With 400 public records requests and counting, John Sailer is putting a spotlight on universities’ controversial hiring procedures.

By Jennifer Graham

Jennifer Graham is the Ideas and Culture editor of the Deseret News.

A year ago, Manhattan Institute scholar Christopher Rufo told his followers on social media that they should pay attention to an up-and-coming researcher who was looking into DEI policies at American universities. “This work is going to lead to serious policy impact,” Rufo wrote.

The tweet was prescient. And John Sailer, the researcher that Rufo hailed, is becoming well known for his impact on diversity, equity and inclusion mandates across the country.

Working from his home and coffee shops in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Sailer (pronounced Sigh-ler) has been doggedly exposing hiring policies that he believes are likely unconstitutional through his job as a senior fellow at the National Association of Scholars. Sailer’s reports, which have been published in various publications, including Deseret, The Free Press and The Wall Street Journal, appear to have been the impetus for policy changes in Missouri, Texas, Ohio and Colorado, and for vigorous debate elsewhere.

His work is controversial and makes for incendiary content on talk shows and cable news. And yet Sailer approaches his work like the academic wonk that he is at heart. The 30-year-old father of two is not prone to hyperbole or generalizations. Instead, he prefers to deal in facts, facts he has obtained through public records requests he has made of universities across the country.

He’s made about 400 such records requests over the past year.

In Utah, for example, Sailer’s request for records at Utah State University yielded information that showed candidates who were applying to teach in very specific areas of science — insect ecology and solid earth geohazards, for example — had to show not only expertise in their field, but also a “demonstrated capacity” to contribute to “justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.”

To Sailer’s thinking, this is the sort of policy that often goes unchallenged until it emerges outside the university and kindles outrage. “When I wrote about these policies, I found very few people will defend them as they exist."

https://www.deseret.com/2024/02/28/john-sailer-dei-universities-equity/