How DEI Policies Lead to Discrimination
“there is evidence that many universities have engaged in outright racial preferences under the aegis of DEI”
The left fails to mention that they consider this a feature, not a bug.
John Sailer writes at the Wall Street Journal:
How DEI Becomes Discrimination
In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the Supreme Court held that colleges and universities couldn’t engage in racial discrimination in the name of diversity. The 45-year-old dispensation from civil-rights law that the court effectively overturned had never applied to employment decisions. But its end ought to provoke institutions to scale back “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives more broadly. Some appear to be doing so: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard said recently they would no longer require “diversity statements” from prospective hires.
Yet there is evidence that many universities have engaged in outright racial preferences under the aegis of DEI. Hundreds of documents that I acquired through public-records requests provide a rare paper trail of universities closely scrutinizing the race of faculty job applicants. The practice not only appears widespread; it is encouraged and funded by the federal government.
At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a large hiring initiative targets specific racial groups—promising to hire 18 to 20 scientists “who are Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander.” Discussing a related University of New Mexico program, one professor quipped in an email, “I don’t want to hire white men for sure.”
Both initiatives are supported by the National Institutes of Health through its Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation program, or First. The program gives grants for DEI-focused “cluster hiring” at universities and medical schools, promising eventually to spend about a quarter-billion dollars.
A key requirement is that recipient institutions heavily value diversity statements while selecting faculty. The creators of the program reasoned that by heavily weighing commitment to DEI, they could prompt schools to hire more minorities but without direct racial preferences. That’s the rationale behind DEI-focused “cluster hiring,” an increasingly common practice in academia. The documents—which include emails, grant proposals, progress reports and hiring records—suggest that many NIH First grant recipients restrict hiring on the basis of race or “underrepresented” status, violating NIH’s stated policies and possibly civil-rights law.
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Comments
Law does not apply to the Left. We’ve seen that first-hand. How many BLM, Hamas, eco-nut, alphabet soup protesters who have committed assault, arson, burglary, fraud, etc., etc., etc. are in jail? Compare that to the J6 political prisoners whose only “crime” was to take a couple of pictures.
“lead to”??
borne out of
dei is just the rewording game affirmative action sounds soooo 60s
Colleges and universities have been deeply involved in racial discrimination for at least 20 years. The Supreme Court never said they could invoke “diversity” in hiring, but that’s what they have been doing. This has been going on for far longer than DEI has been a priority.
I can’t remember our last hire when “diversity” wasn’t one of the most important qualifications. What that means is that if a qualified racial minority applies, he or she will definitely get an interview, and will get the job regardless of how many white males have better qualifications.