Christian professor who criticized DEI wins battle for tenure at Michigan State U.

Internal documents reveal how administrators use “diversity checks” to influence the hiring process and engage in discrimination.


The College Fix

By Pedro Rodriguez-Aparicio

July 11, 2025


Civil rights group says school violated professor’s First Amendment rights


An accomplished nematologist now has tenure at Michigan State University after initially being passed over following her criticism of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”


Professor Marisol Quintanilla recently won tenure from the public university in Lansing after intervention from the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.


The civil rights group intervened after Quintanilla (pictured) failed to obtain tenure despite two decades of teaching experience and “21 peer-reviewed publications, over $6.2 million in grants, and 189 extension talks,” according to a news release.


The group argued in a January letter that the school discriminated against Quintanilla after she faced backlash in 2022 for criticizing DEI policies. She also declined to list her gender on university forms, “believing these questions implicitly endorsed ideological positions contrary to her faith.”


“FAIR’s advocacy for Dr. Marisol Quintanilla reflects our core commitment to protecting academic freedom and ensuring that faculty members can express their deeply held convictions without facing professional retaliation,” a spokesperson for the non-profit told The College Fix.


Michigan State U. said the letter did not lead to tenure.


“A letter from any outside organization would have no bearing on the review process,” spokeswoman Amber McCann told The Fix via email.

“Each submission for reappointment, promotion and tenure (RPT) review is considered on the merits of the case, according to university policy and procedure,” McCann said.


A free speech group who previously helped Professor Quintanilla called the resolution a “positive outcome.”


“The university cannot dictate a professor’s speech. It is a positive outcome that the university reversed course and offered the professor tenure,” Graham Piro with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression told The Fix on a phone call.


In 2023, the group helped Quintanilla when her department chair, Hannah Burrack, mandated the professor “write a DEI statement as part of her annual review.” Burrack also had asked Quintanilla to retract an article criticizing diversity initiatives.


The College Fix contacted Burrack via email on Thursday morning to ask for her side of the story, but she deferred to McCann, the university spokeswoman. She said DEI statements are not required for performance reviews.


Piro said the university did not act in alignment with previous court decisions, where courts sided with people who chose not to disclose their gender identities.


“It is worth noting that there is a decision from a 2006 Circuit Court of Appeals that was a violation of the professors first amendment right and expression of religion,” Piro told The Fix on behalf of the free speech group. “The court believed that addressing the student by their identity fell on the ideological side.”


“If there is a blanket requirement of the preferred pronouns it would be an infringement of the First Amendment right,” Piro said.

“Universities have the right to limit faculty speech in a particular way but a generic requirement that dictates how a faculty is addressed would not be allowed.”

Where Liberty and Learning Endure

June 29, 2026
As America commemorates 250 years of independence, we reflect on the enduring principles of liberty and learning that have defined Davidson College for nearly two centuries.

Bankruptcy and Higher Education

June 21, 2026
By Todd Zywicki The Wall Street Journal June 21, 2026 Auburn University is known for its agricultural and STEM programs, its flight school and athletic programs. But the land-grant university recently became notable for another reason: The board of trustees is taking control of the school back from its faculty. The board began seizing the university’s academic programs—including curriculum, course offerings, degree requirements and academic credentials—at its June 5 meeting. The board also dissolved the faculty senate and replaced it with an advisory council to the president, which includes two faculty members from each of the university’s colleges and additional members appointed by the president. The board’s assertion of authority mirrors incoming mandates by the Alabama Legislature restricting the role of faculty senates in the state’s public university system. Predictably, Auburn’s faculty has responded with howls of outrage, decrying these intrusions on the faculty’s authority over academic operations. How could outsiders appointed through a political process have the expertise to make such delicate decisions? I’ve been a professor at a state university for almost 30 years, and I am sympathetic up to a point. But before becoming a professor I was a bankruptcy lawyer. And bankruptcy law teaches an important lesson for how academia can respond to this moment. Bankruptcy gives businesses an opportunity to admit mistakes, reform and emerge stronger. Successful enterprises don’t need bankruptcy lawyers. But when an enterprise loses its way, it goes into receivership. Most universities aren’t financially bankrupt but have lost their mission and direction. Society has long recognized certain institutions’ authority to manage their own affairs. Two notable examples are licensed professionals—such as doctors and lawyers—and universities. Universities, even state universities, have run their enterprises with minimal external oversight. Faculties enjoyed substantial rights of self-governance because they committed to higher standards than those required by ordinary jobs. Professors would establish and maintain standards of scholarly integrity, freedom of speech and inquiry, and rigorous dedication to merit-based assessment of research in specialized areas. They policed their own house, enforcing norms of truth-seeking, maintaining scholarly integrity and rigor, and ensuring that students emerged with basic knowledge, employable skills and civic competency. But over the past several decades, commitment to those values collapsed. Surveys by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression consistently reveal fear among students and faculty around expressing unfashionable ideas. Universities have seen shout-downs, cancellations and even violence against speakers. Merit and quality yielded to “diversity” and “equity.” Truth-seeking has been displaced by faddish theories and ideologically charged teaching and research. Professors design esoteric departments and teach niche classes to cliques of activist students while the needs of other students and taxpayers for real education go unaddressed. Like companies I represented, universities have lost their way. And many have proved either unable or unwilling to self-correct. When that happens, it is appropriate to put institutions into receivership until they reform and rededicate themselves to their mission. At Auburn incoming students must now take certain required civics and history courses to master basic competency in U.S. history and government. To ensure the classes actually meet that objective, professors will have to make their syllabi publicly available. In the classroom, instructors will be expected to stick to the matter at hand and avoid free-ranging political punditry. Just as other companies can learn from the ones that go bankrupt, other institutions of higher education can learn something from Auburn: Fix what’s broken, or someone else might fix it for you. Mr. Zywicki is a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. He was a Dartmouth College trustee, 2005-09. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bankruptcy-and-higher-education-4c2b178e

Race Preferences Are Falling Nationwide

June 19, 2026
By the Editorial Board The Wall Street Journal June 19, 2026 The Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against racial preferences is turning out to be a landmark with profound consequences as its influence spreads. On Thursday the famously progressive Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a state program that issued scholarships based on race violates the U.S. Constitution. Justice Annette Ziegler wrote for the court that the Constitution requires “that every person ‘must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,’” and that the state cannot “use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.” That must have been painful for the activist liberal majority on the court. In a concurrence, Wisconsin Chief Justice Jill Karofsky took some shots at Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College (2023) before acknowledging that “I am bound by the precedent set forth in SFFA” and other Supreme Court rulings “when interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment.” The case was brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty against a 1985 Badger State law that reserved need-based scholarships through a grant program for “Black American,” “American Indian,” “Hispanic” and some Southeast Asian undergraduate students enrolled in Wisconsin’s private and technical colleges. Last week the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a scholarship program earmarked for black University of Iowa students studying physical sciences was “impracticable” under SFFA. State governments would be wise to repeal these discriminatory grant programs, or the courts will do it for them.
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