This is dedicated to “Senator” J.D. Vance who now ignorantly assaults his alma mater on the basis of an ignorant, ideologically-driven Wall Street Journal Opinion Essay. Despite his OSU BA and Yale law degrees, Vance writes to OSU’s incoming, not yet in office president Top Gun Carter, not to the acting president in office. Of course, all this is only for show…. Never for tell….
The contradictions are incalculable. The right-wing—not conversative—National Association of Scholars joins forces with their ideological partners in the shameless Opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal to attack The Ohio State University baselessly. While this will thrill Sen. Jerry Cirino when he finds a literate person to read it to him, and amuse the Board of Trustees, it will rattle the ghost of Salmon P. Chase whose memory is deeply insulted by its association with OSU’s new anti-diversity center.
Knowing nothing about Ohio State or higher education in theory or practice, NAS paid agent John Sailer published an OpEd—not a “report” as the right ring media circus falsely advertises it—“Inside Ohio State’s DEI Factory” in the notoriously anti-factual and biased Wall Street Journal Opinion page (not to be confused with the rest of the reputable conversative newspaper) on Nov. 20, 2023. Subtitled, “I obtained 800 pages of Diversity Faculty Recruitment Reports. Here’s What I Found,” graduate school dropout Sailer presents a tiny number of quotations without any attention to the basics of their representativeness or context, let alone logic or expression.
Having learned nothing about either academic or journalistic standards or ethics, Sailer also knows nothing about the goals or practices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. His undergraduate and incomplete graduate education taught him nothing about basic research methods, elementary logic, or honesty.
Nor does he know what “factory” means. (See also his “Ohio State Reports: DEI Litmus Tests,” National Association of Scholars, Nov. 21, 2023; and earlier in “Faculty-Packing at Ohio State,” MindingCampus, Feb. 2, 2023; amplified by advance notice in Jennifer Kabbany, “Ohio state University prioritized DEI over merit in hiring, documents show,” TheCollegeFix, Nov. 20, 2023. This is clearly an organized campaign of disinformation.)
Sailer and NAS obtained 800 pages of academic search committee Faculty Diversity Committee Reports via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. They are unaware that OSU most often ignores all such requests, especially from Columbus and Ohio major media despite their legal obligations as a state public institution. This is well known. OSU’s notorious Office of Legal Affairs and its spokespersons withhold information especially when there is any suspicion that its release may hurt the university.
It is therefore noteworthy that OSU responded—at least selectively (800 pages out of how many? Which 800 pages?)—to the NAS filing—when they ignore, for example, the Columbus Dispatch and others. What is OSU’s strategy in this case?
Of course, Sailer has no interest in either the completeness or the representativeness of the material he received. Truth and integrity are not his goals.
Sailer selects four examples—out of how many?—to pursue his radical right-wing rhetorical distortion game. He selects a few phrases from isolated, recorded comments on searches for faculty in Synoptic Meteorology, Music Theory, History of Architecture and the Built Environment, and Military History. In search case, he presents a few words that he finds objectionable. Not one of them proves his illogical ideological point.
Let us turn to basic facts:
- Especially prior to the summer 2023 anti-Constitutional Supreme Court ruling on the use of race in university admissions, but still true today, OSU searches considering Diversity Statements as one factor among others are completely legal. There is nothing untoward about it. Nor about the out of context snippets that Sailer shares.
- The information that Sailer obtained is completely anecdotal and therefore limited in usefulness and generalizability. That should be obvious to any scholar and most others. But is not to him, his publisher, or his echoers.
- Sailer does not and cannot demonstrate that any highly qualified candidates were eliminated on unfair or fallacious grounds. This evidence simply does not permit that conclusion.
- Sailer cannot prove from his documents that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were more powerful factors than scholarship, teaching, etc., in determining search committee’s recommendations. The documentation does not permit that despite his wild claims to the contrary.
- There is no evidence that the candidates who were not recommended would not have been eliminated on other factors and other evidence than the snippets that Sailer presents with no regard to their context or representativeness of the entire record or the demands of each particular search. His radical selectivity is unacceptable.
- There is no evidence that either these four examples of radically different fields of study or even the entire 800 pages are representative of OSU faculty hiring overall. Sailer, NAS, and WSJ Opinion pages have no interest in that reality.
- How many of these search committee recommendations were followed by department chairs, deans, provosts? In other words, did they, or did they not have an impact?
Sailer repeatedly undercuts his own false efforts at exposing what may well not be a problem. The 800 pages from only one part of searches are in no way “exhaustive,” as he claims.
That OSU’s Board of Trustees, following national right-wing currents, eliminated required (but not optional or voluntary) Diversity statements from most faculty job search applicants in April 2023 in no ways sustains Sailer’s statement: “Thus after heavily employing them to assess thousands of job applicants, the university now implicitly acknowledges that diversity statements are a bad idea.” That simply does not follow. Yet Sailer claims to have studied philosophy.
If Sailer, NAS, or WSJ journal had actually investigated OSU, they would have learned that in a special initiative much touted by the former president who was ordered to resign by the broad of Trustees and the about to depart provost, OSU made almost 40 special diversity hires in 2022. Are they counted among the 800 pages? What bearing do they have on the fallacious assault on OSU hiring?
Moreover, Sailer et al seem aware that OSU’s Black admissions and enrollment fall continuously for years, with their decline accelerating at the same time as the only Black president, Michael Drake, spouted endless slogans to the contrary. The problem is so severe that the DEI-hired Vice Provost for Strategic Enrollment actively and dishonestly attempted to hide the fact by confusing rising international, mainly master’s degree students (also known as “cash cows because of their higher tuition and fees), with declining percentages of Black and Latinx admissions and enrollments. That stands out among OSU actual DEI problems. The university has failed, not advanced diversity. It is not accidental that OSU’s relevant officers are called DI, not DEI. OSU has never embraced equity.
OSU’s greatest “achievement,” so to speak, in DEI—or is it DI—is its seemingly endless numbers of DEI officers across the campus. They lack qualifications, goals, organization, and communication.
This is demonstrated most strikingly in the swollen ranks of assistant and associate vice presidents and vice provosts. Many without publicly available job description or annual reports, their numbers, rates of increase, and ratio of salaries to faculty pay far exceed those of declining levels of full-time tenure track faculty.
The OSU Faculty Senate has documented this in detail on several occasions. Neither the administration nor the Trustees have responded.
Sailer, NAS, and WSJ have no interest in realities that affect actual teaching, learning, research, or civic contributions. Only the pursuit of ideological domination. In that, they have the support of the State of Ohio.
References: Essays by Harvey J. Graff
“The United States’ most disorganized university? Ohio State’s ‘5½ D’s’: Disorganization,
dysfunction, disengagement, depression, dishonest, and undisciplined, Part One,” Bustin Myths, Columbus Free Press, Aug. 28, 2022
“The United States’ most disorganized university? Ohio State’s ‘5½ D’s’: Disorganization, dysfunction, disengagement, depression, dishonest, and undisciplined, Part Two,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Aug. 31, 2022
“The OSU Way: Slogans over Truth and Honesty in Graduation Rates and Student Well-Being,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Oct. 27, 2022
“How universities fail their students: The president may be ‘born to be a Buckeye,’ but the students are not. A call to eliminate Offices of Student Life and invest directly in students’ lives,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov. 10, 2022
“University bragging rights: OSU whimpers but doesn’t bite or swallow,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov. 27, 2022
“The Ohio State University: Not ‘a failed presidency,’ by itself, but a failing university, Part One,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Jan. 7, 2023
“The Ohio State University: Not ‘a failed presidency,’ by itself, but a failing university, Part Two,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Jan. 11, 2023
“Lawmakers rush to cancel public higher education in Ohio,” Cincinnati Enquirer, Apr. 19, 2023
“Lawless, Unsafe, and Dirty: The Dying University District.” Busting Myths, Columbus Free
Press, May 2, 2023
“Ohio State University and its Dying University District: The Oval and the Campus
Beyond,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, May 5, 2023
“Mike DeWine’s right wing Republican Party and the destruction of public higher
education in Ohio,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, June 14, 2023
“The 150-year-old, 90,000 student-staff-and faculty university that won’t grow up: The
Ohio State University Buckeyes led by Brutus Buckeye, Part One,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Aug. 23, 2023
“Sen. Cirino versus students’ right to learn,” Letter to the Editor, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Aug.
24, 2024
“The Ohio State University Fumbles Again: The Board of Trustees who have no understanding of higher education selects the most unqualified campus president in modern American university history,” Columbus Free Press. Aug. 26, 2023
“The 150-year-old, 90,000 student-staff-and faculty university that won’t grow up: The
Ohio State University Buckeyes led by Brutus Buckeye, Part Two,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Aug. 30, 2023
“State Senator Jerry Cirino versus the State of Ohio, Public Higher Education, Free
Speech and Academic Freedom, and Students’ Right to Learn,” Busting Myths,
Columbus Free Press, Sept. 5, 2023
“Slogan University Revisited. When did Offices of Compliance and Integrity [sic]. Student
Life, Student Conduct, Campus Safety become just the opposite? The example of one of the largest U.S. universities, Part One,” Columbus Free Press, Nov. 14, 2023
“Slogan University Revisited. When did Offices of Compliance and Integrity [sic]. Student
Life, Student Conduct, Campus Safety become just the opposite? The example of one of the largest U.S. universities,” Part Two, Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, Nov. 19, 2023
“How can you have an ‘intellectual diversity center’ [sic] when the center has no
intellectual diversity? The Ohio State University turns harder right at the orders of the anti-democratic Ohio State Legislature and anti-intellectual Board of Trustees,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press, 2023
“How not to conduct presidential searches, over and over? The example of one major
public university: The Ohio State University,” Busting Myths, Columbus Free Press,
2023
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Harvey J. Graff is Professor Emeritus of English and History, inaugural Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies, and Academy Professor, Ohio State University. Author of many books on literacy, children and youth, cities, and interdisciplinarity, most recently he published Searching for Literacy: The Social and Intellectual Origins of Literacy Studies (2022). My Life with Literacy: The Continuing Education of a Historian. The Intersections of the Personal, the Political, the Academic, and Place is forthcoming. “Reconstructing the new ‘uni-versity’ from the ashes of the ‘multi- and mega-versity’” is in progress. He is also editing Changing Paths of Academic Lives: Revising How We Understand Higher Education/Universities, 1960s to 2020s and Beyond, a collection of original essays.
