UNC Institutions Should End Discriminatory Faculty Hiring

Recent investigative reporting revealed that five UNC schools participated in a federal program explicitly created to hire faculty based on race. UNC should take steps to end these partnerships as soon as possible.

Last week in City Journal, Manhattan Institute senior fellow John Sailer published an investigative report on a DEI hiring program run out of the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) with three partner institutions. The $10-million “Re-Imagining STEM Equity Utilizing Postdoctoral Pathways” (RISE UPP) program is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Its purpose, Sailer reports, is to hire postdoctoral fellows, with special attention to diversity, and “fast-track them to tenure-track positions, sidestepping normal hiring procedures.”

The records reveal letters from provosts at each school praising the program’s DEI goals. The RISE UPP grant proposal and supporting documents, which Sailer obtained via public-records request, reveal Maryland’s plans to collaborate on DEI hiring with three partner institutions: Texas A&M University, the University of Texas, and the University of North Carolina. Five UNC System institutions are listed as participants on the grant: East Carolina, NC A&T, NC State, UNC Charlotte, and UNC-Chapel Hill.

These programs must be eliminated to fully comply with the UNC System’s commitment to equality of opportunity. The records also reveal letters from provosts (see page 835) at each school praising the program’s DEI goals, specifically the efforts to “increase the diversity of our faculty,” and touting existing equity-promoting programs at each school.

Three UNC institutions (NC A&T, NC State, and UNC Charlotte) participate in the NSF-supported Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate-North Carolina (AGEP-NC). The program exists to promote “historically underrepresented minority US citizens” in STEM fields, which the program further defines as “Latino/a, Black and Indigenous American[s].”

UNC’s “Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity” highlights the races of its participants, noting that 76 of them have gone on to be UNC faculty hires. (See screenshot below.)

In his letter to UMBC’s provost, UNC provost Chris Clemens describes the Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity as “one of the oldest fellowship diversity programs in the nation.”

At ECU, the Provost’s Collaborative for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was the RISE UPP partner program. Interim Provost B. Grant Hayes described the program as “a campus-wide initiative to coordinate DEI faculty development” along with various smaller DEI efforts across campus.

Following the implementation of the UNC System’s new Equality policy, which “requires that each [person] be treated as an individual,” some of these programs are now either defunct or inactive. For example, the Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity’s website now states, “We are currently working with University leadership to reimagine the program and will share updates as they become available.” Many of the links to ECU’s program no longer work. The link to UNC Charlotte’s Multicultural Postdoctoral Fellowship Program also seems to go nowhere, although it is still listed on the UNCC website.

This is a good start. However, pausing or “reimagining” these programs is insufficient. Their purpose is inherently discriminatory and exclusionary. They must be eliminated—or universities should stop participating in them—to fully comply with the System’s commitment to equality of opportunity.

Jenna A. Robinson is president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.