Most Americans support racial equity, diversifying workplaces, and DEI.

But they do *not* like preferential hiring.

Fears of blocked professional advancement among whites and men - fueled by very real, very crude cases - were mobilized by Republican elites to kill the entire DEI movement.

The share of white male assistant professors *has* declined (47%→ 33% from 2004 to 2024).

This is driven by gains among Asian-Americans --- who are super overrepresented relative to Hispanic and Black profs.

There's a real glass ceiling for Asian-Americans in leadership roles, though.

Same pattern for women.

In 2004: 34.7% of senior leaders were women.
In 2024: 58.6%.

This isn’t a weird feature of these universities. 6 out of 8 Ivy League presidents were women by 2023!

But full professors? Moved from 18.2% → 31.1%.

Concrete progress but at half the pace of leadership.

Did anything change after George Floyd?

Senior leadership: +1.08 percentage points more Black after 2020

Assistant Professors: +0.23 percentage points more Black

Leadership was 5x MORE RESPONSIVE to diversity pressures than faculty hiring.

Black representation among full professors has stagnated for 30 years.

It *decreased* from 6.4% → 6.0% between 2004-2024.

But Black representation in senior leadership doubled from 6.7% → 11.6%

Yup. "Backlash" toward DEI driven by conservative elites, not the masses. The trend is even more stark when looking at beliefs about reverse discrimination.