Public Comment to the Regents of the University of California
Yesterday, I addressed the Regents of the University of California to urge them to eliminate the UC's diversity programs, because they have been creating discrimination and limiting free speech.
Watch the video of my comments and read my full statement below.
My name is David Pan and I am a professor of German at UC Irvine. I am here to ask that you consider eliminating the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion mandates at the UC campuses. These mandates have exacerbated racial discrimination and undermined the values of merit and freedom of speech in the entire UC system.
Ideally, the idea of diversity can be used to welcome a variety of intellectual perspectives within a context of shared values of freedom and equality. But since the principle of diversity has been used in practice as a way to admit and hire more Blacks, Hispanics, and women, it has nothing to do with a diversity of perspectives. Instead, the rhetoric of diversity has been used to enforce racial preferences—a new form of discrimination. For example, I know about hiring committees in which the external equity advisor has rejected a short list simply because there are not enough Blacks, Hispanics, or women on the list. Search committees are then required to add one or more candidates from one of these preferred race and gender categories in order to continue the search. This procedure has become standard practice as far as I can tell. It is clearly discriminatory, and it clearly undermines the idea of merit as the basis for decisions on admissions and hiring.
Such practices are imbedded in administrative structures such as "offices of inclusive excellence," and they are ideologically enforced through required diversity statements both in hiring and in merit reviews. Consequently, there is little scope for dissent, and anyone who might object to such policies risks being disciplined and ostracized for being racist or misogynist. In this way, the diversity framework has led to a suppression of real debate all over campus. This situation should be deeply disturbing to anyone who cares about our educational mission.
I come to you because, at this point, it is only the Regents who are in a position to act to remedy this situation that is eroding the standards of our university system. Because the diversity framework is so deeply imbedded in our administrative and faculty senate structures, there can be no questioning of it from within the university. I hope that you can at least consider the possibility that it is part of your responsibility to act to investigate and remedy the problems that I am pointing out to you today.
