THIS IS A TOTALLY EVIL IDEA. Imagine judging people on the basis of merit. It’s outrageous. I won’t have it. “Meet the two professors working to replace DEI with MFE: ‘Merit, Fairness and Equality’.”
The mantra of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, has become increasingly dominant in higher education, but two professors have created an alternative to DEI called “Merit, Fairness and Equality,” or “MFE.”
MFE would evaluate university applicants based on their merit and qualifications alone, and treat them as individuals, rather than as members of a group, like DEI does, the two professors told The College Fix in email interviews.
Professor Dorian Abbot of the University of Chicago and Professor Iván Marinovic of Stanford University, both tenured, have together created this alternative framework, which has, according to Abbott, “not been enthusiastically received by DEI officers all over the country.”
In fact, Abbot was recently disinvited from giving a prestigious guest lecture at MIT in part because of backlash over a recent op-ed he co-authored with Marinovic in Newsweek headlined “The Diversity Problem on Campus,” which touted their Merit, Fairness and Equality proposal.
MFE is about university applicants being treated as individuals, and making it so they are “evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone,” Abbot told The Fix.
This is in contrast to DEI, which, according to Marinovic, is an ideology that views American society, its culture, and institutions, as endemically racist and sexist.