University of California essentials

"Cut to the bone." That's how the University of California system's budget vice president described his empire's financial condition. Not quite.

According to Heather MacDonald in a fine publication, City Journal, UC San Diego may be crying about faculty needs, but it now has an associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, an assistant vice chancellor for diversity, faculty equity advisors, and graduate diversity coordinators-and it is hiring a new full-time vice chancellor for faculty equity.

And that's just the beginning: UC San Diego has "the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women's Center."

Meanwhile, UC Berkeley has its own $194,000 vice chancellor for equity and inclusion with a staff of 17, including two project/policy analysts and a director of special projects. Total salaries in that office total more than $1 million a year, which could pay for 20 assistant professors who could help students improve their writing. Last year UC Berkeley announced an Initiative for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion that is, among other things, creating five new faculty chairs in "diversity-related research."

Some might say, "That's California," but the trend is national. The problem, according to a UC Berkeley press release, is that "Ethnic studies, queer studies, and gender studies tend to be marginalized and viewed as less essential to the university than such fields as engineering, law or biology." Yes, they are less essential.