This is excellent work — both as a how‑to for open‑source sleuthing and as a snapshot of how fast universities pivot when the legal and political wind shifts. The “weathervane” line at the end is earned.
What struck me reading it from the higher‑ed/policy side is that you’re very close to a deeper diagnosis you only gesture at in the last few paragraphs.
You document three important facts:
Institutions loudly wrote DEI preferences and even numerical targets into public‑facing policies when the cultural moment rewarded it.
The Supreme Court, state legislatures, and federal enforcement posture changed.
The same institutions are now quietly scrubbing or renaming without ever admitting error.
That’s not just hypocrisy; it’s a system doing exactly what it has been wired to do. The public pages you’re surfacing were never just “policies” — they were narrative artifacts. In 2020–21, posting “antiracist cluster hire with minimum percentage of underrepresented faculty” wasn’t simply about HR; it was a way of purchasing status in a moral economy: accreditors, foundations, elite media, and the internal activist‑administrative class all treated that language as proof of virtue. Now the legal and political incentives have inverted, and the same sentences function as evidence in a lawsuit. So the copy changes while the underlying reflex — align with the dominant story and minimize current risk — stays exactly the same.
That’s why your “these are not institutions with convictions, these are institutions with weathervanes” line lands, but also why it’s almost too generous. It implies a kind of whimsical weakness of character. What your own reporting actually shows is something more structural and harder to fix: once an institution defines its public identity in terms of a moralized narrative (oppressor/oppressed, “antiracism” as a litmus test, etc.), its leaders will reliably sacrifice consistency and legal clarity to stay inside that narrative, right up until a counter‑vailing power (courts, regulators, funders) forces them to reverse. The reversal is rarely principled either. It’s just a new risk calculation.
The other dot your piece helps connect, but doesn’t fully spell out, is the two‑audience problem. The scrubbing you describe mostly affects the external audience — courts, agencies, parents, journalists. The internal audience — DEI staff, activist faculty, accreditor culture, HR training vendors — still lives inside the 2020–21 worldview. For them, the “quiet edits” are a regrettable legal accommodation, not a change in mission. That’s why you can have a central HR page cleaned up while nearly identical language survives in subdomains, PDFs, departmental bylaws, and informal hiring rubrics. The ideology doesn’t disappear with the text; it adapts and goes private.
That has big implications for the reform‑minded readers you’re writing for. Screenshots and Wayback captures are crucial, but they’re the symptoms. The causal chain runs something like:
A particular theory of justice (history as structural oppression, “equity” as outcome balancing) becomes dominant in elite culture.
Universities adopt its vocabulary to signal virtue and to compete for status, money, and protection.
That vocabulary gets written into policies and websites because metrics and targets are how bureaucracies prove commitment.
Law and politics shift; the same text now looks like a confession.
Leadership scrubs the most egregious language, rebrands offices, and hopes no one asks what replaced the old doctrine.
You’ve documented steps 3–5 beautifully. I’d love to see more pieces from you that interrogate steps 1–2: not just “what did they say on the page?” but “what theory of the world made them think it was morally necessary to say it?” Until that’s surfaced and argued with honestly, we’ll keep getting better‑drafted versions of the same commitments, just with more careful lawyerly euphemisms.
Last thing: your practical advice section is gold. The search strings, the PDF angle, the Wayback comparisons — that’s the kind of concrete method most academics and parents have no idea how to use. It might be worth a follow‑up that pairs those tools with interview questions or governance actions: “once you’ve found X on your campus, here’s how to bring it up in a way that forces the institution to choose between its public narrative and its legal obligations.”
In any case, this is one of the clearest pieces I’ve seen that shows how quickly the story flipped from “antiracist forever” to “we never said that.” You’ve got the receipts. The next step is exactly what you’re inching toward: explaining the operating system that produced them.
Consider updating this post with clear step by step instructions for people to file EEOC claims if their university/employer could be illegally discriminating on them by having maintained the illegal DEI practices. Remind them tonsave and acreen capture or print screen evidence, and that there are strict filing deadlines so file asap. Accordingly, if they have knowledge or evidence that the university has accepted any federal funds (grants, but also student financial aid via Title IV funds), then that could also constitute evidemce of fraud, and thus provide step by step links to filing as such to dept pf ed, treasury, doj new fraud division, and jd vance White House fraud commission. Again, save all files and evidence- especially faculty emails of others in their univ indicating intent to subvert and rebrand and covertly non comply
Fair point. I didn’t mean to suggest that SFFA itself directly governs employment decisions. My point was that SFFA's reasoning has been invoked in challenges beyond admissions, such as Fearless Fund and MBDA. But you’re right that employment claims still have to run through Title VII and/or §1981, not SFFA directly. I should have been clearer.
Thx yes this is what I meant. I think there will be/should be some 1st A challenges (primarily association) with some of fed govt attempts to curtail race and gender focused programs and centers. The Feb 14 dear colleague letter lead to such, even though federal govt stopped defending it when they lost. Similar to Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957) whereby faculty were taking 5th Amendment in answer to being member of subversive organization, and Sweezy claimed 1st A freedom of association right to not exist. He went to prison for 20 months, but Supreme Court later overturned. Mike Munger at Duke rights about freedom of association being at least as impt as speech for academic freedom. Appreciate answer
Of course the university had explicit hiring quotas by race.
We need to recognize some legal context. Any university that has significant contracts with the Federal government (probably mostly research, but also possibly consulting, or cooperation operating facilities) is required by federal regulation (40-CFR Chapter 60) to have an Affirmative Action Plan, with specific hiring goals for every category of employment, covering Black, White, Asian/Pacific Islanders, American Natives, and Hispanic, and both men and women in each category. The Trump administration is working to eliminate these regulatory requirements, but they are still in effect, and likely to be reinstated by the next Democratic administration if the requirements are eliminated. Many organizations not required to have Affirmative Action Plans probably have them as a way of protecting against discrimination claims. Such Affirmative Action Plans have been found legal by courts, for private employers without government ties as well as for government contractors.
Even if the regulatory requirements are permanently eliminated, and even if some new law or regulation makes hiring goals illegal, there is abundant case law that hiring practices or standards that have "disparate impact" on any protected group constitute illegal discrimination, and employers can be sued by disappointed applicants. One of the reasons for Affirmative Action in its current form is that employers couldn't have any hiring practices or standards that didn't potentially have disparate impact. Affirmative Action Plans will almost certainly continue unless they are made explicitly illegal, and some other means of protection against "disparate impact" claims becomes available.
If this situation outrages you, then by all means be outraged. If you want some change, you need to think through the larger implications, and come up with some alternative policy that would work for everyone involved.
There's a legal difference between a hiring goal (what you’re describing) and a hiring quota (what we found on the website). One is fine, the other not so much.
I don't think there's a practical difference. The organization is required to make "good faith efforts" to meet the goal. This means hiring any "qualified" candidate of the right demographics, unless there is another candidate "clearly" more qualified.
I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't worked in HR, but I think "qualified" means "meets the minimum qualifications described on the hiring announcement," and "clearly" means "able to justify to a skeptical regulator." I recall an official in the Nixon administration, who was questioned (I think on 60 Minutes, but I could be wrong) who said "If you don't like the word "quota," you can call it "goals" or "timetables" - I don't care. But you have to comply with the requirement."
If there were no applicants of the "right" demographics, the organization could probably get away with hiring a white male.
But the best way to protect against a lawsuit or enforcement action is to meet the quota. Even if the Trump administration refuses to initiate any enforcement action, and even if no one ever gets to see the Affirmative Action Plan, meeting the quota is the best legal defense against discrimination or "disparate impact" suits. Or publicity.
I'm sure that many of the people doing the selecting are committed to the Equity agenda purely for social justice reasons. But, even if every one of them were dedicated to finding the best scholar for their department regardless of demographics, the university would be at risk if it hired "too many" white males, regardless of qualifications.
Years ago at UMICH, about 1990, the University approved a bunch of faculty lines for URM's (though the term URM had not been invented). Each department could search for a URM to hire and make a case for that hire (as opposed to the typical hiring where one targets field and expertise needed to add or replace in the faculty). I believe my area found 2 bonus hires that way. IIRC I heard some people in Econ saying they would not try to increase their numbers in this way - not prejudice, just not willing to hire when the main qualification was URM, and URM is hard to find.
About 15 years ago I headed a search committee (large State school) - before full woke, and we had a great, white male applicant. I was honest with him that we had to go through URM and women before we could consider him, but as I expected any potential URM or female took offers at higher ranked places. The Dean then shut down the search as she was not open to a white male.
Later, during the great awokening, all applicants had to plead fealty to woke, and we included such interrogation as part of the interview. For some reason my colleagues thought I should be the inquisitor on those questions, which I personally thought was funny as I was so against such interrogation but, it had to be done.
In Econ we talk about signaling, and for a signal to be worthwhile it must be costly to mimic. These interrogation sessions were meaningless as any candidate could without cost spout approved opinions.
In our School woke has really been tamped down. We can no longer give preferences to URM for Ph. D. students, or faculty. The TT faculty is currently 20% American born. 30% could be considered straight white male. My foreign born colleagues are great, but not URM. Most of of staff still have Pronouns in Bio and email signature, and many with rainbow flags.
You'll notice I'm an anon on social media as I am full of wrongthink. I'm not courageous like Jordan Peterson or Gad Saad. Partly just my personality that has overall served me well in Academia.
This is excellent work — both as a how‑to for open‑source sleuthing and as a snapshot of how fast universities pivot when the legal and political wind shifts. The “weathervane” line at the end is earned.
What struck me reading it from the higher‑ed/policy side is that you’re very close to a deeper diagnosis you only gesture at in the last few paragraphs.
You document three important facts:
Institutions loudly wrote DEI preferences and even numerical targets into public‑facing policies when the cultural moment rewarded it.
The Supreme Court, state legislatures, and federal enforcement posture changed.
The same institutions are now quietly scrubbing or renaming without ever admitting error.
That’s not just hypocrisy; it’s a system doing exactly what it has been wired to do. The public pages you’re surfacing were never just “policies” — they were narrative artifacts. In 2020–21, posting “antiracist cluster hire with minimum percentage of underrepresented faculty” wasn’t simply about HR; it was a way of purchasing status in a moral economy: accreditors, foundations, elite media, and the internal activist‑administrative class all treated that language as proof of virtue. Now the legal and political incentives have inverted, and the same sentences function as evidence in a lawsuit. So the copy changes while the underlying reflex — align with the dominant story and minimize current risk — stays exactly the same.
That’s why your “these are not institutions with convictions, these are institutions with weathervanes” line lands, but also why it’s almost too generous. It implies a kind of whimsical weakness of character. What your own reporting actually shows is something more structural and harder to fix: once an institution defines its public identity in terms of a moralized narrative (oppressor/oppressed, “antiracism” as a litmus test, etc.), its leaders will reliably sacrifice consistency and legal clarity to stay inside that narrative, right up until a counter‑vailing power (courts, regulators, funders) forces them to reverse. The reversal is rarely principled either. It’s just a new risk calculation.
The other dot your piece helps connect, but doesn’t fully spell out, is the two‑audience problem. The scrubbing you describe mostly affects the external audience — courts, agencies, parents, journalists. The internal audience — DEI staff, activist faculty, accreditor culture, HR training vendors — still lives inside the 2020–21 worldview. For them, the “quiet edits” are a regrettable legal accommodation, not a change in mission. That’s why you can have a central HR page cleaned up while nearly identical language survives in subdomains, PDFs, departmental bylaws, and informal hiring rubrics. The ideology doesn’t disappear with the text; it adapts and goes private.
That has big implications for the reform‑minded readers you’re writing for. Screenshots and Wayback captures are crucial, but they’re the symptoms. The causal chain runs something like:
A particular theory of justice (history as structural oppression, “equity” as outcome balancing) becomes dominant in elite culture.
Universities adopt its vocabulary to signal virtue and to compete for status, money, and protection.
That vocabulary gets written into policies and websites because metrics and targets are how bureaucracies prove commitment.
Law and politics shift; the same text now looks like a confession.
Leadership scrubs the most egregious language, rebrands offices, and hopes no one asks what replaced the old doctrine.
You’ve documented steps 3–5 beautifully. I’d love to see more pieces from you that interrogate steps 1–2: not just “what did they say on the page?” but “what theory of the world made them think it was morally necessary to say it?” Until that’s surfaced and argued with honestly, we’ll keep getting better‑drafted versions of the same commitments, just with more careful lawyerly euphemisms.
Last thing: your practical advice section is gold. The search strings, the PDF angle, the Wayback comparisons — that’s the kind of concrete method most academics and parents have no idea how to use. It might be worth a follow‑up that pairs those tools with interview questions or governance actions: “once you’ve found X on your campus, here’s how to bring it up in a way that forces the institution to choose between its public narrative and its legal obligations.”
In any case, this is one of the clearest pieces I’ve seen that shows how quickly the story flipped from “antiracist forever” to “we never said that.” You’ve got the receipts. The next step is exactly what you’re inching toward: explaining the operating system that produced them.
This is why academia needs a
Purge. Changing policy isn’t good enough, the institutional capture is too deep.
Consider updating this post with clear step by step instructions for people to file EEOC claims if their university/employer could be illegally discriminating on them by having maintained the illegal DEI practices. Remind them tonsave and acreen capture or print screen evidence, and that there are strict filing deadlines so file asap. Accordingly, if they have knowledge or evidence that the university has accepted any federal funds (grants, but also student financial aid via Title IV funds), then that could also constitute evidemce of fraud, and thus provide step by step links to filing as such to dept pf ed, treasury, doj new fraud division, and jd vance White House fraud commission. Again, save all files and evidence- especially faculty emails of others in their univ indicating intent to subvert and rebrand and covertly non comply
My recent book walks thru my experience including mistakes I made https://a.co/d/0frfU0RV
I think you over interpret SFFA decision beyond admissions. I’ll write up what I mean
Fair point. I didn’t mean to suggest that SFFA itself directly governs employment decisions. My point was that SFFA's reasoning has been invoked in challenges beyond admissions, such as Fearless Fund and MBDA. But you’re right that employment claims still have to run through Title VII and/or §1981, not SFFA directly. I should have been clearer.
Thx yes this is what I meant. I think there will be/should be some 1st A challenges (primarily association) with some of fed govt attempts to curtail race and gender focused programs and centers. The Feb 14 dear colleague letter lead to such, even though federal govt stopped defending it when they lost. Similar to Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957) whereby faculty were taking 5th Amendment in answer to being member of subversive organization, and Sweezy claimed 1st A freedom of association right to not exist. He went to prison for 20 months, but Supreme Court later overturned. Mike Munger at Duke rights about freedom of association being at least as impt as speech for academic freedom. Appreciate answer
I wrote a bit about Sweezy v N Hampshire (1957) https://dontaylor13.substack.com/p/sweezy-v-new-hampshire-1957?r=ch0yt&utm_medium=ios
Of course the university had explicit hiring quotas by race.
We need to recognize some legal context. Any university that has significant contracts with the Federal government (probably mostly research, but also possibly consulting, or cooperation operating facilities) is required by federal regulation (40-CFR Chapter 60) to have an Affirmative Action Plan, with specific hiring goals for every category of employment, covering Black, White, Asian/Pacific Islanders, American Natives, and Hispanic, and both men and women in each category. The Trump administration is working to eliminate these regulatory requirements, but they are still in effect, and likely to be reinstated by the next Democratic administration if the requirements are eliminated. Many organizations not required to have Affirmative Action Plans probably have them as a way of protecting against discrimination claims. Such Affirmative Action Plans have been found legal by courts, for private employers without government ties as well as for government contractors.
Even if the regulatory requirements are permanently eliminated, and even if some new law or regulation makes hiring goals illegal, there is abundant case law that hiring practices or standards that have "disparate impact" on any protected group constitute illegal discrimination, and employers can be sued by disappointed applicants. One of the reasons for Affirmative Action in its current form is that employers couldn't have any hiring practices or standards that didn't potentially have disparate impact. Affirmative Action Plans will almost certainly continue unless they are made explicitly illegal, and some other means of protection against "disparate impact" claims becomes available.
If this situation outrages you, then by all means be outraged. If you want some change, you need to think through the larger implications, and come up with some alternative policy that would work for everyone involved.
There's a legal difference between a hiring goal (what you’re describing) and a hiring quota (what we found on the website). One is fine, the other not so much.
I don't think there's a practical difference. The organization is required to make "good faith efforts" to meet the goal. This means hiring any "qualified" candidate of the right demographics, unless there is another candidate "clearly" more qualified.
I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't worked in HR, but I think "qualified" means "meets the minimum qualifications described on the hiring announcement," and "clearly" means "able to justify to a skeptical regulator." I recall an official in the Nixon administration, who was questioned (I think on 60 Minutes, but I could be wrong) who said "If you don't like the word "quota," you can call it "goals" or "timetables" - I don't care. But you have to comply with the requirement."
If there were no applicants of the "right" demographics, the organization could probably get away with hiring a white male.
But the best way to protect against a lawsuit or enforcement action is to meet the quota. Even if the Trump administration refuses to initiate any enforcement action, and even if no one ever gets to see the Affirmative Action Plan, meeting the quota is the best legal defense against discrimination or "disparate impact" suits. Or publicity.
I'm sure that many of the people doing the selecting are committed to the Equity agenda purely for social justice reasons. But, even if every one of them were dedicated to finding the best scholar for their department regardless of demographics, the university would be at risk if it hired "too many" white males, regardless of qualifications.
Or do you have different experience?
Hair-splitting. There is NO practical difference between the two, and neither is "fine."
Years ago at UMICH, about 1990, the University approved a bunch of faculty lines for URM's (though the term URM had not been invented). Each department could search for a URM to hire and make a case for that hire (as opposed to the typical hiring where one targets field and expertise needed to add or replace in the faculty). I believe my area found 2 bonus hires that way. IIRC I heard some people in Econ saying they would not try to increase their numbers in this way - not prejudice, just not willing to hire when the main qualification was URM, and URM is hard to find.
About 15 years ago I headed a search committee (large State school) - before full woke, and we had a great, white male applicant. I was honest with him that we had to go through URM and women before we could consider him, but as I expected any potential URM or female took offers at higher ranked places. The Dean then shut down the search as she was not open to a white male.
Later, during the great awokening, all applicants had to plead fealty to woke, and we included such interrogation as part of the interview. For some reason my colleagues thought I should be the inquisitor on those questions, which I personally thought was funny as I was so against such interrogation but, it had to be done.
In Econ we talk about signaling, and for a signal to be worthwhile it must be costly to mimic. These interrogation sessions were meaningless as any candidate could without cost spout approved opinions.
In our School woke has really been tamped down. We can no longer give preferences to URM for Ph. D. students, or faculty. The TT faculty is currently 20% American born. 30% could be considered straight white male. My foreign born colleagues are great, but not URM. Most of of staff still have Pronouns in Bio and email signature, and many with rainbow flags.
You'll notice I'm an anon on social media as I am full of wrongthink. I'm not courageous like Jordan Peterson or Gad Saad. Partly just my personality that has overall served me well in Academia.
"It had to be done." I recall this phrase from history. It was used to explain and justify some very bad behavior.