Rufo: "We Can't Hire a White Guy"--a Prof on Life at Princeton

DEI has permeated and further perverted my own much more modest institution. I'd bet a fair amount of money that, under our previous dean and provost, we engaged in race-based hiring. Though that's just one aspect of the left's influence on campus.

   One aspect of the Princeton prof's story is a lot like something that happened here. Our previous dean used to say that we had to hire more Hispanic faculty because we were projected to have more Hispanic students in the near future. I questioned this bizarro argument, asking whether he'd say we needed to hire more white faculty if we were projected to get more white students. No answer. And, of course, since SFFA, we probably are projected to have more white students. This is pretty standard fare. Bullshit rationalizations that the purveyors would never dream of generalizing to less-favored demographic groups. This is one way universities ratchet themselves ever leftward.

   Our previous provost illegally re-wrote our hiring guidelines over one summer. Many faculty did revolt about this...but mostly went along with the new guidelines in the end. They were designed to give the provost a freer hand in selecting from the short list mostly chosen by faculty. (I say mostly because we were (and may still be for all I know) under certain rules that (a) required us to have a certain number of candidates on the short list from "underrepresented" groups, and (b) we weren't allowed to drop those candidates from the list unless we deemed them unacceptable--a low standard indeed. We actually had to do this once. The candidate from the "underrepresented" group was awful.) The provost specifically cited "equity" as a reason for the illegal rule changes. An ad hoc group of pissed off faculty began working against the guidelines...but none of them cared nor would even recognize that DEI and leftist preferences were at the root of the problem. I emphasized in many meetings of the group that "equity" was the provost's acknowledged motive. No one would even respond to my point. We were on Zoom, and every time there would just be dead air after my comment. 

   In addition to hiring candidates on the basis of--or at least heavily influenced by--their race, here's another thing that happens: extremely left-friendly areas of specialization are preferred to more traditional specializations on DEI grounds. So DEI is used as a reason not only for hiring nonwhite, non-heterosexual, and female candidates, it's also used as an excuse for hiring candidates who special in left-leaning areas of scholarship like CRT, colonialism, feminism, "gender" studies, "queer theory," etc. Our two most important positions--history of ancient and history of modern--remained empty for something like five years after the retirement of the profs. We were told that we could hire "philosophy of disability" or "world philosophy"...neither of which is central to a philosophy department...but the dean wouldn't let us fill the positions we really needed. We finally filled one of them a couple of years ago because we had to hire for a different reason and managed to hire somebody in one of the relevant areas of specialization. We just now finally hired to fill the other one. And we were able to do so mainly because the previous dean and provost aren't around anymore. The dean moved on to a more prestigious university--which the goal of everyone around here. The provost "quit"...but no one thinks she did so voluntarily. She did not mention where she was going. Which means she probably wasn't going anywhere. Though she didn't seem old enough to retire...

   Anyway.

   As I've said before, DEI is almost nothing more than a catspaw for the academic left to strengthen its grip on campus. It's not the heart of the problem, but it's a tool and an additional motive for moving institutions leftward.

[Written in even more haste than usual; probably some infelicities up there. sry.]