UCLA Students Successfully Petition School to Not Hire Prof Who Criticized DEI Policies
“mildly criticized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements as used by university administrations to screen potential hires”
It only took 66 signatures on the petition to cancel this professor’s potential employment.
Reason reports:
UCLA Declined To Hire a Professor After Students Denounced His Mild DEI Criticism
Yoel Inbar is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He was slated to join the University of California at Los Angeles as a tenured professor of psychology, but the offer failed to materialize after 66 students signed a petition urging the administration not to hire him.
The students’ issue with Inbar? In an episode of his podcast Two Psychologists Four Beers, Inbar mildly criticized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements as used by university administrations to screen potential hires. He described DEI statements as compelled speech and empty “value signaling.”
“It is not clear what good they do,” said Inbar.
His comments were quoted in the student petition, which essentially confirms the very criticism Inbar was making of DEI statements: The students appear to take the view that opposition to DEI statements should in fact be grounds for nonemployment.
“Given the express priority of our university to consider DEI efforts and experiences in the faculty search and hiring process, we are adamant that the hiring committee enforce UCLA’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Office message,” the petition concludes, “by electing to not extend a job offer to Dr. Yoel Inbar.”
Dozens of psych students signed this letter demanding UCLA not hire Dr. Yoel Inbar. After that, he didn't get the job offer he was almost certainly going to receive.
His main offense: expressing skepticism about DEI statements. In his words, "It is not clear what good they do." pic.twitter.com/piV6BwXUvh
— John Sailer (@JohnDSailer) June 28, 2023
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Comments
Dear Brats Who Signed This Petition:
You’re all expelled. You have your freedom of speech, we have ours. We just expressed ours.
Sincerely,
Angry Deans
The students who signed the petition need to have this follow them around for the rest of their careers (which hopefully will be in fields other than psychology or academia — say, Starbucks).
Their names are at the end of their letter: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nd3ifCdRLhyRgc1vzbf6-fw6HDQ03-wO/view
Applying to a PhD program or postdoc fellowship — “wasn’t this you?”
Applying for a teaching position? “Wasn’t this you?”
Looking to publish? “Wasn’t this you?”
Until we make them live by the same rules they play by, this kind of crap will continue.
He applied to UCLA?
Anyone could have written the final act to this screenplay. The only real challenge would have been to write the middle part that eventually got there, because there are so many options.
Rather than type the whole DEI thing, just use “mediocrity.” Shorter and far more accurate.
What’s the difference between Hitler Youth and UCLA psych students?
The Hitler Youth kids may have been brainwashed, but they certainly weren’t crazy.
This letter, along with required “diversity statements,” just confirm that some schools have policies that prevent them from hiring conservatives, Republicans, and even most moderates. Only a raving, “progressive” left-winger will survive all the virtue-signaling requirements to get hired.
He should sue each and every one of them for tortious infringement of his employment rights.
So now it’s as it was in the Middle Ages, when students hired their professors? But many of these students don’t even pay their own way. College administrators get more cowardly every year.