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The diverse are often dropped after failing assessments on minor factors, not because of overt discrimination during hiring. Yes, almost every organization today sets high goals for diversity hiring. Unfortunately, I find that most fail to meet their diversity hiring goals, not because of major institutional discrimination. But instead, due to a multitude of seemingly minor “under the radar” factors. I have further discovered that many of these “diversity killer” factors occur during interviews. So in my view, it makes sense for every organization to begin studying and evaluating the different assessment areas that occur during interviews.

Before you can fix them, you must first identify which specific interview assessment areas where diverse candidates are most likely to be significantly downgraded. The data from your study will almost certainly reveal that diverse candidates are routinely either marked down or knocked out completely during a handful of seemingly minor assessment actions. I call them “stealth assessment areas” because most involved in recruitment barely notice them even though they are frequently used. And as a result of flying under the radar, there is seldom any attempt to improve them. So over time, each will continue to be almost completely unnoticed and therefore un-managed. It’s also important to note that not all stealth assessment factors cause equal damage. The stealth diversity killing factors that usually have the most impact include fit, body language, lack of interviewer training, tardiness, and the handshake. The most impactful diversity assessment areas are listed below. When taken together, 90% of the contributing factors result in only a small unacceptable percentage of diverse candidates getting hired. 

A Quick Illustration – Of The Subtle Unconscious Biases That Can Hurt A Diverse Candidate

Perhaps an example will make the impact of these diversity killers clearer. A diverse black woman candidate shows up for her interview. And after reviewing the hiring manager’s extemporaneous notes after the interview has concluded. It is clear that this male interviewer immediately began to deduct points because of several “subtle missteps” that are likely not directly related to the candidate’s ability to do the job. To start with, she didn’t know it, but she was already screened out before the interview even started because she was 12 minutes late (her South African culture doesn’t emphasize being on time). Next, she lost 10 points out of 100 when she consciously refused to shake hands with the male interviewer (her religion doesn’t allow touching males). Also, she showed a lack of interest and lost 10 points by not maintaining eye contact (her culture/religion expects women to act subserviently in power situations with males). In addition, she lost 10 points by not asking any questions (another subservient cultural norm). And finally, regardless of her accumulated points, she was instantly eliminated for lack of “fit” (because she was wearing a full-length burqa, which is a form of religious/cultural expression), which made her negatively stand out when every other candidate wore standard business attire. The net result would be that because of unconscious biases, she would have lost 30 interview points and would miss the cut because of her lost points during the handshake, because of a lack of eye contact, and her asking no questions). Even if she had survived the final cut for interviews, she would have been eliminated because of her two automatic “knockout factors” actions (i.e., not fitting the team and being late).

The Top 8 Stealth Diversity Killer Assessments That Must End

All interviews are problematic. And that fact is reinforced by Google research that found that unstructured interviews are no better than a coin flip in predicting a candidate’s future on-the-job success. But their research didn’t go far enough because it failed to identify each of the elements of most interviews (whether structured or not) that are common “diversity killers.” In my experience, this omission on their part (and by many others) is part of the reason why most organizations haven’t met their diversity goals. Below is a list of what I have found across all organizations to be the 8 most common and impactful diversity killers. The article notes the top four factors with the highest impact. However, in the list below, each of the 8 diversity killer factors is listed in the order they occur during the typical interview process.

Diversity killer #1 – Penalizing late arrivals means the rejection of diverse candidates.

Although it only happens to a small percentage of diversity candidates. This factor ranks #4 in impact because it is often an instant candidate “knockout factor.” If you have traveled to over 65 countries as I have. You already know that arriving at a precise time is a phenomenon found mostly in heavily industrialized nations, where 100% on-time expectations may be the norm. However, interviewers must realize that punishing those that are late to interviews is a form of “unconscious bias” (e.g., yielding to the unfounded mental belief that “those people” are always late). This exclusion will unknowingly hurt candidates from different cultures,  where they learn to see no problem with businesspeople being routinely late. It’s a fact that “Whether people arrive on time, a little late or extremely late varies widely country to country” (especially in candidates whose families came from France, South Africa, Spain, Greece, Ecuador, and the Philippines). And in some cases (like in France) for some events, “arriving on time is considered rude.” 

Punishing candidates for being late may also likely disproportionately hurt the economically disadvantaged who usually work in hourly jobs. For people of color, there is even an acronym “CPT,” which was highlighted on NPR. This offensive phrase supports “the idea that for brown people, late is a synonym for “on time.” Because as hourly workers, it will usually be especially hard for people of color to leave work at their current job early. So through no fault of their own, their limited time window often makes it much more likely that they will be late to an interview. It’s also a mistake to assume that being late for an interview is an indication of future tardiness. Because the interview is a unique “one-time event.” The candidate won’t have the same established routine that results in them seldom being late to their current job.

Overall, this knockout factor is unfairly applied to only interviewees. For example, your hiring team will occasionally arrive late for interviews when their previous meeting lasted longer than expected (and you often do not record or punish this tardiness). So the best practice is to prohibit minor tardiness from ever being a knockout factor. Next, stop penalizing minor lateness or make it crystal clear upfront to all candidates that “being on time” is one of the primary interview assessment criteria.

Diversity killer #2 –The innocuous handshake greeting can hurt diversity candidates.

This assessment step occurs in nearly every interview. It is the #5 most impactful stealth factor. A single handshake error at the beginning can create a negative impression that might continue throughout the interview. Unfortunately, some handshakes will vary from the expected. Diverse candidates from different cultural backgrounds will shake hands in multiple distinct ways, or they don’t do it at all. In addition, figuring out the right type of handshake to provide for each diverse candidate will likely make each interviewer uncomfortable even before the interview begins. The most effective handshake solution is to demand continuous social distancing to reduce the chance of handshakes or just completely prohibit handshakes. The next best alternative for in-person interviews during Covid is to have the interview room and its entrance physically set up so that the probability of a handshake occurring is almost zero. 

Diversity killer #3 – Icebreaker jokes can hurt diverse candidates.

Perhaps the silliest of the common elements in an interview is beginning the interview with an “icebreaker joke,” which is an unneeded practice that often hurts diverse candidates. First, because diverse candidates often find the content of many of these jokes to be either insensitive or insulting. They also confuse many diverse candidates from different cultures simply because these jokes seem out of place. The best practice is to prohibit all interviewers from formally inserting any jokes during any part of the interview.

Killer #4 – Body language assessments will hurt diverse candidates.

There are so many advocates for this assessment approach. Its widespread use makes it the #2 most impactful diversity killer. The practice can result in discrimination and losing points because diverse candidates will often sit, move and act differently because of their cultural background. And that loss of points is primarily because of “the body language expectations” frequently used as “the ideal benchmark.” In most cases, they reflect European manners and their associated expected body actions. Body language assessment is especially damaging to women, different religions, the elderly, and the disabled. The common BL areas where diverse candidates lose the most BL points include a lack of eye contact, fidgeting, and a body posture that many assume reflects a lack of interest or passion. The only real solution to this type of discrimination is showing interviewers that body language doesn’t predict on-the-job success. Or to forbid this BL assessment practice completely. You can find more about the discriminatory problems associated with body language here.

Killer #5 – Brainteaser interview questions hurt diversity. 

Unfortunately, the “brainteaser question” is often included in interviews. These questions require interviewees to answer an unusual or abstract question to determine how they solve complex problems. An example would be: “You need to measure out four gallons of water, but you only have a three-gallon jug and a five-gallon jug. How do you measure out four gallons exactly?” Asking these questions can lead to discrimination because the right answer usually reflects the type of abstract thinking that may only be used by those who take and do well on SAT college admission tests. These complex brainteaser questions are, of course, inappropriate for jobs that don’t require strategic problem-solving. And because these types of questions are so outside what most diverse candidates expect when they are asked, they may reduce the confidence level of many diverse candidates. Sometimes they may even scare and unhinge the usually unprepared diverse candidate, so their interview performance is negatively impacted during the rest of the process. The best practice is to prohibit the use of brainteaser questions completely because they cause so many problems and don’t accurately predict new-hire success. 

Killer #6 – Fit assessment is the top discriminator.

A lack of team or organizational fit is often used as a primary candidate “knockout factor,” it ranks #1 among diversity killers. The definition of fit is that you act and value the same things that the rest of the team does. Unfortunately, hiring everyone that thinks and acts completely in line with your current team will likely lead to a devastating case of “groupthink.” In almost all cases, fit and diversity conflict because the very definitions of innovators and diversity are based on the fact that the candidates “actually act differently.” The assumption that fit assessment is a valid approach ignores that most candidates can easily and quickly adapt to the new team’s culture. In addition, in practice, the definition and the assessment criteria for assessing fit varies so much that they simply should never be used. The best practice is to instead focus on “diversity adds,” which are the benefits that each diversity hire will provide. You can find more about the discriminatory problems associated with fit assessment here. Incidentally, a lack of fit also parallels another common discriminatory rejection factor. Which is that “coworkers don’t approve” of this diverse candidate. 

Killer #7 – A lack of interviewer training hurts diversity hiring.

Because having no recent interview training is the norm. This diversity killer factor ranks #3 in impact. Recruiting leaders must realize that to minimize discrimination, every interviewer must thoroughly know and understand all the recommended (and not recommended) assessment approaches to prevent unconscious biases from influencing any hiring decision. Unfortunately, it’s also true that managers that have not recently gone through interview training are more likely to use the weaker and more discriminatory unstructured interview approach. The untrained are also much more likely to use the 8 listed “diversity killer” candidate assessment approaches with no data to demonstrate their correlation with new hire performance. The best practice is to require and track every six months when any interviewer reviews their organization’s online interview educational materials.

Diversity Killer #8 – Don’t assess candidates in areas that are best assessed outside the interview.

Many things simply can’t be accurately assessed during interviews. For example, often not having the appropriate personality is, unfortunately, often a primary knockout factor. This is problematic because most managers have no idea or data revealing the desirable types of employee personalities. And with a particular personality type that will most likely succeed and fail in this job. Interviewers should also be educated that it’s almost impossible to assess a candidate’s personality during their interview accurately. Finally, realize that diverse candidates are especially hurt when the personality they reveal during the interview doesn’t exactly “match” the desirable personality of most departing employees. Another area that should not be assessed during the interview is emotional intelligence. EQ can be discriminatory because it is based on an American/Anglo model of behavior that often discounts the skills and actions of innovators and candidates from diverse backgrounds and cultures. The best solution for most diverse candidates is to forbid personality, EQ, and IQ assessments, especially during interviews.

Improve Diversity Hiring By Identifying The Top Diversity Killers

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to minimize or eliminate any of these eight subtle diversity killers. Until you first identify the knockout factors that are impacting diverse candidates. Next, you must identify the specific areas where diverse candidates are disproportionately losing interview points. To get that information, I recommend using one or more of the following proven “diversity killer identification approaches.” In this list, the simplest to implement approaches are provided first.

• Review written interview notes – this best identification practice begins by requiring all interviewers to take written notes. And even if you don’t require note-taking, you should still collect all of the available notes at the end of each interview. Then review them to identify both the positive and negative areas covered in the notes. Particularly look for written comments in the notes in each of the diversity killer areas. Pay special attention to the relevant comment contents underlined, circled, or followed by one or more question marks.
• Require interviewers to use an interview assessment checklist – the best practice is to require each interviewer to utilize a prepared candidate assessment checklist. And then to have it turned in after the interview. The checklist must deduct points in the common “diversity killer areas” like body language, fit, tardiness, dress, etc.
• Interview the hiring manager – when diversity candidates are interviewed. Make it a practice to ask a sampling of hiring managers to participate in an interview where recruiters ask the hiring manager to verbally identify the positive and negative factors (and why) that resulted in a diverse candidate losing points.
• Utilize a “mystery shopper” – if you’re really bold, consider hiring one or more diverse people to assume the role of a candidate. And then have them purposely act “outside the norm” in several common diversity killer areas. And then use the interviewer’s notes to determine if, where, and why they lost points and if any of it was discriminatory.

Final Thoughts

Though you might have initially thought that these 8 subtle interview factors wouldn’t significantly impact diversity hiring. After you have taken the time to identify and then track the negative impacts of these diversity killers (by using interview notes), you will know for certain which factors in your organization have become common diversity knockout factors. And also which killer factors result in points being deducted disproportionately for diverse candidates. Over time, from this data, you will learn specifically how candidates of color, women, the disabled, and international candidates are among those that are most negatively affected by these “right under your nose” diversity killer assessment factors. Over time, you should track how minimizing these diversity killer factors increases your organization’s overall new-hire diversity. It will aid in improving your organization’s performance in multiple strategic areas, including recruitment, retention, product development, the level of collaboration, and the level of customer service that you can provide for years to come.

Author’s Note

Please share these solutions by sending this article to your team and network or by republishing it. Next, if you don’t already subscribe to Dr. Sullivan’s weekly Talent Newsletter, you can do that here. Also, join the well over 11,000 that have followed or connected with Dr. Sullivan’s community on LinkedIn.

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[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Investigations.]

By Richard Bernstein
Real Clear Investigations

At last year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the head of Goldman Sachs announced a new policy for the richest investment bank in the world: It would refuse to underwrite the stock offerings of any private company that did not have at least one woman on its board of directors — and that the minimum would move up to two in 2022.

“This decision is rooted first and foremost in our conviction that companies with diverse leadership perform better,” the Goldman CEO, David Solomon, declared.  “Companies that have gone public with at least one female board director outperformed companies that do not.”

Solomon gave no source for this assertion, and Goldman did not reply to a request for comment. But much of the authority for claims like his rest on three studies done between 2015 and 2020 by the consulting company McKinsey, which were trumpeted as proof that large companies can boost their profits significantly by adding women and people of color to their boards of directors. “Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile,” the 2020 report says, while those in the top quartile for ethnic diversity are 36 percent more profitable than those in the bottom quartile.

“What our data show is that companies that have more diverse leadership teams are more successful,” the 2020 report concludes, recalling the two-word phrase in the title of an earlier report: “Diversity Wins!”

That line has been given credibility in major media outlets. “Diversity isn’t just a feel-good measure; it has bottom line benefits,” the Wall Street Journal reported in a 2018 piece on the McKinsey study. That conviction has inspired policies at large companies such as Goldman, and new state laws, including one in California that requires corporations headquartered in the state to have at least one director “from an underrepresented group” by the end of 2021, two by 2022 – and three such directors if the board consists of more than nine people.

Even as the McKinsey’s conclusions have become conventional wisdom in America’s power centers, there has been little outside scrutiny of its claim that companies enjoy bottom line benefits when they replace white men in leadership positions with women and people of color. But a new academic paper – the first detailed, independent analysis anybody has made of McKinsey’s findings and methods – concludes that while there is nothing wrong with diversity per se, McKinsey provides no evidence that it “wins.”

“Our results suggest that despite the imprimatur often given to McKinsey’s (2015, 2018, 2020) studies, caution is warranted to support the view that U.S. publicly traded firms can deliver improved financial performance if they increase the racial/ethnic diversity of their executives,” the authors report in a summary statement of their findings.

The study, carried out by Jeremiah Green, an associate professor of accounting at Texas A&M University, and John R.M. Hand, distinguished professor of accounting at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, also suggests that McKinsey has misleadingly characterized its own findings to make the case for diversity.

“McKinsey’s studies are a little strange,” Hand said in a Zoom interview, “because they’re not structured to detect any causal evidence [that diversity generates profits]. They’re silent with regard to the fundamental causal question.”

The McKinsey study, written by four of the company’s consultants in its London, Chicago and Atlanta offices — gives each firm that it studied a “diversity score,” based largely on pictures and descriptions of executives on that company’s website and reports. It then measures each company’s economic performance. But as McKinsey acknowledges in the methodology section of its 2020 report, the financial data it collected on companies came from the period 2014 to 2018, while the data on diversity was compiled from Dec. 2018 to November 2019 — showing that the diversity data comes after or at the same time as the financial data, not before.

In other words, McKinsey’s own data shows, if anything, the likelihood that profit leads to more diversity, not the other way around.  Green and Hand didn’t study the causes of such a direction of causality, but in his Zoom interview Hand cited one likely reason: “More successful firms are able to spend more money on aspects that would appeal to customers and respond to internal pressures from employees or boards — that would be the idea.”

McKinsey acknowledges this possibility in its 2020 report.  “We are not asserting a causal link,” the methodology section states.  “It is theoretically possible that the better financial outperformance enables companies to achieve greater levels of diversity.”

Nevertheless, as Green and Hand point out, the company’s public interpretations of their results seem to set aside this crucial problem. They quote Vivian Hunt, McKinsey’s managing partner in the United Kingdom and one of the study’s four authors, saying: “What our data shows is that companies that have more diverse leadership teams are more successful.” Companies are implementing diversity, she continued, “because it’s a business imperative and driving real business results.”

Similarly, the main body of the McKinsey report repeatedly and enthusiastically makes “the business case for diversity,” even as it encourages companies to “purposefully tackle inclusion,” but there are no caveats or qualifications until the technical aspects of the report are disclosed at the end.  McKinsey claims to have conducted “longitudinal analyses” of 365 companies in the United States and the United Kingdom—meaning that its studies were carried out over periods of time, years in typical cases.  The McKinsey study does look at the companies’ degree of diversity over time, but that does not seem to be the case with financial performance as a function of racial or ethnic representation among the companies’ executives.

“The business case for diversity is growing stronger and clearer,” McKinsey’s 2020 report says nonetheless.  “The experience of the diversity winners we have studied suggests that it’s time to be bold in deploying a systematic approach to I[inclusion] & D[iversity].”  The coronavirus epidemic has made doing business harder than ever, it says, but “[c]ompanies whose leaders welcome diverse talents and include multiple perspectives are likely to emerge from the crisis stronger.  In short, diversity wins, now more than ever.”

Asked for comment on the Green-Hand conclusions, a McKinsey spokesperson said in an email that the academics’ study “defined diversity differently, gathered data using a simplified analysis and looked at a significantly smaller data set focused only on U.S. data. … It’s not surprising that with different methods, they ended up with different results, although we would note that their results are directionally similar to ours.”

In fact, it’s debatable whether Green and Hand’s conclusions are “directionally similar” to McKinsey’s, but on the matter of the size of the study, McKinsey is correct that it examined more companies than Green and Hand, in all 1036 of them in 15 countries, compared with the 497 in the S&P 500 examined by Green and Hand.  The large majority of those 497 companies were American, compared with the 322 American companies in the 2020 McKinsey study.

Addressing the Green-Hand argument that the McKinsey study was not longitudinal, the spokesperson said, “Throughout the report and in multiple exhibits, we compare the 2019 data that we describe in our methodology with our 2017 and 2014 datasets.”

Green and Hand find other problems with the McKinsey report, including its assumption that the single factor of diversity could lead to the remarkable outcomes its study proclaims – a 36% improvement in the likelihood of having financial returns above the national industry medium for companies with the highest diversity indices. That’s an astonishing improvement to attribute to a single factor. Could having a few underrepresented minorities among a company’s executives really be solely responsible for such an immense difference?

“The output of high firm financial performance causally depends on a vast number of inputs, not just racial/ethnic diversity,” Hand said in an email. “This ‘vast number’ aspect is important,” he added, because, among other reasons, “it plausibly means that any one of the vast number of inputs is unlikely in and of itself to be a, or the, huge driver of financial performance.” Green and Hand also question the measure of diversity used by McKinsey to create what it called its “diversity score.” What they call the “key weakness” here is that the score given by McKinsey to any study “doesn’t benchmark against anything” – not against the actual representation of various ethnic groups in society, or what that representation was when the current generation of executives was graduating from college.

As a result, McKinsey’s score doesn’t say much about what diversity actually means in any given company. As Green and Hand point out, a company whose executives match the American population – ranging from 61% white down through to 1% Native American – would have the same diversity score as a company that had the reverse representation (61% Native American down through to 1% white).

This “counterintuitive” diversity metric, as Green and Hand put it, means that McKinsey gives no indication of whether a high diversity score means a significant representation of the groups that are of most concern to the social justice movement, namely blacks and Hispanics. McKinsey simply doesn’t say whether diversity means larger numbers of blacks and Hispanics or larger numbers of ethnic Koreans and Chinese.

“The McKinsey diversity score is blind to what people are most interested in,” Hand said, “namely the fractions in executive positions of specific racial and ethnic groups.  They get to diversity in a very generic and not very meaningful way,” and certainly not in the way that both business people and diversity advocates actually care about.

While the Green and Hand study is particularly robust – they tested all of McKinsey’s data for the hundreds of Americans companies it included to see if they could reproduce the consulting firm’s findings (the researchers could not) – they are not the only scholars to challenge the assertion that diversity is good for the bottom line. “Getting Serious About Diversity: Enough Already With the Business Case” is the title of an article last year in the Harvard Business Review by Robin J. Ely, a professor of business administration at Harvard, and David A. Thomas, a professor emeritus at Harvard, now the president of Morehouse College.  There are plenty of reasons to promote diversity, they argue, but higher profits is not one of them.

“Business leaders and diversity advocates alike are advancing a simplistic and empirically unsubstantiated vision of the business case,” Ely and Thomas write.  “Taking an ‘add diversity and stir’ approach … will not spur leaps in your firm’s effectiveness or financial performance.”

Asked specifically about the McKinsey studies, Ely said in an emailed response, “They are correlational and don’t control for much of anything as far as I can tell.  They are also cross-sectional as opposed to using data over time,” and, she added, “the latter kinds of data sets (longitudinal) are really the only ones from which one can reasonably test hypotheses about x causing y.” She and Thomas argue in their Harvard Business Review article that having company directors from different sexes or ethnicities doesn’t automatically mean a diversity of “perspectives,” as diversity advocates often claim, since women in business don’t necessarily see things differently from their male counterparts, and, indeed, when there are different perspectives, “things often get worse, because increasing diversity can increase tension and conflict.”

There are other reasons for skepticism about the McKinsey conclusions and the use put to them by those claiming the diversity-profit connection.  Among them is a comparison with ethnically homogeneous countries whose companies, despite their lack of diversity, have been successful and highly competitive on the international business scene.

It’s not likely, for example, that Chinese giants like Tencent or Alibaba have many ethnic Tibetans or Uighurs in senior corporate positions, and women are severely underrepresented on Chinese corporate boards.  According to a report by the World Economic Forum, as of 2018 only 21% of Chinese companies had even a single woman in a senior managerial position.

Similarly in Japan, according to McKinsey itself, only 15% of managerial positions are held by women, well below the world average, and yet many Japanese companies are highly successful, including against their American competitors.

Of course, the drive for diversity can be justified in many ways besides some supposed financial benefit, as matters of fairness, equal opportunity, social justice, and others.  But the claim that diversity leads to profitability has been used by powerful companies like Goldman Sachs and state legislatures like California’s as a main reason not just to pursue their own diversity programs but require them on the part of others — diverse boards for companies to be approved for underwriting in the case of Goldman, or to be in compliance with the law in the case of California.

Since California imposed its requirement on local companies to have both women and underrepresented minorities on their boards, there’s been a whole literature asserting that this has led to improvements in these companies’ bottom lines.

“Women on boards are good for California business,” was the headline of a recent opinion piece in the Times of San Diego by Betty T. Yee, the state’s controller, but Yee, while citing McKinsey and earlier studies on the supposed benefits of gender diversity, cites no data on the financial performance of California companies since the gender equality law went into effect.  She seems, like many people, to take it for granted that having more women on corporate boards will illustrate that McKinsey headline: Diversity Wins.

But is this conclusion based on real data examined over time, or is it a kind of corporate magical thinking, or perhaps a calculated effort by companies like McKinsey to show publicly that they are signing on to a fashionable trend?

Ely and Thomas, who have actually studied the question in detail – not specifically in California but among the largest companies nationwide – have a very different point of view. “We know of no evidence that replacing, say, two or three white male directors with people from underrepresented groups is likely to enhance the profits of a Fortune 500 company.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Investigations.]

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We are living in an era of unprecedented pressure for ideological conformity within institutions of higher education. Idaho’s Legislature has led the way toward reforming public universities through budgetary controls. Lawmakers were awakened to the need for reform by in-depth reports, which led to the House calling for a $4 million budget reduction at the universities. Red states are following suit and trying to resist the ideological pressure in higher education, but they face a unique challenge. They have to combat the establishment right’s reassurance that deceptive rhetoric is not only harmless, but that the state’s education system is immune to the advancement of Critical Social Justice (CSJ).

Recent events in Idaho reflect this manipulative strategy.

Although Idaho has Republican supermajorities in both state legislative bodies, Republican state board members are part of the education establishment. Amid public backlash against the politicization of the education system, the board has claimed all allegations are “unfounded” while simultaneously endorsing CSJ advancement — and denying that that is what it is doing.

During the 2021 session, legislators cut university budgets by $2.5 million and implemented a tuition freeze for the second time due to concerns over the intrusion of CSJ.  Meanwhile, the state board asserts there is no critical race theory in Idaho, only diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), they say, which is supposedly unrelated. In Idaho, people are told, DEI is just a respectable deliverance of American common sense. There is nothing revolutionary in the support of DEI.

The latest example is the board’s new policy mandating that universities implement DEI initiatives. Each university must adopt DEI policies and incorporate them into their mission statement. Universities must also continue complying with their accreditation institution, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, which demands adherence to DEI.

The board has developed definitions for DEI in consultation with current state university presidents. The board’s policy makes it seem like diversity, equity, and inclusion are just neutral, catch-all terms. But the new policy serves as a smokescreen to accelerate the transformation of Idaho’s higher education system.

DEI presents the same analysis and remedy as CSJ. The ideas behind both DEI and CSJ, emphasize that American society is irredeemably racist or sexist, group identity must transcend individuality, and equity must be celebrated while meritocracy stigmatized. The two cannot be divorced. DEI is simply the mechanism by which CSJ is applied to universities by implementing policies attempting to overturn supposed systems of oppression.

The board’s policy pledges to protect and promote all types of differences including race, sex, religion, or ideology. But the past history of Idaho’s universities shows that they are interested in only certain kinds of diversity. Race and sex will be prioritized over ideology and religion.

For example, both University of Idaho (UI) and Boise State University (BSU) assume that no department or search committee can be trusted to make hiring decisions apart from the dominant culture. All job pools are vetted to increase the likelihood that minority and female candidates are hired, but no mention is ever made and no effort is ever expended to make sure that the university’s hegemonically liberal professoriate do not exercise an “implicit bias” against conservatives or Christians.

The board’s fake commitment to “diversity” protects certain kinds of differences. In fact, ideological diversity is indeed a threat to the “welcoming” and “inclusive” environment that the universities claim to want. More on that in a moment.

The board’s policy defines equity as ensuring equitable opportunities for all community members. This violates the first rule of definitions: do not use the word you are defining (equitable opportunities) to define the word (equity)! That in itself is revealing, because such definitions obscure or take for granted what they are really trying to accomplish.

But CSJ universities only achieve “equity” when they achieve equality of result or statistical group parity. For instance, women make up only 8 percent of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields (STEM). CSJ universities perceive this disparity as evidence of discrimination.

Thus, UI has a housing unit dedicated exclusively to promoting women in STEM. There is no corresponding housing unit dedicated exclusively to men in underrepresented fields such as education. Boise State’s Gender Equity Center hosts a Scholarships for Women page on its website that suggests only women can apply. There are no external male-only scholarships listed or promoted, despite thousands existing across the country.

CSJ universities insist that dismantling this old culture of alleged discrimination, regardless of how well it worked or met the needs of unique individuals, and building a new culture will achieve parity. Unfortunately, that goal means that individual excellence must be subordinated to filling group quotas.

Inclusion, according to the board’s policy, means fostering an environment where the inherent worth and dignity of all individuals are recognized, valued, and have equitable opportunities. Inclusion is necessary to promote freedom of expression, the board says. This sounds harmless and welcoming.

But today’s inclusion at CSJ universities demands an institutional climate that elevates groups that have been designated as oppressed and denigrates those designated as privileged. To BSU, this meant excluding ideas and things that some members of minority groups find objectionable. Student activists, empowered by diversity and inclusion administrators, bullied a small business off campus for having a Thin Blue Line sticker (supporting the police) on its storefront.

Ironically, the university claimed the exclusion of police supporters from campus was an attempt to protect free expression.

LGBT-only graduations are done at BSU in the name of inclusion. Speech codes also arise to achieve the new inclusion. For example, Bias Incident Response Teams roam freely at both universities, using their power to investigate supposedly biased speech that people report, regardless of the defendant’s intent. As a result, ideologically dissenting faculty members and students can be expelled, fired, or punished.

The education establishment hides the true intentions of DEI despite, or maybe because of, the fact every university that focuses on it eventually fosters a tyrannical environment where students and faculty members walk on eggshells to avoid trouble with hypersensitive students or administrators.

Once the new policy is passed, although it could still be turned down during the final vote, the board will no longer need to argue that Idaho is immune to the advancement of divisive ideologies or that the public’s allegations are “unfounded.” The advancement of CSJ at universities will become protected under the guise of adhering to professional state standards.

This same line of reasoning previously led the board to mandate cultural responsiveness, social justice, and DEI in teacher certification standards. Now when parents object to critical race theory education models in their child’s school, district officials can claim they are just following state standards. Such policies are currently busy destroying meritocracy and educational excellence in Idaho school districts.

To fix this problem, the board could enact a policy to annually assess the intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity at public universities. These assessments could determine the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented and to what extent students and faculty members feel free to express their beliefs on campus. Further, the board must hold institutions of higher education accountable to their core missions—to protect academic freedom in research, teaching, and learning for the purpose of the “advancement of truth” and serving the “common good”—and establish the precedent that DEI is antithetical to that mission.

Universities welcome the education establishment’s insistence that the plain words and resulting actions of CSJ universities do not mean what they plainly demonstrate, because they enjoy the board’s coverage for their political agenda. Legislators who cut the budget of Idaho’s universities by $2.5 million for pursuing social justice should be concerned and contemplate taking further steps to fend off the DEI invasion.

The more Idaho’s legislature wakes up to the threat of the establishment, the more they will object and try to stop it. This is what the establishment most fears and wants to avoid. A wide-awake legislature should starve the board of public funds until its leadership commits to reforming institutions of higher education.

This content was originally published here.

This content was originally published here.

This content was originally published here.