Academic Freedom of Inquiry and Expression

6/8/25: UM’s leadership busted by Guardian report of spying on students. As a Wolverine, this is outrageous. It all happed under the previous presidentcy of Santa Ono. Time to as our academic leaderships if our universities have employed similar security consults or local versions of the same one.

5/7/25: Cleveland State University’s administration and Academic Senate today re-affirmed their 2019 statement on free speech on campus, with the official policy here.

5/3/25: NYTIMES says Harvard President agrees with Trump about need to change campus culture.

4/25/25: A Call for Constructive Engagement comes from university presidents.

4/24/25: I have heard recent rumors that after 10/07/23, AAUP (the American Association of University Professors) made a statement blaming Israel for the attack. As a members (retired status), I searched my database of material I’ve been collecting since that day, and found only these statements. On 11/15/23, the AAUP issues a statement Polarizing Times Demand Robust Academic Freedom. The same day, John K. Wilson published his opinion blog in defense of the statement, disagreeing with a criticism of the AAUP statement, and having read both the criticism and the defense, I agree with Wilson. It is true that local AAUP statements may have addressed any number of issues, such as this as Penn. But AAUP almost never speaks out on the specifics of a foreign policy issue, sticking instead to issues of academic freedom.

4/17/26: The Michigan Daily itself is calling for protest against the decision to eliminate all DEI presence at my doctoral alma mater. There is a petition here for students, faculty and alumni presumably. I signed.

4/16/25: There is a national call for actions on higher education for 4/17. Who knew? See the Coalition for Higher Education Action webpage and its list of actions, which from what I can see include only one in Ohio, an anti-SBI petition that involves flyering outside the City Club. As a member, I do not like the precedent of that, and so will not personally participate. I’m too busy finishing my piece on nihilism to attend.

4/15/25: UM has taken disciplinary action regarding a May 3, 2024 protest at the Museum of Art. Alum Danny Steinmetz, posted this publicly on FB: “My email today to University of Michigan President Santa Ono over the UM capitulation to MAGA demands to eliminate DEI (in the guise of fighting antisemitism)

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Subject: This Alumn of the Rackham Graduate School is disgusted by your DEI capitulation and surrender of the values of equity and free inquiry.

Dear President Ono,

The UM, along with many others, had to do penance for their capitulation to McCarthyism. Do you want to be the man with the sullied reputation in the cross hairs of some future reckoning. Is this the legacy you want to leave to your family and the academic community.

I am a 74-year-old child of Jewish Holocaust survivors. If only more people had resisted Hitler's racist authoritarianism early on, many tragedies of WW II could have been avoided.

You know fully well that the MAGA demands are rooted in racist authoritarianism which is totally incompatible with the values of any legitimate institution of higher learning.

Shame on you, President Ono.”

4/14/25: J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami speaks about about the action taken by ICE against Columbia U. student, and green-card holder Mohsen Mahdawi, as he appeared for the next step towards citizenship.

4/14/25: Harvard draws the line on complying with Trump’s whims. Here is the NYTimes account with copies of each letter.

4/13/25: Jeremy Ben Ami today shared this the following link showing over 1000 students have lost their legal status, but that Jewish groups are among those fighting back. Alas, Jonathan Greenblatt of ADL continues his ill-advised and deplorable approach to fightint antisemitism on campus, one I will not cooperate with until ADL returns to its mission as a civil right organization writ large. Yes, he calls for due process, but he seems happy to accept Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s mere contentions that a student or faculty member is “appearing to” support Hamas or another designated terrorits group or as Rubio put it is “undermining our national security or the public safety.”

As Jeremy pointed out, “The Biden administration actually had a comprehensive national strategy for addressing antisemitism and used legal tools including Title VI authorities and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to implement it.” As we can recall its approach provided guidance for how to interpret the question of religion and national origin in an expansive way, one which can help protect many of those with Jewish, Israeli or Palestinian origins, and one which did refer to the IHRA’s likewise expansive definition of antisemitism but only as a guide, not as a definitive definition, as “one of” the ways to understand antisemitism.

For instance, if someone confronts someone who they think or know is a Jew, and angrily points a finger in their face and insists on knowing if they are a Zionist or support “the genocide,” in my view this should be a campus-offense under typical Office of Institutional Equity regulations, a lame defense this was just a political disagreement notwithstanding. And likewise if the act involved similar behavior towards a Palestininan or Islamic student, asking if they are a Hamas or Hezbollah supporter, a lame defense this was just a Zionist or Christian Zionist criticism of a rival political or religions view withstanding.

But let the punishment fit the crime! Is a single such incident grounds for expulsion or suspension, or loss of a visa? I do not think so. Reprimand, yes. On the other hand, if there is a pattern of repeated behavior such as that, that is a another matter, each situation must be considered individually in light of any other extenuating factors. But this is just a lay view. One think I do believe; we must fight Anti-ZioniISTism and antisemitism and anti-Palesinianism and Islamophobia jointly and consisently and primarily via education and training.

Let’s look at a specific instance, former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett’s visit to Princeton. Jeremy pointed out: “At each appearance, Bennett jokes – when rules about protests are announced or when the protests begin – about giving the protesters pagers, alluding to the Israeli military operation last year in which sabotaged electronics blew up in the hands of Hezbollah terrorists” (my emphasis). Are you kidding me? If he did that once, it would be one thing. If he does it at each appearance, it would be grounds for any self-respecting university to cancel his visit on grounds of principle, as saying something like that could encourage domestic terrorism against protestors, some of whom I might add are Jewish. But as Jeremy also pointed out, the protestors reportedly “play their predictable part to perfection as well. At least some in their ranks​ show up in masks, chant​ offensive slogans​, call Jews horrific names and look​ to disrupt – loudly banging drums outside, shouting during the talk and setting off fire alarms.” I strongly recommend that faculty and academic administrators read his whole post. Here was my comment and note on it: “If one has any doubts about offensive slogans by the protestors, see this student piece in the Daily Princetonian. https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025/04/princeton-opinion-column-outside-agitators-zachary-marschall. However, it focuses primarily on the far-right blogger who filed charges against Princeton in the first place. But if it is true, as Jeremy suggests, that Bennett makes a habit of his little comment about giving pagers to the protestors, his invitation to other universities should be withdrawn. That is not free speech, it is incitement, and is an outrage.”

4/8/25: First, they came for the professors and students, in 1939 Poland. I generally do not like comparisons of contemporary events with the Shoah. I also do not like it when Senator Moreno refers to Senator Schumer as the Führer or when protestors portray Trump and Musk in Nazi uniforms. Still, history is important to remember.

4/5/25: Barack Obama has been speaking out and encouraging higher ed to draw on their endowments and self-fund research. I agree, a great model was Michigan’s Detroit Area Study which operated that way for 50 years. It should be revived and emulated. WEB DuBois studied 3000 people for The Philadelphia Negro with a handful of volunteers. Lets redouble out research, independent of the federal government. And let’s “uncheck the box” which potentially and subjects our research—especially social science and history research—to federal scrutiny for no solid reason. Michigan long ago unchecked the box. Some scholars of the system of human subjects research advocate doing it. Now is the time.

3/30/25: It is too late, the Governor signed the bill.

3/30/25: Mark Naison, tenured and still teaching full-time at Fordham, publicly posted this on Facebook: “Ohio, Not Columbia, Is Where the Greatest Threat to Universities is Taking Place, see divider.

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While I am by no means minimizing the destructive power of the Trump Administrations attempts to coerce Columbia into changes in security arrangements, and department management and funding to suppress Palestinian Justice activism, I am concerned that a much graver threat to how Universities teach and do research is currently unfolding in the state of Ohio, where the legislature is considering a bill which would dissolve Ethnic and Women's studies programs, shut down any programs which distinguish between students on the basis of race or gender, weaken tenure, and dictate course content to enforce a celebratory narrative of US History.

Nothing that has happened at Columbia yet, or even what might happen in a worst case scenario, is going to coerce faculty at Columbia to teach differently, except when it comes to how Palestine/Israel issues are presented. By contrast, the Ohio bill paves the way for inspection of every course syllabus by state officials, a step toward educational totalitarianism that goes far beyond anything being proposed for elite schools in the cross hairs of the Trump Administration because of Israel Palestine Issues.

If Ohio gets away with imposing this kind of top down control of teaching at state universities, it will undoubtedly spread to other states with Republican governors and Republican majorities in their state legislatures.

So, Ohio colleagues, please keep us informed of how people are trying to prevent passage of this bill, and resist it if it does pass.

This is truly an educational emergency

One with much broader impact than what is happening at Columbia.

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You are right Mark! We native Ohioans, even us boomerangs from Wolverine land, are on it. I’m hoping former coach/YSU President Tressel will convince the Governor to veto it and that the legislature will refuse to override his veto.

3/29/25 It has just occurred to me that was we seeing is good old-fashioned repression, American style (well, Un-American if you ask me). I wondered why and searched the www.portside.org website (the indispensable source of five key emails a day) and sorted by most recent and found this by Jeremy Brecher, reprinted in Portside : “Sometimes those in power come to be despised by a large proportion of the population, but political repression and the gutting of the institutions of democracy make elections and other normal democratic procedures ineffective as vehicles for eliminating them.” He also pointed out, “Induced fear and helplessness, combined with entertaining circuses and the promise of bread “just around the corner,” may demobilize even a population being ravaged by Trumpian devastation. Other factors, known and unknown, may further help Trump to perpetuate his rule.”

But he is not defeatist: “The success of Social Self-Defense will depend on combining civil resistance in social institutions and the streets with political resistance in the institutions of governance. It will take months or years for the Trump regime to eviscerate, coopt, or eliminate all the institutions that might resist it. There are still courts, legislatures, local and state governments, legal, medical, educational, labor, media, and other civil society institutions. Social Self-Defense can be pursued in part through supporting and strengthening those institutions willing and able to resist Trumpian tyranny. While there is at present little opportunity for an “inside game” that attempts to influence the Trump administration from within, cooperation with anti-Trump politicians and institutional leaders where they exist is essential to the success of Social Self-Defense.” I’m off today to the Cleveland’s Resistance Fair, this one on the West Side not the earlier one in Cleveland Heights, which attracted 1500 in a snowstorm! I’ll be staffing a table for https://www.wimby.org, which Citizen Mike is trying to revive in my personal capacity not representing any organization.

3/27/25: The arrest of a Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts. Her crime? Writing this, apparently. Do I support the kinds of BDS demands the authors raised? No; the whole shift to demanding divestment and blithely reifying charges of genocide rather than demanding a UN ceasefire resolution to end the war and insisting on the investigation and prosecution of specific war crimes by both Israel and Hamas and its allies and demanding US support for recognition of Palestine was an inexcusable diversion away from building a mass peace movement. Instead, the focus was on BDS demands and this was very problematic. But am I going to remain silent in the face of un-uniformed people in black arresting a grad student on the street like this? No.

3/21/2025: See this important letter sent to all CU Jewish faculty just prior to the arrest of Mahmoud Khalili.

3/20/2025 Ohio State Representative Tristan Rader has spoken out in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He also announced on 3/19/25 on Facebook that he would ve, that day, voting against SB1. If anyone knows Tressel, call him to pressure the Governor to veto SB1! How could any former University President live with his party passing a bill like this?

3/20/2025: The Times says University of California will stop requiring diversity statements in hiring. It seems to me the language of postings should be up to departments, not prohibited system wide. Since posting require provost approval, units would likely have to have a justification for how this langauge was used and so forth. I “invented” what I called “mission oriented bonus points” at UM SSW in the early 90s and was later asked to evaluate their effectiveness. There were things like demonstrated history of work with oppressed or diverse populations, and were derived from the school’s mission statement. After my study, the Law School Dean Bollinger started using mission-oriented criteria and won that Supreme Court case. This is on my resume with permission, but not mentioned publicly before. So you would have to relate things like that to your mission. Let’s say the chemistry department was devoted to using mass spectrometry to test shed tooth and hair for lead poisoning; the posting could asked applicants to comment on that. Does anyone know if

3/17/25: Florida acts to ban Students for Justice in Palestine, per Alex Kane in Jewish Currents, to which I subscribe but don’t always agree. Early on, after 10/07/23, I discovered just what Alex said: chapters are local, not controlled by national. National may claim it is “part” of the resistance not just in solidarity with it, but that does not make it so.

SJP varied that fall and since on how much they tolerated what I call anti-ZionISTism directed at individual Jewish students who actually supported Israel right or wrong or who were liberal or progressive Zionists. They varied widely on how much their campus chapter leaders were quietly or openly supportive of one or another of the five paramilitary groups in “the resistance” who engaged in a military and terrorist attack on 10/07/25, claiming international law supported that right (a complicated question, but it did not involve the right to engage in terrorist actions or war crimes, which 10/07/25 did involve. It seems to me that for state law to dictate student organization policy directed at particular organization is very problematic. Can it regulate student organization policy overall? Yes, and it is often is the case that university rules and regulations are matters of a state’s adminitrative code and related to state law. But his is overkill on Florida’s part.

3/16/25: Jeremy Ben-Ami’s latest substack

Defining “Pro-Israel” in 2025

speaks towards the end very eloquently about the issue of higher education. He says: “On the left, harsh criticism of the right-wing Israeli government and its policies at times bleeds into anti-Zionism and even into antisemitism in ugly ways, though the exact line where that happens is exceedingly difficult to define.” When anti-Zionism bleeds into antisemitism is when it involves anti-ZioinISTism. I write about anti-ZionISTism and anti-Palestinianism here:

3/15/25: Several groups are actively speaking out:

Ohio AAUP on SB83 Returning as SB1/HB6. It’s baaaack! AAUP has a synopsis/analysis. This is whys I pays my dues to AAUP despite being “retired” from full-time teaching.

Ohio Education Association (enabled me to write my Representative and send along a copy of this substack and renew our relationship).

Ohio Federation of Teachers

Bad news from Minnesota, unfortunately, where the UM Regents banned statements from departments on public issues, unless the president approved them. One professor has spoken out in criticism although earlier another professor agreed some statements on websites went too far and implied prohibitions would be valuable. One person interviewed praised the Dartmouth policy on institutional restraint (and how statements are made).

I have not been able to fully analyze the policies, but one issue does come to mind, and that is the AAUP’s traditional view on academic freedom, and its distinctions between intramural speech, extramural speech, teaching and research. Faculty often think we/they have more freedom than we actually have, just as the book Underground Woman: My Life as a Subway Conductor showed, unions and union members often think they have won rights which the text of the agreement shows they do not have, but with management has often in practice grants—rights which federal courts have said exist under “past practices” clauses but which are not sacrosanct. For extramural speech, for instance, the AAUP statement says, “When speaking on public matters, faculty members [MD: even in extramural speech, such as for instance a substack or blog written by a person with a university affiliation as well] should strive to be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show appropriate respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.”

The actual AAUP policy which most universities respect along with much state law and court opinions, I seem to recall, has a number of relevant points, including “but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution,” and although this substack is a publication in the popular press arena and is entirely free, in part due to Ohio Ethics rules about using public resources in any way to promote a private concern, and I do not do so.

Here is the AAUP PDF of the policy with interpretations. I can’t seem to find it right now, but one provision has to do with confining one’s work to areas which bear some relationship to one’s profession or discipline or individual acquired expertise. But within departments, people may have a variety of areas of expertise. Arguably, this is one reason why deans or higher level administrators might conceivably, if so empowered, wish to have at least some advance notice of statements made and to inquire as to whether they might create an environment seen as hostile by some members of the department. One provision I would favor is provision for inclusion of a dissenting opinion of one or more department members.

3/14/2025 AP reports investigations at 50 universities. In my opinion, universities need to quickly act to adopt clear prohibitions on what I call Anti-ZionISTism and anti-Palestinianism, which amount to harassment and discrmination, but there must be room for anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel as well as criticism of what I call Totalitarian Theocratic Patriarchal Power Brokers, which certain exist in both Israel and Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East and around the world, including in the US I might add. The idea there can’t be open debate and criticism about the politics of the Middle East is very problematic, but instances of incivility and “in your face” harassment and discrimination are things we must understand and clarify and educate about, along with combining education in the classroom and on campus about antisemitism, Islamophobia nd anti-Arab chauvinism.

3/12/2015: Thanks to Stuart Kaufer of Hunter’s Silverman School for making me aware of this: This quote from Lee Bollinger (former President of Columbia University), published in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, encapsulates the urgency of the moment:

"We're in the midst of an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. It's been coming and coming, and not everybody is prepared to read it that way. The characters regarded as people to emulate, like Orban and Putin and so on, all indicate that the strategy is to create an illiberal democracy or an authoritarian democracy or a strongman democracy. That's what we're experiencing. Our problem in part is a failure of imagination. We cannot get ourselves to see how this is going to unfold in its most frightening versions. You neutralize the branches of government; you neutralize the media; you neutralize universities, and you're on your way."

3/9/2025: Here is the Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorial Board’s analysis of SB1. See Joint Statement of Vandervilt and Washington U.

3/8/25: Michael Kennedy of Brown sociology (my former UM professor) shares slides about academic freedom.

3/6/2025: CSWE releases a statement. And see this from NYTimes. But really see this from the Times about people afraid to speak out.

3/3/2025: Just a quick update to stress the need to read Steven Volk’s latest After Class piece, where he points out, “Indeed, this crisis moment has seen very few higher ed leaders willing shout “Fire!” even as the flames rise higher around them, fearful – and honestly, who could blame them – of drawing unwanted attention from a White House eager to make their lives a misery,” although he discusses notable exceptions, including John Wilson, who I mention below. Closer up, I’m seeing lots of courage and am hopeful. But there is what Bertha Capen Reynolds, speaking in Cleveland in 1953, called Fear in Our Culture. A fearless librarian helped me today track down a copy of that speech, and it will soon be an essay in Speaking from the Heart.

Latest posts: See this and Part I as well about George Mason, which operates Zotero, on which I rely for producing and publishing my bibliographies in my Beats. And see this Atlantic article A New Kind of Crisis for American Universities: The ivory tower has been breached, a threat to the 1945 vision of Vannevar Bush. Wait, isn’t that also the year of the AAUP statement on academic freedom? No, it was 1940. By 1950, the US founded the National Science Foundation (NSF), via an Act of Congress. It’s director, appointed by the President, requires Senate Confirmation. The National Science Board, appointed by the President without Senate confirmation, determines the policies of the NSF. The National Institute of Health (NIA) has less formal independence, as it is part of DHHS. Both are now at the whim of the President.

Introduction: In this my latest free substack post Academic Freedom of Inquiry and Expression, I share an initial Zotero bibliography report, an HTML document which anyone can open: https://tinyurl.com/AcademicFreedomofInquiry The new Beat was inspired by the Academe Blog of John K. Wilson The Danger of Deference to Trump. The Academe blog is on fire! DOE Announces Investigations of Five Campuses. Five Department of Education investigations are now undersay; this process began last year and involved both complaints of anti-Semitism and complaints of discrminination against pro-Palestininian protests. But now the concern is that the process is politically motivated. Also, as the Academic blog by Jennifer Ruth of Portland State points out, “Previously, under the Biden administration, agency officials were free to consider the IHRA definition or not. This was problematic enough, given that, as Jan Deckers and Jonathan Coulter wrote in May 2022, ‘pro-Israel activists can and have mobilized the IHRA document for political goals unrelated to tackling antisemitism, notably to stigmatize and silence critics of the Israeli government.’”

Increasingly, we will find that issues I have commented on and raised in my Middle East Peace with Justice Beats post will likely continue to be related to this present Beat post. For instance, in that post I discuss a phrase I have coined and discussed internally within DSA and DSA North Star listserves since 10/07/23, “Anti-ZionISTism.” As I argue in my MEPJ beat, in my 12/4/24 update about my Cleveland Plain Dealer op-ed calling for a unilaterial Israeli ceasefire, “Each of these events required me to make major changes in my professional and political live and produced ongoing attention to their political and historical significance. Here I share items which I feel are suitable for public attention, although they are clearly selected in part to to my own positionality as someone who, upon a religious conversionn to Judaism completed in 2000, has long been a public advocate for peace with justice and self-determination for Israel and Palestine and a proponent of human rights for all in the region, as well as an opponent of always linking opposition to racism with opposition to anti-Semitism, anti-Arab chauvinism, Islamophobia, and most recently two additional forms of prejudice and discrmination, anti-Palestinianism and anti-ZionISTism, the latter being very different than mere political opposition to Zionism as an ideology.

I’m working on a piece on that but it too has both individual in-your-face aspects and intitututional impacts and political implications. One piece which will influence my thinking on this question is the subject of a soon to beee released (here in Lagniappe) bibliography that will inform further on the question. And that is this insightful article by Haggai Matar, editor of 972. In reading his piece I recocommend thinking along the way, how you think he approaches the question of self-determination. His article me to consider the lonstanding nature of both anti-Semitism and anti-Arab chauvinism, and the specific nature of anti-Palestininianism. In some ways they have a unique character which might be termed “special oppression” and I hope to visit this later. This is not by any means a reliable bibliography relevant to readings on the region, but is a quite extensive collection of valuable items in English since 10/07/23.” [That bib is found in my MEPJ post, not here.] I have a draft of an essay on anti-ZionISTism and anti-Palestinianism but put it off given the priority of a ceasefire. I may need to resurrect it, but the concept of anti-ZioniISTism has gained some attention on substack by MaxSpeaks. It is ironic that Portland State is a focus, being that its President, Ann Cuss, is author of Analyzing Oppression, the book which helped cement my partial theory of human injustice, published in 2019 in Humanity & Society.

In this introduction, I share some history regarding how, based on my own activist history, DEI itself began as a retreat from affirmative action, and in some respects was the very kind of “acting to comply in advance” which the AAUP is warning against. This just reinforces how important the AAUP’s statement Against Anticipatory Obedience really is: https://www.aaup.org/report/against-anticipatory-obedience

But here I explain why I need to follow this “beat.” I am an emeritus lecturer at a public Midwestern university, and a former Academe blog writer myself in 2020, Ending Institutional Racism in Higher Education. I am also the current principal investigator of an IRB approved research project—inspired by dialogue with colleagues following the Academe piece.

Personally, I made the first of many “career” mistakes when, as a UM drop-out working as an off-campus agitator of sorts in support of BAM I at UM in 1970, and employed 20 hours a week as a North Campus bus driver for UM, I put a Support the BAM Strike sign in my bus, for which I was reprimanded. My employment was terminated the end of the semester (I was not offered re-employment in the fall or reduced summer hours, and it was clear why).

Later, I earned a BSW and MSW degrees at Adelphi and Columbia. While at Columbia School of Social Work, as Student Union President, I allied with the Black Caucus and Puerto Rican Caucus to successfully demand employment of a full-time recruitment staff person, who ended up remaining on the Dean’s staff for decades. I also commenced a career-long quest to enhance social work education attention to racism, cultural diversity and cross-cultural practice.

At Columbia, I initiated the Open Letter to the School Community movement, which a couple hundred students and some faculty signed. We had a crowded mass meeting in the lobby. We called for increased curriculum content on institutional racism, knowledge of diverse cultures, and cross-cultural practice. The resulting Open Letter Task Force remained in place as an official advocacy initiative for ten years, leading to regular curriculum reviews.

As an adjunct at Fordham in 1989-90, I taught a course on Oppression of Diverse Populations. A 3x5 card exercise we did there and which I continued to do at several universities lead to the formulation of the typology of human injustice (oppression, dehumanization and exploitation) which was used in my 2016 article on microaggressions and my 2019 partial theory of human injustice (see Other Works for links).

In 1991, I returned for a PhD in Social Work and Sociology at Michigan. I worked for several years in the Admissions Office of the School of Social Work, as my detailed vita indicates: Consistent with my interest in diversity and inclusion and affirmative action within social work, I sought a position for five years as an admissions counselor (part-time as a graduate assistant with GEO health benefits) at Michigan 1992-1997.

During this time, I proposed and implemented “mission-oriented bonus points” as an official aspect of the admissions standards. They included demonstrated commitment and experience in working with oppressed populations and/or working for social justice., for instance, since these were aspects of the school’s mission as a leading school of social work. True, in some respects, this was a preemptive concern that the use of race-oriented bonus points might become illegal, and soon the voters of Michigan outlawed race and gender-based affirmative action bonus points.

After completing this work, and implementing it for several years, Dean Paula Allen-Meares asked me to complete an evaluation study of the impact of these standards on the diversity of the incoming classes during that period. Following this study’s completion, perhaps coincidentally, the Law School Dean adopted a “mission-oriented” approach to admissions, as a significant part of its admissions standards. The Supreme Court later upheld that “mission-oriented” approach given the compelling interest of the state in having a diverse legal profession. It was clear to me at the time that such a compelling interest might apply to law and the military and perhaps major professions but would be hard to apply generally without violating the equal protection clause or having a sunset clause as to the conditions of improvement which would lead to its discontinuation.

Meanwhile university after university dropped “affirmative action” admissions with bonus points for race and quietly renamed their programs as DEI. In other words, the origins of DEI were just the kind of preemptive retreat we must resolve now. I am certainly not critical of DEI; in many respects it was the only thing we could do.

Still, at the time, universities and states should have fought to maintain race and gender-based affirmative action, but enacted such a “sunset clause” to make it consistent with both the equity principle of the common law and the equal protective clause of the constitution. The policy would sunset when it was demonstrable that the impact of historical state-permitted and state-committed race and gender discrimination had been overcome. I am not aware of a single effort to adopt such a state law.

The strategy was to make preemptive changes, claim to be engaging in “individualized” admissions and so forth and to champion DEI as a concept. DEI began as just the sort of Now that too is under attack. We must defend both academic freedom, freedom of protest, freedom of inquiry, and so forth. And re-examine ways in which institutional racism and sexism still manifest themselves in various discrete policies in higher education.

I tried to comment on the AAUP Blog to say: It is important to read and bookmark this and its links and to forward it via email to colleagues and via social media with comments. DEI--or in its best instances ADEI--is now essential to accreditation of social work and other professions. Ironically, however, based on what I saw at Michigan during BAM I and later in the 1990s at UM and elsewhere, DEI itself, in many respects, often began as a retreat from and substitute for formal bonus points for race and gender, rooted in affirmative action policies. This happened when Bakke's authorization of such bonus points to correct historical discrimination was the law of the land. That retreat at the time was the very kind of “acting to comply in advance” which the AAUP is warning against now. This reinforces how important the AAUP’s statement Against Anticipatory Obedience is: https://www.aaup.org/report/against-anticipatory-obedience. The same logic should apply to defending campus-based freedom of inquiry and expression as well. And to sign as: Michael A. Dover, PhD, MSSW, College Associate Lecturer Emeritus, Cleveland State University

However, it appears I accidentally posted a shorter incomplete comment, which is there with a grammatical error! I will continue to update the bibliography and consider an essay on this in the future. So much is at stake. Interestingly, after undergoing recent training on Ethics, Ferpa, Sexual Harassment and other topics required of all employees at CSU, I’ve redoubled my emphasis on the free nature of this substack, have changed to my gmail my LinkedIn’s contact information and made clear that views expressed there and here are my personal views.