The College Fix reports that Professor Marisol Quintanilla is an accomplished nematologist who was passed over after she spoke out against DEI.
Matt Lamb is Associate Editor with The College Fix.
"Marisol Quintanilla has been an outspoken critic of DEI policies, including writing an article in her personal capacity criticizing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. This generated backlash, and the chair of her department asked her to retract it, to apologize, and also separately asked her to submit a DEI statement as part of her performance review."
The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism or FAIR got involved. It said in a news release the university passed over her despite her two decades of teaching and a lengthy list of achievements including 21 peer-reviewed publications, over $6.2 million in grants, and 189 extension talks.
Quintanilla also notably refused to list her gender on university forms, believing these questions implicitly endorsed ideological viewpoints that go against her faith.
"I think it shows the importance of fighting back and fighting back often. Professor Quintanilla required intervention from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, as well as the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism,” Lamb said.
Lamb said he thinks it is good to get her story out there so other professors, particularly at Michigan State University, know how to handle facing pushback for voicing opinions.

“Furthermore, she was voicing her opinion on how DEI was hurting the university, and universities and department chairs should welcome feedback on their policies,” he said.
The struggle Quintanilla faced shows the idea of academic freedom can be a one-way street.
Lamb further said he hopes Quintanilla's fellow academics at Michigan State would defend her right as a professor to share her concerns because they would probably want support in their own rights to voice concerns about different university policies and more that they might not agree with.
"It's important to highlight backlash she generated and the fact that she was initially denied tenure shows that the idea of academic freedom is often really a farce. It's only really academic freedom for people who endorse liberal ideas, which means it's not really, it's not really freedom.”