The DEI fixation prevents academic leaders from standing up for academic freedom when students who say they’re offended demand that professors be punished, as has occurred at University of Pennsylvania Law School regarding Professor Amy Wax. They are also eager to demand that applicants for faculty positions or advancement submit “ diversity statements,” which amount to loyalty oaths to a set of ideas—an requirement utterly at odds with the concept of the university as a place for free inquiry.

With the divisive and anti-educational DEI entrenched at so many colleges and universities, it seems that there is an opportunity for some “product differentiation.” Why shouldn’t those schools that stick to education, and eschew DEI, trumpet that fact to prospective students, families, and financial supporters?

That is what Professors Dorian Abbot of the University of Chicago and Ivan Marinovic of Stanford University propose. Colleges and universities that are not beholden to DEI should declare themselves for MFE: merit, freedom, and equality. Writing in Newsweek, they state, “We propose an alternative framework called Merit, Fairness, and Equality (MFE) whereby university applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone.” …

Colleges and universities that have resisted DEI could proudly declare themselves to be schools dedicated to Merit, Fairness, and Equality and explain why that matters. Students who want education without any ideological overlay would gravitate toward MFE institutions. Also, education supporters who don’t want to waste their money backing schools that are undermining the foundations of the nation would look for MFE schools.

One more thing—MFE schools not only deliver better education, but can do so at lower cost because they don’t waste resources on “diversity” administrators.