"If you close off certain employment opportunities to the ‘wrong race,’ you’re not an equal opportunity anything," Berry said. "You’re a bigot."
Some Fortune 500 companies are nonetheless standing by programs that many lawyers say are illegal. The Free Beacon reported in August that Pfizer bars whites and Asians from applying for its prestigious "Breakthrough Fellowship," which Gail Heriot, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, called a "clear case of liability" under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. When more outlets picked up the story, Pfizer followed Google’s lead and insisted it hadn’t done anything wrong.
Harvard Tells Students: ‘Using Wrong Pronouns’ Constitutes ‘Abuse’
Mandatory Title IX training tells Harvard undergrads they may be subject to disciplinary proceedings for 'sizeism,' 'fatphobia,' 'cisheterosexism,' 'ableism'
Welcome to Harvard!
"Fatphobia" and "cisheterosexism" perpetuate "violence." "Using the wrong pronouns" constitutes "abuse." And "any words used to lower a person’s self-worth" are "Verbal Abuse." Those are just a handful of the things the school told all undergraduate students in a mandatory Title IX training session, according to materials reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
The online training, which all undergraduates were required to complete in order to enroll in courses, includes a "Power and Control Wheel" to help students identify "harmful" conduct. Outside the wheel are attitudes that "contribute to an environment that perpetuates violence," a voiceover from the training states, including "sizeism and fatphobia," "cisheterosexism," "racism," "transphobia," "ageism," and "ableism."
Inside the wheel are behaviors that the school says constitute "abuse" and could violate its Title IX policies. "We all have an essential role to play in creating a community that cultivates gender equity and inclusion," Harvard College dean Rakesh Khurana told students in a video introducing the training. "Completing this course is a critical step in establishing a shared understanding of the values here at Harvard College."
Presentation slide from Harvard College's "Preventing and Responding to Sexual Harassment and Other Sexual Misconduct" training.
Harvard launched the training in 2016, according to the Harvard Crimson, and announced in 2018 that completing the training was a prerequisite for course enrollment. The school is vague on the repercussions for violations of its sprawling interpretation of Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex, stating that violations "may" result in "termination, dismissal, expulsion" or "revocation of tenure."
A spokesman for Harvard's Office for Gender Equity, which conducts the Title IX training, did not respond to a request for comment. Harvard did not respond to a request for comment.
The training also presents scenarios that involve potential Title IX violations and explains how students should react to them, instructing students to "prioritize social justice and inclusion" and to "intervene" whenever "harm" occurs.
In one scenario, "Andre" keeps "messing up Logan’s pronouns" and commenting on Logan’s "outfits, hair, and nail polish," causing Logan to feel "drained and frustrated with again being in a situation to educate his peers on gender identity."
Andre’s remarks "contribute to a climate of disrespect and may also violate Harvard’s policies," the training says. "It may be helpful to reassure [Logan] he is not being oversensitive and the impact he is experiencing is valid."
Presentation slides from Harvard College's "Preventing and Responding to Sexual Harassment and Other Sexual Misconduct" training.
The Harvard training offers a window into how the expanding concept of sexual harassment, from sex to gender identity, is playing out on college campuses. Harvard defines sexual harassment as "unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex, including sexual orientation and gender identity." A similar definition appears in the Biden administration’s proposed Title IX rules released in June. Both documents cite the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that an employer cannot discriminate based on gender identity without also discriminating based on sex.
In the scenario involving Andrew and Logan, the course states outright that "repeatedly using the wrong pronouns" is a potential Title IX violation, and it is a striking example of how Title IX can be weaponized to target speech, not merely conduct. In 2015, for example, Northwestern University launched a Title IX investigation into a professor, Laura Kipnis, who had criticized the school’s sexual harassment policies. And in 2021, a Title IX training at Boston University required all students to affirm that people "rarely" make false accusations.
The redefinition of harassment benefits the bureaucrats tasked with policing it. Title IX officers’ "entire livelihoods depend on there being a perpetual stream of sexual misconduct allegations at their universities," said Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who studies Title IX. "So they define ‘sexual harassment' and ‘hostile environment' in ever more implausible ways to guarantee that there is always supposed ‘sexual harassment.'"
The training highlights the contradictory commitments of these bureaucrats, who champion personal autonomy while advocating policies that curtail it. The Power and Consent Wheel suggests that restrictions on "clothing, friends, time, or events" are "harmful," especially when they result in "isolation." Yet Harvard’s COVID-19 policies—which made students eat in their rooms during surges—have restricted all of those things. The Ivy League school kept mask mandates in place for nearly two years and imposed strict capacity limits for events, prompting over 50 percent of Harvard freshmen to complain of social isolation.
Every scenario in the training involves at least one character who is transgender, nonbinary, or disabled, regardless of the underlying lesson. In one scenario about stalking, both the victim "Adrian" and perpetrator "Toni" use "they/them" pronouns; in another scenario, one of the students uses a wheelchair—even though the subject has nothing to do with disability.
Abigail Anthony is a senior at Princeton University.
Published under: Biden Administration, Harvard, Sexual Misconduct, Title IX, Transgender
Nation’s Largest Public University Hit With Class Action Suit Over Race-Based Hiring Practices
Texas A&M offers $100K bonus for minority professors only
The largest public university in the United States is reserving faculty positions based on race and making six-figure bonuses available exclusively to minorities, programs that are now the subject of a class action lawsuit.
As part of a new initiative to attract "faculty of color," Texas A&M University set aside $2 million in July to be spent on bonuses for "hires from underrepresented minority groups," according to a memo from the university's office of diversity. The max bonus is $100,000, and eligible minority groups are defined by the university to include "African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians."
Another program, at the university’s Mays Business School, reserves certain slots on the faculty for the same minority groups, emails between Texas A&M professors show.
These explosive revelations form the basis for a class action complaint filed this weekend by the conservative nonprofit America First Legal. The plaintiff, a University of Texas at Austin finance professor named Richard Lowery, argues that the hiring programs violate three different civil rights laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prohibits race discrimination in contracting; Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race discrimination at federally funded universities; and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which bars public universities from using racial preferences in nearly all situations.
"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," the lawsuit reads. Lowery is asking a Texas district court to put an end to Texas A&M’s programs and appoint a court monitor to make sure that the diversity office "does not aid or abet violations of the nation’s civil-rights laws."
Such violations are increasingly de rigueur in both academia and corporate America. A faculty hiring plan at George Mason University, announced in April 2021, drew criticism from law professors over its apparent use of racial quotas, which are illegal under federal law. Google, Pfizer, Microsoft, and IBM have capped or outright excluded white and Asian applicants from prestigious fellowships, while Amazon offers "Black, Latinx, and Native American entrepreneurs" a $10,000 stipend to launch their own delivery startups—a program that, like Texas A&M’s initiatives, is now the subject of a lawsuit.
Many of these programs seek to ensure that an institution’s racial balance reflects the demographics of the population. George Mason said its hiring initiative would close "gaps" between the racial composition of its students and the racial composition of its professors. Texas A&M likewise touted its race-based bonus scheme as a way to achieve demographic "parity" with the state of Texas.
Though the public universities can use race as a "plus factor" in admissions, it’s not clear whether they can do so in faculty hiring. Even if they can, the lawsuit argues, Supreme Court precedent would still forbid the sort of outright quotas used by Texas A&M.
"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 says. "The existence of these offices is subverting meritocracy and encouraging wholesale violations of civil-rights laws throughout our nation’s university system."
Laylan Copelin, the vice chancellor of marketing and communications for Texas A&M, said the the university system would "review the lawsuit" and "take appropriate action as warranted." With more than 73,000 enrolled students, Texas A&M is the largest university in the country.
Published under: Affirmative Action, Diversity, Racism, Texas, Texas A&M
No Whites Allowed: Pfizer Fellowship Flagrantly Violates the Law, Lawyers Say
The 'Breakthrough Fellowship' prohibits whites and Asians from applying, a restriction that is 'flagrantly illegal'
The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer offers a prestigious fellowship that bars whites and Asians from applying. Trumpeted on the company’s website as a "Bold Move" to "create a workplace for all," civil rights lawyers are characterizing it in a different way: as a blatant violation of the law.
"This Pfizer program is so flagrantly illegal I seriously wonder how it passed internal review by its general counsel," said Adam Mortara, one of the country’s top civil rights attorneys.
Pfizer’s "Breakthrough Fellowship" offers college students multiple internships, a fully funded master's degree, and several years of employment at the pharmaceutical giant. It also restricts applications to "Black/African American, Latino/Hispanic and Native American" students, the fellowship requirements state.
In a Frequently Asked Questions brochure about the nine-year program, Pfizer asserts that it is an "equal opportunity employer."
Gail Heriot, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, described the fellowship as a "clear case of liability" under federal law: a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bans racial discrimination in contracting, and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans racial discrimination in employment.
"Major corporations seem to have forgotten that there’s such a thing as law," said Heriot, who is also a law professor at the University of San Diego. "They seem to think that as long as they’re woke, they’re bulletproof."
As a legal matter, that view is questionable. Some companies have scrapped race-conscious programs in the wake of discrimination lawsuits, which—when they involve overt racial quotas—typically succeed. Even the threat of a lawsuit can pay dividends: Last year, for example, the American Civil Rights Project sent Coca-Cola a letter demanding that it drop a requirement that law firms working with the company staff at least 30 percent of their teams with "diverse lawyers." In a memo to shareholders in February, Coca-Cola announced it was backing away from the policy.
Every lawyer contacted by the Washington Free Beacon said the case against Pfizer was open-and-shut. David Bernstein, an expert on civil rights law at George Mason University School of Law, said the Breakthrough Fellowship was "obviously illegal." Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, called it a "very facial violation" of Title VII. Jonathan Berry, a partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, said it was "hard to see any way" the program was legal.
Pfizer did not respond to a request for comment.
The pharmaceutical giant is not alone in flouting anti-discrimination law. From Uber to NASDAQ to JPMorgan Chase, a kind of casual lawlessness has descended across corporate America, with C-suites using—and publicizing—illegal racial quotas to achieve their diversity goals. That trend is especially acute in Silicon Valley: Google, for example, restricts the number of white and Asian men that universities can nominate for a prestigious Ph.D. fellowship, a policy that effectively encourages schools to violate civil rights statutes.
The Breakthrough Fellowship is part of a larger push within Pfizer to "embed DEI into our DNA," per the company’s 2021 Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) report. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in 2020 made "equity" one of the company’s four "core values" alongside excellence, courage, and joy. "We don’t just talk about the importance of equity," Bourla said at the time. "We put our words into action."
Central to those actions has been the use of diversity targets—concrete, legible benchmarks the company can measure. "By having a clear overarching DEI vision," Pfizer’s 2021 annual review reads, "we’re able to outline distinct DEI roles and accountabilities, align our therapeutic areas and divisions with our vision, and assess our progress against measurable outcomes."
While not a formal quota system, this metrics-based approach has nonetheless produced dramatic—and disproportionate—results. In 2021, the ESG report states, "72% of summer interns surveyed identified as representing an underrepresented group or disadvantaged background, far exceeding our goal of 50%." For comparison, non-whites make up less than 40 percent of the U.S. population.
The Breakthrough Fellowship appears to be contributing to that skew. The program’s first cohort was "55 percent female and 45 percent male," according to the annual review, "with a diversity breakdown of 40 percent Black/African American, 40 percent Latinx/Hispanic and 20 percent two or more races." Pfizer plans to have 100 Breakthrough fellows by 2025.
Asked about the company’s claim to be an equal-opportunity employer, Berry, the Boyden Gray attorney, used the term "doublespeak."
"If you close off certain employment opportunities to the ‘wrong race,’ you’re not an equal opportunity anything," Berry said. "You’re a bigot."
Published under: Civil Rights Act, Diversity, Feature, Pfizer, Racism, woke
Google, IBM Quietly Backtrack on Race-Conscious Fellowships in Wake of Free Beacon Reports
Google and IBM are quietly backtracking in the wake of Washington Free Beacon reports about the companies capping the number of white and Asian students whom universities can nominate for prestigious research fellowships, which required that half of each school’s nominees be underrepresented minorities.
Both companies dropped the caps after lawyers told the Free Beacon that they likely violated civil rights laws. The fellowships, which provide graduate students with generous stipends and mentorship opportunities, still ask schools to nominate a diverse pool of candidates, but no longer limit how many whites and Asians can apply.
Just two weeks ago, Google insisted its nominating criteria for the Google Ph.D. Fellowship were legal, describing them as "extremely common" and maintaining that they followed "all relevant laws." Since then, however, the tech giant has replaced its diversity mandates with suggestions. "If more than two students are nominated," the new nominating criteria state, "we strongly encourage additional nominees who self-identify as a woman, Black / African descent, Hispanic / Latino / Latinx, Indigenous, and/or a person with a disability."
The original language stipulated that if a university "chooses to nominate more than two students … the third and fourth nominees must self-identify as a woman, Black / African descent, Hispanic / Latino / Latinx, Indigenous, and/or a person with a disability."
Original Criteria:
Updated Criteria:
IBM, meanwhile, quietly dropped a requirement that half of the nominees for its Ph.D. fellowship program be "diversity candidates"—after the Free Beacon contacted IBM for comment—and replaced it with a request that schools "consider a diverse slate of candidates."
The original criteria posed legal problems for Google, IBM, and participating universities. Civil rights lawyers told the Free Beacon that the fellowships likely ran afoul of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bans race discrimination in contracting, and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans race discrimination at federally funded schools.
Asked whether the company had scrapped its diversity requirement over legal concerns, a Google spokesperson, Courtenay Mencini, attributed the change to a desire to "clarify our nomination criteria," adding that the company stands by its original statement.
A few schools have already been hit with civil rights complaints over their participation in the Google fellowship. On August 24, emails obtained by the Free Beacon show, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights received complaints against Harvard University, Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, New York University, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins University, and Carnegie Mellon University.
The complaints allege that these schools are discriminating based on race and sex by nominating students for the fellowship, and ask that each one apologize for the "sexism and racism it has engaged in."
Google and IBM’s reversals come as other corporations face blowback for their own discriminatory policies, some of which are now the subject of major lawsuits. In the past two months alone, Amazon and American Express have both been hit by class action complaints alleging anti-white discrimination. Other companies like Coca-Cola have scrapped race-conscious policies amid legal threats from shareholders.
Some Fortune 500 companies are nonetheless standing by programs that many lawyers say are illegal. The Free Beacon reported in August that Pfizer bars whites and Asians from applying for its prestigious "Breakthrough Fellowship," which Gail Heriot, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, called a "clear case of liability" under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. When more outlets picked up the story, Pfizer followed Google’s lead and insisted it hadn’t done anything wrong.
"All of our actions comply fully with all U.S. employment laws," the pharmaceutical giant told Fox Business. "We create opportunities for people without taking them away from others."
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