On the Necessity of DEI for Restoring Trust in Higher Ed

Amid the Trump administration’s cuts to government contracts with universities, professors have taken to the press to vent their anger and frustration that the government is holding research funds hostage. Shutting down campus DEI offices and calling for more oversight for disciplines that either emerged from, or work within, the DEI framework has led many professors to cry foul and to demand the protections of academic freedom for their offices, classrooms, and research teams. Of course, it’s not surprising that faculty would oppose the policies of a Republican administration given their overwhelming left-leaning politics, especially at the prestigious schools that receive lots of federal funds.

All of this is laced with tremendous irony, which might be funny, if professors could take themselves a little less seriously.

As I reflect on the state of the academy, I am reminded of the writing of Adorno, Horkheimer, and Alinsky. Their most enduring works were critical of authority, tradition, and the status quo. These activist scholars gave us the tools needed to critique mainstream American culture, the Western tradition, and our Judeo-Christian religious and cultural inheritance. These tools have been a major part of the activist scholar toolkit of the left for last sixty years: perhaps we can use them to address our current problems as well.

To that end, I can’t help but notice that DEI might be the perfect solution to the politicization of the academy in general, and of the humanities and social sciences in particular. If our universities are going to receive federal funds, that is, money derived from taxpayers, our universities should reflect the ideas and beliefs of the public that funds them. This is all the more important at public universities since, being funded by the public, they should reflect the public in every way. Moreover, if a student can’t find themselves represented in the academy, they will be less likely to enroll and persist to a degree. Therefore, we must make the academy fit the demographics of the United States at any cost.

Thankfully, those in power in universities have been doing what they can to make that happen on the left, so we can begin to balance the scales to the right. If approximately 50% of the population is conservative, we will need the professoriate to be approximately 50% conservative, otherwise our educational institutions run the risk of being labeled non-diverse, inequitable, and exclusive—and these are NOT the values that drive American universities.

At present, liberals make up the vast majority of the academy and, due to their overrepresentation, a considerable number will need to be relieved of their duties. Since standardized tests and measures have been recently discovered to be racist, sexist, and classist, we will make these decisions by putting every liberal professor’s name into ChatGPT and commanding it to randomly select liberal professors in exact proportion to their percentage of the general population. Then we will know how many conservative professors we will need to hire to be diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

The objection will be raised that there are not enough conservatives to fill the resulting positions, but we know that conservative think tanks exist and that many people in the private sector are conservative. We can draw from these two pools to reach our goal of 50% equity. Another objection will be raised that these potential conservative professors are making more money as lawyers, doctors, and finance bros and won’t accept jobs in the academy. This is an excellent point, for if we are to reach 50% equity, we will need to pay conservative professors considerably more than liberal professors or they will not join the university.

The question will be asked: where will this money come from? Again, we can turn to DEI to solve this issue as well. Anti-racist scholar Ibram X. Kendi has given us the needed blueprint: “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” If we are to overpay these conservative professors to join the academy, we can source the funds from those who have discriminated against them in the past, namely, liberal professors and administrators. By cutting the salaries of liberal professors and administrators to far below that of their conservative counterparts, we will achieve the diversity, equity, and inclusion that is necessary for academia to pursue excellence.

Obviously, if we are following Kendi and other anti-racist scholars, our present discrimination will require recalibration in the future. To make this recalibration possible, we must get rid of the tenure system. Tenure creates entrenched and vested interests in the professoriate, which would not be inclusive or equitable, so we must remove it from the academy. In place of tenure, we will institute rotating four-year contracts that align with the four-year presidential election cycle. Every four years, we will use the exit polls to recalibrate the professoriate to fit the composition of the electorate. We like to think of this as term limits that encourage professors to stay in touch with public opinion and public interests. As before, we can’t look at metrics like teaching evaluations, number of publications, or external funding received. Instead, we will feed all the names of the professors, along with their political identities, into ChatGPT and have it randomly decide which faculty will be employed for the next four years. Conservative professors, of course, will continue to be paid far more than liberal professors because of the legacy of liberal discrimination and oppression within the professoriate.

You may have been wondering why there are no political independents in our calculations? This is because politics, like gender and sexuality, is on a spectrum. To claim that one is independent is to say that one is not on the spectrum, which is impossible—everybody is on the spectrum. But, you may ask, doesn’t this mean that hiring professors based on the binary of liberal and conservative is problematic? This is very important point. If we hire professors based only on the binary poles, much of the middle of the political spectrum will not be represented, which would not be diverse, equitable, or inclusive. Once again, new AI technologies can help us address this problem. So our actual proposal is that instead of hiring people based on their political affiliation, we have the computer assign them a political affiliation. This way, we can ensure that the entire spectrum of political beliefs is represented in their correct proportions.

What if, someone will ask, the political affiliation assigned to a professor doesn’t align with their personal beliefs or, perhaps more problematic, what if they are assigned a political affiliation with which they fundamentally disagree? How are they to play their part? This question is, of course, ridiculous. As we said at the beginning, the professoriate has moved increasingly to the left over the past 60 years, but experts say it has not forgotten the importance of objectivity and presenting all viewpoints. If they could do such a good job of remaining objective these last 60 years, we are confident that professors in the present will be able to play their assigned role. Technically speaking, this will be much easier for professors as they can focus on their assigned affiliation and not worry about other viewpoints.

Still, someone will object, our beliefs and values are the most important part of who we are, and we cannot shed them the way we shed our clothes. This objection is more serious given that DEI has traditionally taken the stance that immutable characteristics are the most important things about a person. In order to make DEI more diverse, equitable and inclusive we must adjust that previous prejudice. With beliefs and values now the most important part of DEI, and these not being easily changed, we propose a partnership with Lumon industries. Using their patented severance technology, professors could be severed from their actual beliefs and values and assigned new ones. In order to make sure they do a good job embodying these beliefs, human resources can assign them video lectures covering the basics of their new roles. Each video will be accompanied by a personalized AI bot that tells professors what to think and say. Faculty can use this bot to pass the short quiz following each module to ensure they have accurately internalized their new values and beliefs.

Having made these small changes to the university system, we are confident that the political polarization and public distrust of the academy will become a thing of the past.

Image via RawPixel