University of California Just Stopped Funding Woke Academics Post Doctoral Fellowship Program

Under pressure from the Trump Administration to end racial preferences, the University of California this March announced that it would stop requiring a diversity statement for faculty hires.

Now, this month, with the Trump Administration still hovering in the background,  the University of California system announced that it has stopped funding a longstanding fellowship program that was creating faculty positions for particularly woke academics.

Meanwhile, one University of California professor whose criticism of the program at a campus discussion was quoted in a City Journal article is freaking out, demanding that the California Globe not use the quote.

The University of California Post Doctoral Fellowship Program was established in 1984. It was originally open to only minorities and women. But after the enactment of Proposition 209,  the exclusionary criteria were removed.   Applicants, however, were  required to be committed to “diversity.”

Manhattan Institute senior fellow John Sailer told the California Globe that this ruse to skirt the law turned out to be “worse than affirmative action.”

“Instead of requiring fellows to be of a particular demographic background, the system said that the program would hire fellows who showed a commitment to diversity and equal opportunity. It was transparent about how this would work: the argument was that if you made a ‘commitment to diversity’ a heavily weighted criterion, you would naturally attract more minorities, getting close to the outcomes of affirmative action without technically breaking the law.”

“Ironically, this actually made the program worse than affirmative action, because it meant that many of the fellows who were hired would almost invariably focus their research on some identitarian cause.”

It also looks like the diversity requirements were a proxy for hiring by race. There is not a single white male among the 2024 fellows.

But sometime this year, the requirements for the program were reworked–with the emphasis on diversity removed, perhaps to placate the Trump Administration.

Last year, the program website boasted of  “advancing excellence through faculty diversity.” And the listed criteria said that “faculty reviewers will evaluate candidates according to their academic accomplishments, the strength of their research proposal, and their potential for faculty careers that will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity through their teaching, research and service. Faculty reviewers also may consider the mentor’s potential to work productively with the candidate and commitment to equity and diversity in higher education.”

But all of that diversity speak has since been removed from the website for the program. Instead, the program is now described as seeking applicants “whose life experiences and educational background would help to broaden the perspectives represented in the faculty of the University of California.”

Since 2003, fellows that were hired on to the University of California faculty had $85,00 toward their salary paid by the University of California system for their first five years of employment. After that, the campus where they were employed took care of their salary. The University of California system has reportedly paid a total of $162 million for the salary of fellows.

But as of this Fall, the spigot is cut off.

University of California system spokesman Omar Rodriguez said in a statement to the California Globe that, “Due to the severe budget constraints currently facing UC, the President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP) faculty hiring incentive is sunsetting as of fall 2025. While the University will continue to provide five years of salary support to PPFP fellows hired by summer 2025 and in earlier years, no new incentives will be provided going forward.”

“Campuses will still be able to hire PPFP fellows as part of their normal search and hiring processes, but the additional financial contribution from the incentive program will no longer be available. While the PPFP hiring incentive is ending, the program will remain active as other important elements of the program such as the PPFP postdoctoral fellowships, support for faculty research, and mentorship and networking opportunities will continue.”

Sailer explains that “In practice, this program has been a side-door mechanism for recruiting scholars who view their work as an extension of a progressive political agenda. The funding cuts render it toothless, a huge blow to academia’s scholar-activists.”

In his February 2025 article for City Journal, the Manhattan Institute publication, Sailer took note of some of the very politicized professors who were hired on to the University of California faculty through the fellowship program.

For example, David Turner, an assistant professor of  Black Life and Racial Justice at UCLA, founded  an organization pushing for the abolition of the police.

Another fellow, who studies something called “TransLatinx activist media” – whatever that means – leads workshops on protests. And another lovely woman at UCLA who started out as a fellow but is now an assistant professor, has posted musings on Instagram glorifying the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Sailer noted that “At UC Riverside, several professors raised this concern directly to Douglas Haynes, the UC system’s Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Academic Programs, during a recorded panel discussion on the postdoctoral fellowship program.”

For example, sociology professor Stephen Brint said, “What I wonder about is whether there is an ideological litmus test—whether there are any apolitical people, or political moderates, who are selected.”

When this reporter asked Brint to expand on his criticism, he emailed back,”I’ve decided not to comment on this matter. Please also do not use my quote from the City Journal.  That quote was collected by John Sailer using very dubious (and I believe unethical) methods.”

Sailer, of course, just got the quote from a video of the conference on the program that was posted on YouTube by the University of California.

Brint did not reply to follow-up emails asking what exactly was “unethical” about Sailer’s methods and why he did not want his criticism publicized.

But it says something about the ideological hegemony of the program that a tenured professor would be so skittish about his criticisms being published.

National Association of Scholars spokesman Glenn Ricketts reacted to the defunding of the program with mixed emotions.

“Undoubtedly, the program is being ‘discontinued’ because of pressure from the Trump administration,” he emailed. “What I expect, however, is that it will simply continue under another name. The administration may have won a PR victory, but for now I’m keeping the champagne on ice.”