UT Austin Spends Over $13 Million on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Salaries

The University of Texas at Austin spends more than $13 million on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) salaries for close to 200 jobs, according to documents obtained by The Epoch Times.

That’s enough money to fund 342 in-state students to attend one of Texas’ top publicly funded universities for a year, based on $35,000 in annual tuition.

The Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DCE) at UT Austin paid 171 employee salaries totaling some $12.2 million, according to documents obtained through an open records request.

Another $1.4 million in salaries were paid to 14 associate deans called Coalition of Diversity Equity and Inclusion officers, according to the documents.

UT Austin’s expenditures on DEI paint a picture of a vast network of workers dedicated to a contentious sociopolitical movement that has taken hold in America’s institutions.

Much of the money spent on salaries support what critics describe as “woke” programs based on social justice activism. Vast amounts of taxpayer money spent on DEI salaries demonstrate what detractors say is a bloated system siphoning money away from academics.

DCE supports multiple learning centers and programs throughout UT Austin. Positions at affiliated programs include the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, Youth Engagement Center, Office for Inclusion and Equity, and even an elementary school that helps train future teachers to be well versed in the movement’s ideology.

The diversity division pays another $11.7 million for public charter schools to help children in crisis and UIL salaries, apparently unrelated to DEI.

Scott Yenor, a Boise State University political science professor, is senior director of state coalitions at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank.

Yenor told The Epoch Times that DEI had been woven into every facet of universities nationwide, making it difficult to determine how much public money is being spent supporting controversial political ideologies.

“Nearly every college has a dean that’s dedicated to it,” he said.

Yenor pointed to the costs of offering majors at UT Austin dedicated to DEI, such as African and African Diaspora Studies and Race, Indigeneity & Migration.

Another DEI major at UT Austin Texas is Women’s and Gender Studies, which includes classes to analyze the “social narratives of gender, race, and sexuality,” according to the school’s website.

Minors at UT Austin include Critical Disability Studies and Latino Media Arts and Studies, Yenor said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ut-austin-spends-over-13-million-on-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-salaries-documents_5280452.html

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Cornell wants to ‘express itself’ but ‘diversity, equity, inclusion’ are in the way

When I heard that Martha Pollack, president of Cornell University, would announce that Free Expression will be the theme for the 2023-2024 academic year, I was delighted.

It seemed like Cornell was turning a corner from its poor record on free expression documented by the organizations such as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).

Indeed, just before her announcement, Pollack had given two wins to free expression.

She rejected a Student Assembly resolution to mandate content warnings for traumatic content in the classroom, and for her bravery, she won the Cojones Award from alumnus Bill Maher.

But when I read what Pollack had to say, I realized that the Free Expression theme was actually a ruse. Pollack had stacked the steering committee with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) scholars.

I wrote individually to each member requesting links to their work on free expression —and heard, even up to today — nothing but crickets.

Then the campus paper the Cornell Daily Sun reported that Pollack will defend DEI as strongly as she defends free expression. This is a tragedy because free expression cannot coexist with DEI.

Cornell, the first American Ivy League university, should be a citadel of freedom — particularly for the freedom of thought and the freedom of speech — both of which contribute to the mental change required for intellectual growth. The goal of DEI activism, however, is the antithesis of free expression. Activists tend to believe they already know what is true and demonstrate little need for discussions that can change hearts and minds. They readily say so themselves.

Ibram X. Kendi, the most prominent leader in the DEI movement, for instance, concedes in his seminal book “How to be an Antiracist” — “An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change . . . [and the] Educational and moral suasion is not only a failed strategy. It is a suicidal strategy.”

Unlike the civil- and gay-rights movements, which required free speech to change legislation, the DEI movement requires the cancellation of free speech to influence power and policy. This is because the DEI bureaucrats are activists-in-disguise, at once unable and unwilling to defend their ideology with reasoned arguments based on truth.

This was demonstrated last month in a debate at MIT on a resolution that academic DEI programs should be abolished. None of the approximately 90 people in DEI positions at MIT chose to defend their ideology by participating in the debate.

The debate still took place; and interestingly, there was agreement between Pat Kambhampati and Heather Mac Donald who argued for the resolution, and Karith Foster and Pamela Denise Long who argued against the resolution. They all agreed that the university DEI bureaucrats have gone off the rails.

Foster summed it up like so: “When DEI is done poorly — and let us be absolutely honest, it has taken a left turn — it creates insurmountable barriers of fear, mistrust, vengeance, and indifference.”

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, well-meaning administrators across Cornell surrendered their mission to seek truth and replaced it with the mission of critical social justice, whose postmodernist foundations deny objective truth. Indoctrination replaced education.

Cornell used to encourage the search for truth through the discovery of new knowledge but has morphed into something omnipotent, if not sclerotic.

The free thinkers have been replaced by followers who mindlessly speak past each other using platitudes and bromides.

The solutions to every problem are to add more rules and regulatons, and to do what seems expedient at that moment. The bureaucracy does not encourage dissenters and governs by coercion, compulsion, and mandates.

I am speaking out against the institutional cancel culture at Cornell in the hope that I will be as successful as I was last year in un-canceling the bust of Abraham Lincoln, which was removed from a campus library following unspecified “complaints.”

According to postmodernism, the only self-evident truth is that there is no objective truth. Without a foundation of truth, there can be no reasoned argument capable of changing the viewpoints of others.

In the pursuit of critical social justice, there is no time to question the DEI orthodoxy or to waver from the thin party line.

The DEI ideology excludes even the slightest diversity of thought.

It is ironic that the front lines of the DEI movement are found in our universities whose mission has always been the search for and dissemination of truth through open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and civil free expression.

Except for a small minority of believers, both for or against DEI, fear quashes free expression, and leads to self-censorship among the students and faculty.

https://nypost.com/2023/05/20/diversity-equity-inclusion-dei-in-cornells-way/

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Why Britain is falling behind in the global universities race

Britain still excels when it comes to higher education. Britain has seven of the world’s top 50 universities. In spite of many claims that Brexit would lead to a reduction in the number of foreign students, the intake has never been higher. In 2021-22, there were 680,000 overseas students in higher education in Britain, an increase of 123,000 in just two years.

That’s good news for the British economy. A report by London Economics estimated that one year’s intake of students would, by the time their courses had finished, bring in £29 billion in revenue from tuition fees and other income. Importantly, the benefits are spread all over the country: the University of Manchester and the University of Edinburgh each have around 18,000 overseas students.

But higher education is a global race and our place is in danger. This year’s table by the Center for World University Rankings – which measures the employability of graduates as well as the quality of research – shows 55 out of 93 UK universities on the slide. Thirty-two have improved their rankings, while Cambridge and Oxford retain their positions at fourth and fifth respectively. But the reason a larger number of universities are slipping is that China’s universities are on the way up. This matters not least because China is currently the biggest single source of overseas students at UK universities: some 152,000.

While their international reputations remain high, UK universities have not helped themselves over the past few years. Some have harmed their role as bastions of free speech by giving in to small bands of student activists who have demanded speakers be banned; at others, students have demanded that the curriculum be revised to suit their beliefs – reversing the traditional arrangement whereby tutors teach and students learn.

It’s also hard to compete on a global level when the best academics are paid so little. A depressing fact of British university life is that so often any scholar who achieves widespread recognition or success will be poached by an American Ivy League university offering a far greater salary – and often given a job that requires far less administrative work. In a place where the reputation of professors attracts students, it’s important to draw and retain the top talent.

Part of the problem is a failure to raise fees in line with inflation. The maximum has barely increased since it was set at £9,000 in 2010. At the time, student fees were deeply controversial – yet private schools, which educate 14 per cent of British sixth formers, charge much more. Why should families who manage to pay £30,000 a year for schools be subsidised when it comes to university? In an economy in which what you learn is closely linked to what you earn, there’s a strong case for asking families who can afford it to pay to meet the cost of tuition.

To remain competitive on a global level, Britain’s universities should be given the resources to win talent. American universities have a tradition of using fee money from wealthier families to subsidise those who cannot afford it: there’s a case for an element of that being introduced here as well.

The danger is that, if universities do not fight for their independence, they become playthings of the government – forced to link admission to diversity targets rather than merit. It is right to make allowances for students who might not have had their interview techniques polished at a private school, but universities already do that. If private schools account for around 30 per cent of the top A-level grades (as they currently do), it’s natural that they also account for a similar proportion of those getting into top universities.

Open discrimination against candidates on the basis of presumed privilege is deeply wrong – and also starts to undermine the status of the university from being a seat of unashamed excellence into an instrument of social engineering.

A university education is not everything. For many people, going from school straight into employment will be more appropriate; there are already far too many courses of no use to either students or society. Qualifications should never be fetishised to the point of writing off people who, for various reasons, might have missed out on them when young. The Spectator is one of many employers to make a point of not asking new recruits about their education but hiring on an aptitude test alone.

Yet a university education remains, for many, an important part of a successful and fulfilling life. Moreover, much of the research which informs an advanced society originates in its universities.

Britain is fortunate to have some of the best universities in the world, but we cannot take their reputations for granted. They must strive to remain at the top of their game.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/05/university-challenge-5/

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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