In the spring of 2023, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion essay by John D. Sailer, who was then a fellow at the National Association of Scholars. Based on documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, Sailer detailed how a search committee from the Texas Tech University biology department had vetted candidates for a faculty position. One was dinged for advocating a race-neutral approach to teaching; another was praised for reciting a “land acknowledgement” before their job interview. What Sailer found confirmed what he and other critics of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts had long suspected, Sailer wrote: Diversity statements function as ideological litmus tests.
“DEI connotes a set of highly contestable social and political views,” wrote Sailer. “Requiring faculty to catalog their commitment to those views necessarily blackballs anybody who dissents from an orthodoxy that has nothing to do with scientific competence.”
The next day, Texas Tech announced that it would stop using diversity statements in faculty hiring. A short time later the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, sent a letter to the state’s public colleges condemning any hiring practices that consider candidates for reasons other than merit.
For Sailer, the Texas Tech investigation was a turning point in his career. “Moving on to Manhattan Institute was kind of a logical next step,” he said.
The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank founded in the late ’70s to improve “great American cities,” has emerged in recent years as a formidable influence on higher education. The think tank has crafted model legislation to remake colleges and universities as race-blind institutions, fueled the campaign to oust Claudine Gay as president of Harvard, and turned City Journal, its quarterly magazine, into a platform for attacking diversity programs, grade inflation, and university presidents’ capitulation to the demands of left-leaning students and faculty. It has found in Trump administration officials and red-state lawmakers a battalion of allies who share the view that higher education has strayed from its truth-focused mission.
In the months leading up to Trump’s second inauguration, Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, met with members of the administration to plan how the government could rein in DEI by threatening federal funding. On his second day in office, Trump signed two executive orders banning DEI-related contracts and spending across the government.