A COMPETITIVE OPPORTUNITY, IF THEY'D TAKE IT.

Perhaps it might behoove the administrations at the land-grants, regional comprehensives, and mid-majors to stop emulating the Ivies when it comes to at least one of their hiring practices.  "Prestigious universities are significantly more likely to have DEI requirements than nonprestigious universities. Perhaps surprisingly, these statements are as prevalent in STEM fields as in the humanities and social sciences, once controls are accounted for."  That might not matter, as it has long been the case that excellence in the lab or the field might have been attained at the expense of common sense in ordinary life.  What's at stake is, are the scientific and technical fields inadvertently (or is it deliberately?) introducing a cadre of Lysenkoists and calling it inclusion?

An anecdote does not an indictment make.

Of 893 nominally qualified candidates, 679 were eliminated solely due to insufficiently woke diversity, equity and inclusion statements. In other words, Berkeley used a political litmus test to eliminate over three-quarters of the applicant pool.

If the remaining quarter were still Nobel-worthy or at least capable of generating the indirect cost returns that keep the deanlets in wine and cheese, California still might be fine. But there are ominous signs. "Ideological conformity may also result in a narrowing of research questions, with negative consequences for intellectual pursuits."

Perhaps graduate schools are institutions that screen for ideological conformity to go along with the neuroses that seem to proliferate there.  I submit, though, that the ideological conformity might be shape-shifting in the humanities, the better to screen for a MacArthur fellowship or some money from the national endowments.  The grantsmanship hustle likely leads to a narrowing of research questions, and that would be true whether or not there's money to be had for Marxist genetics Indigenous ways of cosmology.  I'm also old enough to remember when the quest for grant money had some people claiming the universities were complicit in an unpopular war.

The study I've been quoting from is from American Enterprise, and it's unlikely to be submitted to a social science journal.  I also fear that the administrations of the "nonprestigious" universities might see in their underperformance relative to the two hundred or so institutions claiming to be in the top fifty according to U.S. News or the society pages an opportunity to make a career move by touting their efforts to make their institutions more pro-diversity statements.  Never mind that students there will suffer as personnel committees have to narrow their searches.

Why not offer opportunities to promising faculty members who somehow don't pass through the diversity baleen in the Ivy seas?