Another DEI Higher Ed Lawsuit in California

A third lawsuit regarding DEI statements at California higher ed institutions was profiled in Inside Higher Ed yesterday. This one is at a community college. The other two are at a community college and a UC campus. As we have suggested, the likely outcome of these lawsuits - and others that may be filed - is that the DEI requred statements will be watered down, much as the old loyalty oath of the 1950s was watered down into a bland pledge to support the state constitution.

Two lawsuits filed by California community college professors take aim at rules recently instituted by the state’s community college system intended to ensure employees uphold diversity, equity, inclusion and access principles. The professors say the rules infringe on their First Amendment rights and require them to incorporate ideologies they don’t support in their work or risk losing their jobs. District and system leaders argue the regulations don’t curtail professors’ free speech and are a valid expression of the system’s values as it tries to better serve a diverse student body.

The rules, which were proposed by the chancellor’s office and took effect in the spring, set “a DEIA competency and criteria framework that can serve as a minimum standard for evaluating all California Community College employees,” according to a May 2023 memorandum from system leaders offering guidance on the rules. Districts have until Oct. 13 to incorporate the rules into their own employee review policies. The chancellor’s office published three guidance documents to demystify the regulatory changes, including a list of criteria for employees to meet the standards, an explanation of how these principles can be incorporated into the classroom and a glossary of relevant terms, including words such as “intersectionality” and “antiracism.”**

“The evaluation of district employees must include consideration of an employee’s demonstrated, or progress toward, proficiency in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility … competencies that enable work with diverse communities,” the memo reads. “District employees must have or establish proficiency in DEIA-related performance to teach, work, or lead within California community colleges.” The lawsuits taking issue with the rules quickly emerged. One was filed by a Bakersfield College professor and another by a group of professors working at colleges in the State Center Community College District in the Fresno area.

Daymon Johnson, a history professor at Bakersfield College, represented by the Institute for Free Speech, an advocacy organization, filed an amended lawsuit against Bakersfield College and Kern Community College District administrators in June alleging they penalized him and other professors for espousing conservative political and social values and chilled his free speech. The lawsuit suggests college and district leaders were acting on the system’s mandate and asks that administrators be prevented from investigating or disciplining Johnson for expressing his opinions and that the systemwide rules be struck down as unconstitutional.

Johnson is the faculty lead for the Renegade Institute for Liberty, which describes itself as a faculty coalition at Bakersfield College “dedicated to the free speech, open inquiry, critical thinking to advance American ideals within the broader Western tradition of meritocracy, individual agency, civic virtue, liberty of conscience and free markets.” His predecessor in that role, Matthew Garrett, was fired from Bakersfield in April. Garrett believed he was terminated for expressing right-leaning views. Administrators denied this and charged him with a list of offenses outlined in a lengthy report, including “immoral” and “unprofessional” conduct, “dishonesty,” and “unsatisfactory performance.”

Johnson wrote in a declaration to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California that the Kern Community College District investigated a colleague’s complaint about a comment he posted on the institute’s Facebook page, causing him to have retired professors take over managing the page. “Fearing retribution by Bakersfield College officials should I speak my mind on social and political matters, I self-censor,” Johnson said in his declaration.

===

Note: The case is at https://www.ifs.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/001-0-complaint.pdf

===

Alan Gura, lead counsel and vice president for litigation at the Institute for Free Speech, said it’s already “concerning when you have a college professor who is afraid for his job because the school has decided that … making political statements, speaking one’s mind is suddenly considered to be unprofessional conduct, qualified grounds for termination,” but the systemwide rules show “the school adopting an official ideology where everything must be conformed to this new religion DEI,” which he called a “political cult.”

A spokesperson for the Kern Community College District said Johnson’s claims are “without merit.” ...

[The article then goes on to describe other lawsuits including one against Florida's "Stop WOKE Act."]

The Florida law would make it so that “professors can’t teach antiracism, intersectionality, these concepts,” while the California community college system’s DEIA rules insist they do... “The state of California or the state of Florida can’t come in and force professors to endorse their viewpoint or ban them from expressing ideas to the contrary. That’s really what it’s about.”

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/diversity/race-ethnicity/2023/10/03/california-community-college-professors-sue-over-dei-rules [also UC Daily News Clips 10-3-23] 

====

*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/09/sturm-und-drang.html; http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/08/more-on-loyalty-oaths.html; http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/05/diversity-lawsuit.html; http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/08/uc-history-loyalty-oath.html.

====

**Whatever the merits are in these situations, university administrators would do well to avoid academic in-speak. It's not the way people talk except in narrow circles. When it's parodied on otherwise non-political national TV, you know you have a problem:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSw72ju6h0Q.