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Texas A&M University Continues Race-Based Hiring Practices Despite Legal Challenge

Texas A&M University Continues Race-Based Hiring Practices Despite Legal Challenge

“endorsed an affirmative-action program that is currently under legal scrutiny for using taxpayer dollars to hire non-white and non-Asian staff members”

Why is the academic left so intent on reversing the work of the Civil Rights Movement?

The Federalist reports:

Texas A&M Faculty Senate Votes To Exclude Asian Job Applicants To Hire People With Preferred Skin Colors

The Texas A&M University faculty senate on Monday endorsed an affirmative-action program that is currently under legal scrutiny for using taxpayer dollars to hire non-white and non-Asian staff members.

Despite a class-action complaint filed against TAMU on Sept. 10 alleging that the university’s Accountability, Climate, Equity, and Scholarship (ACES) Plus program violates federal law “prohibit[ing] universities that accept federal funds from discriminating on account of race or sex,” faculty senators at TAMU voted 54-12 in support of the project.

According to a memo from Annie McGowan, vice president and associate provost for diversity,
and N. K. Anand, vice president for faculty affairs, sent by the university’s leadership in July, the program will receive $2 million over the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years to match the salary and benefits of “new mid-career and senior tenure-track hires from underrepresented minority groups.” The memo defines underrepresented minorities as “African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians,” but does not include Asians on the list.

This program, the TAMU officials say, is designed to “contribute to moving the structural composition of our faculty towards parity with that of the State of Texas.”

Sidelining qualified white and Asian candidates in favor of fulfilling racial quotas, both the complaint and some senate faculty members say, is a massive legal liability for the school and constitutes discrimination.

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Comments

They all do it anyway, starting right from “diversity applicants encouraged to apply,” which is an effective “whites need not apply.”

The private school where I worked also had “diversity hires” where only minorities and women were considered. We were told to make sure our top picks didn’t include any white males.

Most administrators refused to talk about the blatant discrimination. But one nameless trustee was candid enough to tell me that they all knew what they were doing was illegal, but they felt that few excluded applicants were likely to sue, and settling those few lawsuits out of court would be a cost of doing business. So far, no one has sued, and the racist hiring practices continue.

    Louis K. Bonham in reply to OldProf2. | October 22, 2022 at 11:03 am

    Right in one. The wink-wink, nudge-nudge, “don’t put this in writing but . . . “ overt discrimination has been going on for years in academic hiring, despite everyone knowing it is illegal. (Why would they go to such lengths to conceal it if the actually think it is legal? Why don’t they just proudly say, “see how virtuous we are!)

    The legal worm is about to turn, and with a vengeance. The current lawsuit against A&M may result in not only an injunction but also a court-appointed master, given how pervasive the practice is — the fact that the Faculty Senate overwhelming voted to support a blatantly illegal program show why the court can’t just leave A&M it’s own devices. And if expected SCOTUS slaps down race conscious admissions decisions, I strongly suspect there will be some dicta reiterating Wygant — “race conscious employment decisions in education have been clearly illegal since 1986, and remain so today.” That will supercharge suits like this.

    What will be real interesting is if states like Texas decide to get serious, and change the laws to give taxpayers standing to challenge these activities at state schools. Give taxpayers something like a qui tam claim (along with personality liability — no sovereign or qualified immunity — for the administrators involved, along with liberal venue rules so the you don’t have to sue Enormous State University on its own turf), and these practices will either go away quickly, or will cause a large wealth transfer from university endowments to the plaintiffs bar.

Sad. Aggies had a long reputation as hard-headed based realists. All down the toilet now.