The NIH Sacrifices Scientific Rigor for DEI

Its First program pushes institutions to hire medical researchers based on their ideological commitment.

By John Sailer

The Wall Street Journal

March 12, 2024


Thanks to a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Cornell University is able to support several professors in fields including genetics, computational biology and neurobiology. In its funding proposal, the university emphasizes a strange metric for evaluating hard scientists: Each applicant’s “statement on contribution to diversity” was to “receive significant weight in the evaluation.”


It might seem counterintuitive to prioritize “diversity statements” while hiring neurobiologists—but not at the NIH. The agency for several years has pushed this practice across the country through its Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation program—First for short—which funds diversity-focused faculty hiring in the biomedical sciences.

Through dozens of public-records requests, I have acquired thousands of pages of documents related to the program—grant proposals, emails, hiring rubrics and more. The information reveals how the NIH enforces an ideological agenda, prompting universities and medical schools to vet potential biomedical scientists for wrongthink regarding diversity.


The First program requires all grant recipients to use “diversity statements” for their newly funded hires. Northwestern University suggests it will adapt a diversity-statement rubric created by the University of California, Berkeley. It isn’t alone. A year ago I acquired the rubrics used by the NIH First programs at the University of South Carolina and the University of New Mexico, which I discussed in these pages. Both used Berkeley’s rubric almost verbatim.


That rubric penalizes job candidates for espousing colorblind equality and gives low scores to those who say they intend to “treat everyone the same.” It likewise docks candidates who express skepticism about the practice of dividing students and faculty into racially segregated “affinity groups.”


These responses aren’t merely administrative; the requirements carry serious weight throughout the NIH First programs, often valued on par with conventional measures of academic excellence. The University of Alabama at Birmingham and Tuskegee University jointly received an NIH grant in 2021 to hire researchers studying cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The institutions noted in their proposal that “the statement of diversity will be heavily weighted during the selection process.”


Other programs have sought to redefine excellence with an ideological gloss. As a part of its First program, San Diego State University required search committee members to attend an “equity-minded hiring” seminar. A handout for the program discusses redefining the concept of “merit” by incorporating such “equity-minded” indicators as an education in social justice and “experience acting as an equity advocate.” Another handout, an applicant screening tool, prompts hiring committees to assess whether scientists are “critically conscious,” that is, whether they have “the ability to speak with complexity” on DEI.


The records underscore that scientists simply can’t get hired in the program without an outstanding DEI score. Northwestern’s grant progress report describes an evaluation rubric that equally weighs a “commitment to diversity” and research potential—a remarkable value judgment for a program focused on cancer, cardiovascular health and neuroscience.

The priority is especially troubling given what DEI programs typically entail. The University of South Carolina promises to integrate critical race theory into its program’s design and to emulate activist public-health scholars in their “efforts to bring critical race theory to the forefront of society.”


Others, like Drexel University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, fully embrace the language of left-wing identity politics. “Our culture and climate,” Northwestern’s proposal confesses, “was founded on values and ideas of White, Eurocentric males and perpetuated by structures that enable continued marginalization of URG”—underrepresented group—“faculty.” The program promises to create “Safe Space Ambassadors” to host discussions on topics like “navigating intersectional workplace oppressions.”



Lawmakers have begun to push back against DEI in general and diversity statements in particular. The University of North Carolina Board of Governors has effectively banned the use of such statements, as have legislators in Texas, Florida and Utah. Even liberal professors have argued that diversity statements amount to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

Yet with the NIH’s help, the policy persists in red and blue states. The University of New Mexico’s program, which focuses on neuroscience and data science, devotes a third of the points on its applicant screening rubric to criteria such as “DEI Knowledge” and “DEI Track Record.” Florida State University’s program, which has hired faculty in psychology and nursing, devotes 28% of its rubric to DEI.


The latter example raises questions about compliance with anti-DEI laws. In June 2023, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation banning both diversity statements and DEI offices at state universities. That month the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center received NIH First grants after declaring in their joint proposal: “Our goal is to become the public face of DEI for the Dallas metro area, and as a model for the nation.”


The agency’s program wields influence even beyond the institutions it funds. Tufts University’s Provost Caroline Genco spearheaded an application for the NIH First program in 2021. Tufts evidently didn’t get the funding but has nevertheless announced a universitywide DEI-themed cluster hire, led in part by Ms. Genco. Ohio State University, the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and the University of Cincinnati likewise applied for the program, didn’t receive funding, but pursued DEI-focused cohort hires anyway.


The NIH First program matters because it supports biomedical researchers and thus biomedical science. In medical research, lives depend on putting excellence first. The NIH distorts that value, subordinating it to political ideology and endangering those it’s supposed to serve.


Mr. Sailer is a senior fellow at the National Association of Scholars.

City Journal College Ranking -Davidson Results

December 10, 2025
Written by John Craig December 10, 2025 On October 27, the Manhattan Institution’s City Journal published a major, breakthrough analysis of the performance of 100 prominent US (and one Canadian) universities and colleges, “Introducing the City Journal College Rankings,” For the first time, this new performance system includes data on measures (68 in all) like freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity tolerance, quality of instruction, investment payoff, and campus politicization that are not considered in the other major higher ed ranking systems. How did Davidson measure up in City Journal’s performance assessment? On a scale of one (bottom) to five (top) stars , Davidson is among the 63 schools that received 2 stars. Schools that, according to City Journal, have “Mostly average to below-average scores in all categories with no particularly noteworthy strengths. Significant, focused policy changes are needed at these schools.” (Full rankings available here College Rankings | Rankings ) To summarize the methodology, the City Journal team selected 100 schools that are highly touted by other ranking systems, widely known to the American public, and/or of high regional importance. The researchers gathered data on 68 variables across 21 categories covering four major aspects of on- and off-campus life. The Educational Experience categories were Faculty Ideological Pluralism, Faculty Teaching Quality, Faculty Research Quality, Faculty Speech Climate, Curricular Rigor, and Heterodox Infrastructure; the Leadership Quality categories were Commitment to Meritocracy, Support for Free Speech, and Resistance to Politicization; the Outcomes categories were Quality of Alumni Network, Value Added to Career, and Value Added to Education; and the Student Experience categories were Student Ideological Pluralism, Student Free Speech, Student Political Tolerance, Student Social Life, Student Classroom Experience, Campus ROTC, Student Community Life, and Jewish Campus Climate. No other higher ed ranking system includes as many variables. (Read more about methodology at College Rankings | Methods ) The data included publicly available information from sources such as the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the Department of Education’s College Scorecard, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s College Free Speech Rankings. The researchers also developed original measures for the project, such as the ideological balance of student political organizations and the partisan makeup of faculty campaign contributions. Each variable was coded so that higher values mean better performance and was weighted to reflect relative importance. For example, student ideological pluralism (as measured by self-reported student ideology and the left-right balance of student organizations) accounts for 5 percent of a school’s score while City Journal’s estimate of how many years it will take the typical student to recoup their educational investment to attend a given college accounts for 12.5 percent. A school’s overall score is the sum of points across the 21 categories, with the top possible score being 100. While the assessment system is for the most part hard-data-based, it has, like other ranking systems, subjective elements—like the weighing system. So methodological challenges will come and will doubtlessly lead to improvements the next time around. That said, the methodology strikes me as defensible and a marked improvement over that of other popular rating systems. I will conclude with some comments on the findings. Note that the Average score (out of 100) for the 100 institutions is 46 and the median score is 45.73—so overall, this is not a “high performance” group of institutions. No institution receives a 5-Star rating, and only two receive a 4-Star rating (University of Florida and University of Texas at Austin). Only 11 schools receive a 3-Star rating—Having “Mixed results across the four categories, showing strengths in some and weakness in others. These schools typically have several clear paths to improvement.” Because assessment scores are generally low and tightly clustered in the middle, the rankings by score are misleading: Davidson, at 51.16 with a rank of 25, looks to be in the top quartile (between Princeton and Georgetown), but in fact gets just a 2-Star assessment

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