Students successfully pressure UCLA not to hire a free-thinking professor
Jack Elbaum
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Although it is well known that American universities are hotbeds of “woke” political activism, the absurdity of what such activists are able to pressure administrators into doing never ceases to amaze.
Today’s example comes from UCLA, where students successfully pressured the school into not hiring a professor simply because he was skeptical of using “diversity statements” in employment decisions. Yoel Inbar argues that using them as a hiring requirement can be a way to root out those who do not “[signal] an allegiance to a certain set of beliefs.”
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This is obviously correct, and, ironically enough, as commentator Matthew Yglesias pointed out, these students literally wrote a letter “saying that [statement] shows he shouldn’t be hired since he doesn’t pledge allegiance to the right beliefs.”
The episode reveals the extent to which giving power to far-left activists can truly limit who is eligible for positions of leadership to only those who think exactly like them — and how small a group that really is.
Let’s start with the letter itself. It reads: “Most concerning to us as students is Dr. Inbar’s opposition to institutions endorsing positions on sociopolitical issues he has deemed ‘contentious’ or ‘controversial.’ In particular, he takes a strong stance against promoting DEI initiatives through the use of diversity statements and DEI criterion to evaluate research.”
According to these students, it ought to be disqualifying for a faculty applicant even to question whether or not institutions should take positions on political and social issues. That automatically rules out more than half of U.S. adults, 52% of whom don’t want businesses to take public stances on political issues.
In clarifying exactly what they mean, the students whittle down the acceptable pool even further. By writing that it is unacceptable to oppose promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, they preclude almost everyone not on the political Left from the position. Then, by prioritizing the idea of “DEI criterion to evaluate research,” the students exclude 1) anyone not familiar with that bizarre term and 2) the vast majority of people, including liberals, who believe work should be judged on its merit alone rather than some sort of DEI checklist.
So, using the hiring criteria suggested by these students, who remains eligible for the position? Well, other liberal activists.
Conservatives would, of course, be disqualified. But even liberals such as Inbar, who supports affirmative action, for example, must be kept from professorships if they even put one foot out of line. The only members in good standing with liberal activists are others exactly like them. Not even liberals who may not be particularly political can be accepted because, after all, that is supposedly just a manifestation of privilege.
For a group so obsessed with diversity, very little diversity of opinion is actually tolerated.
It is sometimes difficult to make sense of what exactly is occurring when reading about a group such as this. Liberal Columbia University professor and New York Times columnist John McWhorter has an idea, though. He argues that these actions and ideas are a manifestation of what any anthropologist would recognize as a religion. It has faith, it has sin, it has repentance, and, key for these activists, it has heretics.
What we are witnessing in situations such as these are the most zealous religious believers in America today in action. According to them, even the most minor deviation from orthodoxy is worthy of excommunication.
But while proper religions encourage, and are inherently tied up with, important virtues, this new “woke” religion does the opposite. It must be opposed.
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Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.