Many institutions that are making the most noise have had some of the worst progress. Make of that what you will.

I attach little inherent value to a person's skin color and philosophically oppose racist programs where people are rewarded or punished based on race.

In addition to the philosophical reasons, I have also been deeply skeptical about the purported benefits of programs based on race. There is great value in assembling teams who have a common commitment with one another but have variable life experiences, skills, and knowledge. But that is never what diversity programs pursue. Theirs is a straight racist program of racial preferences, implying that there are viewpoint positions inherent by race. An absurdity.

Those two layers of skepticism, philosophical and epistemic, dominate other considerations. But other considerations there are, as indicated in Faculty diversity at near stand-still despite MILLIONS spent by universities by Ethan Cai. He is asking whether diversity recruitment programs even work at the most basic level of increasing racial diversity.

The research seems to indicate that millions of dollars are not effective at moving the diversity dial all that much.

A new study found that universities have not made much progress on faculty diversity initiatives, despite more attention and money being given to race and inclusivity issues.

The study, published by South Texas College of Law’s Hispanic Journal of Law and Policy, concluded that colleges have not seen substantial growth in the diversity of faculty between 2013 and 2017, according to Inside Higher Ed.

“We wanted to test this hypothesis -- whether we in higher ed were improving diversity in those particular areas,” Julian Vasquez Heilig, one of the study’s authors and the incoming education dean at the University of Kentucky, said, Inside Higher Ed reported. “A lot of times faculty, when we have these discussions, talk like we’re reinventing the wheel. We have these ideas and these gut feelings of what might work. But I think we need to be more empirical and data-driven on diversity.”

Overall, research-intensive schools offering doctorates showed the least progress. From 2013 to 2017 at such institutions, tenured faculty who were Hispanic and Latino only grew 0.65 percent, while African American tenured faculty increased by only 0.1 percent during the study’s time frame. Asian Americans saw only a 1.94 percent increase.

Graduate schools saw similar results, with tenured Hispanic and Latino faculty rising 0.64 percent and African American tenured faculty increasing just 0.07 percent.

During the four-year period, tenured male faculty decreased at doctoral and graduate schools by 1.99 and 1.76 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, tenured female faculty at these institutions respectively increased by 1.99 and 1.76 percent.

“Despite concerted efforts, we really haven’t moved the needle that much in terms of ethno-racial and gender diversity,” Vasquez Heilig said, according to Inside Higher Ed. “Especially when you consider the growing population of communities of color in the United States, you haven’t resultantly seen the growth in faculty especially at the doctoral levels. Many institutions that are making the most noise -- the brand-name institutions -- have had some of the worst progress.”