Conservative critics call for federal action to end program as UNC System cuts ties
A taxpayer-funded hiring initiative for universities reportedly skirts existing state laws that restrict “diversity, equity, and inclusion” practices.
Conservative advocates told The College Fix the Re-Imagining STEM Equity Utilizing Postdoctoral Pathways program engages in illegal discrimination and should be shut down by the federal government.
However, one university system told The Fix it is cutting ties with the program, effective April 30.
The RISE UPP program “aims to recruit and subsequently hire ‘minoritized postdoctoral scholars’—part of the ‘fellow-to-faculty’ pipeline that, in practice, installs activists in tenure-track positions,” according to a City Journal article written by policy expert John Sailer.
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County hosts the program, with administrators expanding its reach to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the University of California system, and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
Sailer, a senior fellow at conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, reviewed documents from the program that expose how it has bypassed state DEI bans, concealed its true objectives, and “used proxies to achieve [its] demographic goals.”
During a May 2024 meeting, an NSF-appointed panel criticized RISE UPP administrators for not using explicitly “identitarian language,” pointing out that the program failed to address how STEM disciplines are rooted in “white, patriarchal, colonizing Western European norms.”
In response, the RISE UPP team said it is aware of the “Eurocentric, colonial, and cis-patriarchical” norms pervasive in academia. However, while operating in states hostile to DEI, the team avoids such language to protect their “safety and livelihood,” according to the meeting report.
In private, however, the program’s personnel uphold a race-conscious approach, as evidenced in a report appendix where they highlighted that most of the academic literature shaping the program reflects “equity- and inclusion-minded, race-conscious, and critical perspectives,” Sailer wrote.
“Texas and North Carolina have rejected the DEI paradigm, but programs like RISE UPP give administrators a tool to get around these states’ reform efforts,” Sailer told The Fix via email.
However, the University of North Carolina System told The Fix Monday that UNC Charlotte “no longer participates in this program and relinquished the National Science Foundation INCLUDES Alliance: Re-Imagining STEM Equity Utilizing Postdoctoral Pathways award back to the University of Maryland Baltimore County.”
“This decision is effective as of April 30, 2025,” spokesperson Buffie Stephens said.
Still, Sailer believes President Donald Trump’s administration should end the program altogether.
“What’s funded by the federal government can be ended by the federal government. In general, the NSF funds a lot of great scientific research, and that funding should remain robust,” he said.
“But the RISE UPP program promotes hiring that is both discriminatory and politicized. Getting rid of it will improve higher education,” he said.
Sailer also said there would be “huge knock-on benefits” to conducting a civil rights investigation into the initiative.
“Programs like RISE UPP have effectively created a career path for scholar-activists, while often using blatantly discriminatory recruitment tactics,” he said.
Similarly, another fellow with a conservative group told The Fix, “hiring based on race or sex is almost always illegal.”
“Workarounds that intend different outcomes by race still count as illegal discrimination,” Adam Kissel with the Heritage Foundation said.
“Universities that use ‘commitment to diversity’ as a criterion in hiring not only violate free speech by using an ideological litmus test, but also violate civil rights laws when they use it as a proxy for race or ethnicity,” he said.
“States should ban ‘diversity’ statements from public institutions’ hiring processes and should strictly enforce civil rights laws to exclude all illegal workarounds,” Kissel said.
MORE: Ed Dept. threatens to cut federal funds of universities with DEI programs
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: University of North Carolina at Charlotte campus; UNC Charlotte/Youtube
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