EXCLUSIVE DOCUMENTS: The NIH's DEI Litmus Tests

John D. Sailer

In 2020, The National Institutes of Health created its Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) program, designed to dole out $241 million over nine years for DEI-focused faculty hiring. Through the program, public and private institutions across the country—including Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine and Florida State University—have created faculty hiring initiatives.

One key condition for each of these NIH-funded programs: All faculty job candidates must submit a diversity statement. To be hired, they must demonstrate “a strong commitment to promoting diversity and inclusive excellence.”

As I announced in my latest for the Wall Street Journal, I have acquired the rubrics for evaluating diversity statements from two of these hiring programs, at the University of South Carolina and at the University of New Mexico. I have also acquired a similar rubric used by the University of Massachusetts Chan School of Medicine, which has not yet received any NIH-FIRST funds but has explicitly followed the NIH’s model. You can read more about these rubrics at the Wall Street Journal. We are publishing the documents in full below. Simply put, they provide a roadmap for viewpoint discrimination.

The University of South Carolina

Download the PDF

The University of New Mexico

Download the PDF

The University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School

Download the PDF


Photo by 2y.kang on Unsplash

  • Share

Most Commented

October 29, 2024

1.

The Looming Irrelevance of Middle East Study Centers

Today’s Middle Eastern Studies Centers are facing a crisis due to the winds of change in the Middle East and their own ideological echo chamber....

November 19, 2024

2.

Lee Zeldin Should Reform EPA Science Policy

NAS welcomes the nomination of Congressmen Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency....

November 20, 2024

3.

NAS Welcomes Administrator McMahon's Nomination to Serve as Education Secretary

With McMahon, the new administration has a chance to drastically slim down and depoliticize the Education Department....

Most Read

May 15, 2015

1.

Where Did We Get the Idea That Only White People Can Be Racist?

A look at the double standard that has arisen regarding racism, illustrated recently by the reaction to a black professor's biased comments on Twitter....

October 12, 2010

2.

Ask a Scholar: What is the True Definition of Latino?

What does it mean to be Latino? Are only Latin American people Latino, or does the term apply to anyone whose language derived from Latin?...

May 26, 2010

3.

10 Reasons Not to Go to College

A sampling of arguments for the idea that college may not be for everyone....