For several years, the National Association of Scholars (NAS), where I work, has monitored the rise of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) in higher education. DEI entered the mainstream somewhere between the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the death of George Floyd in the spring of 2020. In addition to being a set of ideals, sometimes including “anti-racism” and/or “social justice,” DEI is a set of practices and programs descended from affirmative action and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Recent backlash from both the public and conservative lawmakers, however, has caused some universities, such as the University of South Carolina (USC), to change DEI offices, giving them names more in line with Civil Rights-era norms. Yet, while the names of these departments have in some cases changed, their practices have largely continued unassailed. For over 50 years, universities have interpreted the Civil Rights Act as a mandate to racially balance their populations. The landmark Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case in 1978 permitted the use of race in student admissions. In the name of increasing “diversity,” universities have extended racial spoils far beyond admissions to faculty, staff, and even contractor hiring. For example, Mylene Culbreath, vice dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of South Carolina, describes the mission of her office as “creat[ing] greater parity between the demographic composition of the university and the communities we serve.”
Strategic plans written by department chairs, deans, and presidents focus heavily on the recruitment of a “diverse” faculty.Sadly, Culbreath’s words are more than just talk at the Palmetto State’s flagship public university. Strategic plans written by department chairs, deans, and presidents, often with the input of DEI administrators, focus heavily on the recruitment of a “diverse” faculty. USC’s College of Information and Communications, for instance, boasts a DEI plan that aligns searches for new faculty with minority population levels among students, at the university, and in the state. Success is described as increasing “the [School of Journalism and Mass Communications’] 2023 diversity representation from 19% in 2016 to 35% in 2023-2024, and Black faculty from 7% … in 2016 to 20% … in 2023-2024.” In material obtained by NAS, the USC College of Nursing talks of “focused efforts during the past 6-10 years to increase diversity among our faculty, staff, and students to meet the state’s population. […] Through intentional recruiting, the proportion of underrepresented race/ethnic groups (Black/African American, Latinx, Native American) has increased.”
This goal of racial balancing is widely shared among stakeholders in the USC faculty-recruitment process. The USC computer science and engineering department chair writes that “the definition of diversity adopted by CSE@USC, which also sets our hiring objectives, is to achieve hiring demographics that converge to that of our regional and national population demographics.” However, “Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians or Alaska Natives” remain “underrepresented” in the department.
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke gave permission for the use of race in admissions, but it made no such allowance in employment programs. The Civil Rights Act specifically prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in all aspects of employment. The circumstances in which affirmative-action hiring programs (i.e., programs using race as a criterion for eligibility) can be deployed are very narrow. Employers must demonstrate “actual past discrimination, significant statistical disparity, or … manifest imbalance in traditionally segregated job categories.” While employers can set racial hiring goals in unapproved affirmative-action plans, hiring goals do not provide a justification for hiring preferences or creating set-asides for particular groups.
Based on these guidelines, USC’s Office of DEI does not appear to have a strong legal case for its Bridge-to-Faculty (B2F) fellowship program, an affirmative-action postdoctoral program. Postdoctoral-to-faculty programs, unlike other equity “pipeline” programs, offer actual employment. Providing candidates with additional funding, mentorship, and an advantage in being hired as permanent faculty, pipeline programs significantly affect which academics secure a tenure-track position.
The main eligibility criterion for B2F and other faculty-diversity programs like it is one’s status as an “underrepresented” scholar.The main eligibility criterion for B2F and other “faculty diversity” programs like it is one’s status as an “underrepresented” scholar. “Underrepresented” is used synonymously with the phrase “of color” in B2F materials and is defined by various departments in terms of race (and sometimes sex). USC’s College of Information and Communications defines “underrepresented” (“for recruitment purposes”) as “African American/Black, Hispanic/Latina/o, Native American, and Asian American.”
B2F, then, is the specialized tool through which departments hire “diverse” faculty. Submitting its B2F proposal, the USC mathematics department said bluntly, “We employ too few women and too few underrepresented minorities in our tenure-stream. […] The Bridge to Faculty Program offers a terrific opportunity for us to target on those women and underrepresented minorities [sic] candidates.”
USC’s B2F program suggests a number of recruitment strategies to departments whereby race or sex are primary sorting mechanisms, such as going to “conferences attended by large groups of professionals/academics who are underrepresented or of color (e.g., National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in Higher Education, National Women’s Studies Association).” Departments, in their applications to B2F, have been happy to supply a number of their own race-based recruitment strategies. The physics department promised to “directly contact a wide selection of Ph.D. programs in physics, asking them to relay information about this search to underrepresented minority (URM) scholars.” The geography department pledged to “directly contact faculty at several programs that are top producers of URM doctoral students in geography and related disciplines” and stated that “outreach will be made to URM advocacy groups in higher education (Bill Anderson Fellows; Black Geographers).” The economics department explained that “we have actively sought out Under represented [sic] minority (URM) graduate students by leveraging our professional networks and social media advertising for an unofficial pipeline program.”
These hiring practices have successfully produced the desired racial outcomes. The inaugural cohort of Bridge to Faculty candidates was 100-percent scholars “of color,” and all but one met what one department called “the more restrictive definition of underrepresented minority groups (i.e., not including Asian).”
Reached for comment, USC’s interim vice president for communications provided the following statement:
The Bridge to Faculty program is intended to recruit talented early career scholars and provide them with mentorship designed to foster their success. It does so by providing fellowship opportunities to postdoctoral researchers from a broad range of backgrounds. We encourage a competitive pool of fellowship candidates, which can include scholars from different racial, gender, and ethnic groups; first generation scholars; and those from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Fellowship awards are not based on race, ethnicity, or gender. We are proud of the program’s success and of the dedication of our fellows to their research and teaching.
I will leave it to the reader to decide whether this statement aligns with the facts on the ground described above.
Few universities have altered their hiring processes, and they are unlikely to do so unless induced by a court or legislative body.Affirmative-action faculty-hiring programs like B2F are common across higher education, and there is no sign of their immediate cessation. Since the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, which banned the use of race in college admissions, few universities have altered their hiring processes, and they are unlikely to do so unless induced by a court or legislative body.
Anti-DEI legislation at the state level is likely the best solution. Astutely written state legislation, such as Senate Bill 17 in Texas, can eliminate a large number of race-conscious policies in one fell swoop. B2F and the University of South Carolina as a whole could similarly be barred from using race and racial proxies (such as “underrepresented”) in hiring programs and strategic planning.
Anti-DEI legislation is a good first step towards restoring fairness to university hiring processes. It also has the salutary effect of increasing academic freedom. South Carolina should follow Texas in banning the use of race in hiring at its public universities.
Louis Galarowicz is a research fellow at the National Association of Scholars. He received his B.A. in philosophy and history from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently completing a master’s degree in theology at the Pontifical Institute of John Paul II in Washington, D.C.