The rapid rise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in American (and Western) universities, particularly since the 2020 George Floyd protests, has fundamentally altered the academic landscape, often at the expense of meritocracy and intellectual rigor. While initially framed as a means to foster inclusivity, DEI has morphed into a pervasive ideology that critics argue values political goals over academic excellence, corroding hiring practices, publishing standards, and the broader academic ecosystem. Drawing from a Revolver News article published in June 2024, this analysis outlines how DEI has contributed to a systemic "rot" in universities, undermining their core mission of truth-seeking and scholarship.
The DEI movement gained significant traction in the US following George Floyd's death in May 2020, which sparked nationwide protests and a broader cultural push for racial justice. Universities, eager to align with this movement, expanded DEI programs, embedding them into hiring, curriculum, and research. The Revolver News article describes this as the "George Floyd Effect," noting a marked increase in DEI-driven hiring practices, with some institutions reporting up to 90% of faculty hires from 2020 to 2023 being facilitated through DEI programs like the University of Colorado-Boulder's Faculty Diversity Action Plan (FDAP). These programs often opt for demographic quotas over qualifications, reshaping academic culture.
One of the most visible manifestations of DEI's impact is in faculty hiring. The Revolver News article highlights the case of David Austin Walsh, a Yale postdoctoral fellow who struggled to secure a job due to his identity as a white male, despite specialising in DEI-aligned fields like "white supremacy" studies. Walsh's experience underscores a broader trend: universities increasingly favour candidates from underrepresented groups, even when less qualified, over others. For instance, at the University of Colorado-Boulder, FDAP allocated a significant portion of faculty positions for "diversity hires," often bypassing open searches to target specific individuals. In another example, a professor reported being told during job interviews that his demographic identity was "disqualifying," despite California's Proposition 209 banning such discrimination in public institutions.
DEI-driven hiring extends beyond individual cases. The article notes that in fields like U.S. history, approximately 50% of tenure-track job postings focus on racial identity categories, with 35% specifically in African American history. "Cluster hiring," where multiple faculty are hired simultaneously with a focus on DEI priorities, centralises the process under administrators who value quotas over departmental expertise. This shift marginalises traditional academic standards, as hiring decisions increasingly reflect political goals rather than scholarly merit.
Until recently, many universities, including Harvard and MIT, required job applicants to submit diversity statements, documents outlining their commitment to DEI principles. These statements often served as litmus tests, screening out candidates who did not align with DEI ideology. However, as reported by the New York Times and cited in the Revolver News article, both MIT and Harvard have abandoned mandatory diversity statements due to faculty pushback and lack of support. This change is significant, as the University of California system pioneered these requirements a decade ago to foster inclusivity. Yet, critics argue that abolishing diversity statements addresses only a symptom, not the root cause of DEI's influence, which remains embedded in university culture and hiring practices.
DEI's influence extends beyond hiring to academic publishing, a critical measure of scholarly success. The Revolver News article highlights how prestigious journals like The Lancet and the American Political Science Review have adopted DEI principles, compromising their meritocratic standards. For example, The Lancet's editor-in-chief, Richard Horton, has endorsed "equity" as a guiding principle, publishing pieces that frame issues like racism and nationalism as public health crises. Such editorial biases raise questions about the objectivity of paper selection, as journals increasingly choose politically aligned research over rigorous scholarship. This shift creates a "spoils system" where DEI-aligned researchers gain preferential treatment, undermining the credibility of academic output and further entrenching ideological conformity.
DEI's influence has reshaped entire disciplines, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, where fields like African American studies or "far-right" studies have expanded rapidly post-2020. These fields, often criticised as ideologically driven, attract scholars who align with DEI goals but may lack the rigorous output of traditional disciplines. The Revolver News article argues that this creates a feedback loop: less qualified candidates are hired through DEI programs, publish in DEI-influenced journals, and perpetuate a cycle of mediocrity. Meanwhile, traditional metrics of academic success, such as publications in top journals like Nature or Science, are devalued for those outside the DEI framework, as seen in Walsh's case.
There are signs of resistance. Republican-led states like Texas and Florida have taken legislative action, with the University of Texas-Austin firing 40 DEI staffers and the University of Florida terminating 13 administrators following DEI bans. These moves aim to dismantle DEI infrastructure, though their long-term impact remains uncertain. At elite institutions, faculty scepticism, as voiced by former Harvard Medical School dean Jeffrey S. Flier, suggests a growing backlash against DEI's overreach.
While abolishing diversity statements and DEI offices is a step forward, the Revolver News article warns that these measures do not address the deeper cultural shift within academia. DEI's grip persists through administrators, journal editors, and faculty who internalised its priorities long before 2020. The article suggests that without systemic reform, such as decentralising hiring, prioritising merit in publishing, and dismantling ideologically driven programs, universities will continue their "downward spiral toward useless mediocrity." The George Floyd Effect, while a catalyst, built on decades of growing DEI influence, making reversal a complex challenge.
DEI initiatives, amplified post-2020, have eroded the meritocratic foundations of American universities by prioritising demographic quotas over qualifications in hiring and publishing. While recent pushback, such as the elimination of diversity statements and DEI staff cuts, offers hope, the underlying ideology remains deeply embedded. Restoring academic integrity requires a fundamental overhaul of hiring practices, publishing standards, and disciplinary priorities to realign universities with their supposed mission of pursuing truth and excellence. But the bigger question, also discussed at the blog is: is it all too late and the universities are too far down the road to wreck and ruin?
"DEI is dead! Long live DEI!
That, at least, is the situation now prevailing on America's university campuses. Glance at recent news stories, and the story you'll see is that, after decades of growth and four years of absolutely running wild, the diversity and inclusion industry is now in full retreat.
In a promising shift, both MIT and Harvard University have (for now) publicly abandoned the requirement that job applicants submit loathsome "diversity statements" as part of a job application. According to no less of an authority than the New York Times, this could be "The End for Mandatory D.E.I. Statements."
"The switch has flipped as of now," said Jeffrey S. Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School. Many professors on hiring committees, he said, may have been reluctant to voice their concerns about mandatory diversity statements before now. "But I think the large, silent majority of faculty who question the implementation of these programs and, in particular, these diversity statements — these people are being heard."
The University of California system was the first to require diversity statements, starting about a decade ago. To supporters of the requirement, such statements were necessary if colleges wanted to build a welcoming environment for a diverse student population.
Today, some universities use the statements early on in the hiring process, to screen applicants before they are even granted an interview. Others consider the statements later, as applicants reach the final rounds.
When Harvard and M.I.T. asked their faculties about the worthiness of diversity statements, though, they found little support.
Further down the prestige ladder, at public colleges in Republican-controlled states, a similar shift is taking place. In these states, the push is coming from Republican lawmakers, who have belatedly recognized that DEI is a hiring program for people who hate them. In some states, lawmakers have ordered universities to abolish diversity statements, but the most on-the-ball initiatives have made sure to actually fire DEI staffers and shut down their departments. At the University of Texas-Austin, forty people lost their jobs after the school's DEI office got the axe. At the University of Florida, officials fired 13 administrators in response to a DEI ban.
The signs are all promising, to say the least. But a crucial question remains: Will all of this work?
We can hope, of course. Harvard and MIT are both trendsetters for the schools just below them on the prestige ladder. Odds are good that, at least at America's top schools and any public college in a red state, much-hated "diversity statements" will soon be a thing of the past.
But don't get too thrilled just yet. Abolishing diversity statements is not the same thing as abolishing the diversity cult itself. The situation in academia is improving in some respects, but for now it remains a matter of tiny marginal improvements to a vast, utterly rotten edifice. The state of affairs in academia today is such that broad swathes of entire disciplines—not just fake DEI disciplines—have become utterly corroded by DEI.
The triumphalism over vanishing diversity statements operates on the assumption that said statements are a primary driver of anti-white and anti-male discrimination in academia. In reality, though, these statements are simply the product of a DEI-obsessed culture that exists on a deeper level. Mandatory statements during the hiring process make it easier and smoother to reject white male applicants, but the intent to reject them as often as possible was there long before. This discriminatory intent means that DEI (or woke, or race communist, pick your term of choice) priorities now pervade almost every aspect of the academic sausage-making process—to a degree that would shock most Americans. Unless this process is reformed (or, more likely, torn out at the root and replaced), universities will continue their downward spiral toward useless mediocrity.
Let's take a look beneath the hood.
At the end of May, a post by Yale postdoctoral fellow David Austin Walsh went viral. In the thread, the hapless Walsh commented on his hopeless struggle to secure an academic job as a white male in a hiring market where his skin and sex place him into the untouchable caste.
Walsh himself deserves little sympathy. He himself chose to specialize in a fake DEI-motivated field studying the "far right," "white supremacy," and similar politicized garbage. In fact, Walsh's DEI colleagues were scandalized that he, a white man, would dare complain about his difficulty finding a job in academia. The very act of a white man complaining would seem, at the very least, adjacent to racism. Walsh, being the good obedient dog that he is, apologized profusely to his colleagues for complaining about his inability to get a job and deleted the offending thread. When some right-wing veterans of academia reached out to offer support, Walsh published some of their private messages and then issued hysterical denunciations, in a sad attempt to regain favor with the same leftists who made his life a failed disaster in the first place.
Still, the sorry figure of Walsh merits comment and further explanation. Because while Walsh's follow-up was pathetic, his original statement was true: He almost certainly really is being rejected in favor of less qualified diversity hires, over and over again. The ironic thing is that in the case of academic researchers of the "far right," we welcome more qualified people like Walsh being passed over for jobs in favor of less qualified women and minorities—antagonistic joke fields should have the least qualified people possible! But we digress.
Look around, and academics admit the impact of affirmative action all the time. Here is an academic admitting that from 2020 to 2023, approximately 90 percent of faculty hires were done through a re-named DEI program.
Over in The Chronicle of Higher Education, University of Colorado-Boulder climate professor Matt Burgess recently begged his fellow scholars to be more forthright about what really happens in the hiring process:
An honest conversation about diversity hiring must start by acknowledging the basic fact that, whether we like it or not, diversity hiring has been happening on a large scale for the past decade (the period in which colleges shifted sharply to the left by many measures), especially in the years since the summer of 2020.
It is plainly obvious to anyone who has been a faculty member over the past decade that diversity hiring is widespread. In my experience, it is frankly discussed in private, by both its supporters and its opponents. I've also seen it up close, as both a job candidate and a faculty member.
When I was on the job market between 2016 and 2018, I had seven on-campus interviews. I was told during three of them (all in 2018) that my demographic identity was in some way disqualifying. Two of these interviews were at public colleges in California, where diversity hiring is clearly illegal under Proposition 209. In one case, a search-committee member, who I knew before the search, told me, "Half the search committee didn't want to interview another white man, but we liked your diversity statement." In the second case, the search was in a broad interdisciplinary area and I asked a member of the faculty if they had insights into what the department was looking for. Their answer: "Honestly? Women."
[…]
Confidentiality prevents me from sharing anecdotes from the searching side, but my current dean told our college's faculty senate in November 2022 (the minutes are supposed to be public record) that roughly 90 percent of the 20 most recent hires were made through a program called the Faculty Diversity Action Plan (FDAP), which started shortly after the murder of George Floyd. (Before publishing this, I reached out to the University of Colorado at Boulder's director of issues management, Nicole Mueksch. She told me that the College of Arts and Sciences hired 22 faculty members who started between the fall of 2021 and the fall of 2022, of which 12 were funded by FDAP.) FDAP sets aside a large fraction of vacated positions for diversity hires, which were often targeted (i.e., a department proposed to hire a specific person rather than run a search). It was clear from the get-go that the intent of FDAP was to conduct diversity hiring.
Poke around where academics talk amongst themselves anonymously, and you'll see the same story over and over. Over on the glorified ChatGPT training site Reddit, plenty of recent posts include scholars admitting what really goes on under the table or behind closed doors.
For more proof of all this, just look at some job postings.
In the field of U.S. history, for instance, roughly half of new tenure-track job postings are in some kind of racial identity category. Thirty-five percent of jobs are specifically in the field of African American History.
There is a consistent pattern in the examples above indicating an aggressive increase in DEI hires beginning in 2020. Perhaps this indicates something of a "George Floyd Effect" in academia.
Universities have also adapted the technique of "cluster hiring," where multiple faculty are hired at the same time with a focus on particular specialties, to laser in on left-wing political goals. As explained by John Sailer at the National Association of Scholars, even without diversity statements, cluster hiring makes it easier to rig the system by centralizing the hiring process. Such centralization takes faculty hiring out of the hands of normal academic departments and puts it substantially in the hands of administrators, who are more likely to be obsessed with mindlessly hitting quotas.
What's important about all these factors is that none of them will actually be mitigated by simply abolishing diversity statements. Rather, we see the truth: Diversity statements are simply a mechanism through which university administrators achieve a political goal: hiring fewer white men and more of everybody else. Academics openly admit to this goal, and they engineer it in many other ways.
But there's another force coming into play. For years, the university DEI racket has been about finding ways to rig the application process to hire those who are less qualified. But especially since Floyd season began in 2020, there have also been changes to the entire academic ecosystem that are undermining the entire concept of being "better qualified."
Consider academic publishing. One of the reasons it is typically easy to observe that DEI hires are less qualified than their melanin-deficient competitors is that they often fall substantially (or laughably) short on standard career thresholds for an aspiring scholar. For the regular public, the job of professors is to teach college classes, but in academia, the currency of success is published papers and other recognized research accomplishments. Getting a paper in a field's top journal (such as Nature or Science for scientific endeavors) greatly improves an academic's chances of being hired, and the conspicuous lack of such papers from many DEI hires drove home the farce of handing them prestigious jobs.
While battles amongst university faculty get the most attention, quietly behind the scenes, the editors of those top academic journals have been maneuvering to turn the very process of publication into a race- and sex-based spoils system. Right now, instead of being headed by sober-minded scholars, some of the most prestigious journals in the world are led by people who are, speaking charitably, mentally unwell.
The Lancet is one of the world's most historically distinguished medical journals. At the start of June, the journal published a piece by editor-in-chief Richard Horton about how the Orange Man, Donald Trump, is very bad.
The prospects for this failing system look bleak. Donald Trump again as US President? The far right making electoral gains across Europe? Murderous political leaders able to act with impunity? Purveyors of disinformation, working under the rubric of The Geneva Project, who proclaim that, "We, people of the world, no longer abide by the tyrannical rule of unelected global officials and their vision of the future"? A collection of anti-vaxxers, right-wing activists, and conspiracy theorists gathered at the World Health Assembly on June 1 to declare their opposition to WHO's efforts to negotiate a pandemic agreement. What is the cause of this breakdown of belief in an international community? There are many possible culprits. Racism. Populism. Nationalism. But I think it was Dr Ghada who identified one especially important root cause: the loss of our humanity.
Elsewhere, Horton has endorsed "equity" as the unifying principle of the Lancet's many sub-journals. In 2017, three whole years before Floyd-a-palooza, he wrote this:
Hate, racism, xenophobia, and terror will be hard to defeat. But medicine and public health can play a part. First, they must find their voice and join the public discussion. Second, they must put at the centre of their concern those who are most vulnerable in our societies, and use a political as well as a biomedical lens to interpret and understand their predicaments. Third, they must examine the accumulating body of evidence about community-specific, multisector, equity-oriented interventions that can make inroads into racism. Inequality does not hurt us equally. There can be neither health nor health equity while racism is tolerated.
Reading stuff like this, how likely do you think it is that Horton's journal is perfectly meritocratic in which papers it accepts?
At other journals, there isn't even a need to read between the lines. They will proudly tell you how biased they are. The American Political Science Review has historically been the top publication for, well, you can guess. In 2019, the publication selected a 12-person 2020–2024 editorial board that looked like this:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2025-05-29-black-women-plagiarize-at-astronomically-higher-rates.html.