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Heather Mac Donald's article in City Journal last week  us to the University of California at San Diego's (UCSD's) to reorganize its diversity-initiatives administrative structure by refashioning the office of Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) as the office of Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. UCSD's May 4, 2011, announcement states:

Following campus and community consultation, we are pleased to announce plans to establish the position of Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and to conduct a national search for an experienced leader to guide our diversity initiatives.  The full-time vice chancellor position will have direct responsibility for a range of diversity offices and activities for faculty, staff and students.

This is not just a cosmetic makeover for the bureaucratic apparatus that last year brought us the ominous-sounding , the dissolution of the student television station, and the unconstitutional freezing of funds to all 33 student media organizations following a variety of expression that roiled the campus including the "Compton Cookout." In continuing its efforts to place political reform at the top of its agenda, UCSD is converting a half-time position into a full-time position, even as the UC system is staring at a that has reportedly led some professors to leave for .

But perhaps this shift is more troubling for its implication for the principles of faculty self-governance and academic freedom. Whereas previously the CDO was chosen among the UCSD faculty and limited to three-year terms, the new Vice Chancellor is to be a permanent office, firmly entrenched within the administrative hierarchy. Given that UCSD's diversity initiatives affect core academic matters such as , this decision deprives the faculty of some of its prerogatives and confirms a worrisome trend of diminishing academic freedom on our campuses, where decisions as to who may teach, what may be taught, and who may attend are increasingly made by bureaucrat-administrators without much or any accountability to the faculty.