Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Versus Merit, Fairness, and Equality on Campus
By Aman Majmudar, Student, Undergraduate Student, University of Chicago, and Lily Ahluwalia, Student, Wesleyan University
DEI Efforts Are Inferior to Meritocracy
By Aman Majmudar – Student, University of Chicago
Diversity, equity, and inclusion initially aimed to close gaps stemming from racial discrimination. Yet today’s DEI is different. Rather than providing a framework for improved policies and outcomes, DEI has become a belief system that allocates resources less efficiently than meritocracy.
DEI Initiatives Lack Nuance
DEI advocates ask us to believe there are two kinds of people: the oppressors and the oppressed. They name black people and other minorities as oppressed and white people as oppressors. Yet this binary lens of reality means a wealthy black Princeton student may be more “oppressed” than a poor white cashier at McDonald’s. Similarly, men are considered “oppressors,” despite the fact that they perform worse throughout school and have almost four times as many deaths by suicide than women. Few, if any, DEI policies are aimed at helping men with these issues, though many recruitment programs exist to assist women.
Properly allocating resources needs more nuance than just giving to the most historically “oppressed.” Despite DEI efforts sweeping the country, the black-white achievement gap remains. And instead of investing in black and hispanic students, some DEI measures have divested from everyone. Cambridge Public Schools got rid of advanced math courses and California overhauled its math program to delay advanced math. The timing could not be worse, as ACT scores are at a 30-year low, and reading and math levels have also dropped. We cannot allow DEI to place a ceiling on student achievement.
DEI in Practice Has Gone Awry
The worst of today’s DEI movement is when it is a virtue signal that does very little. As a result, those who offer legitimate alternatives seem less virtuous and have their reputations soiled. Take the case of Claudine Gay and Roland Fryer Jr. Both are Harvard professors who care about erasing the disadvantages minorities face. But their approaches differ.
Claudine Gay, Harvard’s former president, grew up in privilege, attended private boarding school, and graduated from Stanford and Harvard. She embodies DEI, having run many initiatives at Harvard. Yet her research productivity toward her goal has been dismal—about a dozen academic papers, half with alleged plagiarism. Roland Fryer Jr. grew up in a single-parent household where his alcoholic father beat him and served eight years in prison for a rape conviction. Fryer graduated 1.5 years early from the University of Texas at Arlington while working at McDonald’s full-time and then he went to Pennsylvania State for a doctoral degree in economics.
Fryer’s work opposes traditional DEI. He researched a Harlem Children’s Zone school that uses a “no excuses” philosophy, pushing kids to excel, whatever their background. Fryer’s 2011 American Economic Journal paper concludes that high-quality schools, however poor the neighborhood, can close the achievement gap between black and white students (at least in math). This sort of research won Fryer the John Bates Clark Medal, a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” and Harvard tenure at 30 years old.
But the biggest winner was still Claudine Gay. In his lab Fryer did not practice political correctness, which brought him a sexual harassment investigation ending with Harvard advising that he needed training. Claudine Gay established a special committee, and against Harvard’s recommendation, she and the other members she picked suspended Fryer from Harvard for two years and shut his lab where his groundbreaking research tackled inequality but without following DEI. If Claudine Gay is a DEI figurehead, her subpar academic record, ambiguity in condemning genocide, and denial of better alternatives show us what DEI stands for today.
DEI Efforts Can Break Systemic Barriers
By Lily Ahluwalia – Student, Wesleyan University
In a utopian world where everyone has equal access to resources, DEI efforts would be unnecessary. Since everyone would start from an equal place, a system based purely on meritocracy would be fair and just. However, our world is not utopian.
In 2022, about 11.5 percent of the United States population lived below the poverty line. While black individuals were only 13.5 percent of the population, they make up 20.1 percent of the population in poverty. This directly contrasts the white population, who make up 58.5 percent of the total population but only 44.0 percent of the people under the poverty line. These statistics demonstrate the inequity created by racial barriers, such as redlining and discrimination through housing covenants that have allowed white Americans to accumulate more generational wealth than their black and brown counterparts. DEI policies are necessary to combat systemic discrimination that has led to disproportionate poverty rates.
What would aid the problems Mr. Majmudar pointed out would be a greater focus on poverty as a measure within DEI policies, in combination with race and other identifiers. For example, people without a college degree are less likely to be employed and more likely to have lower earnings, continuing a cycle of not having enough money to pay for higher education. In 2020, the median earnings for someone who did not complete high school was $29,800, compared to $59,600 for someone with a bachelor’s degree. So, DEI policies that take socioeconomic status into account will make education more accessible for everyone.
DEI Beyond Harvard
To argue that meritocracy is more effective than DEI, Mr. Majmudar also compares two individuals: former Harvard President Claudine Gay and economist Roland Fryer Jr. Mr. Majmudar’s argument that Gay’s plagiarism represents what DEI stands for discredits the work of thousands who work to create policies that open opportunities for those facing institutional barriers.
Mr. Majmudar also minimizes the extent of the sexual assault allegations against Fryer, whose investigation found at least seven violations of Harvard policy. He sent inappropriate messages to colleagues and non-consensually put his groin near a female colleague’s face. We must not minimize Fryer’s harmful actions just because of his work, nor question Gay’s motives in suspending him when his actions broke campus policy and had nothing to do with DEI.
Without DEI policies, college students would lose an integral part of learning: meeting people with different perspectives. While they are not less smart than their rich, white peers, minorities of lower socioeconomic status have less access to opportunities due to systemic barriers. If most students at a certain college come from a similar background—racial or socioeconomic—they will become caught in an echo chamber. The point of college is to gain an education. Students are not gaining a real education if they are only surrounded by like-minded people. The result of DEI policies is to gather a more diverse group of people, which is necessary for adequate education.
DEI Does Not Work in Practice
By Aman Majmudar – Student, University of Chicago
I’m inspired that Ms. Ahluwalia wants equal access to resources for everyone, a desire I share. But Ms. Ahluwalia depicts DEI’s intention, not the reality. We still need a better approach.
Although DEI has helped some, it often brings the opposite effects. DEI policies like affirmative action discriminate against Asian Americans, who also face racism every day because they are allegedly too economically and academically successful. The result of this double standard is that many black and hispanic students at elite colleges come from wealthy families. DEI policies that don’t take income into account will do little to close the vast achievement gap between the wealthy and the truly marginalized, low-income students—as seen over the past half-century.
DEI Does More Harm Than Good
Fixing the income inequality gap is crucial for social mobility to address the “systemic discrimination” Ms. Ahluwalia notes. But DEI ideology seems to hurt minorities’ achievement. A Bay Area elementary school hired Woke Kindergarten to train its teachers to tackle “barriers to learning”: white supremacy, racism, and oppression. The school, teaching predominantly low-income hispanic and latino children, saw English and math scores hit “new lows.” Similarly, universities removing testing requirements discourages low-income students from showing their college-preparedness, which is why MIT and Dartmouth admissions reinstated standardized testing.
Yet Ms. Ahluwalia contends meritocracy is not the answer. It seems she argues for the socialist idea of equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Socialism has historically been a destructive ideology, contributing to economic crises in Argentina, mass murder in China under Mao Zedong, and systemic human rights violations in North Korea today. Instead, we must fix achievement gaps by investing in high-quality teaching and pushing minorities to do their best, which Fryer’s research has found works.
Opposing DEI on Campus
Ms. Ahluwalia also misrepresents my claims regarding Fryer and Gay. I do not minimize Fryer’s sexual harassment charges. I cite that Harvard’s own investigators concluded Fryer required “training.” Ms. Ahluwalia wrongly calls these charges “sexual assault.”
The reason I question Gay’s motives is that she is a figurehead of DEI who has shown little interest in helping low-income, black students. She shut down a research lab that helped these minorities and, despite her prominent position, has published very little to bring policy recommendations to help low-income minorities. Her track record reinforces that DEI is all words and little action.
That said, I agree with Ms. Ahluwalia that colleges need diversity to prevent becoming echo chambers. Only 6 percent of college administrators lean right politically and most professors are also liberal. And elite schools like Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania rank lowest in free speech, restricting the free exchange of ideas. As Ms. Ahluwalia writes, “[We] are not gaining a real education if [we] are only surrounded by like-minded people.”
A Better Society Means Blending DEI and Meritocracy
By Lily Ahluwalia – Student, Wesleyan University
While Mr. Majmudar claims I am advocating solely for the socialist idea of equality of outcome, I am not. Instead, I am advocating for balance. I believe it is important that DEI policies are included alongside meritocratic factors that are currently in the college admissions system, such as GPA and high school courseload. We need to strike a balance between meritocracy and DEI policies.
As I previously noted, I agree with Mr. Majmudar that DEI policies that disregard income are a problem. However, the solution is not to eliminate DEI but rather to focus on income as a determinant of outcomes. It is true we need to invest in high-quality teaching, but we must ask the question, why do certain communities not have high-quality resources already?
The Need for Resource Redistribution
Discriminatory policies such as redlining—systemically drawing school and housing districts based on race and economic status—created a deficit in resources for public schools that serve black and brown low-income communities. Public schools in redlined areas often lack quality teaching and educational opportunities for their students, who are often part of underrepresented groups in elite higher education institutions. In order for these schools to have the necessary resources, it is crucial to redistribute funds going to majority white, wealthy communities. Pure meritocracy cannot close a resource gap caused by discrimination.
A similar argument can be made about standardized testing. Mr. Majmudar claims that removing testing requirements “blocks low-income students from showing their college-preparedness.” However, researchers found that richer students perform better on standardized tests due to access to high-quality tutors. This is another outcome as a result of the unequal opportunities DEI seeks to fix.
People who grow up wealthy are more likely to be successful—not because they are smarter or work harder but because they have access to resources. This leads to a vicious cycle of rich families continuing to be successful, while low-income individuals lose out on opportunities because of a lack of resources they had in their childhoods.
Coming to a Compromise
In order to create an effective solution to the effects of discrimination, it is important to acknowledge DEI policy shortcomings—some of which Mr. Majmudar mentioned—and make adjustments to ensure these policies help people from the most vulnerable communities.
Working together to refocus DEI policy on income will create a more equitable society. No policy is perfect, and we can always find ways to improve. DEI holds important values at heart: helping people and addressing inequality. Therefore, we must work to find a compromise: a combination of DEI and meritocracy.
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Aman Majmudar
Aman Majmudar is a senior at the University of Chicago. He represents his class in student government, co-directs professional development at the Energy and Climate Club, and assists with research at the Tian Research Group. His guest essays have been published in The Scientist, Undark Magazine, and Times Higher Education.
Lily Ahluwalia
Lily is a student at Wesleyan University. She is interested in government, history, and human rights advocacy. She is the author of "Why We Need Affinity Groups," published in the Star Tribune, as well as several articles published in Hear Our Voices Magazine and the Wesleyan Argus.