MORE EVIDENCE THAT THERE IS AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ASTERISK.

I told you so.

A quarter century ago, when university administrations came up with the idea of filling faculty posts without regard to field or area, should a candidate ticking the desired diversity boxes come to their attention, their enablers in the faculty governance committees would respond to complaints raised in meetings that doing so was not judging those candidates on their merits with the not unreasonable argument that against a background of vocational tracking or outright segregation in the common schools, or the more rigidly defined sexual divisions of labor back in the day, nobody was really being judged solely on the merits.

If the purpose of those hires was to expand the talent pool and produce more broadly shared intellectual excellence, that might have even been a good idea.  A quarter-century on, though, it appears as though that talent pool is weaker.

Not that it stops the house organ for all wokeness, all the time, for denying that the talent pool is weaker.  "Black, Hispanic Faculty Far Less Likely to Get ‘Gold Standard’ Tenure Recommendations."

A recently published study of tenure and promotion cases for nearly 1,600 faculty members across five universities didn’t find racial disparities in either provosts’ decisions or in department-level tenure and promotion committees’ recommendations on which professors should advance.

But the study, published earlier this month in Nature Human Behaviour, did find a divergence in the middle of the process—when collegewide committees weigh in.

There, underrepresented minority faculty, defined as Black, African American or Hispanic, received 7 percent more negative votes from individual committee members than white or Asian faculty. And underrepresented minority faculty were a full 44 percent less likely to receive unanimous recommendations from these college-level committees.

Tenure is a hire, tenure is a political decision, and who knows the internal dynamics of the departments recommending the candidates for tenure, let alone the faction fights among departments in a college or of the colleges within the university?  Don't let any of that get in the way of a good gripe.

While a unanimous recommendation isn’t required for a promotion and tenure, the study’s authors note it’s considered a “gold standard.” They wrote that, because “faculty probably learn about the voting results through their network,” negative votes may make underrepresented minority professors feel less supported.

“Learning that a portion of one’s colleagues did not vote for your tenure or promotion is likely to lead to greater feelings of isolation and a lack of belonging,” they wrote. “Second, even if they do not learn about the result of the vote, the other (senior) faculty members will know. Receiving more negative votes may therefore make other faculty members view [underrepresented minority] faculty as less competent academics, potentially affecting the likelihood of seeking collaborative relationships or advocating for colleagues.”

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a gold standard. Christiane Spitzmueller—one of the authors and a psychology professor and vice provost for academic affairs and strategy at the University of California, Merced—said a lack of unanimity only requires “a single person who brings potentially negative attitudes towards marginalized groups to the voting process.”

Or a single person who has a grudge against that college, or views the department as a nest of troublemakers, or has old grievances about some decision that only matters to that committee member and perhaps to people long dead.  Any of which might lead to the outcome that these scholars presume to be contrary to diversity.

“There’s limited discussion oftentimes, and then oftentimes it’s anonymous,” she said of promotion and tenure decisions. “People write on a piece of paper whether it be yes or a no, so nobody is held accountable. So people who think, ‘Oh, maybe there are too many faculty of color in the academy now, or the standards have been lowered’ … Without even having to ever say that, they vote no.”

Spitzmueller and her co-authors suggested in the study that because faculty who serve on these college-level committees are more removed from the candidates compared with department-level panels and less likely to be familiar with their research, “they may be more likely to rely on race-based perceptions when making their decision.”

Theo Masters-Waage, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Houston and the paper’s lead author, surmised that part of the difference between what authors saw from college-level committees compared with department-level ones is “at the department level, the individual has a personal relationship with that faculty member, which means that they know more about them, they might understand their research.”

Yes, and in practice, colleagues within a department have a better idea what their juniors are working on, if they're doing their jobs properly they're reading and commenting on the juniors' working papers, and showing up at the department workshop.  I'll offer that charitable interpretation, rather than be cynical and propose that it's within the department that the desire not to have a diversity hire exposed as a fraud, leading to departmental recommendations with less dissent.

That, however, is not the silliest story Inside Higher Ed recently released.  Credit for that goes to Nadia Ahmad for "How DEI Initiatives on Islamophobia Fall Short."  No, seriously, as if reprising Reichsparteitag imagery at Columbia is insufficiently affirming of diversity.

As a visibly Muslim woman and tenured law professor, I’ve faced my share of discrimination. However, nothing prepared me for the chilling reality I encountered at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

While I was serving as co-chair of the DNC’s Interfaith Council and on the executive committee of the DNC’s Women’s Caucus, I became a victim of a violent assault at the convention. This attack laid bare the pervasive nature of Islamophobia in our society, but what followed was even more disturbing.

The complete institutional failure following my assault—manifested in the Democratic Party’s silence, my academic institutions’ indifference, the legal system’s impotence and the overall lack of support for a victim of political violence—revealed a disturbing truth: Even in spaces that champion diversity and inclusion, Muslim voices remain expendable.

One of these days, the sort of useful idiot who whinges about silence being violence might see the wisdom in "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."  If Professor Ahmad is lucky, she might have children who will roll their eyes at her old country ways.  That's how assimilation works.

Her beef, though, is with her university, for not acknowledging her martyrdom.

As I stood in the bustling convention hall at the United Center in Chicago, holding a cloth banner that read “Stop Arming Israel,” I never imagined that my act of peaceful protest would end in violence. Yet, within moments, three white men wielding campaign signs with wooden planks inside repeatedly struck me on the head. The physical pain was immediate, but the emotional aftermath—a concussion, trauma and a profound sense of betrayal—would linger far longer.

While some organizations swiftly issued statements condemning the attack as political violence and demanding justice, the universities I am affiliated with remained silent. This institutional indifference underscores a larger problem: The disconnect between well-intentioned diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and the lived realities of Muslim faculty and staff, particularly those who are visibly Muslim, Black, Latino/a or from other minority groups.

In my years navigating academia, I’ve witnessed firsthand how corporatized, apolitical DEI programs fall short for those of us at the margins. They tend to focus on secular and liberal perspectives, emphasizing concepts like religious practices and holidays. While these are important, they fail to address the daily microaggressions and systemic biases that shape our experiences.

Well, busting heads at Democrat conventions in Chicago have long been a thing, and maybe ensuring that professors schedule examinations, particularly late in the day, with Jewish and Moslem holy days in mind, might be more important than calling attention to a few Fans of Jihad on the law faculty.  But the special pleading gets even more tiresome as she rambles on.

As one of the few tenured, visibly Muslim women in legal academia, I face an average of 500 micro- and macroaggressions annually. The mental toll of deciding which handful of incidents to address is exhausting, constantly pulling my focus from teaching, research and service. This burden of representation and advocacy weighs heavily on visibly Muslim women in academia. We’re often tokenized, expected to be the voice for all Muslims, which places an unfair burden on individuals and perpetuates the myth of a monolithic Muslim experience.

Moreover, current DEI approaches often prioritize male and Arab voices, inadvertently sidelining the perspectives of women, Black Muslims, Latino/a Muslims, Indigenous and other minority groups within the Muslim community. A panel on Islamophobia might discuss the impacts of fasting during Ramadan and the need for prayer spaces, but neglect to address the foreign policy landscape or the systemic racism and unique challenges faced by Black or Latino/a Muslims in academia.

The personal toll of traversing these spaces is immense. The constant code-switching, the exhaustion of being valued for expertise in one’s field while simultaneously unsupported when speaking about personal experiences with discrimination—it all breeds cynicism and burnout. My assault at the DNC and the subsequent lack of support from institutions I once believed in have profoundly impacted my sense of safety and belonging in academic and political spaces.

That's rich.  She starts her essay with the identity politics tic, "As a visibly Muslim woman" and then grouses about being "expected to be the voice for all Muslims."  You can't create protected classes of individuals with protocols for affirming and celebrating their diversity without creating the myth of a monolithic experience, whether it's the ghetto experience or the jihad.

Think we're going to get that?

Institutional leaders must step up in setting the tone for how Islamophobia is addressed on campus. They must make public, unequivocal statements condemning Islamophobia and supporting Muslim members of the academic community. They need to stop criminalizing antiwar protesters and brutalizing their own students. Allocating significant resources to anti-Islamophobia initiatives, including funding for Muslim student organizations and research on Islamophobia in academia, is crucial.

Regular policy reviews are essential to ensure protection for Muslim students and faculty from discrimination, with clear consequences for Islamophobic behavior. Promoting Muslim-led interfaith dialogue and developing robust crisis response protocols are also critical steps. As we strive for progress, it’s important to note that the burden of education and advocacy does not fall solely on the shoulders of Muslim academics. Allies in positions of power must step up, speak out and take concrete actions to create truly inclusive academic spaces.

Sorry, lady, adding a few more sectarians with their own understandings of "from the river to the sea" and the rest of the nostalgia for the seventh century isn't going to create an inclusive academic space.