California’s Community College system recently enacted a set of rules designed to force professors to embrace DEI views both professionally and personally, including anti-racism and intersectionality. I wrote about this in March before it was adopted. Here’s a bullet point list of what the new rules require a professor to do to maintain his or her employement:

• “Promotes and incorporates DEI and anti-racist pedagogy.”

• “Develops and implements a pedagogy and/or curriculum that promotes a race-conscious and intersectional lens.”

• “Contributes to DEI and anti-racism research and scholarship.”

• “Articulates the importance and impact of DEI and anti-racism as part of the institution’s greater mission.”

• “Advocates for and advances DEI and anti-racist goals and initiatives.”

• “Leads DEI and anti-racist efforts by participating in DEI groups, committees, or community activities that promote systemic and cultural change to close equity gaps and support minoritized groups.”

• “Participates in a continuous cycle of self-assessment of one’s growth and commitment to DEI and acknowledgement of any internalized personal biases and racial superiority or inferiority.”

There’s also a glossary of terms posted on the California Community Colleges website which makes it pretty clear this ideology is strongly opposed to ideas of academic merit or the idea that students are responsible for their own achievements (or lack of them) at all.

Equity-Minded: Is a schema that provides an alternative framework for understanding the causes of equity gaps in outcomes and the action needed to close them. Rather than attribute inequities in outcomes to student deficits, being equity-minded involves interpreting inequitable outcomes as a signal that practices are not working as intended. Inequities are eliminated through changes in institutional practices, policies, culture, and routines. Equity-mindedness encompasses being (l) race conscious, (2) institutionally focused, (3) evidence based, (4) systemically aware, and (5) action oriented…

Merit: A concept that at face value appears to be a neutral measure of academic achievement and qualifications; however, merit is embedded in the ideology of Whiteness and upholds race-based structural inequality. Merit protects White privilege under the guise of standards (i.e., the use of standardized tests that are biased against racial minorities) and as highlighted by anti-affirmative action forces. Merit implies that White people are deemed better qualified and more worthy but are denied opportunities due to race-conscious policies. However, this understanding of merit and worthiness fails to recognize systemic oppression, racism, and generational privilege afforded to Whites.

Given these definitions, any professor who claimed to be grading students based on merit regardless of race would be subject to a poor performance review or worse. Now that these rules have been adopted, some professors are suing, arguing the requirements interfere with their academic freedom. Yesterday, a group of six professors joined in a lawsuit filed by FIRE:

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a lawsuit on behalf of six California community college professors to halt new, systemwide regulations forcing professors to espouse and teach politicized conceptions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”…

The regulations explicitly require professors to pledge allegiance to contested ideological viewpoints. Professors must “acknowledge” that “cultural and social identities are diverse, fluid, and intersectional,” and they must develop “knowledge of the intersectionality of social identities and the multiple axes of oppression that people from different racial, ethnic, and other minoritized groups face.” Faculty performance and tenure will be evaluated based on professors’ commitment to and promotion of the government’s viewpoints.

“I’m a professor of chemistry. How am I supposed to incorporate DEI into my classroom instruction?” asked Reedley College professor Bill Blanken. “What’s the ‘anti-racist’ perspective on the atomic mass of boron?”

“These regulations are a totalitarian triple-whammy,” said FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner. “The government is forcing professors to teach and preach a politicized viewpoint they do not share, imposing incomprehensible guidelines, and threatening to punish professors when they cross an arbitrary, indiscernible line.”…

“Hearing uncomfortable ideas is not ‘curricular trauma,’ and teaching all sides of an issue is not ‘weaponizing’ academic freedom,” said Loren Palsgaard, a professor of English at Madera Community College and a plaintiff in the suit. “That’s just called ‘education.’”

That’s not the only lawsuit filed so far. A professor at Bakersfield College named Daymon Johnson filed a similar lawsuit last month.

His lawsuit says that “Professor Johnson cannot satisfy DEIA standards based on the state Chancellor’s DEIA competencies without violating his conscience and surrendering his academic freedom. Almost everything Professor Johnson teaches violates the new DEIA requirements—not just by failing to advance the DEIA and anti-racist ideologies, but also by criticizing them.”

Instead of making everything about race he wants to follow “classical pedagogy that stresses the study of “truth, goodness, and beauty,” his federal lawsuit says…

“These demands that faculty subscribe to and advance a particular creed or political ideology as a condition of maintaining their employment and ability to fully participate in school affairs are inconsistent with the mission of a public college. These demands are unconstitutional on their face and as applied against Professor Johnson, as they contradict the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and petition by punishing the expression of dissenting viewpoints and trampling over faculty’s right of academic freedom. The First Amendment guarantees Professor Johnson’s right to express himself in opposition to Defendants’ goal of advancing “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” and anti-racism ideologies.”…

The lawsuit explains that,  “Professor Johnson does not wish to engage in any DEIA “self-reflection,” which it likens to the practices of a cult. “He does not want to “[e]ngage[] in self-assessment of [his] own commitment to DEI and internal biases,” id., because he rejects DEI and the concept of internal bias, and he does not wish to “seek[] opportunities for growth to acknowledge and address the harm caused by internal biases and behavior,” id., because he objects to these demands, which he views as religious-like and little more than neo-Marxist re-education on race.”

The lawsuit claims the school has already fired one professor for using the phrase “cultural Marxism.” “Johnson refrains from speaking and has altered his speech for fear of further investigation, discipline, and termination by” the lawsuit says.

Hopefully, California will lose several of these battles in court and the demand for woke compliance from all professors as a condition of their employment will be rolled back. It seems obvious that these rules infringe on academic freedom and personal freedom but this is California we’re talking about so there’s no guarantee common sense will prevail.