Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki on X - "Divided by Design: How DEI Undermines Academia’s Mission...
In STEM fields, where merit and collaboration should be paramount, DEI policies felt particularly intrusive. One of the most glaring examples of this was the push to eliminate the GRE as an admissions requirement for graduate programs, all in the name of equity. I fought against this decision, arguing that the GRE, while imperfect, provided a standardized measure to evaluate students’ readiness for the rigors of graduate-level work. Without it, we were left with subjective criteria heavily influenced by identity-focused initiatives. This made it exceedingly difficult to fairly and accurately assess applicants, especially when academic records varied widely in quality and rigor across institutions. By removing objective metrics, we risked admitting students who might struggle unnecessarily while overlooking others who were truly prepared to excel. My resistance to these changes and my broader critique of DEI policies earned me immediate and intense backlash. Colleagues branded me a racist on social media, a reaction that was both predictable and profoundly absurd. When I first joined the University of Alabama as a faculty member, I had high hopes of contributing meaningfully to the field of science. I envisioned a career rooted in rigorous inquiry, collaboration, and teaching students to approach problems with curiosity and an open mind. But over the years, I watched as the university and others like it pivoted toward a different focus: the enforcement of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. While these programs were ostensibly designed to foster inclusivity and fairness, what I saw, and experienced, was something far darker. The DEI agenda at the University of Alabama and throughout the university system did not unite students or faculty; it alienated them. By reducing individuals to their immutable characteristics, race, gender, or ethnicity, DEI initiatives created division rather than cohesion. Instead of building bridges, they drew hard lines between groups, segregating students and faculty into reductive categories. These programs claimed to fight inequality, but they seemed only to foster resentment and mistrust. Speaking Out and Facing Backlash I was vocal about my concerns from the start. In STEM fields, where merit and collaboration should be paramount, DEI policies felt particularly intrusive. One of the most glaring examples of this was the push to eliminate the GRE as an admissions requirement for graduate programs, all in the name of equity. I fought against this decision, arguing that the GRE, while imperfect, provided a standardized measure to evaluate students’ readiness for the rigors of graduate-level work. Without it, we were left with subjective criteria heavily influenced by identity-focused initiatives. This made it exceedingly difficult to fairly and accurately assess applicants, especially when academic records varied widely in quality and rigor across institutions. By removing objective metrics, we risked admitting students who might struggle unnecessarily while overlooking others who were truly prepared to excel. My resistance to these changes and my broader critique of DEI policies earned me immediate and intense backlash. Colleagues branded me a racist on social media, a reaction that was both predictable and profoundly absurd. Image These accusations weren’t rooted in anything I had said or done but were based solely on my refusal to unquestioningly accept the DEI orthodoxy. The hostility escalated to the point where the university’s strategic communications office instructed my department to cut off all communication with me entirely. Overnight, I became a pariah in my own academic community. The absurdity didn’t stop there. One of my department’s DEI initiatives involved participation in the Unlearning Racism in Geosciences (URGE) program. Ironically, this program, designed to promote diversity, was almost entirely white at my institution, save for one student, despite the large number of minority students. Yet, this overwhelmingly homogeneous group felt entitled to lecture me about revising my lab protocols to ensure they were free of “microaggressions.” The suggestion was baffling, my protocols were strictly about research and safety. The idea that they could harbor hidden biases was a performative exercise in wokeness, devoid of any real-world application. Instead of addressing meaningful issues or advancing STEM education, initiatives like URGE devolved into self-congratulatory rituals that did nothing to foster genuine inclusion. These experiences highlighted just how far DEI efforts had drifted from their stated goals. Policies and programs ostensibly designed to promote equity and fairness instead created barriers to objective evaluation, fostered resentment, and prioritized virtue signaling over substantive progress. My refusal to stay silent about these issues came at a significant personal and professional cost, but it was a stand I knew I had to take. This silencing wasn’t limited to me. Across campus, there was a growing sense of illiberalism, where dissent was no longer tolerated. Faculty and students alike were pressured to conform to the DEI narrative, regardless of whether they believed in it or not. Conversations became stifled, as people feared being labeled as bigots or facing professional consequences for voicing alternative viewpoints. Worse still, DEI policies actively segregated students. Programs and initiatives were designed specifically for certain racial or ethnic groups, excluding others by design. Rather than fostering cross-cultural understanding, these policies made students hyper-aware of their differences. The result was a climate of tension and hostility, where students began to see each other not as peers but as members of competing tribes."
Adrian Vermeule on X - "In general, the problem with all the recent talk of “viewpoint diversity” as the cure for the monoculture of the university is this:
(1) everyone thinks that there must be some limits of professional competence to viewpoint diversity (no flat-earth types in the geography department please);
(2) academic progressives overwhelmingly hold that views like “men cannot get pregnant” are as inadmissible as believing in a flat earth.
Hence they are ultimately unable to reform themselves, at least at the department level. There must be thorough reconstruction from above or from outside."
Joe Duarte on X - "Yes, the University of Arizona social psychology PhD program denied me admission because I criticized Jimmy Carter on my blog. They asked me about it on the phone interview, wanted to clarify if I "really" felt that way about Carter. It was incredible to be talking about political opinions on an admissions interview. I was lucky that I got into better programs, and that those programs didn't see my blog... She (Stephanie Fryberg) even told me that all the other faculty were against me because of the blog post, but that she was not. This was in 2007, shortly after all the Jewish members of the Carter Center board resigned over his rationalization of Palestinian terrorism in his recent book. I agreed with the Jews."
John Carney on X - "I was recently speaking to a professor at a very prestigious university who argued that there was plenty of “viewpoint diversity” at his school. So I asked him: “How many Trump supporters do you have in your humanities departments?” He laughed and then said he didn’t think anyone who voted for Trump, much less still openly supported him, could be qualified to teach at his school. QED."
Adrian Vermeule on X - "A structurally analogous story (versions of which can be found in Rorty and elsewhere): “I’m for human rights! Human rights!” “Oh Ok, even for the [X out-group?]” “No no — they aren’t really human, you see.”"
ape attack survivor on X - "I know you guys hate hearing this but universities are open to a wide spectrum of viewpoints. Conservatives are just rarely capable of writing at an academically acceptable level. Sorry man. Stop begging for DEI hires"
Prof sues UCLA 'over suspension for not grading black students more leniently' - "“Recently, I was suspended from my job for refusing to treat my black students as lesser than their non-black peers,” wrote Gordon Klein in an op-ed on Bari Weiss’s “Common Sense” newsletter on Substack. The dean of UCLA’s business school launched an investigation into Klein’s actions, put him on leave and tried to terminate him, wrote the professor, who has taught at the university’s Anderson School of Management for 40 years."
Weird. We're told that DEI is meant to give everyone a level playing field
A new trigger warning for college kids: How to prepare them for the intellectual discomforts of a university - "I’ve concluded that universities should provide “trigger warnings” about upsetting content, as many student activists demand. But not many warnings. Just one, and not the one they have in mind... The self-infantilization on display in this tirade lacked even the dignity of a sinister ideology. Its point was more like: “I want my mommy.” But if students feel the modern university’s job is to create a “place of comfort” rather than an “intellectual space,” that is hardly all their fault. Many parents of my generation make it their business to spare their children any exposure to upset and risk. Then kids and parents alike are wooed by colleges that promise idyllic experiences at very steep prices. Yale, for example, markets its residential colleges as “little paradises.” No wonder if some students expect college to provide shelter from intellectual and interpersonal storms. And no wonder the movement for trigger warnings and safe spaces is gaining traction at colleges around the country. Trigger warnings supposedly help students cope with (or avoid) exposure to upsetting ideas and images; their other purpose, I and many other free-speech advocates believe, is to chill the presentation of controversial material. Either way, they seek to make higher education emotionally safer by making it less intellectually dangerous. The trouble is that intellectually safe places are finishing schools, not universities. They can confer connections, polish and useful skills, but they will not educate, because to educate is to inflict and to endure criticism, which is not comfortable... So it is only fair to warn students and their parents that higher education is not a Disney cruise. Tell them in advance so they can prepare. Not, however, with multiple trigger warnings festooning syllabi. One will suffice: “Warning: Although this university values and encourages civil expression and respectful personal behavior, you may at any moment, and without further notice, encounter ideas, expressions and images that are mistaken, upsetting, dangerous, prejudiced, insulting or deeply offensive. We call this education.”"
From 2015
Peter MacKinnon: Yale report on declining trust in higher education should be read - "Yale is among America’s — and the world’s — finest universities, and we should take note when its president identifies a problem of declining trust in higher education and commissions a faculty committee to examine the problem. The Committee on Trust in Higher Education submitted its findings and recommendations , which committee members supported unanimously, on April 10. The committee’s report declared that “the issue of declining trust is real, urgent and must be addressed” and identified several reasons for the decline at Yale and other universities. The reasons will not come as a surprise to careful observers of these institutions: the cost of higher education, generally but particularly at Ivy League and private schools, is widely seen as too high; admissions without transparency and often driven by non-academic criteria (read identity, athleticism, family connections and money); pressures toward conformity, intimidation and social shaming; self-censorship; and ideological echo chambers resulting from homogeneity — on the left — in the professoriate. Smart phones and social media contribute to the problems, devaluing the classroom. The committee also cited a challenge to Yale’s governance model which, in recent decades, “has come under strain from the growth of non-academic administrative functions across the university.”...
Among its recommendations:
• The committee begins with a shift in attitude: “We must be willing to admit where we have been wrong, and where we might improve,” and must focus on “what makes a university a university” as expressed in Yale’s historical mission “to create, disseminate and preserve knowledge through research and teaching.” That is the mission; it does not include institutional pursuit of social justice, cancel culture, decolonization, or recruitment of faculty and students according to race, colour, gender, or sexual orientation.
• Free speech must be treated as a first principle. “It includes the right of invited speakers, of any political or intellectual persuasion, to speak unimpeded on campus. It also affirms the right of students, faculty, and other members of the community to engage in peaceful protest, debate and exchange, though not to disrupt events, shout down speakers or block access to buildings.”
• Support for academic freedom, the “scholarly bedrock of any excellent university,” must also be prioritized.
• Higher education must be made affordable.
• Undergraduate admissions must be reformed: “We recommend that the university embrace a standard of candour; it should only use criteria for admission that it is willing to describe publicly and defend openly. The top priority in admissions decisions should be academic achievement.”
• The committee further recommended “that Yale undertake a multi-pronged series of initiatives and experiments with the goal of enhancing open and critical debate on campus.” It emphasized the importance of open minds: “Great teaching and scholarship require contestation.” As John Stuart Mill reminded us, “it is only by the collision of adverse opinions” that truth can be found."
Damn Trump! Damn fascists!
Thread by @sfmcguire79 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Yale has issued a new report on declining public trust in higher education. The New York Times has a great headline summing it up: This is so refreshing. The first step is admitting the problem.
The first recommendation in the report? “Take Responsibility.” “Universities champion critical thinking. However, those of us in higher education have too often resisted calls to critically examine our own institutions, professions, and modes of thought. As we move forward, we must be willing to admit where we have been wrong and where we might improve, even as we defend what is essential about higher education and its academic mission. “This imperative applies to faculty, who must balance our rights as scholars with our obligations to our students, institutions, communities, nation, and world. But the need for self-scrutiny includes everyone from the first-year undergraduate to members of the Board of Trustees. The tendency to be self-regarding, insular, and unreceptive to legitimate criticism does not engender public trust. A shift in attitude is needed.” President McInnis’s response to this recommendation: “The committee calls on Yale to reflect on and take responsibility for our role in the erosion of public trust. I accept this judgment fully. This decline did not come out of nowhere, nor did it happen overnight. And we were certainly more than mere bystanders. We must acknowledge how we have fallen short. That means welcoming as comprehensive a panorama of perspectives as possible—even, and especially, those that may be critical—and facing such criticism with humility and curiosity.”
The second recommendation: “Focus on the Mission.” “In 2016, departing from its traditional emphasis on the creation and dissemination of knowledge, Yale expanded its mission statement to include ‘improving the world today,’ educating ‘aspiring leaders worldwide,’ and fostering ‘an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community.’ These are all worthy goals. But they are not what makes a university a university. “We recommend that Yale adopt a focused university-wide mission statement such as the one currently articulated in its own Faculty Handbook: ‘Yale University's mission is to create, disseminate, and preserve knowledge through research and teaching.’ This statement serves as the basis for the recommendations that follow in this report. At a moment when higher education is being buffeted from all sides, it is imperative to understand what we are here for and what universities do best. That requires clarity, not diffusion, of purpose.”
Further recommendation focus on free speech, academic freedom, opening minds, making higher ed affordable, reforming admissions, education value, grading reform, etc., etc. It’s a pretty incredible report. Read the whole thing here: president.yale.edu/sites/default/…"
The Best Argument for the “State of Scholarship” Report Is Its Critics - "When the chancellors of Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis commissioned a committee chaired by the New York University philosopher Paul Boghossian to assess the condition of humanistic and social-scientific scholarship, they invited a particular sort of reply. The report that resulted advances a contestable empirical claim: that across several fields, certain politically charged questions have been quietly treated as closed, dissent is recoded as incompetence rather than disagreement, and a good deal of scholarship now serves a moral program settled in advance. One can answer such a charge in the ordinary scholarly way—with evidence, counterexample, and argument. The report invites it, conceding that its conclusions are not yet supported by the kind of quantitative study its critics would demand and urging administrators to consult disciplinary experts before acting. Instead, the Vanderbilt and Washington University chapters of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) have supplied something more useful than any defense the report’s authors could have drafted for themselves: a confession. Their June 11 joint statement does two things, and each one proves the case it means to refute. First, it demands not rebuttal but erasure. The chapters call on their chancellors “to rescind the report” outright—to unpublish it, to make it disappear from the universities’ websites. This is a revealing reflex. A confident discipline meets an unflattering description of itself with a better description. A discipline that has lost confidence in its own standards reaches instead for the delete key. The report asked, in effect, whether some fields have lost the capacity to hear criticism as anything but an attack to be repelled. The first substantive response was a motion to suppress the question. Second—and this is the part that should make even sympathetic readers wince—the statement defends the disinterested pursuit of knowledge by appealing to a political mission. Weakening faculty governance, the chapters warn, would undermine the university’s ability to address society’s deepest problems, “the inequalities of wealth and white supremacy” and the political consequences of climate change among them. Set aside whether those are worthy causes. The report’s charge was that scholarship in these fields has been bent toward a predetermined political agenda. Offered the chance to deny it, the AAUP instead named the agenda. A political creed produced as a defense against the accusation of harboring a political creed is not a rebuttal. It is an exhibit. The inversions compound from there. The statement accuses the report of licensing a “heckler’s veto” because it suggests administrators might weigh dissenting and minority scholarly voices within a discipline—while the statement’s own central demand is that a document it dislikes be silenced. It credits the American Council of Learned Societies, the Modern Language Association, and the American Historical Association as the real defenders of free inquiry against political interference. But those are the professional societies of the very disciplines under review. The disciplines grade their own scholarship and, unsurprisingly, award themselves high marks. That closed loop—in which a field’s health is certified only by the field’s own guild – is not a counterargument to the report. It is the mechanism the report set out to describe. I have argued before that the AAUP, statement by statement, keeps disclosing what it actually thinks academic freedom is for. The same reflex appears here. The surest sign that a profession has mistaken a political consensus for a discipline is its inability to treat an outside criticism as anything other than an enemy at the gates. A healthy field metabolizes critique; it absorbs the challenge, tests it, and is strengthened or corrected by it. A politicized field excommunicates the critic and reaffirms the creed. The distinction matters because the humanities and social sciences cannot be rescued by administrators, legislators, or donors. They can be rescued only by scholars who still believe their disciplines are answerable to evidence rather than to a cause—and who can say so out loud without being told they have breached the faith."
The Question Haunting the Vanderbilt/Wash U Report (opinion) - "Once the academy broadened who could participate in knowledge production, it was always likely to broaden what counted as important knowledge and how that knowledge would be pursued. To accept the former while viewing the latter with suspicion risks preserving the very assumptions that made these subjects marginal in the first place. What the report identifies as a departure from neutrality may instead be evidence of the success of the academy’s transformation. The humanities have become more attentive to voices once excluded from scholarly consideration. They have broadened our understanding of what counts as a legitimate object of inquiry and whose experiences are worthy of serious intellectual attention."
When you say that diversifying academia by including women and other "minorities" results in a loss of objectivity and its transformation into political grievance mongering. That conclusion would be "bigotry" coming from a a non-left wing angle. Ironic.
Phil Magness on X - "I documented the sharp leftward shift in academia several years ago, along with its accompanying decline in research standards. The Vanderbilt report is welcome, but it's also simply confirmation of what was already obvious (although adamantly denied by many faculty on the left)"
OK Then on X - "I’ve written this before but we’re already in the early stages of a massive Anglo university bust(US/UK/Canada/Australia). It’ll intensify in the 2030s but thousands of colleges are going to go out of business. Terrible student demographics, far less Chinese students wanting to study abroad, not enough wealthy students from the rest of the world to replace said Chinese, and AI just completely destroying most entry level knowledge work and eventually up the ladder as well. Only truly elite universities and public universities will survive IMO. Mid tier schools like syracuse, a lot of the small private liberal arts schools, and anything that’s private and low tier are absolutely finished. Universities will go back towards being an elite privilege. The golden age of the university was fun while it lasted."
Anatoly Karlin 🧲💯 on X - "Anglo universities getting hit by a double whammy. First, AI undermines the entire value proposition of the academy. Second, Chinese universities now dominate actual high quality research (as proxied by the Nature Index). 9 of the top ten world universities by this metric are now Chinese. The old university prestige rankings might still say otherwise but that is cope and irrelevant. Universities exist to create new knowledge. The rankings will adjust to reflect this new reality or they will lose relevance. You could make a case for US and UK academia having some "intangible" value in their "unique" spirit of truth-seeking and freedom of inquiry. However, they voluntarily destroyed that reputation in a decade of Wokeness 🤷♀️. So now there's just the hard metrics, and they're not looking too good."
Post-Menshevik on X - "@Scholars_Stage Also talks about how many Chineses student emigres in USA ended up radicalizing, and ended up pro-China, anti-USA."
arctotherium on X - "At some level I want to be indignant about this, but TBH I have a hard time imagining spending four years at a US university and *not* becoming radicalized against the country, one way or another."
David Sun on X - "I attended a mandatory DEI class w many Chinese students in early days of woke at UW- a large angry butch lady professor authoritatively demanded the class to refer to her as they/them, and had us introduce ourselves and state our pronouns. The Chinese kids looked at each other in bewilderment and stammered out their gender pronouns with a confused expression. Ironically in the post-Deng China they managed to escape struggle sessions at home yet had to undergo one (of many later on) in what they then viewed as a futuristic advanced and prestigious American institution that they spent double the local tuition to attend"
Durham students’ plan to shake off ‘Oxbridge rejects’ tag... cancel formal dinners - "The commission’s final report, published this week, found that “students feel an overwhelming pressure to not only exist, but to thrive within a co-opted version of an Oxbridge experience” and use “the ritualism of formals, to signal their proximity to this trope”. Formal gowned dinners, which have been a central feature at Oxbridge for centuries, “represent a more sinister history of oppression”, the commissars said... The commission, led by Seun Twins, the outgoing Durham Students’ Union president, found that formals and college dining traditions “are barriers” for international students as “tokens of British culture”. Their report also took aim at Durham’s collegiate system, which is one of only a handful of universities outside Oxbridge, which are “overtly reminiscent of a boarding school” and “the subtle elitism of the British upper classes”. It made a series of recommendations for Durham University bosses, chief among them a mandatory “universal core module for students” that would set out the “key elements, competencies and expectations” of degrees there. This module would emphasise diversity to “deconstruct Durham’s elitist image [and] subvert the image of what the Durham student is”, modelled on the London School of Economics’ “LSE 100” module which is a compulsory guide into culture and skillsets for undergraduates. The Durham Students’ Union report also found that some undergraduates feel “marginalised, dismissed and silenced” by the willingness of their peers to play devil’s advocate, and felt “intimidated by their remarkable peers and the prominent narrative of the exceptional Durham student”... Other recommendations included active bystander training for all students, sex and relationships workshops and a ramping up of decolonised curriculum efforts with the help of a current crop of student union decolonisation interns. Toby Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: “All the old traditions the commission wants to do away with are what make Durham such a special place. “A Durham cleansed of all its old-fashioned characteristics won’t appeal to anyone. You might as well pull down the old buildings, replace them with prefabs and call it Durham polytechnic.” The report came after Durham was embroiled in a row over free speech following a student walkout during an address by Rod Liddle, a journalist, who students accused of making “transphobic, sexist, racist and classist remarks”. The incident led to Prof Tim Luckhurst, the founding principal of the university’s South College, calling students “pathetic”."
Kevin Bass on X - "Academia: We don't hire conservatives because they are flat earthers, reject evolution, etc.
Also academia: We are happy to announce we hired our 10,000th Leninist professor who believes men can get pregnant, math is white supremacy, overthrowing capitalism ends poverty, etc."
Thread by @77_steeze on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Because of the bubble they live in, progressive academics live more or less in a small town. Despite how much they value “worldliness”, they’re “hillbillies” in a way because only the people in their small town subscribe to their beliefs but they don’t really know why anyone outside the village behaves the way they do and are terrified by the outside world (non-urban environments). This has been coming through so loudly in their cartoonish explanations for “how conservatives think”. They sound like guys in Idiocracy going “Water? Like…from out the toilet??” Except…they’re supposed to be the people who got bred out of that world. Like someone (I forget who) pointed out to me a couple weeks ago, the “anywheres” can’t actually live anywhere. Sure, they can hop continents, but that environment needs to be curated to the hilt to keep, not only their preferred physical conditions, but also their ideological bubble in tact.
New York Post on X - "Ivy Leaguer who's 'not interested in working for a Jew' says Cornell is welcoming him back"
Rachel Moiselle on X - "Elite universities will ruin your career over an email about Halloween costumes, but writing ‘not interested in working for a Jew’ is A OK."
Steve McGuire on X - "In four different surveys, 33-45% of faculty said they would discriminate against conservatives when considering job applications:"
Proof that Conservatives don't have the intellectual capacity for academia
