California State University, Northridge Doubles Down on Racial Discrimination

In March 2025, the United Nations commemorated the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, with its Secretary-General António Guterres lambasting racism as a “poison” that “continues to infect our world.” Such grandstanding, aside from having the irony of showing the inefficacy of international racism-fighting work for the last six decades, serves as a pretext for the protracted over-correcting in the West.

Here, major cultural institutions, represented by prestigious colleges and universities, routinely engage in race-based practices in admissions, financial assistance, faculty hiring, and more. They do so in proud capitulation to constitutional principles, executive directives, and public disdain, wearing discriminatory practices as a badge of honor and at the expense of excellence and fairness.

When confronted in the court of law and held accountable, as in the recent case of Columbia University, which has agreed to pay the Federal Government a $200 million settlement to resolve anti-Semitism charges, the offender is chastised by peers for “surrendering” to the devil. In spite of facing heightened legal risks, higher education gatekeepers either act in bold defiance or enact window-dressing changes that seek to preserve the institutional core of race-based programs.

Rinse and repeat.

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Check out the appalling case of California State University, Northridge (CSUN), a flagship campus in the colossal CSU system. While having a meager six-year graduation rate of 54 percent and a much lower four-year graduation rate of 17 percent, CSUN goes to great lengths for ideological exercises. Touting being “ranked second in the nation for its diverse learning environment by the Wall Street Journal,” CSUN couches its seven standards of excellence in the school’s “Strategic Plan for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence” and publishes diversity data in strictly racial terms.

At CSUN, the Office of Equity and Compliance employs 11 people and oversees the incorporation of diversity and equity principles in faculty hiring. For the latter, the office pledges to “aggressively … increase the diversity of the applicant pool … to [be] responsive to the diversity of our student population.” The undertone of racial pairing can’t be more obvious, but CSUN’s Chief Diversity Office quibbles that the school’s affirmative action plan is in compliance with Proposition 209, California’s statewide ban on racial preferences in public education, employment, and contracting.

CSUN’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) program, a separate function hosted under its University Student Union, offers healing spaces for students to “engage in conversations regarding race, anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusivity.” It is also equipped with an internal DEI work team, three resource centers targeting “undocumented students,” “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA+) students,” and veterans. To broaden students’ diversity horizons, EDI maintains an “anti-racism resource list,” including “allyship articles,” trainings on unconscious bias, law enforcement alternatives—to encourage students to break the law in the names of revolution and justice—books and videos.

Virtual signaling serves as an affront to more egregious programs operating on the axiom of race. CSUN’s 10-point action plan for diversity, for instance, includes the following objectives:

• Implement new recruitment, retention, and graduation plans for black students.
• Provide funding and an action plan to recruit, retain, and promote black faculty, staff, and administrators.
• Funding, resources, and an action plan to create an Institute/Center for Research and Resources on Equity and Black Culture.
• Engage Career Services in expanding their focus on career readiness for students who identify or are interested in issues facing blacks in employment.
• Develop an oral history project and visual/digital arts installation(s) showcasing the histories and contributions of local black communities.

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Of the services, opportunities, funding, and resources tailored towards only black students, there is the Black Scholars Matter (BSM) program, aimed to “enhance the pipeline of college-going students who are committed to advancing racial equity and Black culture at CSUN.” One program participant raved about getting a “full-ride scholarship” to “be surrounded by likeminded people like Black people.” There is also the Black Male Scholars (BMS) program, providing on-campus activities and workshops to the target group “through embracing the intersections of culture and identity.” Then there is the Minority Male Mentoring (M3) project, an initiative combining “one-on-one mentoring, focus groups and workshops on how to deal with stress” to help “Latino, African-American/Black, Native American, Southeast Asian and other minoritized students” succeed at CSUN. Adding insult to injury is the Black Matadors Rise program, which offers “resources specific to [CSUN’s] Black community.”

When the U.S. Department of Education started to crack down on racial programming on college campuses in early 2025, CSUN doubled down in utter disregard, vowing to keep business as usual. And keeping the woke business as usual, CSUN has done. It remains unclear how much taxpayer money and institutional energy CSUN has poured into the aforementioned programs. Even more unclear is the efficacy of said initiatives in curbing pronounced “equity gaps.” More shall be revealed, either through federal investigations or legal filings, or both.

CSUN is a glaring example and certainly not an anomaly to higher education’s collective penchant for drinking the “race” Kool-Aid liberally and wanting more. Just 120 miles further south to the border, the University of California, San Diego has maintained a race-based scholarship named “the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund (BASF)” for 42 years! We are now suing the school to stop BASF on behalf of members who are excluded from receiving financial assistance on the sole basis of race. However change-resistant, the race obsession plaguing too many colleges and universities is not insulated from legal scrutiny.

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Image: “csun logo” by Stephanie Asher on Flickr