"In the meantime, that leaves the California Community College DEI policy as the most clearly unconstitutional law on the books in the country — but that gets very, very little media coverage even though it does something that’s arguably worse: compelling professors to promote ideas they may not agree with."
But why? Why does this problem with the California Community College (CCC) system receive so little attention? I saw Bill Maher interview CA governor Newsom last week, and I was hoping that Maher would ask about this genuinely troubling issue in Newsom's state. Instead, Maher conducted a disappointingly softball interview. He even allowed Newsom to dismiss DEI criticism as a right-wing phenomenon without pushing back on that mischaracterization at all.
And I can think of only three relatively high-profile centrist/Liberal types who have written on the DEI censorship at CCC: Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic; David French at the NYT; and Mr. Lukianoff on Substack, at FIRE, or in his books. Where is everybody else?
California community colleges are a mess when it comes to this kind of thing. I have a friend who's a tenured prof at one in the SF Bay Area, and he was telling me that earlier this year they were rolling out a plan to have the faculty organized into race-based "affinity groups", and while joining them was not mandatory, the administration was "strongly encouraging" faculty to take part. Given the area and it's politics, there's a strong culture of conformity around DEI dictats, and those who dissent by not participating stand out even if doing so passively.
Good question! As a Californian dismayed by the CCC DEI policy, I’m even more disappointed by the lack of coverage and discussion in the media and in public. I can only presume it’s a result of the left-leaning media and the culture of fear here.
Absolutely agree! The level of self censorship and the pressure to conform have accelerated so rapidly it's dizzying. Reading your book now! So helpful in understanding and navigating this new landscape. Thank you for fighting this good fight.
And at a certain point, the problem becomes impossible to even track. The list of words and framings that risk getting you yelled at grows and shifts constantly, until looking over your shoulder just becomes second nature.
I'm glad you wrote this up. It's refreshing to see a good faith critique when so many of your critics are on intent on painting FIREOrg as some right wing shill outfit.
The California Community College DEI policy is exactly what Robert Jackson’s Supreme Court ruled illegal in 1943 in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. The decision is worth reading today and is filled with Jackson’s signature rhetorical gems. The most famous is likely “compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.”
Thank you for the link. I listened to it while walking in the park. The quality of the arguments and the importance of the issues reminded me of the Lincoln-Douglas debates or a Socratic dialogue. Most of the challenges argued by the court are relevant today. Despite our best intentions, compelled speech does not substitute for quality education or reasoned arguments designed to convince people of good will. In 1943, proponents of turning schoolchildren into little soldiers adopted the militarism of the totalitarian enemy. The impulse is understandable, but the means has no place in a free society. Not then, not now.
The differentiation by discipline suggests that the faculty is the problem, not the DEI administrators. Faculty runs the search committees and leftist faculty=leftist results in hiring.
It is much trickier than that. Short answer is that at least in science and engineering the imbalance almost entirely comes from the administrators.
The longer answer is that, the faculty search committee is required (by the administration) to prove that preference was given to the usual preferred groups. With the proof burden of being racist/sexist on the committee or the search is cancelled before one interview happens.
Then there are the promotions only for DEI racists/sexists.
There is money for DEI racism introduced into classes.
And pay/performance based on the number of racist/sexist activities performed.
Basically, ALL incentives are aligned to make a conservative miserable and promote a leftist.
I was a tenured full professor at a large and well known state University. I just retired last year, at age 58 to get away from the immoral stupidity of it all.
FIRE counts firings, but how many people just give up and take their talents elsewhere.
I commend you for your efforts. I think STEM was well behind the other disciplines in leftism. I could see the others back in the 60s. Agree with you about the giving up factor. I did it. Glad I am retired.
Glad I'm 70. Don't need to deal with this shit. They can cancel me all they want. I call them as I see them. I call a spade a spade. I don't soft soap a anything. And, I don't give a rat's behind about pronouns, or being called a "phobe" or having white privilege. Don't like what I say? Just "walk on by".
"It’s also important to note that the problem will only get worse as older faculty, who are generally far better on free speech, begin to retire in large numbers. "
Begin? The current tilt in academia was much smaller in the 90's. You're already looking at the result of a 25 year long purge by attrition. Today you're just looking at a mopping up operation.
I believe what happened was that the '94 election caused left wing academics, even then a significant majority outside STEM, to switch from viewing their conservative colleagues as harmless eccentrics, to a serious threat. They could actually end up in power!
And so they stopped tolerating them, and set out to remove the threat.
The x-axis is the ratio of registered Democrat faculty to registered Republican faculty in the discipline. The graph, presented in Chapter 3 of Cancelling, comes from here:
I think your cautions about being too optimistic about the state of free speech are warranted, but then again, I really think we've turned a corner post-10/7. I had long thought that there would inevitably cause a breach between the Democratic Party/liberal establishment and the kind of extreme identitarians they've been cultivating in the DEI push. The atrocities of Hamas and the fact that many high-profile wokesters and DEI types seemed to apologize for or even endorse these actions finally said the quiet part out loud about how they think the 'privileged' deserve to be treated and it's pretty ugly. Not to mention, going up against a third rail of American politics - support for Israel - that institutions like the Democratic Party and the business community have not broken with, for all of their seeming embrace of far-left causes. The power of the DEI establishment was already waning and I think 10/7 was kind of the nail in the coffin, at least at this particular cultural moment.
A recent case to pay attention to is the resignation of six TED fellows over TED's 'platforming' of Bill Ackman and Bari Weiss:
If you read their letter, it's much like a classic college disinvitation demand, and the petulant tone of the letter jumps out immediately. Albeit, these people are ostensible adults who have actually achieved high status careers, and yet still behave like bratty 20 year-olds.
It's been four days since the letter, and so far no response from TED. I have a feeling that they're not going to cave to this, and that the disinviters have badly misread the proverbial room. This is the kind of thing that probably would have actually suceeded back in 2020, but I think the culture is in a very different place right now.
That said, you're right to point out that folks like college administrators will have learned nothing from this, and that higher education and other places where there's been wholesale institutional capture will keep pushing for censorship and compelled speech and that where possible (eg, governmental organizations), legal pressure and bad publicity needst to be kept up, and an ongoing push for a culture of free speech needs to continue. This round of the 'political correctness wars' was far worse than the 90s version, and I'd hate to see what's coming around the bend 20 more years if this censorious mindset on both the right and the left isn't reversed.
Honestly, not a fan of Adam Corolla - I thought The Man Show was pretty dopey, and now he comes across as simply reactionary, even on points where I agree with him. But if this grows the "free speech army", then, sure, I guess it takes all kinds.
"In the meantime, that leaves the California Community College DEI policy as the most clearly unconstitutional law on the books in the country — but that gets very, very little media coverage even though it does something that’s arguably worse: compelling professors to promote ideas they may not agree with."
But why? Why does this problem with the California Community College (CCC) system receive so little attention? I saw Bill Maher interview CA governor Newsom last week, and I was hoping that Maher would ask about this genuinely troubling issue in Newsom's state. Instead, Maher conducted a disappointingly softball interview. He even allowed Newsom to dismiss DEI criticism as a right-wing phenomenon without pushing back on that mischaracterization at all.
And I can think of only three relatively high-profile centrist/Liberal types who have written on the DEI censorship at CCC: Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic; David French at the NYT; and Mr. Lukianoff on Substack, at FIRE, or in his books. Where is everybody else?
California community colleges are a mess when it comes to this kind of thing. I have a friend who's a tenured prof at one in the SF Bay Area, and he was telling me that earlier this year they were rolling out a plan to have the faculty organized into race-based "affinity groups", and while joining them was not mandatory, the administration was "strongly encouraging" faculty to take part. Given the area and it's politics, there's a strong culture of conformity around DEI dictats, and those who dissent by not participating stand out even if doing so passively.
Everything you describe sounds to me like all the more reason for a non-partisan media investigation :|
Good question! As a Californian dismayed by the CCC DEI policy, I’m even more disappointed by the lack of coverage and discussion in the media and in public. I can only presume it’s a result of the left-leaning media and the culture of fear here.
Brilliant response. I am glad that Substack gives writers a means to respond to book reviews.
The Franks article is repulsive--it reads like something written by 1950s pro-Soviet communists.
Absolutely agree! The level of self censorship and the pressure to conform have accelerated so rapidly it's dizzying. Reading your book now! So helpful in understanding and navigating this new landscape. Thank you for fighting this good fight.
And at a certain point, the problem becomes impossible to even track. The list of words and framings that risk getting you yelled at grows and shifts constantly, until looking over your shoulder just becomes second nature.
You do realize that is the entire point, right?
It is code. A power club. And those ever changing handshakes are how the elites determine if you are in the club - or out of it.
Religions often function similarly. If you know the mumbo jumbo of the Lords Prayer for example, well then you are in.
There are precious few ways in which this ideology is NOT just a religion.
I'm glad you wrote this up. It's refreshing to see a good faith critique when so many of your critics are on intent on painting FIREOrg as some right wing shill outfit.
The California Community College DEI policy is exactly what Robert Jackson’s Supreme Court ruled illegal in 1943 in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. The decision is worth reading today and is filled with Jackson’s signature rhetorical gems. The most famous is likely “compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.”
Indeed that is FIRE's lodestar case. We even did an audio version of it! West Virginia v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) https://www.thefire.org/news/podcasts/free-speech-out-loud/west-virginia-v-barnette-319-us-624-1943
Thank you for the link. I listened to it while walking in the park. The quality of the arguments and the importance of the issues reminded me of the Lincoln-Douglas debates or a Socratic dialogue. Most of the challenges argued by the court are relevant today. Despite our best intentions, compelled speech does not substitute for quality education or reasoned arguments designed to convince people of good will. In 1943, proponents of turning schoolchildren into little soldiers adopted the militarism of the totalitarian enemy. The impulse is understandable, but the means has no place in a free society. Not then, not now.
That chart showing numbers for different departments needs some label explaining what those numbers are. Engineering is 1.6 what? 1.6 % Republicans?
Sorry! It's ratios--the number of Democratic faculty members for every Republican across 51 institutions. More here: https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/2/homogenous_the_political_affiliations_of_elite_liberal_arts_college_faculty
Thanks. You should definitely add a caption explaining that. Or put it in the preceding paragraph.
Yes please label your data more clearly.
The differentiation by discipline suggests that the faculty is the problem, not the DEI administrators. Faculty runs the search committees and leftist faculty=leftist results in hiring.
It is much trickier than that. Short answer is that at least in science and engineering the imbalance almost entirely comes from the administrators.
The longer answer is that, the faculty search committee is required (by the administration) to prove that preference was given to the usual preferred groups. With the proof burden of being racist/sexist on the committee or the search is cancelled before one interview happens.
Then there are the promotions only for DEI racists/sexists.
There is money for DEI racism introduced into classes.
And pay/performance based on the number of racist/sexist activities performed.
Basically, ALL incentives are aligned to make a conservative miserable and promote a leftist.
I was a tenured full professor at a large and well known state University. I just retired last year, at age 58 to get away from the immoral stupidity of it all.
FIRE counts firings, but how many people just give up and take their talents elsewhere.
Don't blame the faculty. We tried. And we lost.
I commend you for your efforts. I think STEM was well behind the other disciplines in leftism. I could see the others back in the 60s. Agree with you about the giving up factor. I did it. Glad I am retired.
Glad I'm 70. Don't need to deal with this shit. They can cancel me all they want. I call them as I see them. I call a spade a spade. I don't soft soap a anything. And, I don't give a rat's behind about pronouns, or being called a "phobe" or having white privilege. Don't like what I say? Just "walk on by".
"It’s also important to note that the problem will only get worse as older faculty, who are generally far better on free speech, begin to retire in large numbers. "
Begin? The current tilt in academia was much smaller in the 90's. You're already looking at the result of a 25 year long purge by attrition. Today you're just looking at a mopping up operation.
I believe what happened was that the '94 election caused left wing academics, even then a significant majority outside STEM, to switch from viewing their conservative colleagues as harmless eccentrics, to a serious threat. They could actually end up in power!
And so they stopped tolerating them, and set out to remove the threat.
Our research shows a huge drop in viewpoint diversity in hiring in the second half of the 90s for sure!
"ACLU National Legal Director" That's all you had to say.
What does the x-axis on your second chart (that runs from Engineering to Communications) represent? It's not labeled
See my reply to James Gaston: https://open.substack.com/pub/greglukianoff/p/yes-the-last-10-years-really-have?r=3bft4&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=48057791
The numbers on that first graph lack units. For example, Engineering is 1.6 what?
The x-axis is the ratio of registered Democrat faculty to registered Republican faculty in the discipline. The graph, presented in Chapter 3 of Cancelling, comes from here:
https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/2/homogenous_the_political_affiliations_of_elite_liberal_arts_college_faculty
A ratio is unitless.
Colleges getting tax exemptions should be required to hire at least 30% Republicans, & 30% Democrats, as professors and administrators.
It’s illegal, but hard to prove, to discriminate against hiring Republicans. Losing a benefit can be an explicit political decision.
I think your cautions about being too optimistic about the state of free speech are warranted, but then again, I really think we've turned a corner post-10/7. I had long thought that there would inevitably cause a breach between the Democratic Party/liberal establishment and the kind of extreme identitarians they've been cultivating in the DEI push. The atrocities of Hamas and the fact that many high-profile wokesters and DEI types seemed to apologize for or even endorse these actions finally said the quiet part out loud about how they think the 'privileged' deserve to be treated and it's pretty ugly. Not to mention, going up against a third rail of American politics - support for Israel - that institutions like the Democratic Party and the business community have not broken with, for all of their seeming embrace of far-left causes. The power of the DEI establishment was already waning and I think 10/7 was kind of the nail in the coffin, at least at this particular cultural moment.
A recent case to pay attention to is the resignation of six TED fellows over TED's 'platforming' of Bill Ackman and Bari Weiss:
theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/24/ted-fellows-resign-bill-ackman-speaker-conference
docs.google.com/document/d/1a8CtDgBgpbmWW6BgvOtFHkWhHg8Q_SmnV2liuwiGZ_o/edit
If you read their letter, it's much like a classic college disinvitation demand, and the petulant tone of the letter jumps out immediately. Albeit, these people are ostensible adults who have actually achieved high status careers, and yet still behave like bratty 20 year-olds.
It's been four days since the letter, and so far no response from TED. I have a feeling that they're not going to cave to this, and that the disinviters have badly misread the proverbial room. This is the kind of thing that probably would have actually suceeded back in 2020, but I think the culture is in a very different place right now.
That said, you're right to point out that folks like college administrators will have learned nothing from this, and that higher education and other places where there's been wholesale institutional capture will keep pushing for censorship and compelled speech and that where possible (eg, governmental organizations), legal pressure and bad publicity needst to be kept up, and an ongoing push for a culture of free speech needs to continue. This round of the 'political correctness wars' was far worse than the 90s version, and I'd hate to see what's coming around the bend 20 more years if this censorious mindset on both the right and the left isn't reversed.
Honestly, not a fan of Adam Corolla - I thought The Man Show was pretty dopey, and now he comes across as simply reactionary, even on points where I agree with him. But if this grows the "free speech army", then, sure, I guess it takes all kinds.