Your Cart is Empty
John D. Sailer, Forest Romm
City Journal
Last fall, the University of California announced that it would sunset a key diversity-hiring initiative tied to its President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP). Less than two weeks later, the UC system reversed course, cowed by a backlash led by the very “scholar-activists” whom the program had spent four decades and more than $162 million cultivating. The episode offers a sobering lesson for reformers: when a university sustains an agenda long enough, that agenda becomes self-sustaining.
The PPFP functions as a social-justice career accelerator—and a kind of side-door to the faculty lounge. Through the program, UC hires postdoctoral fellows with a heavy emphasis on DEI, and the postdocs then get special favor for tenure-track faculty jobs.
Comments will be approved before showing up.
For the good of the Nation, university leadership must seize this occasion to drive essential reforms—a process some began by adopting positions of institutional neutrality and improving policies related to campus protests. Before the end of 2026, I call on every postsecondary institution to describe to the American public your commitments to rigorous teaching, pathbreaking research, and national service—commitments that make our universities a bedrock institution of the American republic.
Now the administration is back with Compact 2.0, formally titled "A National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards." It includes some rhetorical flourishes intended to make it seem less threatening to teaching, learning and research. But make no mistake: It once again asks colleges and universities to align themselves with a far-right agenda at the expense of students’ education and the public’s well-being.
