A federally funded program at a Midwestern public research university — one known for its engineering and computing programs — trained deans and faculty chairs to keep sending hiring shortlists back for revision until the demographic breakdown satisfied the institution’s preferred benchmark.
We have the document courtesy of a FacultyLeaks.com reader.
It is a 42-page institutional guide titled “Guide to Inclusive Faculty Hiring.” Produced by the campus’s NSF-funded ADVANCE program, it was circulated to search committees, department chairs, and deans. It is a roadmap for proxy discrimination in faculty hiring, detailing exactly how to evaluate candidates, what training faculty must complete, and how to intervene when the demographic outputs of a search don’t match a predetermined target.
The guide defines a “diverse” candidate pool as one that “reflects the current demographics of the field.” Before a search even begins, leadership is instructed to set a benchmark drawn from the NSF’s Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED).
The process is coldly mathematical: if a field like Health Sciences is 67.44% female nationally but your applicant pool is lower, the search is flagged. But the most revealing part of the document is the “Short List Audit.” When a dean receives the demographic breakdown of finalists, they are instructed to compare those percentages to the original pool.
Crucially, this audit is asymmetrical. The guide only mandates a “pause” and a “redo” if the shortlist is “not as diverse” as the pool. If a shortlist significantly over-represents the demographics the guide is designed to increase, no such audit is required. This is not a search for “neutrality”; it is a one-way ratchet.
The guide includes a legally significant instruction. Deans are told not to identify specific candidates by race or gender and demand their addition. Instead, they are told to send the rubric back for re-evaluation until the results change.