Universities as Corporate Criminals

1,587 words

Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.
— William Shakespeare

I have written about the pervasive ideological subversion of American universities and the corruption and hypocrisy that is rampant in higher education in previous ^[3] Counter-Currents ^[4] posts ^[5]. Universities are the fons et origo of the racial madness sweeping through our institutions.

A recent article in the Daily Mail ^[6] caught my attention. It detailed the salaries of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) personnel at the University of Virginia (UVA). DEI staffers make up a bloated administrative corpus of approximately 230 individuals. Some are full time while others are high-level administrators, such as Associate Dean Martin Davidson. The “Global Chief Diversity Officer” title raises his annual compensation package to almost $600,000, a striking anomaly for which no plausible explanation can be given other than institutional bribery.

I challenge any inquisitive reader to peruse below the “professional” titles of these top ten wage-earners [sic] and not conclude that they are composed of vague and meaningless abstractions, the purpose being to connote high status and render the holders completely unaccountable for whatever it is that they pretend to do. What “global” entity, one might ask, is Martin Davidson “chief” of? What does the VP for “Community Partnerships” do that is different from what the “Chief Diversity and Community Engagement Officer” and the “Assistant Dean for Community Engagement and Equity” do? Why can’t the procurement and supplying of “Diversity Services,” whatever those might be, be carried out by the regular university procurement staff? What does the “Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion” do that the “Senior Assistant Dean, DEI” doesn’t do? Finally, for those whose who have not reached the limits of bewilderment or disgust upon contemplating such malfeasance: What does the Global Chief Diversity Officer do that is left undone by all of his flunky underlings? ^[7]

There are two relevant observations missing from this article’s valiant muckraking efforts, however, that make what it is about scandalous and damning on a much greater order of magnitude.

The first is that the “diversity” payola boondoggle featured here is standard fare at most every American university and college. The more prestigious the institution, the more egregious and outrageous the scam. All of the flagship state universities — The Ohio State University, University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin, etc. — do what UVA does. Some even do it “better.”

Mark J. Perry, Professor Emeritus at The University of Michigan, recently released his University of Michigan 2023-2024 Diversity Report Summary ^[8]. Here is an excerpt from the Executive Summary that makes the DEI grifters at UVA look like rank amateurs:

UM employs at least 241 paid staff members whose main duties are to provide DEI programming and services as either their exclusive or primary job responsibility. In addition, 76 faculty or staff members work part-time as “DEI Unit Leads” advancing diversity efforts in one of UM’s 51 schools, colleges, and units that are a key part of . . . [a] new 5-year diversity plan called The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) 2.0 Plan ^[9]. We did not include the salaries of the part-time “DEI Unit Leads” to calculate the annual cost of DEI at UM, but did include them in the list of DEI-related staff members . . . which brings the total DEI headcount to 317 employees . . . [W]e believe that the actual number of DEI staff . . . is actually significantly higher than 317, and likely exceeds 500 employees.

The total annual payroll of UM’s full-time DEI staff is estimated to be $30.68 million — $23.24 million for staff salaries and $7.44 million for employee fringe benefits. To put that in perspective, $30.68 million would pay in-state tuition and fees ($17,228 ^[10]) for 1,781 undergraduate students . . . DEI staff is well compensated with salaries as high as $402,800 for . . . head diversity administrator Tabbye Chavous Sellers ^[11] . . . Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion & Chief Diversity Officer.

Chavous Sellers succeeded her husband, Robert M. Sellers ^[12], in this prestigious position, just coincidentally. Sellers is an educational psychology professor whose “expertise,” you would be shocked to learn, is in “racial and ethnic identity, personality and health.” When Sellers’ ample keister recently warmed that VP chair, he, too, was making around a half-million bucks a year. You can be certain that the process by which Frau Sellers replaced Herr Sellers was a model of Wolverine transparency.

The DEI Strategic Plan Team ^[11] at the Ann Arbor campus is a dusky troika composed of a “Program Manager” – aka secretary ($70,000) — a “Senior Program Manager” ($83,146), and a “Strategic Communications Manager” ($94,500). “Associate VPs,” “assistant VPs,” and “directors” abound. The well-worn, bureaucratically opaque lingo that describes what any of the DEI staff actually do reads like a mind-numbing collection of tautologies and dead ends, one and all. Consider, for example, Assistant Vice Provost for Equity, Inclusion and Academic Affairs Deborah S. Willis, who scrapes by on $161,762.00 a year.

“[S]he works [sic] with the leadership team to develop strategy and tactics that lead to institutional transformation around diversity, equity, inclusion . . .” So, Diversity-Deborah’s job is to transform the place around — what is it? Ah, I almost forgot: “diversity.” “Transformation” is one of those virtue-signaling buzzwords used to cast a priestly cloak of sanctimony over the mau-mauing ^[17] that diversity commissars use to intimidate would be micro-aggressors and demand more resources from cowering administers.

Looking on the website at these diversity desk jockeys and their bogus titles, what the feeding trough known as the Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion is all about can be expressed with that illuminating mother of all “diversity” tautologies: “Diversity is wonderful because it’s so wonderful to be diverse.”

The second observation is that DEI personnel and the university administrators who insert them into highly-remunerated positions of power are complicit in activities that resemble those of organized crime. I am speaking here of extortion in the form of a protection racket. This is the point where cynicism trumps ideology. The administrators and the diversity chiefs they hire know that “diversity” as a profession is a hustle with all the incentives aimed at making “diversity” impossible to achieve without ever-more resources that are never enough. With the tens of millions poured into diversity staff and initiatives over the years everywhere, is there anywhere where an acceptable level of diversity has been achieved — where “racism” and “white privilege” have not gotten worse? “Diversity” workers need “racists” to justify their paychecks, which is why “racism” is the “gift that keeps on giving.” “True diversity,” like the Second Coming, is always far in the future.

The racketeering modus operandi works something like this. A university president hires a “Diversity VP” with a huge salary and perks for “protection” purposes, similar to a business owner paying regular installments to the local mafia in exchange for them not burning down his store. The VP then is green-lighted to build a pyramid of “diversity” personnel with him perched at the top and given carte blanche to meddle wherever he chooses. The pyramid functions public relations-wise as evidence that the administration really cares about “diversity” and believes that “racism” must never be permitted to rear its ugly head on campus . . . for long. The bigger the pyramid, the more the meddling and the more it shows how deeply the bosses care and that outing “racists” is the highest priority. In exchange for the fat salary, the perks, and the bossing-around carte blanche, the Diversity Chief “protects” his employer by orchestrating a perpetual reign of terror that he keeps on a slow boil. It enforces the DEI orthodoxy, punishes and/or expels heretics, keeps the slush funds coming, and holds the frothing-at-the-mouth, affirmative action faculty and students at bay.

Stripping away the vacuous “diversity talk,” the religious piety surrounding the quest for “equality,” and the pretend anguish of oppression and exploitation, what remains is an old-fashioned shakedown. The $30 million a year that The University of Michigan pays to keep hundreds of people in fake jobs is a spectacular example of the kind of racial racketeering that goes on unobstructed at universities across the land. It uses the threat of “racism” to extort institutional power and control from the bosses, along with high salaries. No one at these institutions benefits from these payoffs other than the “morality enforcers” and their wards. For the administrators, it’s the cost of doing business subtracted from the bottom line: payoffs to keep the in-house goons from disrupting their operations.

A personal, relevant anecdote. Years ago, while employed at a second-tier state university, I sat in a university-wide presentation and Q&A session for a finalist for the position of Vice President for Diversity and Equity. Near the end, I raised my hand and asked her: “If you were appointed to this position, after occupying it for five years, how would you know if you were successful?” She paused and looked extremely uncomfortable. It seemed like a reasonable question to me. Her answer was so pathetically incoherent, I am unable to reproduce it. As I recall, she was a white woman. A black guy got the job.

While I don’t have the data to prove it, I strongly suspect that the average length of stay in a Chief Diversity job at a university is pretty short, with the time mostly spent polishing the resume for the next move . . . up.

For anyone paying attention to the “transformation” of American universities “around diversity, equity, inclusion,” the people running them are looking increasingly like corporate criminals.