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The University of Washington quietly pulled a faculty job posting after conservatives exposed that the application required candidates to prove what they’d done specifically for Black students — a raw example of ideology trumping qualifications in a public institution. This isn’t theory or hearsay; veterans on the faculty now openly admit that a diversity checkbox and a DEI rubric are being used as decisive filters in hiring.
The posting demanded a one‑page diversity statement aligned to the APA’s equity framework and asked applicants to describe how their work would “further the College of Education’s commitment to racial equity and social justice,” effectively making political pledges part of the résumé. When a university starts grading teachers on political conformity instead of classroom outcomes, meritocracy dies and mediocrity masquerades as virtue.
Stuart Reges, an award‑winning teaching professor at UW, said bluntly that he would not pass today’s ideological gauntlet despite his record — and his long history of pushing back against performative campus rituals even landed him in court over a parody land‑acknowledgement. Faculty who won awards and built careers here are being told to swap achievement for political theater, and many are saying, rightly, “Why bother?”
Under pressure, the university announced it would cancel the contested posting and review hiring guidance to ensure compliance with state and federal law — a damage‑control move that proves the outrage had teeth. But cancelling one posting is not reform; it’s a bandaid after the rot has already set in, because the same administrators who put the rubric in place still control the levers.
Conservative commentators and watchdogs are right to warn that DEI mandates function as ideological litmus tests that screen out anyone who won’t parrot campus orthodoxy, and the UW episode shows how easily public universities can weaponize well‑meaning language into exclusionary practice. This isn’t compassion or equity — it’s gatekeeping dressed in woke jargon, and the losers are the students who need true excellence, not political catechism.
Patriots who care about education should demand transparency, rescind any hiring metrics that require political pledges, and insist on hiring that rewards achievement and protects free thought. If taxpayers and alumni let our universities become recruitment centers for political conformity, we will have handed the next generation an education that points them to grievance instead of greatness.
