In January, University of Toronto psychologist Yoel Inbar interviewed for a role at UCLA. His girlfriend had received a job offer from the psychology department, and like many universities, UCLA has a dual career program designed to facilitate partner appointments. The interview went well, and as Inbar notes in a recent podcast, he thought that an offer was likely.

A few days after the interview, he received not an offer but, rather, news that a group of more than fifty students signed a letter demanding that he not be hired. Shortly thereafter, he was told that the ad hoc committee to whom the letter was addressed declined to recommend him for a full-department vote. He wasn’t getting the job.

Put simply, Inbar said the wrong things about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which provoked the ire of students. To be clear, Inbar is no critic of DEI. He’s certainly not a conservative. In this respect, the letter is remarkable. It doesn’t just call for what is likely illegal viewpoint discrimination, but it takes issues with opinions that are, at most, only modestly controversial. It’s thus remarkable for a second reason: it perfectly illustrates growing concerns about the effects of far-reaching university DEI policies.

Here are the main points of the letter, which the National Association of Scholars has posted on its website:

• Inbar voiced skepticism about the use of DEI statements. According to the letter, Inbar said in a podcast episode from 2018 that diversity statements “seem like administrator value signaling,” that is it unclear “what good they do,” and that they signal “an allegiance to a certain set of beliefs.” He made a similar point about the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), which piloted mandatory diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism statements for its conference submissions. “These comments,” according to the letter, “frame diversity statements as a threat to ideological diversity, and reflect a lack of prioritization of the needs and experiences of historically marginalized individuals across the lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability.”

• Inbar advocated for institutional neutrality. Specifically, in another podcast episode, he said that professional organizations should not take stances on controversial political issues. While expressing his support for abortion, he noted that the SPSP should not weigh in on a Georgia law banning abortion past six weeks. This, likewise, prompted condemnation: “His flippant conflation of this issue with a political disagreement (i.e., Democrats vs. Republicans) trivializes the necessity of bodily autonomy that all people, regardless of political ideology and governance, ought to be entitled to.”

• Inbar said that his research doesn’t deal directly with issues of identity. The letter notes, somewhat confusingly, that “Dr. Inbar’s responses call into question not only his implicit and explicit biases on an interpersonal level, but with respect to his research. A systemic failure to consider the objective fact that groups experience certain phenomena and interactions differentially is an ongoing issue which the field of Psychology is actively working to overcome, and his response leads us to believe he does not understand and/or appreciate the importance of this issue as one of intellectual merit.”

• Inbar allegedly transgressed “inclusive” etiquette in several interactions with students. Students asked him about his approach to mentoring minority students. He said that he typically “just asks what’s going on because graduate students will tend to tell you”—a wrong answer, apparently. “This response leads us to believe that he does not appreciate the importance of power dynamics or invisible barriers that prevent students from feeling empowered to advocate for themselves, particularly students from URM [underrepresented minority] backgrounds.” Likewise, the letter reports that he referred to one student, “who is a woman of color,” as “intense” in a conversation with another professor. According to Inbar, this student denounced the psychology department as racist, and even abusive, during the student interview. Later, in a conversation with a faculty member, he referred to that student’s digression as “intense.”

Notably, nearly every paragraph of the letter makes reference to UCLA policy or a statement made by UCLA administrators. 

The letter was emailed to the entire UCLA psychology faculty and was circulated widely, even beyond the department. By mid-February, I received the link to the letter from someone affiliated with UCLA. A smaller group of students sent a letter in support of Professor Inbar. (When I contacted Inbar, he declined to comment.)

[Related: “Science is Rotting from the Top”]

For now, we can’t know whether the letter made a difference in the hiring decision, though there’s good reason to think it did. He was given a flyout interview for a partner role. The department was not choosing between multiple candidates, and it had already judged his CV worthy. They told his girlfriend to fly out, too, so the couple could look for housing together. One UCLA faculty member told me that it would be unusual not to hire after getting to this stage of the partner-hiring process, barring any obvious red flags in the interview. Of course, nothing is ever certain in faculty hiring.

The department chair’s rejection letter to Inbar, which he shared with the Chronicle of Higher Education, was also revealing. She noted that “unusual events occurred surrounding [Inbar’s] visit,” and said that, after “much consideration and consultation,” she had decided that “following the department’s standard process spanning more than two decades is the right way to go.” She added that she was “disappointed with the outcome.” It’s telling that the department chair considered, and even sought, advice about not following standard procedures.

UCLA could easily clarify what happened and, most importantly for its own interests, demonstrate that it did not engage in illegal viewpoint discrimination. But so far, the university has taken extra steps to avoid transparency. In February, I submitted a records request for correspondences between the ad hoc committee members in charge of recommending Inbar. UCLA first estimated that those documents would be available on May 31, then on June 30, and now on July 28. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), likewise, submitted a records request for the ad hoc committee’s report on the hiring process and a few other related documents. Even after Inbar waived his privacy rights, the university delayed, and then outright rejected, FIRE’s request.

Some students also wrote a counter-letter in support of Inbar.

But regardless of whether the letter made the difference, it represents a broken academic culture. More than fifty graduate students in one of the country’s top psychology programs demanded that their university, in effect, violate academic freedom.

This isn’t limited to activism-prone graduate students. As the controversy gained attention online, many established scholars spoke out in support of the letter. Megan Stevenson, professor of law and economics at the University of Virginia, tweeted that “This letter seems completely reasonable to me. Students should have a voice in the hiring decision. And this guy does not seem to share their (very defensible) values, either in his approach to research or in what he would bring to the community culture.” Kelly O’Connor, a postdoc at Virginia Commonwealth University, added, “I applaud the brave students who advocated for themselves & the future climate of their program. Dr. Inbar has the right to free speech, but so do these students ???????? The message is loud & clear: the next gen of scholars value DEI. And that gives me hope.” J. David Jentsch, a psychology professor at Binghamton University, tweeted that “Dude applies for said position, but is inadequate with respect to those criteria by evaluation of the larger department community. Dude gets upset that he doesn’t get job. Did I get that right?” 

Evidently, many in academia think that the student’s reasons for objecting to Inbar are perfectly valid, but the letter, in fact, shows the opposite. It illustrates a key argument against diversity statements and using DEI as a criterion to evaluate professors. On the basis of DEI evaluations, an otherwise qualified job candidate can be disqualified for expressing opinions that ought to be discussed within the confines of the academy—not just highly controversial opinions, which ought to be protected, but even opinions with which most Americans likely agree. Already, savvy prospective faculty members know that they have to be careful about what they say and how they say it. No doubt, Inbar’s example will only exacerbate that caution.

It also shows that DEI policies have a special status in higher education and are functionally self-insulating. If your job is advancing DEI, any opposition to DEI policies could be construed as a basic failure to do your job. If DEI represented nothing more than a synonym for “basic human decency,” that might not be a problem. But that’s clearly not the case, as DEI has come to connote a set of substantive political and social views. 

[Related: “Litmus Tests for Nuclear Scientists”]

It also illustrates the importance of institutional neutrality. In 1967, the president of the University of Chicago appointed a committee to make a statement on “the University’s role in political and social action.” That statement, known as the Kalven Report, argues that colleges and universities ought to stay silent on matters of social and political controversy to help ensure free inquiry. Institutions, per the report, “cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness.” When they do wade into controversies, “it places pressure on faculty to conform to their position.” In a rare positive development in higher education, some universities have recently moved to publicly adopt the Kalven Report, most notably UNC-Chapel Hill.

Inbar expressed a similar commitment to institutional neutrality. His protest letter quotes him saying that “when we align ourselves with a political side or faction it’s bad for our science.” As if it was designed to prove his point, the letter quickly appeals to the leadership of both UCLA and the University of California system: 

The UCLA community’s position on this issue was made abundantly clear when the UCLA Office of the Chancellor issued a statement on June 24th, 2022 to all UCLA community members that stated “as University of California President Michael Drake wrote today, this decision is antithetical to the University of California’s mission and values. Our university firmly supports individuals’ ability to access necessary health care services and make decisions about their own care in consultation with their medical teams.”

In other words, the letter appealed to the university’s official proclamation on a controversial issue to say that one should not even caution institutions against taking stances on controversial issues. Imagine if Inbar expressed opposition to abortion.

The principle of institutional neutrality can be instructive for the broader debate over diversity, equity, and inclusion. If these values merely represent a commitment to treating everyone with respect and decency, there would be little reason to object. But today, DEI increasingly implies a set of substantive social and political views, including a commitment to race-consciousness and the belief that disparities are per se indicators of racism. Thus, a strong endorsement from the university can easily silence—or punish—those who object.

Image: Unsplash, Public Domain