Writing for Bari Weiss’ new site, The Free Press, John Saller describes how Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) took over US universities and how it now dominates hiring, promotion, tenure and pay decisions. The hiring of DEI administrators by universities has been going on for more than a decade but a major change came when California’s UC system made mandatory diversity statements part of the hiring process for all faculty:

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.

And now this focus on DEI has been completely integrated into the system of hiring, pay, promotion and tenure. The small army of DEI administrators at each school is evaluating professors to make sure they are meeting the school’s DEI goals by incorporating the material into their curricula.

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.”…

UC Berkeley’s rubric for evaluating DEI contributions, which is used by universities around the country, dictates a low score for a candidate who professes a desire to “treat everyone the same.”

The story also describes a hiring practice called “cluster hiring” which I hadn’t heard of before. This is apparently being done as a way to get around direct racial preferences which are illegal.

To increase the likelihood of hiring minority faculty members, cluster hiring initiatives often assess candidates’ contributions to DEI as the first criterion.

In 2018, UC Berkeley launched a cluster hire across several life sciences departments. Of 893 qualified applicants, the hiring committee narrowed the pool to 214 based solely on the candidates’ diversity statements. Finalists then were asked to describe their DEI efforts during their interviews. The initiative yielded eyebrow-raising results: The initial applicant pool was 53.7 percent white and 13.2 percent Hispanic. The shortlist was 13.6 white and 59.1 percent Hispanic…

One humanities professor told me that after his department creates a final group of candidates, “a lawyer in the DEI office will make a determination as to whether this slate of candidates is diverse enough. If it’s not diverse enough in their estimation, they can kick the slate back to the search committee.” Professors across multiple disciplines told me this is standard practice. One said DEI officers have the power to simply cancel searches.

All of this sets up a situation where potential hires who are hoping to work in academia quickly learn they can’t afford to say anything critical about the focus on DEI if they hope to find a job and maybe even get tenure one day. Only those who are all in on DEI goals (or claim to be) have a chance at advancing.

But even longtime professors with a record of excellence aren’t safe. The College Fix has a story up today about an award-winning community college chemistry professor named Paris Svoronos. Svoronos recently retired after students complained about his teaching methods.

“I could not work with the administration that would listen to failing students’ complaints over academic standards. And that’s after 40 years while being a fully tenured QCC professor,” Svoronos told The College Fix in his email.

One failing student in particular accused him of racism.

Svoronos had been accused of racism for failing a minority student, which had been one of the complaints lodged against him that the university had used to seek his suspension.

Svoronos told The Fix he was exonerated after an investigation, but “administration refused to have my name cleared.”

But there was another incident in 2020 which led Svoronos to decide to retire.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for Svoronos came in 2020 after he reprimanded a student who came late to class, saying to her what he has said to many other aspiring med students: “a doctor who comes in late is called an undertaker.”

She recorded it and used it in her complaint to the Queensborough Community College administration, he said, adding this to other complaints that had been lodged against the teacher, who acknowledges he prioritized excellence over apathy…

Administrators didn’t see it that way. They deemed Svoronos guilty of “conduct unbecoming,” he said, and was threatened with a year’s suspension, and if he did not accept it, they would terminate him. So he decided to retire, he said.

If all of this sounds familiar, it might be because there was another very similar story about an organic chemistry professor at NYU who was fired because students signed a petition complaining his class was too hard and that he wasn’t sufficiently concerned about their well being.

Among other things, the focus on DEI gives students who are more concerned about social justice than excellence a way to attack professors who put excellence first. There are so many mechanisms to asses DEI compliance that all it takes now is a petition from a handful of students to get even an award-winning professor pushed out of his or her job.