Inside Ohio State’s DEI Factory

A search committee seeking a military history professor rejected a candidate “because his diversity statement demonstrated a poor understanding of diversity and inclusion issues.” Another committee noted that a candidate for nuclear physics professor could understand the plight of minorities in academia because he was married to “an immigrant to Texas in the age of Trump.”

These examples come from more than 800 pages of Ohio State University’s “Faculty Hiring Diversity Reports,” which I obtained through a public records request. Until recently, Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences required each search committee to write such a report, which had to be approved by various deans before finalists for employment were interviewed.