the committee used a rubric that cited several “problematic approaches” for which a candidate can receive a zero score—for example, if he “solely acknowledges that racism, classism, etc. are issues in the academy.” It isn’t enough for a freshwater biologist to believe that racism pervades higher education.
The rubric meanwhile gave a high score for DEI-focused activism outside academia, for demonstrating an understanding of “intersectionality” and for embracing a vision of “anti-racism” that “requires consistent and long-term growth, reflection, and engagement (and that they are prepared to put in this work).”
Viewpoint discrimination aside, these assessments reveal an issue of basic priority. For a search in astrophysics, “the DEI statement was given equal weight to the research and teaching statements.” This would strike many as a poor metric for judging astrophysicists.
Indeed! And in astrophysics!
And even bodyt weight makes its way into the statements:
Candidates’ demographics also appeared to play a significant role in faculty hiring decisions. Throughout the reports, references to the race and sex of candidates abound. Many of the job candidates’ diversity statements emphasized their own “intersectional” identities—“a person of color and a member of the LGBTQ+ community,” “a first generation, fat, queer scholar of color” and so on.
Does being overweight contribute to viewpoint diversity? Are universities supposed to increase the diversity of avoirdupois? I suppose you can make the case that “fat” people are, like “queer people of color” considered oppressed. But should university increase the variance of body weight?
At any rate, this DEI initiative, which now appears to have been deep-sixed (for one thing, the recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action probably made this kind of hiring illegal). But it had already had its effects:
This emphasis seemed to have an effect—sometimes a remarkable one—on the demographic makeup of the proposed finalists. For a role in communications, four of the 46 applicants were Hispanic—and so were two of the three finalists. One role in medical anthropology had 67 applicants. The four finalists include the only two black applicants and the only Native American applicant. “All four scholars on our shortlist are women of color,” the committee said.
. . . . . Some search committees at Ohio State were surprisingly forthcoming about their use of racial preferences. “Diversity and inclusion featured prominently in all our discussions,” wrote one committee in the division of geodetic sciences. “Naturally, most weight was given to candidates from URM”—underrepresented minority—“backgrounds, but we also gave considerable weight to the diversity statements that were provided by all candidates.”
One faculty position advertised last year was in French and francophone studies with a “specialization in Black France.” It yielded a more racially diverse but still majority-white applicant pool. The committee was adamant about its intended outcome. “In our deliberations to select finalists, the importance of bringing Black scholars to campus was deemed to be essential. We thus chose three Black candidates.”
It added: “We decided as a committee that diversity was just as important as perceived merit as we made our selections.”
This is a remedy for academic disaster: judging people by their adherence to a progressive view of identitarian politics as much as by their academic quality. The solution? Widen the opening of the pipeline by trying to ensure equal opportunity for people at the very beginning of their lives (granted, a very hard and expensive task, but the only way to go). By the time someone gets to the career stage of applying for jobs, the tradeoff between ethnicity and merit is already there, although those with more zealotry than neurons insist that you can have both diversity and merit—that there is no tradeoff. But that’s simply not true, for we see people left and right trying to increase diversity by lowering academic standards: ditching standardized tests and using “holistic admissions.” They’re even doing this in medical-school admissions, and the result will have to be an average decrease in the quality of doctors.
Another solution: just as all universities should adopt Chicago’s Kalven Report on institutional neutrality, so they should also adopt our “Shils report“, which lays out the criteria for hiring and promotion. Its conclusions are summed up on a statement on page 5:
There must be no consideration of sex, ethnic or national characteristics, or political or religious beliefs or affiliations in any decision regarding appointment, promotion, or reappointment at any level of the academic staff.
The whole report is 23 pages long, but the Provost’s office gives a summary:
On 15 July 1970, the Committee on the Criteria of Academic Appointment was appointed by President Edward H. Levi. This Committee was charged with writing a report that would become the basis for evaluating faculty up for promotion. The Shils report dictates that faculty at the University of Chicago must display distinguished performance in each of the following criteria when being considered for promotion:
- Research
- Teaching and Training, including the supervision of graduate students
- Contribution to intellectual community
- Service
This Committee understood that unless such high standards existed and were used, the University would – indeed – become a pantheon for dead or dying gods incapable of attracting the best minds from around the world.
“Service” is construed as committee work or other work that helps the university meet the first three criteria. It is not construed as adherence to any belief system, as you can see in the sentence above. And we still adhere to this. DEI statements are strictly forbidden here, though, of course, those of a “progressive” bent try to find ways to get around this. Violating the Shils criteria, as the committee recognized is a recipe for erosion of academic quality as well as an abrogation of academic freedom, and it’s telling that Ohio State no longer adheres to its draconian and uniformitarian standards.
By the way, I just found this job ad for an astrophysics position at Penn State (another state school). The stuff you have to submit for the job are these (the arrow is mine):
I suspect that this kind of stuff is actually illegal, but to fight it in court one needs “standing”: plaintiffs who have been injured by the regulation. It’s obvious why academics cut out of the process for inadequate DEI statements won’t go to court, for they’d be forever demonized. Nevertheless, I think there are at least two court cases in the works involving required DEI statements.
I am aware of several “BIPOC” appointees in astrophysics who have gained a faculty position with a track record about a quarter as good as that which would be needed by a white, Jewish or Asian-American candidate.
Despite this, they have a tendency to complain on social media about how hard-done-by they are and how their departments are racist.
When I’ve asked then to explain their compaint about their departments, they reply (to the effect of): “nobody respects me, everyone thinks I’m a diversity hire”.
To add: I am also aware of some (though fewer) BIPOC appointees in astrophysics who have good track records and who clearly merit their faculty positions. I’ve not seen these ones complain on social media.
The downside for those highly qualified [edit – BIPOC] astrophysicists is that other people will still think they are diversity hires 🙁 and the highly qualified folks will wonder if they really did get their jobs on merit. It’s a lose-lose-lose proposition that generates doubt, resentment, and heartache (although some great people do end up with jobs, and representation is sometimes a valuable thing, blah blah).
In general you are right, that’s a big problem and highly unfair to the actually-qualified BIPOC appointees.
In astrophysics specifically it’s not so big a problem since in 10 secs on NASA’s database I can get a list of all the papers someone has written and how many times they have been cited. Hence, merit is readily recognised.
Just a general comment regarding bibliometry. There are several reasons why some papers are cited more than others; quality and relevance are only two. Also, the threshold from moving from a mention in the acknowledgements to co-author also varies quite a bit.
A recent case in Astrophysics has given me real concern that criteria of merit and excellence have gone completely out the window at some institutions. I won’t mention the name of the individual, or their institution, because I don’t want to skate too close to doxxing. But their identity will be obvious to those who follow these things.
This year, this person — who holds joint appointments in Physics/Astronomy and Women’s studies — was granted tenure. I think they are certainly very smart, and their astro research appears to be solid and insightful (although it’s outside my own subfield and so I can’t bring much to the table in terms of a critical evaluation).
However, what raises my hair is that they were tenured early, after only four years of service as a TT professor (the typical timescale is 6 years). This isn’t unusual for researchers that have demonstrated outstanding performance during their time on the TT. But in their case, their track record is weak (and would not get anywhere close to being sufficient at my own R1 institution). In brief:
*) 8 peer reviewed Physics/Astro publications during the TT period (of which *none* are first author, and only 5 are in well-regarded journals)
*) $399k in extramural grants as PI (spread across 3 grants) in Physics/Astro
*) $174k in extramural grants as Co-PI/Co-I (spread across 2 grants) in Physics/Astro
The publication record is thin, but the lack of any first-author papers is alarming. Likewise, $500k in grant income is weak tea; a typical Astro grant that supports a grad student for three years (and provides a bit of summer salary for the PI, and travel/publication/etc expenses) is around $350k.
In non-Physics/Astro, their publication record is equally thin — 5 publications in peer-reviewed journals, with 3 first author. The grant income in this sphere is $15k.
They did write a (non-academic) book during their TT process, which won a number of awards — however, this isn’t usually considered as relevant for tenure in Physics/Astro
I’m left to wonder whether their early promotion has something to do with their identity (BIPOC, queer, agender) and their high visibility as an outspoken social justice advocate. It’s almost as if these were used in lieu of merit criteria in the decision to grant them tenure.
Yes that person is an interesting edge case. IDK anything about the expectations in physics so I can’t judge the tenure case. Obviously smart & energetic but a physics professor?
An equally interesting question is how that person got a faculty job. Published 2 journal articles in 2009 as a PhD student (PhD awarded in 2010) but then 6 years without more publications until that string of middle-author papers starting in 2015. In my field nobody survives 6 years as a postdoc without making discoveries and publishing them as journal articles.
That person didn’t just survive but thrived: a two-year NASA postdoc at Goddard Space Flight Center (2010-2011), a five-year Martin Luther King Jr. fellowship in physics at MIT (2011-2016), and then a research associate position in physics at University of Washington (2016-2018)? That’s ~9 years of itinerant postdoc work with 1 first-author paper to show for it in 2015.
Did that person have some significant patronage or clout in order to hang around the postdoc scene for such a long time, be not very productive, and then get a faculty job? That clout may have been where it mattered that the person is a “pansexual agender…queer Black femme.”
But what do I know. Maybe that person is incredibly brilliant but had bad luck with research projects and papers during the postdoc phase. Maybe the mentoring network helped that person stay in the game for reasons other than identity politics. It’s so hard to know from the outside.
As a retired 32-year NASA engineer, I find it extremely difficult to understand how he/she could complete a Goddard two-year post doc with no publication to show for it. NASA mentors generally have loads of data and lots of questions from simple to extremely complex that should generate publishable results over 24 months. Hell, even entry level GS-9’s are (well at least were) expected to publish their first year, at least as co-author with writing a part of the paper associated with their specific work. Weird.
Also speaks to the quality of the person’s graduate research: during 7 years of graduate work 2004-2010 only those two 2009 papers resulted; the long hiatus 2009-2014 with no papers included a lot of time to publish the rest of the graduate research. One guesses there was nothing else of quality to publish.
I hasten to add that the only reason anyone cares is that the person has gone on to an unexpectedly successful career as a professor and twitter scold (>150,000 tweets and counting). If that person had settled into a low-profile career as a NASA employee or state college instructor nobody would especially mind about how that came about. It’s the constant banging on about how oppressed such people are that invites scrutiny of exactly how little oppression they actually experienced.
And sorry for over-commenting again 🙁 I think about these things a lot because my university is laying the groundwork for a lot of this kind of affirmative action hiring with many of the same likely consequences.
Black? Tick. Female? Tick. Queer? Tick. Advances “social justice” on social media? Tick! Isn’t shy about applying *-ist and *-phobe language to others? Tick!
Ideal candidate! What other considerations could there be for a tenured faculty position in astrophysics?
I’m thankful that this modestly talented activist has found a tenure-track sinecure in a university. Can you imagine the havoc and demoralization she would cause had she leaked out into the private sector where everyone’s livelihood depends on productivity and no one dared fire her?
A valuable, sometimes mordantly funny review of this trend in education, science, music, and art can be found in “”When Race Trumps Merit”, the latest book by the indefatigable Heather MacDonald. Her range of knowledge is impressive.
All you gotta be is a Party member. Ideological correctness is more important that bourgeois science.
Pulling round numbers out of thin air— 50 professors whose work focused on race and “social equity” and “100 underrepresented and BIPOC hires”—DEI is the old quota system by another name.
I’ve got another one:
BIPOC :
Bourgeoise-Inverse Proletariat-Occupied Colony
DEI :
Dialectical Epistemic Inversion
Dialectical Enemy Incarceration
Result :
Institutional Marxist Subversion
Happy Thanksgiving! :
->[ decode ]->
Day of Mourning!
I prefer IED: improvised equity device.
Coming this summer:
In a world…
Where heroes…
Are enemies…
[ cackling laughter ]
IED : How The University DIED
Directed by Michael Bay
Discrimination, Entitlement, and Intimidation.
I think this is in some part the result of first hiring a large pool of DEI administrators, whose clear job is now to make themselves Necessary Until Retirement. That pattern is occurring everywhere now. About a year ago Jerry had posted a huge list of DEI admin hires from either Michigan State U., or University of Michigan (I can’t remember which). They were spending 10’s of millions of dollars in their annual budget on just those hires and support staff. In a very short time, the fruits have spread far and wide from the Kendian tree.
I am afraid that now, after an army of DEI administrators has emerged that depend on identitarianism for their paychecks, it will be incredibly difficult to revert to normalcy.
I’ve been wary of quoting (or even reading) WSJ op-eds, as they’re predictably conservative.
That reminds me of an exchange in Richard Bach’s (very bizarre) Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah:
I’ve been wary of quoting (or even reading) WSJ op-eds, as they’re predictably conservative.
That reminds me of an exchange in Richard Bach’s (very bizarre) Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah:
Sadly, similar use of DEI has spread to the UK. According to The Daily Telegraph
https://archive.ph/5M2ml
It seems that the mission of the academy is changing. No longer is the mission to teach and create new knowledge. The mission now is to advance social justice. Ohio State seems to be executing its new mission.
What will happen when universities drop subject matter expertise entirely from their job descriptions? Entire universities will become DEI departments!
Intellectuals of substance will have to find homes at think tanks and research institutes. That may the future if this DEI agenda reaches its logical conclusion.
This is more ammunition for the Right to argue that higher ed is Leftist indoctrination, which they use to justify budget cuts to state schools and helps them win elections. The progressives are shooting themselves in the foot when they do this.