The time has come that many have feared but many will celebrate: DEI (“diversity, equity, and inclusion) is effectively gone from campuses by federal order.

Inside Higher Ed reports; click headline to read:

An excerpt:

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights declared all race-conscious student programming, resources and financial aid illegal over the weekend and threatened to investigate and rescind federal funding for any institution that does not comply within 14 days.

In a Dear Colleague letter [JAC: see below] published late Friday night, acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor outlined a sweeping interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down affirmative action. While the decision applied specifically to admissions, the Trump administration believes it extends to all race-conscious spending, activities and programming at colleges.

. . . . .The letter mentions a wide range of university programs and policies that could be subject to an OCR investigation, including “hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”

“Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race,” Trainor writes.

Backlash to the letter came swiftly on Saturday from Democratic lawmakers, student advocates and academic freedom organizations.

“This threat to rip away the federal funding our public K-12 schools and colleges receive flies in the face of the law,” Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, wrote in a statement Saturday. “While it’s anyone’s guess what falls under the Trump administration’s definition of ‘DEI,’ there is simply no authority or basis for Trump to impose such a mandate.”

But most college leaders have, so far, remained silent.

Since virtually every institution of higher learning depends on some federal funding, this gives colleges the choices of abandoning DEI or abandoning federal money. You know which they’ll prefer. The former, of course, but they’ll try to have both, sometimes by duplicitous practices.

Since the Supreme Court has declared that universities can’t use race as a basis for admitting students, but will allow them to identify their race in essays (this is a backdoor many colleges use to promote affirmative action), the letter also deals with that:

The Dear Colleague letter also seeks to close multiple exceptions and potential gaps left open by the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action and to lay the groundwork for investigating programs that “may appear neutral on their face” but that “a closer look reveals … are, in fact, motivated by racial considerations.”

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that colleges could legally consider a student’s racial identity as part of their experience as described in personal essays, but the OCR letter rejects that.

“A school may not use students’ personal essays, writing samples, participation in extracurriculars, or other cues as a means of determining or predicting a student’s race and favoring or disfavoring such students,” Trainor wrote.

It would be hard to determine, though, whether colleges are actually doing this. Essays and the like aren’t banned—only their use for race-based admissions, and that would be a lot harder to prove than what Harvard did, which was give Asian applicants lower “personality scores” in a way that could be statistically affirmed. Further, the elimination of standardized tests as a requirement for application—another backdoor approach to promoting affirmative action—is also now banned:

Going even further beyond the scope of the SFFA decision, the letter forbids any race-neutral university policy that could conceivably be a proxy for racial consideration, including eliminating standardized test score requirements.

The department has never revoked a college or state higher education agency’s federal funding over Title VI violations. If the OCR follows through on its promises, it would be an unprecedented exercise of federal influence over university activities.

The letter is likely to be challenged in court, but in the meantime it could have a ripple effect on colleges’ willingness to continue funding diversity programs and resources for underrepresented students.

On top of that, there will be no more race or gender-based graduation ceremonies (Harvard had at least ten “affinity graduations”), no more ethnically-segregated dormitories, no more segregation of any type. As the letter notes (my emphasis):

Although SFFA addressed admissions decisions, the Supreme Court’s holding applies more broadly. At its core, the test is simple: If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law. Federal law thus prohibits covered entities from using race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life. Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race

Of course this will be challenged in court, though I don’t see a clear reason why the executive branch can’t make such a policy since the Supreme Court has disallowed race-based admissions.  In the meantime, you can find the whole letter at this site (this one was sent to Harvard, but they’re all the same), or click on the screenshots below, where I’ve given just a short excerpt.  Colleges will be poring over the whole four-page letter.

My Chicago colleague Dorian Abbot, who’s opposed to DEI, wrote a short piece about this on Heterodox Substack with this information about how to report violations:

If you want to report something but are concerned about potential retaliation, Jonathan Mitchel at Faculty, Alumni, & Students Opposed to Racial Preferences (FASORP) has offered to file the complaints with OCR. You can give information anonymously at the FASORP website, including any documents, websites, or other relevant information. The website does not track IP addresses and you can use a VPN before navigating to it if you want to be extra safe.

If you have any information about ongoing illegal discrimination, it is essential to report it as soon as possible. General Council at every educational institution needs to quickly understand and advise their administration that discrimination really is illegal and must stop immediately.

As for me, I have mixed feelings, and have gone back and forth on this issue in the past few years. On the one hand, I’m strongly opposed to requiring DEI statements for hiring or promotion.  This is illegal compelled speech and, in fact, is banned by the University of Chicago’s 1970 Shils Report. Nor do I think that there should be preferential admission on the basis of race, nor the elimination of standardized tests as a sneaky way to increase “diversity”, though I have suggested that when two candidates are equally qualified, the minority candidate might be favored.

The fact is that, historically, minorities have been disadvantaged by bias in a way that has affected them over the long term. In my view, the way to remedy this is not through “equity”—a misguided claim that groups should be represented in all institutions in the same proportion as in the general population.  The proper remedy is equal opportunity, but of course that is a much harder remedy than simply forcing equity on institutions through preferential treatment. But equal opportunity from birth is the only way to guarantee that groups are truly treated equally now, and seems the fairest solution.

Besides the possibility of preferential admission when students have equal records (this is of course illegal under the present “Dear Colleague” letter), the only DEI that I think colleges and universities need is a small office—or even just a procedure—for dealing with reported instances of bias against students or university members, and those reports cannot be anonymous. In the meantime, DEI should consist of promulgating these two statements:

1.) All students should be treated equally regardless of ethnicity, religion, disability, ideology, and so on

2.) Any instances of bias or harassment of students can be reported here (give link or location).

It will be interesting to see what happens in the next three years, but we can be sure that once the Democrats re-assume power, all of the above will be deep-sixed.

My once-favorite society continues to take ideological positions rather than scientific ones, and it continues its habit of wokeness with this latest announcement.

Even after getting some pushback from members about its misguided announcement about the “spectrum of sex”, the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) persists in taking political positions (in some cases having little or nothing to do with evolution per se), implicitly violating institutional neutrality and chilling the speech of SSE members.  The SSE Council sent out this memo two days ago. (It doesn’t seem to be on their website.)  While their concern for science funding does indeed fall within the ambit of the SSE, they are now changing the mission of the Society (as they did with the last announcement) from promoting the study of evolution to also enacting social justice.  And as time passes, and as I hear about the annual meetings and read their statements, they’re getting more “progressive” all the time. The letter below spends quite a bit of time advocating for “equity” (they don’t seem to know what the word means) and DEI. The bolding is theirs announcement.

February 10, 2025

Dear SSE members,

The Society for the Study of Evolution leadership has been following recent developments at the US federal level, as they affect teaching, the conduct of scientific research in evolution, and the people who do both. We are deeply concerned about misrepresentation of science, deletion of public data and reports from governmental websites, and illegal attacks on science funding and DEI mandates. We stand committed to supporting our community and our mission: to promote evolutionary biology research, education, application, outreach, and community building in an equitable and globally inclusive manner.

The daily attacks from the administration on science and its infrastructure are of great concern. Scientific research and education require funding. Halts or suspension of already awarded funding or non-negotiated changes to associated indirect costs are untenable. Such interruptions create unnecessary problems for investigators, post-docs, students and universities alike, and can derail ongoing experiments. The deletion of public data and reports from governmental websites amounts to book burning and cannot be tolerated. Likewise, the forced archiving of proposal calls that support development of a diverse pool of scientists has serious consequences.

Taken as a whole, this attack on the scientific enterprise threatens the production of knowledge by US scientists, with fall-out [sic] that will affect the health and well-being of our society. Basic research provides the foundational knowledge on which applied research is built, which in turn is translated into advances in human welfare. The US has historically been a leader in this area, benefiting from diversity in the workforce and from public funding. This leadership role is now significantly threatened.

What has the SSE done so far?

In response to the January 25, 2025 Executive Order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”, SSE and our sister societies, The American Society of Naturalists and the Society of Systematic Biologists, are sending a letter to the White House and all members of Congress clarifying the scientific consensus regarding the definition of sex. We will continue to watch events as they unfold and will respond accordingly. We welcome opinions and ideas from the membership on how we can best support you during this time.

What can you do?

Make your voice heard. If you are a US citizen, contact your congressional representatives, both in the House and Senate. Calling is more effective than writing an email or a letter, but anything is good. Personal stories of the impact on you and your science are most effective. Engage with groups that advocate for public policy. The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) offers communications and advocacy training and opportunities to meet with lawmakers through the AIBS Congressional Visits Day event on April 28-30. Funding support is available from SSE for this, with an application deadline of February 17. Larger societies (e.g., AAAS, Ecological Society of America) also sponsor advocacy training.

Communicate with the public. Send an op-ed to your local newspaper, telling the story of the impact on you and your science. One resource for drafting a compelling op-ed is at https://www.theopedproject.org/askajournalist. Story-telling resources are also useful, and a multitude can be found through an online search (e.g., here and here). Continue posting on social media, vetting for accuracy.

Use your local resources and expand your network. Work with your institution to support spending of current grant funding. Think about your network. Who do you know who knows someone who could be helpful?

Tell us how this has affected you. We would like to know how you have personally been affected by the attacks on science and scientists and solutions that you or your academic unit have developed in response. Send your personal experiences and any ideas for further action by SSE to president@evolutionsociety.org or submit them to SSE Council through this form.

In sum, the SSE leadership reaffirms our commitment to the SSE mission: we will work tirelessly on behalf of the membership to promote and defend evolutionary biology, and to support all the diverse people that form the bedrock of this field. Although there are many moving parts, daily stressors, and huge unknowns that members of SSE are currently grappling with, we note that the attacks on historically excluded members of society are reprehensible. We encourage our membership to be unwavering in your support of the most vulnerable within the community. Attacks on science and science funding are likewise untenable. We emphasize that defending evolutionary biology and promoting inclusive science is the ethical and moral way forward.

Sincerely,

SSE Council

Scientific societies of course should advocate for positions that further the mission of the society, which, as I recall when I was President, was to further knowledge, research, teaching, and publishing in evolution. Now, however, they have clearly changed their mission in the direction of social justice:

In sum, the SSE leadership reaffirms our commitment to the SSE mission: we will work tirelessly on behalf of the membership to promote and defend evolutionary biology, and to support all the diverse people that form the bedrock of this field.

Now the membership of any society is diverse in the sense that it contains people with different backgrounds and views, but it’s also clear that by “diversity” the SSE means ethnic or racial diversity. Does anybody think it means anything else? And so the SSE is now promoting equity as well as evolution.  They imply, without proof, that a diverse group of people will produce better evolutionary biology. That is likely true for “diversity of interests” but is it true for diversity of ethnicity? Who knows?

Of course the SSE should not show any bias towards any group, and a statement to that effect would suffice on its website. Further, since evolutionary biology is not limited to the U.S., the SSE should sometimes hold meetings with the societies of other countries, which they have done, and offer meeting grants to students from outside the U.S.. But other countries have their own evolution societies, too.

As far as “equity” is concerned, it usually means ethnic representation in the society in proportions to the existing groups in society, not “equal opportunity”. But opportunity and representation are conflated in the sentence below:

We stand committed to supporting our community and our mission: to promote evolutionary biology research, education, application, outreach, and community building in an equitable and globally inclusive manner.

At the end, they urge the members to take political action, mostly to oppose executive orders of Trump that, the Council believes, hurt the SSE.  They don’t seem to realize that most members just want to concentrate on doing their research.

The point of all this, though, is just to give my view that my once-beloved SSE has, like many other societies, has become political, and has changed its mission to emphasize social justice as well as science. I highly doubt that this announcement will have any beneficial results for the SSE or society as a whole; it is an exercise in flaunting the society’s virtue. If there is a lesson here, it’s that while the SSE may make political statements that further its scientific mission, it should stay out of ideology and politics that are irrelevant or tangential to evolution.

If you click on the link below, you’ll go to Trump’s executive order, signed in his first day in office, ending DEI positions in the government and describing the dismantling of DEI programs.

As readers know, I’m not a fan of Trump, whom I see as dangerously unstable, and I’m not a MAGA-ite. Regardless, neither will I damn everything his administration does as harmful or evil, for that’s simply not the case, and those determined to do that from the outset have a problem.  In this case, the action seems salubrious.

Here’s the whole thing; I’ve put in bold part that I see as especially important:

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1.  Purpose and Policy.  The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military.  This was a concerted effort stemming from President Biden’s first day in office, when he issued Executive Order 13985, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.”

Pursuant to Executive Order 13985 and follow-on orders, nearly every Federal agency and entity submitted “Equity Action Plans” to detail the ways that they have furthered DEIs infiltration of the Federal Government.  The public release of these plans demonstrated immense public waste and shameful discrimination.  That ends today.  Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.

Sec. 2.  Implementation.  (a)  The Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), assisted by the Attorney General and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), shall coordinate the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.  To carry out this directive, the Director of OPM, with the assistance of the Attorney General as requested, shall review and revise, as appropriate, all existing Federal employment practices, union contracts, and training policies or programs to comply with this order.  Federal employment practices, including Federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI or DEIA factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements.

(b)  Each agency, department, or commission head, in consultation with the Attorney General, the Director of OMB, and the Director of OPM, as appropriate, shall take the following actions within sixty days of this order:

(i)    terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and “environmental justice” offices and positions (including but not limited to “Chief Diversity Officer” positions); all “equity action plans,” “equity” actions, initiatives, or programs, “equity-related” grants or contracts; and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for employees, contractors, or grantees.

(ii)   provide the Director of the OMB with a list of all:

(A)  agency or department DEI, DEIA, or “environmental justice” positions, committees, programs, services, activities, budgets, and expenditures in existence on November 4, 2024, and an assessment of whether these positions, committees, programs, services, activities, budgets, and expenditures have been misleadingly relabeled in an attempt to preserve their pre-November 4, 2024 function;

(B)  Federal contractors who have provided DEI training or DEI training materials to agency or department employees; and

(C)  Federal grantees who received Federal funding to provide or advance DEI, DEIA, or “environmental justice” programs, services, or activities since January 20, 2021.

(iii)  direct the deputy agency or department head to:

(A) assess the operational impact (e.g., the number of new DEI hires) and cost of the prior administration’s DEI, DEIA, and “environmental justice” programs and policies; and

(B) recommend actions, such as Congressional notifications under 28 U.S.C. 530D, to align agency or department programs, activities, policies, regulations, guidance, employment practices, enforcement activities, contracts (including set-asides), grants, consent orders, and litigating positions with the policy of equal dignity and respect identified in section 1 of this order.  The agency or department head and the Director of OMB shall jointly ensure that the deputy agency or department head has the authority and resources needed to carry out this directive.

(c)  To inform and advise the President, so that he may formulate appropriate and effective civil-rights policies for the Executive Branch, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy shall convene a monthly meeting attended by the Director of OMB, the Director of OPM, and each deputy agency or department head to:

(i)    hear reports on the prevalence and the economic and social costs of DEI, DEIA, and “environmental justice” in agency or department programs, activities, policies, regulations, guidance, employment practices, enforcement activities, contracts (including set-asides), grants, consent orders, and litigating positions;

(ii)   discuss any barriers to measures to comply with this order; and

(iii)  monitor and track agency and department progress and identify potential areas for additional Presidential or legislative action to advance the policy of equal dignity and respect.

Sec. 3.  Severability.  If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its provisions to any other persons or circumstances shall not be affected.

Sec. 4.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

January 20, 2025.

Although I feel that the government (and its citizens) need to give people in the underclass a hand up, I think in general that has to be through the creation of a system of equal opportunities from birth rather than equal representation in colleges and hiring (“equity”). Inequities are often imputed to structural racism acting right now, but, at least in academia, that doesn’t seem to be the case. If racism or misogyny is a cause, it was bigotry in the past whose effects persist in the present, reducing equal opportunity. While it’s a lot harder to effect equal opportunity, as that means effacing the environmental differences that, say, hold back black and Hispanic children from accessing good educations and decent resources.  Rectifying this also involve effacing cultural differences, for example the attitude that I’ve seen that smart minority kids, and those who study hard, are somehow  “acting white”—something to be denigrated.  Fixing this entails a herculean task which will cost money (even worse, creating cultural changes, for we know that simply throwing more money at schools doesn’t improve education).  But it’s the only way to help those who, for no fault of their own, lack opportunity.

That said, the solution is not DEI programs, which have not done anything to equalize opportunity, and have effaced the idea of merit, replacing it with identity. By the time DEI programs kick in, usually in or after college or in hiring after high school, it’s too late. Further, it’s widely recognized that DEI training does not change people’s attitudes.

Finally, there is a sense of palpable unfairness with aspects of DEI that are racist in the sense that people are advanced at high levels because of their ancestry.  One example in science are grants that are either given out preferentially to investigators from minority groups or, especially, grants given out with DEI aims: grants designed to show that structural racism is responsible for inequities X, Y, and Z. (See this post on how National Science Foundation grants studying DEI issues have gone from 0.29% of all grants in 2021 ($14,280,928) to 27.21% of all grants ($289,593,584) in 2024. All scientists are aware of this, and of the paucity of anything useful coming from such funding.

Under the new order, not only will all DEI positions and programs be terminated in the government, including jobs relabeled to hide the fact that they were DEI positions. As section ii(E) suggests, this would also include federal grant money used to further equity, which presumably means federal grants to science.

These are early days, and it’s not clear to me whether public universities or schools with DEI programs will have to terminate them or surrender government funding, but if that’s the case, places like the University of Michigan are going to lose a lot of jobs.

And it looks as if the requirement of including DEI statements for job applications is on its way down the drain. That is good because I consider this compulsory speech that is prima facie illegal, though almost nobody’s challenged this in court.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the most powerful organization of American academics, issued a statement a while back ditching its previous opposition to boycotts of universities. Such boycotts were no longer, said the AAUP, violations of academic freedom.  Although their statement didn’t mention Israel, it was clear that their statement was meant to put the AAUP’s imprimatur on boycotts of Israeli institutions and academics.  It was wrongheaded and reprehensible.

But wait! There’s more! Now the AAUP has issued a new policy (pdf here) that it’s okay to use DEI statements to evaluate candidates for hiring, retention, tenure, and promotion. DEI statements, they say, are closely connected to academic freedom (academic freedom is the right of faculty to teach whatever they want, within reasonable limits, and to work on whatever they want):

The Association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure views the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) criteria in faculty recruitment, promotion, and retention within this broader vision of higher education for the public good. Since the 1990s, many universities and colleges have instituted policies that use DEI criteria in faculty evaluation for appointment, reappointment, tenure, and promotion, including the use of statements that invite or require faculty members to address their skills, competencies, and achievements regarding DEI in teaching, research, and service.² Such criteria are one instrument among many that may contribute to evaluating the full range of faculty skills and achievements within a diverse community of students and scholars.

Some critics contend that such policies run afoul of the principles of academic freedom. Specifically, they have characterized DEI statements as “ideological screening tools” and “political litmus tests.” From this perspective, DEI statements are sometimes thought to constitute unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and a threat to faculty members’ academic freedom because they allegedly require candidates to adopt or act upon a set of moral and political views. This committee rejects the notion that the use of DEI criteria for faculty evaluation is categorically incompatible with academic freedom. To the contrary, when implemented appropriately in accordance with sound standards of faculty governance, DEI criteria—including DEI statements—can be a valuable component in the efforts to recruit, hire, and retain a diverse faculty with a breadth of skills needed for excellence in teaching, research, and service.

This is misguided because it okays ideological litmus tests that are the real purpose of DEI statements. Everyone in academia knows that, regardless of what the AAUP says, if you submit a statement saying that you will treat all students equally and fairly, regardless of race, your application or promotion goes into the dumpster.  And this is regardless of whether the DEI standards were confected by “faculty governance.”  And if you want to recruit, hire, and retain a “diverse faculty” (and of course they mean “racially diverse”), you can simply broaden your search, putting some emphasis on minority candidates and thus getting more of them into your pool. But you don’t have to hire or promote them on the basis of race, a move that is probably illegal but hasn’t yet been tested in the courts. Deemphasizing merit in favor of ethnicity—or fealty to a certain ideology—is never a good thing to do.

Anyway, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (the familiar FIRE), has issued a pretty splenetic statement criticizing the AAUP for its new stand. The article is called “The AAUP continues to back away from academic freedom,” and it’s on the mark.  As Special Counsel Robert Shibley writes:

The AAUP insists academic boycotts and DEI hiring criteria won’t threaten academic freedom — as long as everyone is always super careful.

In its latest statement, the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure notes that “some critics” (Hey, that’s us!) contend the use of DEI criteria and mandatory diversity statements in faculty hiring and evaluation can

run afoul of the principles of academic freedom. Specifically, they have characterized DEI statements as ‘ideological screening tools’ and ‘political litmus tests.’ From this perspective, DEI statements are sometimes thought to constitute unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and a threat to faculty members’ academic freedom because they allegedly require candidates to adopt or act upon a set of moral and political views.

With the exception of the word “allegedly,” this is a pretty fair description of the main problem with mandatory DEI statements.

FIRE is careful to consider each such policy individually, as not every statement requirement is the same. But in general, when employees or job applicants are required to pledge or prove their allegiance to a school’s interpretation of DEI concepts, we object precisely because ensuring that allegiance is the stated goal of the policy. From the perspective of the policy authors, that’s not a bug, it’s the key feature.

Shibley adds this:

Schools adopting DEI requirements want to filter out people who don’t or can’t agree to act upon the institution’s specific set of views in the classroom and in their service work. If colleges and universities didn’t care whether applicants agreed with their conception of DEI, why would they bother to ask applicants to demonstrate that agreement?

. . . . FIRE isn’t alone in our observation that these policies can operate as ideological filters — many faculty think they do, too. A 2022 FIRE survey found faculty were almost evenly split on whether DEI statements in hiring were a justifiable requirement for a university job (50%) or are an ideological litmus test that violates academic freedom (50%). While that’s bad on its own, a whopping 90% of conservative faculty, the group most likely to dissent from prevailing campus views on DEI, viewed such statements as political litmus tests. The Washington Post’s Editorial Board cited the survey in an op-ed arguing that “[w]hatever their original intent, the use of DEI statements has too often resulted in self-censorship and ideological policing.”

So are these critics right? The AAUP’s answer is a firm “not necessarily.”

The statements are, of course, political litmus tests. Berkeley used them by giving numerical rankings to three aspects of the statements (past involvement in DEI, philosophy of DEI, and a candidate’s plans to advance DEI), and simply throwing away those statements whose scores weren’t high enough—that is, “progressive” enough.  They didn’t even consider academic merit. And that is an ideological litmus test. Those tests are illegal.

Shibley finishes by excoriating the AAUP:

The AAUP’s transformation into just another political organization is highly discouraging. America needs an AAUP that is willing to go to the mat to defend professors even when they have something unpopular to say. More than members of any other profession, academics have reason to understand that they may someday be the first to grasp an unsuspected and perhaps unwelcome truth. Since 1915, the AAUP has been the traditional first stop for those who find themselves facing trouble for doing so. If the organization continues on its current course, it is hard to imagine that remaining true for much longer.

Finally, over at my colleague Brian Leiter’s website, he also takes issue with the AAUP policy and quotes his earlier opposition as well as some from a professor from Bates College:

Oh how the mighty have fallen; Committee A of the AAUP used to be a reliable defender of academic freedom, but since its capture by the enemies of academic freedom, it has been going downhill fast.   The latest absurd statement in defense of “diversity statements” reflects pretty clearly the influence of UC Davis law professor Brian Soucek (a member of Committee A), whose mistaken views we have discussed many times before (see especially).   Let me quote the appropriately scathing comments of Professor Tyler Harper (Bates College) from Twitter:

The AAUP statement insisting that mandatory DEI statements are compatible with academic freedom—and not political litmus tests—is ridiculous. DEI is not a neutral framework dropped from the sky, it’s an ideology about which reasonable people—including people of color—disagree.  I have benefited from and support affirmative action, and there are some things that fall under the rubric of DEI that I agree with. But pretending that DEI is not a political perspective or framework—when only people of one political persuasion support DEI—is a flagrant lie.  Evaluating a professor’s teaching with respect to their adherence to a DEI framework is a clear violation of academic freedom. DEI is not some bland affirmation that diversity is important and all people deserve accessible education. It’s a specific set of ideas.

Professor Harper adds:  “Recent events should have made clear that professors, particularly those of us on the left, must defend academic freedom without compromise, even when we disagree with how others use that freedom. When academic freedom is softened, we are always the ones who end up losing.”

Leiter adds:

DEI is an extramural social goal, just as much as being pro-America in MAGA-land is.  Committee A is dead.  We are fortunate that both FIRE and the Academic Freedom Alliance are actually still defending academic freedom.   I would encourage all readers to resign their membership in the AAUP.  It’s a disgrace.

Well, I’ve never been a member, so I couldn’t resign, but I would if I were a member.  The AAUP is indeed a disgrace, capitulating first to anti-Israel sentiment and now to those who want academics to show fealty to the tenets of progressivism.

Some day someone is going to challenge diversity statements in court. That hasn’t yet happened because someone with that kind of “standing” would lose any chance to be hired or promoted. But if some day some brave person does object, and can prove that he or she was hurt by an inadequate DEI statement, the case will work its way up to the Supreme Court, which will rule that DEI statements are illegal.