University of Illinois Chicago mandates gender and race quotas for faculty hiring

In September 2022, the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) committed to a significant change in its hiring practices by ensuring that 50 percent of all faculty hires would be either women or minorities. This initiative is part of a broader effort within UIC, which includes various departments announcing similar diversity commitments. For instance, the History Department pledged to hire a scholar specializing in colonial Latin America with a focus on slavery or Indigenous peoples, while the Department of Urban Planning and Policy is looking to employ a scholar with expertise in environmental justice from a community of color. These diversity initiatives are influenced by the need to address historical imbalances in academia, but they have drawn criticism for potentially violating legal hiring practices. Critics, including Dan Morenoff from the American Civil Rights Project, argue that such quotas are contrary to laws prohibiting race-based hiring discrimination. As these programs grow in popularity across the country, they raise complex questions about the tension between promoting diversity and adhering to legal guidelines in hiring practices.