In February 2021, then-president Kristina Johnson launched an initiative to hire 50 professors whose work focused on race and “social equity” and “100 underrepresented and BIPOC hires” (the acronym stands for black, indigenous and people of color). These reports show what higher education’s outsize investment in “diversity, equity and inclusion” looks like in practice. Ohio State sacrificed both academic freedom and scholarly excellence for the sake of a narrowly construed vision of diversity.
Ohio was considered a swing state and bellwether state, but is becoming more of a conservative state after going for Donald Trump twice for president. Ohio has a Republican governor, and solid Republican majorities in the state House and Senate. How did our flagship state university get so polluted?
A search committee seeking a professor of military history rejected one applicant “because his diversity statement demonstrated poor understanding of diversity and inclusion issues.”
Another committee noted that an applicant to be a professor of nuclear physics could understand the plight of minorities in academia because he was married to “an immigrant in Texas in the Age of Trump.”
In a search for a professor of chemistry, the report notes that one candidate’s “experiences as a queer, neurodivergent Latinx woman in STEM has provided her with an important motivation to expand DEI efforts beyond simply representation and instead toward social justice.”
Another report concedes that “as a white male” one proposed finalist “does not outwardly present as a diversity candidate.” In his defense it notes that he recently published on critical race theory.
A committee searching for a professor of freshwater biology selected finalists “based upon a weighted rubric of 67% research and 33% contribution to DEI.”
One role in medical anthropology had 67 applicants. The four finalists include the only two black applicants and the only Native American applicant. “All four scholars on our shortlist are women of color,” the committee said.
This is why I am a conservative, rather than a Republican. Ohio has a Department of Higher Education. Who is running it and why was Ohio State allowed (encouraged?) to become so corrupted?
The neo-Marxists behind the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity policies are proud of their destructive work. Hearings at the State House should have no problem tracing the origin of this corruption. The people involved must be removed from the Department of Higher Education, The Ohio State University and all state universities. The professors who were hired based on the DIE principles should be scrutinized and re-evaluated. Some are surely qualified and only playing the game. Others are deep Marxists who should be removed from the faculty.