{"id":4162,"date":"2023-07-10T23:56:35","date_gmt":"2023-07-10T23:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=4162"},"modified":"2023-07-11T00:05:05","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T00:05:05","slug":"irgs-cio-exposes-uw-madisons-unconstitutional-faculty-hiring-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=4162","title":{"rendered":"IRG\u2019s CIO Exposes UW-Madison\u2019s Unconstitutional Faculty Hiring Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/reforminggovernment.org\/irgs-cio-exposes-uw-madisons-unconstitutional-faculty-hiring-program\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

IRG\u2019s CIO Exposes UW-Madison\u2019s Unconstitutional Faculty Hiring Program<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Report Highlighted in\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/a>\u00a0Exposes TOP Program and demands answers and full transparency from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<\/em><\/h4>\n
WHAT IS IT<\/span><\/strong><\/u>: IRG\u2019s Center of Investigative Oversight\u2019s report highlights new records, obtained by IRG<\/a>, that thoroughly document\u00a0UW-Madison\u2019s unconstitutional, highly race-conscious, faculty hiring initiative called the Target of Opportunity Program<\/strong>.<\/span><\/div>\n


WHY DOES IT MATTER<\/strong><\/u>: UW-Madison\u2019s Target of Opportunity Program (or the \u201cTOP program\u201d) permits the university to hire and specially fund applicants to the school\u2019s faculty partly on the basis of race.\u00a0This is incompatible with the recent United States Supreme Court case striking down affirmative action.<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n


WHAT\u2019S NEXT<\/strong><\/u>: The Legislature intends to address race-conscious state programs in the fall. This MUST include correcting the TOP program and faculty hiring processes. Wisconsin taxpayers should not be required to subsidize a university that engages in open and pervasive racial discrimination in hiring.<\/span><\/p>\n


\u201cThe Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard reaffirmed the court\u2019s view that race-based governmental decision-making as a general matter is hardly ever permissible. Universities hoping to escape constitutional scrutiny won\u2019t be able merely to change their admissions practices. Affirmative action in faculty hiring is the next frontier in Equal Protection Clause litigation.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n


The University of Wisconsin-Madison, the flagship of the UW system, proudly operates the so-called Target of Opportunity Program (TOP). It allows academic departments to obtain waivers from the requirement to post job positions publicly and instead hire \u201cdiverse\u201d candidates directly. The university provides the irresistible incentive of salary funding for approved hires. Public records of internal TOP requests obtained by my group, the Institute for Reforming Government, show blatant, widespread and pernicious racial classification of faculty applicants that is difficult to reconcile with the Supreme Court\u2019s recent decision.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n


Similar to Harvard\u2019s and the University of North Carolina\u2019s admissions policies, the actions of several UW departments approximated racial balancing, which the court called \u201cpatently unconstitutional.\u201d The university\u2019s business school supported its proposal for TOP funding with a helpful chart showing faculty race by percentage with categories such as \u201cAsian,\u201d \u201cWhite,\u201d and \u201cAfrican American\u201d and expressed a desire that faculty and student racial diversification proceed \u201cat the same rate.\u201d The school of medicine and public health argued that a targeted hire was necessary in part because \u201cthere are only 4.2% of dermatologists of Hispanic origin compared with 16.3% in the general American population.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n


\u201cAs recently as five years ago,\u201d boasted the department of gender and women\u2019s studies in another TOP proposal, \u201cour department had only one faculty member who identified as a person of color. Through targeted recruiting and lucky opportunities, roughly 30 percent of our faculty now so identify.\u201d Perhaps those recruits whose race unlocked a separate hiring track felt lucky. It\u2019s doubtful the rest of the applicants did\u2026\u2026\u2026.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n


Wisconsin\u2019s public deserves full transparency regarding the operation of the TOP program and its constitutionality; if it cannot be defended, it should be ended.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/reforminggovernment.org\/irgs-cio-exposes-uw-madisons-unconstitutional-faculty-hiring-program\/ IRG\u2019s CIO Exposes UW-Madison\u2019s Unconstitutional Faculty Hiring Program Report…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":4164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-institute-for-reforming-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4162"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4165,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162\/revisions\/4165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}