How DEI Conquered the University of Colorado

Trump’s order against the practice is a crucial step in restoring the purpose of higher education

By John Sailer and Louis Galarowicz. Mr. Sailer is a senior fellow and director of higher education policy at the Manhattan Institute. Mr. Galarowicz is a research fellow at the National Association of Scholars. Excerpts:

"At the University of Colorado, Boulder, administrators, department heads and professors worked in tandem to advance racial preferences in hiring, documents acquired through a public-records request reveal. In the process, they recruited faculty who pushed the university’s research agenda in a more ideological direction, often with the aim of better recruiting minorities.

In a hiring proposal that the National Association of Scholars acquired, faculty and staff of the university’s program for writing and rhetoric argued that recruiting a “BIPOC” professor—the acronym stands for “black, indigenous and people of color”—was vital to the department’s “curricular and programmatic goals.” Faculty at the department of Germanic and Slavic languages and literatures, proposing to hire a German-studies professor, touted the racial diversity of the department’s preferred candidate and explained how she could revise courses on fairy tales, folklore, and fantasy to incorporate “critical race studies perspectives.”"

"Created in 2020, the program [the university’s Faculty Diversity Action Plan] played a significant role in dictating whom the university hired. In a 2022 faculty meeting, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences was asked how many professors were hired through the program since it began. He estimated that around 90% were either hired through the program or were spousal hires." 

"Through the program, the university brazenly prompted departments to select faculty based on race. In many cases, this went hand in hand with a declared preference for hiring scholar-activists."

"One version of the application form, which was used in dozens of the hiring plans, asks departments: “How will this hire increase the number of underrepresented faculty members in the unit"

"Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned race-based discrimination"

"Consultants often remind universities that they can’t base hiring decisions on race."

"competing for the funds to bring in new faculty, academic departments happily followed administrators’ prompting and boasted about their intent to discriminate." 

"Several plans proposed not only single hires but the hiring of multiple professors at once. “This cluster hire,” faculty and staff at the college of engineering and applied science wrote, “has the goal of doubling our underrepresented faculty in the college.”"

"while referring to the specter of systemic racism, they propose systemic discrimination." 

"These sweeping initiatives of social-justice bureaucracies won’t be easily dismantled, as they’ve led to ideological capture"

"departments used ideological affinity as a tool to recruit minorities."

"“another BIPOC TT hire”—TT meaning tenure track—“is critical to meet our curricular and programmatic goals.” They thus proposed hiring a scholar specializing in “critical approaches to race, ethnicity, culture, embodiment, and/or decolonialism,” arguing that such a search “is likely to draw interest from a large pool of diverse scholars.”"

"At times, departments explicitly sought activists. The education school proposed hiring a scholar with expertise in “anti-racist teacher education” and who is “embedded in local communities and activist movements.”"

"They elevate a tendentious worldview that puts racial identity at the center of everything. Faculty at the school’s Germanic and Slavic languages and literature department noted how the department’s preferred candidate would “transform” the department’s “research and teaching profile.”"

"how literature has been “appropriated to undergird white supremacist fantasies in more recent times.”"