UW-Madison hires by race

Impermissibly!

Any school that expels from campus a 42-ton boulder accused of racism is choking on Woke. Few major state universities are more race-obsessed than the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Once known for helping 19th Century farmers overcome the wheat louse and transition to a more demanding agriculture, dairy farming, our land grant university now teaches identity politics, to the detriment of our public schools and media outlets.

The UW mandates pernicious, race-based hiring quotas not just in grievance studies and sociology (please pay off my college loans!) but in medicine, engineering and other STEM disciplines, according to a conservative boutique, the Institute for Reforming Government. The IRG says it has found evidence “that thoroughly documents UW-Madison’s unconstitutional, highly race-conscious, faculty hiring initiative called the Target of Opportunity Program.”

AKA the TOP program, “it permits the university to hire and specially fund applicants to the school’s faculty partly on the basis of race,” says the IRG’s Anthony LoCoco. “This is incompatible with the recent United States Supreme Court case striking down affirmative action.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s long-desired decision overturning affirmative action in college admissions has lifted the rock (42 tons or not) to expose the Deep University.

Not enough Hispanic dermatologists

LoCoco says UW-Madison’s business school charts faculty race by percentage under the categories “Asian,” “White,” and “African American.” The school of medicine and public health argued that a targeted hire was necessary in part because “there are only 4.2% of dermatologists of Hispanic origin compared with 16.3% in the general American population.” LoCoco writes:

In Students for Fair Admissions, the Supreme Court explained that it had “rejected the assumption that ‘members of the same racial group — regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live — think alike,’”18 and that use of that assumption in admissions decisions was constitutionally impermissible. But stereotypes occurred often in UW TOP proposals.

The economics department noted a “unique opportunity to hire a quantitatively minded Indigenous scholar” given that “talented and ambitious Native American students tend to specialize in law and humanities.” The hire would “help encourage Indigenous students to study applied economics.” Similarly, the psychology department asserted that its commitment to “hiring a cohort of 6 faculty of color” was “essential for both recruitment and retention of scholars of color.”

— Anthony LoCoco, Institute for Reforming Government 

The recent signed state budget withholds $32 million from the state university system to pay diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats (although the Democrat(ic) governor vetoed eliminating the positions themselves). Assembly Speaker Robin Vos also intends to zero-out a race-based scholarship program.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: The Institute for Reforming Government demands that the legislature zero out the TOPS program as well.

Or will a court challenge do it first?