Race-Based Hiring Programs Persist at Public Universities. Here’s How.
26th November 2024
n September 2022, the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) made a bold promise to the school’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Engagement: From then on, the department said, 50 percent of all faculty hires would be either women or minorities.
Citing the need for “culturally relevant pedagogy,” the department explained that “minoritized” professors “tend to have a greater sense” of “the human, social, and communal nature of teaching and learning.”
That is why the department was applying to UIC’s Bridge to Faculty program, which funds the recruitment and mentorship of postdoctoral scholars from “underrepresented” groups.
The money would help the engineering program hit its diversity targets, the department wrote in its application, and, by boosting the number of minority faculty, “enable students” to change “oppressive systems, discriminatory practices, and eventually society as a whole.”
The pitch paid off: When UIC announced its fourth cohort of Bridge scholars in 2023, industrial engineering was one of 10 departments chosen to host one.
There’s money in them thar grifts.