A California professor sues over new DEIA performance reviews.

Wall Street Journal

Crit­ics of Flor­ida Gov. Ron De­San­tis ar­gue he has gone too far in try­ing to root out “wok­e­ness” from pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties, but look to Cal­i­for­nia to see where aca­d­e­mic group­think is go­ing if left unchecked. A le­gal com­plaint filed this month by a his­tory pro­fes­sor in Ba­kersfield says that his com­mu­nity col­lege’s per­for­mance and ten­ure re­views are be­ing used to force fac­ulty to adopt woke pro­gres­sive val­ues in their class­rooms.

Day­mon John­son has been at Ba­kersfield Col­lege since 1993. As he tells it, three months ago Cal­i­for­nia Com­mu­nity Col­leges, which serves 1.8 mil­lion stu­dents at 116 cam­puses, amended its reg­u­la­tions so em­ploy­ees must es­pouse its tenets of di­ver­sity, eq­uity, in­clu­sion and ac­ces­si­bil­ity (DEIA). “Fac­ulty mem­bers shall em­ploy teach­ing, learn­ing, and pro­fes­sional prac­tices that re­flect DEIA and anti-racist prin­ci­ples,” the reg­u­la­tions say. Schools must “place sig­nif­i­cant em­pha­sis on DEIA com­pe­ten­cies in em­ployee eval­u­a­tion and ten­ure re­view.”