RE: The Faculty Merit Act

I regret that the National Association of Scholars (NAS) has proposed the Faculty Merit Act (David Randall, “It’s Time to Mandate Merit,” Jan. 2, 2016).

I agree that some universities, when hiring faculty, are using subterfuge to get around the legal requirement to avoid discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex. But NAS is recommending draconian measures to correct this problem.

As outlined by David Randall, director of research at NAS, the model legislation is quite explicit about what it is meant to do.

The Faculty Merit Act requires state universities to publish every higher-education standardized test score (SAT, ACT, CRT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, etc.) of every faculty member, as well as the standardized test score of every applicant for the faculty member’s position—of every applicant selected for a first interview and every applicant selected for a final interview.

Whew! NAS is apparently convinced that the intelligence of faculty members has declined because of efforts to promote racial and ethnic diversity (and, to be generous, perhaps because of eagerness to select “woke” candidates). What Randall calls “political” discrimination by universities “as often as not is camouflage for breaking civil-rights law and straightforwardly discriminating by race and sex.”

But this plan seems almost vengeful. Randall explains that, “if the public and policymakers can see that a faculty search had 300 applicants … and that the person who got the job had a lower SAT score than 290 other applicants, then they can see that something is wrong.”

And then what? Mock the new hire? Gloat? Sue? And thus make the university even more divisive than it is now?

No. Instead of interfering into the personal lives of faculty (as this act would) there are other remedies. We know that university boards have been weak, largely neglecting their obligation to oversee the faculty’s choice of new hires, among other matters. Governing boards, wrote Martin Center senior fellow Jay Schalin in 2020, “are often reduced to rubber-stamp committees that give a seal of imprimatur to decisions made by others, even those who are legally subordinate to them.”

Fortunately, we are beginning to see trustees who take their jobs seriously—certainly in North Carolina. At UNC-Chapel Hill, trustees helped foster the new School of Civic Life and Leadership in order to expand intellectual thought on campus. And at schools throughout the UNC System, trustees are required to vote on faculty tenure decisions. This is the kind of action we want to see.

I appreciate the work of the National Association of Scholars, a group that shares our desire for university reform. But, in my view, this act is not the way to go.

-Jane Shaw Stroup, chairperson, board of directors, James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal