In many colleges and universities, faculty hiring and promotion are subject to highly discriminatory conditions. Many positions are reserved for women and “persons of color” because the decision-makers want to promote “diversity.” The applicants must also avow certain beliefs. The way this works out is that applicants who might have the wrong views (i.e., who aren’t vociferously “anti-racist”) are filtered out.
But aren’t there anti-discrimination laws regarding employment? Yes, and someone has just filed a lawsuit to find out if the courts will enforce them. That someone is University of Texas at Austin professor Richard Lowery, who is suing Texas A&M University.
To read all about this litigation, go to this Minding the Campus essay by Texas attorney Louis Bonham. He writes, “With universities perceiving no real risk of being sued, and with the Biden administration having about the same interest in neutrally enforcing federal discrimination law as it does in securing the southern border, university administrators know there is no serious risk to giving in to the demands of ‘antiracist’ activists for official, overt discrimination against white and Asian men.”
Does Lowery have a chance of beating the academic establishment?
Yes. The case will be heard in Texas, and the Fifth Circuit has been ill-disposed toward leftist attacks on legal equality. Bonham quotes Berkeley law professor John Yoo: “This seems like a strong case. The Supreme Court’s diversity rationale for the use of race in university admissions for students is a limited exception to the general rule that the Constitution prohibits government from using skin color in its decisions and policies. Here, Texas A&M is flatly using race in considering the hiring and compensation of faculty. It is flatly unconstitutional and the university should lose in court.”
I must add that Lowery recently wrote an article for the Martin Center on how the University of Texas managed to ruin an attempt at injecting some intellectual diversity by subverting an institute that would have upheld values like limited government and free enterprise that are no longer tolerated at UT.
This is at least as important as the discriminatory-admissions cases the Supreme Court will hear this fall.