Academia, Constitutional Law

Can Universities Offer Faculty Race-Based Benefits in Seeking Tenure?
There is an interesting controversy brewing at Central Connecticut State University where faculty are being offered funding to assist them in securing tenure. However, CCSU is limiting access to such support to “members of minority and other protected groups.” The fund allows tenure-track scholars to receive funding “to support projects and activities” that are “related to their retention.” That includes money “to defray the costs of travel to conferences, workshops, and special collections, and for data collection and creative work at distant field sites. Funds may also be used for such expenses as workshop and conference registration fees, and to support further study for credit or non-credit courses.”The program is reportedly implemented by Professor Samuel Zadi, who teaches World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. The program was recently discussed on the conservative site The College Fix.
The program has the worthy objective to “assist the university in achieving its goal of recruiting and retaining faculty members of minority and other protected groups.” However, it also means that other faculty are barred due to their race or sexual orientation or identity.Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits “discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance.”The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the use of race criteria in the admission of students in Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. For decades, universities have avoided the type of outright quota the court held unconstitutional in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). Justice Lewis Powell wrote. “Preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids.”

For some justices, race-based programs in education are generally inimical to our constitutional values. In 2017, Chief Justice John Roberts declared: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”  In 2006, Roberts also wrote: “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”

We have previously discussed the constitutionality of programs that exclude whites or males. The federal and state governments have long used “set asides” or minority preferences in contracting or benefits. Yet, in 1989, in City of Richmond v. JA. Croson Co., the Court struck down the City of Richmond’s minority and female-owned business program as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

However, a key aspect to the Croson ruling was the failure of the City of Richmond to present evidence of racial discrimination on the part of the city or the city’s prime contractors. Thus, “If the city of Richmond had evidence before it that nonminority contractors were systematically excluding minority businesses from subcontracting opportunities, it could take action to end the discriminatory exclusion.” The Court fractured on the issue, but a plurality maintained that a “state or local subdivision … has the authority to eradicate the effects of private discrimination within its own legislative jurisdiction.

One challenge in litigation could be based on standing. The CCSU could argue that white faculty are not harmed by the fact that minority faculty are getting assistance. Tenure is not a zero-sum game where tenure for one professor means the loss of tenure to another. However, there are often limited “slots” on faculties. Barred faculty could claim that this program gives an advantage to other academics in seeking limited positions.

There would not be any serious problem, in my view, to CCSU spending money to recruit minority faculty candidates. Moreover, there may be differences in pay or compensation that deans agreed to with individual candidates. However, once on the faculty, the question is whether the university can offer such professors an advantage denied to colleagues in the form of such grants or subsidies.

Putting aside the constitutional questions, there is also a major academic policy question over the need of universities to maintain a level playing field for all faculty. Once on the faculty, professors are ideally subject to the same standards and opportunity for tenure. However, this program facilitates the progress toward tenure for some based on their race or identities.

It is not clear if there will be a challenge to this program and, thus far, there is no public response from CCSU.

 

63 thoughts on “Can Universities Offer Faculty Race-Based Benefits in Seeking Tenure?”

  1. Simple answer No. This should not be done. We both are professors at this school. We both met the standards to be hired and are competent at our jobs. Now we are both looking for tenure. Because You are a protected class (anything but white and straight) you get extra cash to pay for coaching, outside professionals, new cloths, whatever it takes to increase YOUR chances of getting the tenure we both want. Would Howard University, a Black school do this for its white facility ?

  2. Ah, a visage of the USS Academie sailing spritely to the rocks on a bright, shiny day. Wonder where I’ll set up my beach chair? Oughta be a good ‘en and since I no longer support any institution of higher learning given their Maoist tendencies, I can enjoy the crash unfettered by any sympathy. Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

  3. Here, CCSU appears to have wholly excluded other criteria and limited its benefit solely and exclusively on historically “protected” status. Accordingly, I question whether CCSU can prevail without some showing of a “compelling state interest,” -to the exclusion of all others- and irrespective of speciously-laudable objective?
    Assuming that all -or at least almost all- eligible faculty were born well after the mid-60s Civil Rights Act and the Bakke decision, and a plethora of other anti-discrimination laws/Titles, it SHOULD boil down to consideration of whether any of these faculty members suffered any palpable setbacks/hardships that were not suffered by, e.g., a West Virginian/Appalachian white male?

    Wasn’t it Justice Sandra Day O’Connor who predicted that we would no longer need these “protections” by Now?
    Award criteria should be limited to an individual’s (not a class’) showing of demonstrated (not perceived) setback/hardship. Race/ethnicity/sex/handicap, etc. may be a contributing factor based on personal (not protected class) factors, but not to the exclusion or diminution of other factors.

  4. With my apologies to Martin Luther King, this discussion needs to hear from this millennium’s much revered prophet on social justice; Ibram X. Kendi

    The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

    In other words, racist discrimination is necessary to end racist discrimination. The root of that, ahem, logic stream is the [ig]noble goal of equity. But it’s not enough to right our history of injustice based on immutable characteristics, by establishing a system providing an equal opportunity for all to pursue their individual happiness. No sir. We must first inflict an equal measure of punishment on innocent people, once again based on immutable characteristics, all for social justice. And at the same time strive for equality…of outcome. Then, once we’ve reached this Marxist utopia we will all live happily ever after. But wait, Kendi said the only remedy for past discrimination is present discrimination and future and present and future and present…discrimination. Did Jefferson omit this self-evident truth? Maybe, and I’m spit-balling here, but maybe the only remedy is to end every form of discrimination based on immutable characteristics and try once and for all MLK’s philosophy.

    1. Olly: Nice comment, and well-written. (I see our comments posted one minute apart, didn’t see yours, sorry for any like-minded overlap, but obviously share your views here.)

  5. So, the child of a wealthy black family will be eligible to receive a gift from the school to pursue tenure, but the son of a single white mom suffering from opioid addiction gets a goose egg. People who push this crap are demented.

  6. “The program has the worthy objective to “assist the university in achieving its goal of recruiting and retaining faculty members of minority and other protected groups.” However, it also means that other faculty are barred due to their race or sexual orientation or identity.Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits “discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance.””
    In short, if the last two sentences are true, then the first sentence cannot be true.
    Ever since affirmative action was introduced during the 1970s, race- and sex-based hiring have distorted thinking (is Obama black, white, or mulatto?), undermined values (does the most deserving get the job, or the one who can play the victim best?), damaged institutions (if we hire people on the basis of their sex and race, can we expect them to be honest administrators, teachers, and bureaucrats?), and created a society in which merit counts for less than identity, even an imagined one.
    I was raised in an imperfect society which aspired to equality; I have spent most of my adult life in one in which grievance trumps talent and race and sex take precedence over intelligence and achievement.
    So, which sentence is true? Is discriminating against one group who did not benefit from past discrimination morally justified to privilege members of a group which experienced discrimination in the past? If it is illegal to discriminate “based on race, color or national origin” how can it possibly be legal to prefer a “black” over a “white”?
    So many questions, so few reasonable conversations and rational answers . . . .

  7. The self applying solution to this, appears to be the winnowing of professors by skin color, creating all black profs at some colleges, or all white profs at other colleges.

    1. The obvious solution is to allow colleges to do as they like, Get government completely out – including not providing loan guarantees or funding of any kind.

      Quite quickly colleges will discover to survive that they must deliver the educational value that those paying for the education demand – and that would mostly be parents.

      The reason that the left is hostile to free markets is because left wing nut values do not thrive in free markets.

      People prosper by trading value for value. If no one values what you offer – you starve.

      1. John, it would not happen “quickly”. The rot would take much much too long.

        1. Market changes that are possible – tend to happen quickly.

          Would you pay to send your kids to a place you could not afford that left them less able to earn a living than before ?

  8. I have 3 grandsons, 11-13 years old. While at the early stage of education, they are at the top of the class, testing several grades above grade level.
    At some point I will have to explain to them that their hard work and smarts will be ignored, in favor of blacks, women, homosexuals’ and those with weird sexual fetishes.

    1. You are correct that we have problems.
      But if you are actually correct and the world becomes as you describe it – we will ultimately all starve.

      Our how well we live is determined by how much value we produce.
      PERIOD.

      If we do not reward those who are productive – we ALL have less – far less.

      I would separately say that all this sexual nonsense is going to be short lived.

      A significant portion of the world is near, or at some point along the way towards population collapse. China – which not long ago was forcing late term abortions on women who had more than one child, is now begging women to have 3-4. Europeans are paying women to have children. Regardless of the political wars over immigration – The US needs 2-$M preferably legal immigrants per year to avoid the problems of the rest of the world.

      Only Africa and to a lessor extent South America are not at some stage of population collapse, and even they will get their eventually.

      The very same left wing nuts who push every single form of sexuality today, will with certainty outlaw abortion, and all non-reproductive sexuality once those become a clear threat. If we can force people to mask for a respiratory virus that no one has ever stopped, the same people will certainly tell us that the science requires us to give birth.

      The problem with tyranny – particularly the tyranny of experts is that they not only can, but Will with certainty change their minds.

      I am not as concerned as you – because this left wing nonsense is obvious failure.

  9. I think it would be funny for my left leaning in law, who is trying to rush his tenure at a university, gets caught in the crosshairs of this type of BS

  10. So… minorities want to practice racism. How ironically tragic and laughable at the same time. No a bit of logic knocking about in their noggins, just plain old revenge, hatred and generally ill-controlled thinking. What a hoot if it wasn’t going to cost us our constitution or our blood and treasure to fix this mess.

  11. I fail to see why anyone is complaining, CCSU must have a policy on non-discrimination, so clearly this tenure office cannot be discriminatory. Lookie here:

    “Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) is committed to a policy of nondiscrimination in education and employment. No person shall be discriminated against in terms and conditions of employment, personnel practices, or access to or participation in programs, services, and activities with regard to: age; ancestry, color; gender identity and expression; intellectual disability; learning disability; mental disability; physical disability; marital status, national origin; race; religious creed; sex, including pregnancy, transgender status, sexual harassment and sexual assault; sexual orientation; veteran status; or any other status protected by federal or state laws. Discrimination in employment-based on genetic information is prohibited. In addition, CCSU will not refuse to hire solely because of a prior criminal conviction, unless that refusal is permitted by Connecticut law. ”

    See, this clearly discriminatory policy won’t hold…

    Oopsie, I almost missed the fine print:

    “Definitions
    Discrimination. Discrimination is defined as conduct that is directed at an individual because of his or her protected class and subjects the individual to different treatment so as to interfere with or limit the ability of the individual to participate in, or benefit from, the services, activities, or privileges provided by the university or otherwise adversely affects the individual’s employment or education.”

    Sorry whiteys, because you are not in a “protected class” what CCSU is doing cannot, by their definition, be discriminatory. So sorry, hate that for ya, but the rule is the rule

  12. Should this even have to go to court. We should fight all types of discrimination, not institutionalize the practice ourselves. I agree with the professor that if you want more minority added to the faculty, then focusing funds to help recruit is fine. But no quotas. Once on the faculty then the field should be level and all rules apply the same. No carveouts for anyone. Merit has to be the basis from then on. We want a colorblind society.
    Merit, contrary to the preachings of the radical and not so radical left, is not a white invention. It has permeated all civilizations. The historical record suggests that when merit is not followed then a society suffers. In many advanced civilizations such lack of merit in ruling, military, and commerce lead to the fall of those civilizations or a revolution that topples the government.
    Somehow I don’t think even the hunter gatherers in our past sent out the slowest and dumbest hunters to bring home the bacon. I would propose the thesis that those who did not send out their best hunters, starved to death and removed themselves from the gene pool.
    Merit above all else. Sometimes you have to admit that the person that won the point, job, or promotion was better. That is a bitter pill to accept but it tends to spur people to work harder and transform themselves. Those that don’t continue to fail and often go into academia.
    Napoleon promoted from in the ranks “any corporal’s backpack could contain a marshals baton”. As did Genghis Khan whose greatest general, commander and innovator, Subutai, rose through the ranks from being just a common soldier (not a relative at all).

  13. Is it not crystal clear that any program which gives an advantage to any minority group is, by definition, racist? It’s not only racist because the programs give advantages based on race, of equal, if not more importance, is the fact that those who push such programs truly believe that without them, the minority group simply is incapable of making it on its own. In their minds, 50+ years of legally mandated equal opportunities just hasn’t been enough for the poor things. Tell that to the millions upon millions of black Americans who have done just fine since leaving the liberal plantation.

    1. Oh no! They remedying past discrimination! Guilt is a powerful motivator for weakminded people.

    3. HonestlawyerM,

      This story here again is just another daily distraction from the Billionaires Mil Intel Grade Psyops Coup’s Color Revolution.

      Just look at all the info that has came out this week on dozens of Major Issues.

      If you’ve the time this weekend.

      Infowar/AJ Live now. Reposted later this evening to Banned.Video & MadMaxWorld.com if that URL hasn’t been blocked for phones yet?

      The Gateway Pundit.com.

      Dump Truck Loads of real info on Anti-American Coup Plotters.

  14. These race-exclusive programs are welfare by another name, and a blatant admission that minorities are indeed what “white supremacists” presumably say about them: they just can’t make it in the real world, so they need special handling, hand-holding, and lots of TLC (and money) to get through this rough world. Is that the message colleges want to send, or minorities want to live under? Might as well pin a huge X on their chests. It’s demeaning and humiliating — but when money talks, all decency and values go out the window. Nevertheless, every minority, whether they accepted this charity or not, will forever have the shadow of suspicion attached to them: they just couldn’t cut it without continuous welfare and charitable handouts from the white boys.

  16. On its face, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes it clear that this kind of intentional race-based benefit is discrimination. That said however, CCSU will continue doing this until ordered to stop. Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article.

  17. “CCSU is limiting access to such support to ‘members of minority and other protected groups.’”

    So: Whites need not apply.

    Someone care to explain how that is not racism?

    Someone care to explain how such (racist) policies will achieve harmony and good will among the races?

  20. I expect that an entity with standing would have to challenge this as being unlawful under the provisions of promulgated anti-discrimination law.

    1. Who would have standing? Anyone who wished to apply for standing, or someone who “meets” the criteria of the program described?

      1. What if I wanted to “identify” as a minority – would that count?

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