Top California school obscures effort to preserve DEI

Aaron Sibarium of the Washington Free Beacon reports on one prestigious university’s effort to obfuscate its approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

The California Institute of Technology has changed the title of its top diversity official but kept the office she oversees intact, the latest example of how institutions are attempting to save their diversity programs by making largely cosmetic changes.

Caltech announced last week that Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux, the university’s assistant vice president for diversity, equity, inclusion, and assessment, was receiving a “promotion” to associate vice president for campus climate, engagement, and success. Though the new title does not mention DEI, Malcom-Piqueux will continue to oversee Caltech’s Center for Inclusion and Diversity, the school’s central DEI office, according to a university-wide email from Caltech president Thomas Rosenbaum.

“In this expanded capacity, Lindsey will be responsible for promoting engagement, progression, and personal and professional success within the Caltech community,” Rosenbaum wrote on March 31. He added that she would be “responsible” for the diversity center as well as the Office of Institutional Research.

The Center for Inclusion and Diversity provides “educational workshops and programming for all to learn, connect, and improve their practice and approach to doing great science,” a Caltech webpage states. “Our programming and initiatives not only play a role in expanding human knowledge, but they promote identity exploration, community-building, and networking.”

The title change came two weeks after NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is administered by Caltech, performed a similar bait-and-switch with its own chief diversity officer, Neela Rajendra, who has described “extreme deadline[s]” as an obstacle to “inclusion.” Though the lab had laid off 900 workers due to budget cuts and begun taking down webpages related to DEI, it said that Rajendra would stay on as “Chief of the Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success.”