Alas, cutting funding for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) and rewarding universities for free speech will prove insufficient to Make Universities Great Again (MUGA)—a key facet of making America great again long-term. With their funding threatened, universities will make it appear that they again adhere to freedom of speech and meritocracy without curbing the leftist bias of their faculty and administrators. Then, they will bide time until another progressive regime regains control of Washington, DC. Thus, affirmative action will be needed to ensure that the Trump administration’s proposed reforms will actually MUGA and not result in an easily reversible window dressing.
I refer to affirmative action in the general sense, not as code for quotas for conservatives. The affirmative action I have in mind is to mandate meritocracy. By this, I mean developing rules that will end government funding for universities that do not hire the objectively best applicant for positions not premised on baked-in ideologies.
[RELATED: What is Merit and What is Not?]
Today, university hiring decisions are done in secret, with offers made based on “fit.” The term “fit” is vague and basically refers to whatever search committees want. They do not need DEI statements to ascertain which candidates are the most “woke,” as such information can be determined from social media, letters of recommendation, and/or the classic grapevine.
By baked-in ideologies, I am referring to jobs with inherently progressive agendas. Professorships in “sustainability,” “social justice,” or “a more democratic Constitution” cut off free speech at the door and preclude the employment of those who question foundational ideological shibboleths. Universities should hire professors who, for example, teach the principles of investing, not ideologues charged with espousing ESG, or Bitcoin for that matter.
The best applicants can be determined by reference to each applicant’s curriculum vitae (CV)—a complete listing of job experience, grants, publications, and other scholarly achievements—as well as reviews of their books, citation counts, etc. If two or more candidates have objective credentials too close to call, let the matter be decided randomly. That is perfectly impartial once the top candidates have been identified and a far cry more meritocratic than the amorphous and usually ideological notions of “fit.”
Critics will complain that I pitch this notion out of self-interest.
As a fixed-term—non-tenured—lecturer at a middling state university with 25 books and 80 scholarly chapters and articles to my credit, I certainly have much to gain personally from the readoption of meritocracy. My CV is longer than 95 percent of the faculty at so-called elite universities, yet none have ever even interviewed me despite my being, quite literally, underprivileged. Instead of teaching Ph.D. students, I mentor high school students to publication, and instead of large, automatic research accounts, I must publish to gain modest research funding. Ultimately, my motivation doesn’t matter. What matters is the consequences of my proposal.
[RELATED: The Antidote of Merit, Fairness, and Equality]
Ironically, I am not even politically conservative. I am just not woke. I do believe, though, in old-fashioned values like empirical evidence and logic, which explains why I have been able to publish so much despite a deficient public school education—all the way from K through Ph.D. Only by enabling those with beliefs and skills like mine to once again come to positions of power and influence in our best universities can the Trump administration MUGA on a “sustainable” basis.
Anything short of mandating meritocracy will create another border wall-type situation once progressives regain power, as they already scheme to do. Without permanently making universities great again, places where critical thinking and rationality prevail, the Make America Great Again administration will fail to counter yet another onslaught of progressive canards.
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Image Donald Trump speaking with attendees at an Arizona for Trump rally at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona by Gage Skidmore on Wikimedia Commons; Edited by Jared Gould
