Posted on 05/11/2023 6:45:56 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The university has adopted radical politics in order to “dismantle systemic racism.”
Texas A&M is a systematically racist institution. According to whom? According to the leadership of Texas A&M.
In recent years, the College Station-based public university, originally founded with a focus on agriculture and engineering, has built a vast “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucracy that has adopted the narrative of left-wing racialism, segregated students by race, and told colleagues to “stop centering whiteness.”
I have obtained a collection of documents through public-records requests that reveal this stunning process of ideological capture. According to these materials, virtually every academic and administrative unit at Texas A&M has adopted the politics of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and pushed radical and discriminatory measures to promote “social justice.”
The transformation of the university hit full speed following the death of George Floyd in 2020. As with many American institutions, the leadership at Texas A&M immediately adopted the narrative of critical race theory, which castigates the United States as a systemically racist nation and advocates for “anti-racist discrimination” in order to equalize outcomes.
“Racism, hate speech, safety, and belonging issues are evidence of systemic, cultural problems that are enduring trends at Texas A&M,” the university claimed in a report published that summer. “Texas A&M’s disparities in student success and representation of historically underrepresented groups of students, faculty, and staff may be attributable to systemic, racist, and discriminatory practices in higher education and society.”
The report promoted the views of left-wing racial theorist Robin DiAngelo. Quoting from her book White Fragility, it argued that “the default of the current system is the reproduction of racial inequality” and that “bringing racism to white people’s attention” would require administrators to move beyond “niceness.” The ultimate solution, university officials said, was to “dismantle systemic racism to advance Texas A&M’s land-grant mission.”
The new DEI orthodoxy has been replicated throughout the system, with administrators placing heavy-handed “diversity accountability” requirements on all departments—not only in the humanities but also in hard sciences such as agriculture, engineering, and medicine.
The priorities are both ideological and administrative. A&M’s departments aggressively promote DEI ideology through trainings, programs, lectures, reports, committees, and multimedia, involving hundreds of faculty and staff.
The content of these programs is unadulterated left-wing activism. The School of Dentistry, for example, hosted a guest lecture by University of Texas professor emeritus Robert Jensen, who told the audience that the United States is “appropriately called a white supremacist society.” The School of Veterinary Medicine promoted a “21-Day Anti-Racism Challenge” so that white students could address their “white privilege” and “white fragility.” The College of Geosciences promised to “embed discussion of DEI and anti-racism throughout the undergraduate curriculum.” And within the College of Arts and Science, the sociology department was tasked with implementing a “land acknowledgement statement,” the history department received funding to develop “anti-racist and inclusive pedagogies,” and the English department was asked to develop a “Black Lives Matter special topics course.”
Administratively, the new DEI orthodoxy has resulted in a policy of widespread racial discrimination and segregation. The leadership has made it clear that administrators should pursue “structural diversity,” in which the demographics of the university become “representative of the demographic diversity of the State of Texas.”
To achieve this objective at the faculty level, A&M has created a hiring process that effectively discriminates on the basis of race and sexuality. In its official Handbook for Faculty Search Committee Members, the university has stated that “all members of a search committee should be advocates for diversity” and instructs committees to “take steps that are likely to increase the number of semi-finalists and finalists from groups that are underrepresented in your department,” such as including DEI activists in the hiring process and soliciting DEI statements from potential faculty.
Entire programs are designed to reward faculty on the basis of identity rather than merit. The ADVANCE Scholars Program, which provides mentorship and advancement opportunities, is restricted to “first-generation college graduate[s]” and “historically underrepresented groups”—a euphemism for demographic favoritism. The Accountability, Climate, Equity, and Scholarship (ACES) Faculty Fellows Program, which offers a pipeline for tenure-track professorships, is also discriminatory. The language is evasive and euphemistic, cloaking identity-based discrimination as a commitment to “building a culturally diverse educational environment” and measuring applicants on their “commitment to diversity,” but the intent appears to be to create set-asides for racial and sexual minorities.
The admissions process for students follows a similar pattern. The university has laid out specific racial quotas, such as maintaining a minimum of 25 percent “Hispanic/Latinx” enrollment. To achieve these demographic targets, admissions officers have adopted “affirmative action” and “holistic admissions” processes, which, in practice, tilt the scales in favor of “historically underrepresented groups.”
A&M has even created racially segregated programs that divide students by identity group. Each year, the Multicultural Services program, for example, organizes racially segregated graduation ceremonies, with separate programs for Asian, African American, and “Latinx” students—all in the name of “spread[ing] the value of inclusivity.”
The final goal of A&M’s DEI programs is left-wing activism. The materials from the Office of Diversity are explicitly partisan and political. In one presentation on DEI-centered marketing last year, DEI officials made it clear that their goal was to promote “critical race theory,” “intersectional feminism,” “decolonizing practices,” and social movements such as Black Lives Matter. They maligned Texas’s Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz as illustrations of “systemic racism” and highlighted inflammatory social media content instructing readers to “stop centering whiteness.” Overall, they said, their role was to “[take] a progressive stand on issues of social justice.”
The obvious question: Why are Texas voters subsidizing this process of ideological capture? Texas A&M might be best known for football and agricultural science, but under the surface, administrators have displaced the pursuit of truth with the pursuit of left-wing activism—and they are openly hostile to the state’s political leaders and cultural values.
If it is this bad in Texas, imagine how bad it is in blue states.
What I find is texas can be quite blue esp in cities. Texas has been used to being red they don’t fight back. They’re extremely non confrontational
A&M fits that. They scream at their football games and they believe that’s tough
Long Island is redder in the last election than San Antonio. That’s a matter of record.
If true, then the entire current leadership should resign.
This needs a legislative remedy. Texas Republicans in the legislature: are you awake?
Colleges continue to exist because naive’ alumni fund them.
It’s quite a racket.
University admin are without exception, leftist. If there is “systemic racism” it is the policy of leftard academics.
ping
The faculty should wear Maoist during caps and be paraded in the football stadium for their sins of racism.
Then people will feel much better.
I’m in “battle” with Texas A&M on this issue right now. My son was denied admission even with having a very high SAT and GPA. But because he went to a private Christian High School, they wiggled out of the auto admit law. They pulled every trick they could to keep private school kids out this latest round. I’m sure it involves “DEI” with the assumption that the students of such are conservative (correct) and mostly white (false in my son’s school). An org is involved. It’s going to be ugly.
DEIs are the new commissars. Evil apparatchiks.
What does that mean?!
Sorry to hear this about A&M. I would expect this from the tea sippers in Austin but not the Aggies.
That's where we are.
“My son was denied admission”
Here in Florida construction trade contractors are raking in big bucks.
I expected better.
A&M used to be a GREAT engineering school, especially the nuclear engineering department.
So, I guess that we will have to start planning to add A&M to the list of (so called) universities we will NOT be hiring STEM folks from.
Bye bye Texas A&M. The list is getting very long. A&M will make the number 19.
Big law suit might get their attention. Get with your high school.
I am inclined to think that TPTB are getting pressured to ‘diversify’ their student body. While TAMU offers a good spectrum of degree plans the school is often viewed as a STEM oriented place. That viewpoint probably discourages those who want a ‘studies-style’ degree or something less arduous than STEM.
And then there is the issue of TAMU having a good number of set-asides for non-white kids but are unable to fill those slots. Many POC simply don’t show up for the reduced qualification slots offered by TAMU. This has been happening on and off for years. TPTB are probably getting hammered about this. It’s like offering Bud Light for free but nobody grabs one. So what are TPTB going to do? They can’t drag kids off the street to fill the quotas.
Too bad that they went to wokeness and DIE.
America is finished. Barring divine intervention which I do not expect.
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