Texas A&M faces legal action over its race-based hiring practices for faculty members

09/15/2022 / By Ramon Tomey

Texas A&M University (TAMU), the largest public university in the U.S., faces a class-action lawsuit over its alleged race-based hiring practices. The institution based in College Station, Texas was reserving faculty positions and earmarking huge bonuses for minorities – both mentioned in the complaint.

The lawsuit, filed by conservative nonprofit America First Legal, named University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) finance professor Richard Lowery as the plaintiff. The UT Austin faculty member argued that TAMU’s hiring programs violate three different civil rights laws: the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which bars public universities from using racial preferences in nearly all situations; the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prohibits race discrimination in contracting; and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race discrimination at federally funded universities.

Lowery’s lawsuit asked a Texas district court to put an end to TAMU’s diversity programs. It also asked the bench to appoint a court monitor to ensure TAMU’s diversity office “does not aid or abet violations of the nation’s civil rights laws.”

“These discriminatory, illegal and anti-meritocratic practices have been egged on by woke ideologues who populate the so-called diversity, equity and inclusion offices at public and private universities throughout the United States,” Lowery’s lawsuit stated.

“The existence of these offices is subverting meritocracy and encouraging wholesale violations of civil-rights laws throughout our nation’s university system. University administrators think they can flout these federal statutes with impunity because no one ever sues them over their discriminatory faculty-hiring practices and the Department of Education looks the other way.”

Back in July, TAMU set aside $2 million worth of bonuses under its ACES Plus Program to be given to “hires from under-represented minority groups.” According to a July 8 memo from TAMU’s Office of Diversity, eligible minority groups could receive a maximum of $100,000 in bonuses. The office added that “African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives and Native Hawaiians” qualify for the program.

Other universities following TAMU’s footsteps in anti-white discrimination

An email thread between two TAMU professors also showed that the ACES Plus Program also encompassed the university’s Mays Business School. Certain slots on the school’s faculty were reserved for the aforementioned minorities, as per the email exchange. (Related: Science position at Canadian university reserved for women, transgenders, non-binaries and “two-spirit persons.”)

The tertiary institution at the Lone Star State is not the only one practicing this discrimination in hiring. Back in April 2021, George Mason University (GMU) in Virginia announced its faculty hiring plan that openly indicated racial quotas. The plan was blasted by law professors, who argued that racial quotas were blatantly illegal under federal law.

GMU President Gregory Washington acknowledged the criticism, but said it would not deter him from prioritizing ethnicity over credentials in hiring.

“If you have two candidates who are both ‘above the bar’ in terms of requirements for a position, but one adds to your diversity and the other does not, then why couldn’t that candidate be better, even if that candidate may not have better credentials than the other candidate?” Washington said.

“Study after study has proven that the most diverse organizations, which recognize the importance of maintaining a diverse and inclusive environment, are the best performing organizations.”

Writing for Liberty Unyielding, lawyer Hans Bader blasted the GMU president for his arguments justifying racism in hiring faculty members.

“Washington attributes GMU’s limited number of Black and Hispanic staff to the effects of ‘structural racism.’ But the fact that GMU’s faculty are whiter than its student body does not show discrimination,” he wrote. “The faculty have special qualifications that students do not, and most faculty were hired at a time when applicants were whiter than they are today, due to America’s changing demographics.”

PublicEducation.news has more on American universities practicing racial discrimination in the hiring of faculty members.

Watch this OAN report about Connecticut school official Jeremy Boland, who admitted to discriminating against conservatives when hiring teachers.

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