Sian Beilock, the President of Dartmouth, just wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling to "re-center higher education on learning rather than political posturing" and to "emphasize equal opportunity, not equal outcomes."

This is disingenuous horseshit. Dartmouth was (and continues to be) one of the more discriminatory institutions I encountered in my research. Since Beilock took over in 2023, Dartmouth College has hired 51 assistant professors, of whom just four are white American men (7.8%). This isn't confined to the humanities, where everyone knows the score -- somehow it manages to span the hard and soft sciences alike.

Doctor, heal thyself.

The Mellon to Postdoc Fellows program,which has seeded a couple dozen highly politicized assistant professorships over the past decade, and none (as far as I can tell) to a single white man, is still very much alive. Here are the latest postings:

• Department of Art History, with specialization in either of these two fields: 1. Trans-Pacific global exchanges between Polynesian/Melanesian cultures in Oceania, the Americas, Africa, or Europe; 2. Asian/American art history and its related diasporas from any chronological period that extends the category of Asian/American art and examines its historical depth and heterogeneity. For both of these fields, we will prioritize candidates whose work is informed by queer studies, transcultural approaches, and/or digital humanities methods.

• Department of Classics, with specialization in any of these fields: Comparative slavery studies in ancient cultures broadly defined (e.g. Egypt, Mesopotamia, China); Queer studies; Disability studies; Critical reception studies (e.g. Africana receptions, Luso-Hispanic, Asian/Asian-American). For all of these fields, we will prioritize candidates whose research is informed by digital humanities methods.

The Art History posting makes clear they want an Asian or Pacific Islander art historian. But it's Classics that should attract the attention of the EEOC. They're not looking for a "Luso-Hispanic" classicist to fill a specific curricular gap. No — they're looking for candidates who specialize in "Africana receptions, Luso-Hispanic, Asian/Asian-American." In other words: literally anyone who isn't white (of course, queer and disability studies preferred).

“Research funding, faculty hiring and academic recognition should be grounded in scholarly excellence, not ideological litmus tests,” Beilock writes. This is as political as it gets, an ideological litmus test par excellence.

Sue them. See what comes up in discovery.