Eric Kaufmann
Unherd, Feb. 10, 2025
“Ultimately, one starts to wonder what sort of intervention will tame higher education’s rampant progressivism.”
Just as DEI is being scaled back in American higher education, the UK is doubling down on it, much to the peril of academic freedom.
After a lengthy consultation period, conveniently timed to report after the election which brought Labour into office, guidance from Research England (which doles out over £2 billion in funding per year) has been released. It stipulates that its Research Excellence Framework (REF) will now grade university departments on their share of women and non-whites, promotion rates by race and sex, and how well they are training their staff in DEI ideology. All of which has nothing to do with research excellence.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is a euphemism for woke cultural socialism. “Diversity and Equity” is about achieving equal outcomes and representation for minority identity groups through anti-white/male discrimination while “Inclusion” refers to censoring speech that offends the most sensitive members of such groups. When a staff member posts on social media against biological males in female sports, they are now more likely to be threatened or forced out for undermining “inclusion” and “diversity”, damaging their department’s precious reputation.
The REF is extremely important, not just because of the funding it gives to cash-starved universities whose only other income is from student fees, but because a department’s REF ranking is its most important esteem indicator. This is key for attracting top staff and students. As someone who chaired my department’s REF committee and has been on the committee several times, I can tell you that among status-conscious academics, the REF is king: most academics can teach, but few can produce world-leading research. The REF separates the wheat from the chaff. No wonder universities spent around £450 million preparing for REF 2021, £6,000 per staff member submitted. One result is that this causes a lot of competition among colleagues and some — especially those who are not productive researchers — resent it….Source