Adam Andrzejewski and his group, OpenTheBooks, appear very busy. The previous Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate and his group publish an ongoing collection of articles at RealClearInvestigations, a conservative-leaning information website, referred to as “Waste of the Day.”
Amongst OpenTheBooks’ many targets have been Dr. Anthony Fauci’s compensation, federal companies’ spending and California governor Gavin Newsom’s opposition to a measure that would restrict taxes. And amid the present nationwide political fixation on universities, together with their range, fairness and inclusion efforts, “Waste of the Day” articles have appeared since December specializing in DEI spending on the College of North Carolina system, the College of Virginia and Oklahoma public universities, plus different points at Indiana College, Northwestern College and Ivy League establishments.
Andrzejewski and OpenTheBooks additionally publicize the investigations on their very own webpages and on social media, and conservative media shops have uncritically repeated the flashy numbers that seem in headlines.
Citing OpenTheBooks’ reporting in a phase this 12 months, Fox Information host Jesse Watters mentioned, “When you haven’t realized by now that DEI is a grift, let me simply take you to high school—particularly the College of Virginia, which spends practically $20 million a 12 months on DEI.”
OpenTheBooks is one other identify for American Transparency, a nonprofit Andrzejewski based. It’s labeled as a 501(c)(3), which the IRS says is for “charitable, non secular, academic” and different functions.
Its handle is Andrzejewski’s Hinsdale, Unwell., house. American Transparency posted its 2023 IRS Type 990 on its web site, exhibiting $3.5 million in income that 12 months and compensation exceeding $100,000 every for seven staff, together with $197,000 for Andrzejewski and $323,000 for Craig Mijares, the chief working officer.
What that kind, and Andrzejewski, don’t say is the place the cash comes from. In a quick telephone interview, Andrzejewski mentioned American Transparency is a non-public group and “we don’t launch the names of our personal donors, interval.” He answered additional questions by way of e-mail.
“Our donors benefit from the potential to privately help causes they imagine in, together with ours,” Andrzejewski wrote. “Privateness is for people, and we’re owed transparency from authorities.”
Andrzejewski mentioned his group employs and contracts with licensed public accountants and makes use of forensic auditing instruments. On March 5, he revealed OpenTheBooks’ investigation into the College of Virginia beneath an eye-popping headline: “College of Virginia Spends $20 Million On 235 DEI Staff, With Some Making $587,340 Per Yr.” The article hyperlinks to an Excel sheet of all these staff, together with their names and base pay.
Posted on the Substack webpage for his group, the article praised the College of Florida’s cuts to DEI spending, saying, “All who care about studying can look to Florida because the beacon of a brand new day.” However, Andrzejewski wrote, there’s “no such luck for studying at Virginia’s flagship college—based by Thomas Jefferson no much less.” UVA’s DEI staffers had been, he wrote, “costing college students and taxpayers a fortune.”
Andrzejewski’s headline numbers made it into headlines within the conservative Washington Examiner and the Each day Mail, which started its characteristically lengthy headline with “College of Virginia EXPOSED for $20M annual DEI spend on 235 workers.”
Andrzejewski wrote that it additionally “hit a number of primetime reveals on Fox Information” and “the nightly information on the practically 200 ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox associates of Sinclair Broadcast Group,” the conservative-leaning native information community. Andrzejewski makes common appearances on The Nationwide Desk, a Sinclair-produced information program.
However under the headline of the unique article, Andrzejewski offers extra data on how OpenTheBooks got here to its figures—a strategy that makes his headline significantly much less simple than it seems.
The article begins with a graphic itemizing the highest 10 “highest paid DEI workers” subsequent to their “estimated taxpayer price.” One is Dr. Tracy M. Downs, UVA Well being’s chief range and group engagement officer. Nonetheless, Downs can also be, in response to the college’s web site, a professor and a “urologist specializing within the surgical remedy of urologic cancers” who serves sufferers. Nonetheless, OpenTheBooks labels all of his compensation, which it estimates at $405,600, as a DEI expense.
The graphic additionally reveals the highest-paid UVA DEI workers member is Martin N. Davidson, its world chief range officer. He makes an estimated $587,340, the graphic reveals. So that might solely be one particular person making that a lot, not the “some” within the headline.
Davidson additionally holds different titles, together with a tenured school place because the Johnson and Higgins Professor of Enterprise Administration. He’s additionally the interim govt director of the College of Virginia’s Contemplative Sciences Heart. But OpenTheBooks labeled his complete wage as a DEI expense.
Andrzejewski defended together with Davidson’s complete wage, noting to Inside Increased Ed that, amongst different issues, Davidson teaches a category referred to as Management, Range and Leveraging Distinction. Additional, Andrzejewski mentioned, “it’s UVA itself that has the accountability for the DEI accounting, they usually’ve proven horrible opacity.”
Farther down, the article reveals that OpenTheBooks included a number of staff who conduct sexual misconduct investigations and guarantee compliance with Title IX and the People With Disabilities Act in its rely. These are presumably federally required positions.
On the day the article emerged, Brian Coy, UVA’s chief communications officer, instructed The Washington Instances that OpenTheBooks “appears to wildly overstate” UVA’s DEI spending and staffing ranges. Later, UVA went additional in its critique.
An April 22 rebuttal on the college’s web site urged a significant error: OpenTheBooks had “wrongly included about 100 UVA college students who function group tutors and profession counselors.” UVA mentioned the group additionally “inaccurately transformed” part-time employees’ pay charges “from hourly seasonal roles to full-time annual jobs, leading to a substantial inflation of what they’re truly paid.”
Kevin McDonald, the college’s vp for DEI and group partnerships, mentioned within the rebuttal that he believes it’s smart to spend “assets to supply equal alternatives.” However, he mentioned, “strictly as a factual matter, in case you hear UVA spends $20 million yearly on DEI applications, together with 235 staff, that’s merely false.”
Upping the Depend
Andrzejewski hasn’t taken such criticism mendacity down. In a March 21 Substack put up, he referred to as his group “non-partisan” and questioned whether or not folks might belief Coy as a result of he had been communications director for 2 Democratic governors and the Virginia Democratic Social gathering.
As an alternative of decreasing his tally of DEI staff in response to UVA’s criticisms, Andrzejewski has gone dramatically in the other way. In Might, in Metropolis Journal, a publication of the conservative Manhattan Institute, he wrote that OpenTheBooks had newly “recognized greater than 100 extra staff throughout 80 college departments who, along with their main roles on the college, had been contributing variously as DEI deans, administrators, undertaking leads, coordinators, representatives, fellows, council members, school advisers, ex officio members and even ‘JEDIs’ (Justice, Fairness, Range, and Inclusion personnel).”
“Whereas the college refuses to be clear, we’re assured in our rely,” Andrzejewski wrote. However apparently the counting wasn’t over. “So far, we’ve uncovered greater than 350 UVA staff who’re propelling the college’s DEI push,” he wrote. “And we’ve got but to seek out all of them.” He instructed Inside Increased Ed, “Our estimates are conservative.”
Thomas M. Neale, president of an anti-DEI group based by conservative UVA alumni referred to as the Jefferson Council, mentioned he reached out to OpenTheBooks final fall after listening to concerning the group from one other council member—the daddy of an OpenTheBooks worker.
Jim Bacon, the council’s contributing editor who writes on its web site and was its govt director till just lately, instructed Inside Increased Ed the group “voluntarily made a contribution to OpenTheBooks” after the investigation, “in gratitude.” Neale mentioned it was a $5,000 honorarium, technically for a speech Andrzejewski gave concerning the investigation.
Bacon wrote on the council’s web site that the council additionally “supplied help within the analysis and fact-checking” for OpenTheBooks’ preliminary article. He instructed Inside Increased Ed the council has developed information of UVA’s “labyrinthine” paperwork and sought to assist OpenTheBooks perceive the knowledge they had been taking a look at. And this partnership could have led OpenTheBooks to its subsequent exposé.
DEI at UNC
Andrzejewski was a featured speaker for the Jefferson Council’s third annual dinner on April 9, together with John P. Preyer, chair of the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees—a board that might vote in Might to shift cash from funding DEI to school police. A video of Andrzejewski’s speech and Q&A session, which OpenTheBooks posted on-line, reveals the primary query he received from the viewers was “Have you ever ever been to Chapel Hill, North Carolina?”
The particular person, unidentifiable within the video, mentioned, “I’ve received a job for you.” Andrzejewski, with amusing, mentioned, “Simply google ‘Andrzejewski’ and let’s get involved and let’s speak.”
Preyer instructed Inside Increased Ed that he couldn’t inform whether or not that was his voice within the video, however he mentioned he sat on the similar desk with Andrzejewski and requested him to look into whether or not Chapel Hill directors had been understating the variety of DEI positions and bills there. “I feel it’s a superb factor to have third-party verification on knowledge like that,” Preyer instructed Inside Increased Ed.
Andrzejewski, requested concerning the connection, instructed Inside Increased Ed, “I’m not answering questions on our inside decision-making, whistleblowers or how we prioritize an investigation.”
However OpenTheBooks did, the next month, launch a DEI investigation on the entire UNC system, two days earlier than its Board of Governors was set to vote on repealing its DEI coverage.
The Might 21 headline on OpenTheBooks’ Substack was “College Of North Carolina System Spends $90 Million On Almost 700 Staffers Beneath The DEI Umbrella.” Conservative shops like Nationwide Evaluation, The Each day Caller and The Washington Examiner repeated the numbers.
Andrzejewski wrote within the article that “on Wednesday, the system’s governing board could finish the controversial program that institutionalizes bias and prejudice based mostly on neo-Marxist rules and falsehoods—comparable to America is a structurally racist nation.”
Like with the UVA investigation, the article itself referred to as the large numbers within the headline into query. Of the “practically 700 staffers” quantity, OpenTheBooks mentioned fewer than half had been present in what it referred to as “DEI-related roles listed on the UNC system’s payroll.” Almost 400 of the 700 staffers counted had been solely “members of DEI committees, commissions and councils,” it mentioned.
But the full compensation for these merely serving on a DEI committee—not being paid for DEI jobs—was poured into the $90 million determine. So had been the salaries of professors educating about race, gender and different points.
Andrzejewski wrote that “we did our greatest to quantify the whole advanced of DEI, Workplace of Civil Rights, Equal Alternative, Title IX and different places of work. A few of these companies are mandated by state or federal regulation.” Requested why he included these places of work, Andrzejewski wrote to Inside Increased Ed that “now, all stakeholders have a whole image. Stakeholders can debate and resolve what’s training muscle and what’s political fats.”
If there could also be points with how OpenTheBooks counts DEI positions and expenditures, the schools themselves aren’t offering detailed details about what the numbers needs to be. The UNC system mentioned it doesn’t acquire this knowledge. Additional, there aren’t agreed-upon definitions on what ought to or shouldn’t be referred to as DEI.
What Is DEI, Anyway?
What DEI means can rely upon who’s defining it.
One UNC system spokesperson, when requested for the system’s DEI positions and bills for them, wrote in an e-mail that “the system workplace doesn’t acquire that knowledge.” The spokesperson emailed a hyperlink to a Raleigh Information & Observer article that supplied self-reported numbers from a lot of the state’s public universities. That article’s numbers had been a lot decrease than OpenTheBooks’, however the definition used was individuals who “spend at the least half of their work time on the [DEI] efforts.”
A 2022 article from the conservative North Carolina–based mostly suppose tank the James G. Martin Heart for Educational Renewal got here up with a a lot decrease determine than OpenTheBooks’ $90 million, 700 staffers quantity. The Martin Heart reported “over $11 million going in direction of DEI workers salaries throughout the UNC System,” although its linked report says these numbers had been just for “administrative” salaries.
UVA has supplied its personal determine, saying there are round “55 devoted DEI positions with a complete annual finances of $5.8 million,” not the 235 and $20 million figures OpenTheBooks’ headline urged. UVA despatched Inside Increased Ed a 2023 PowerPoint presentation with a graphic that mentioned its calculation excluded salaries for school members “on administrative appointment who’re paid based mostly on their school position and market worth.”
Bacon, with the Jefferson Council, mentioned, “Everybody comes up with a barely completely different quantity as a result of in the end all of it boils all the way down to semantics.” However the numerical variations have been broad, even amongst conservative organizations, they usually’ve been a lot decrease than OpenTheBooks’ calculations—or the headlines they generate.
A 2021 Heritage Basis report, which excluded “workers listed as primarily having accountability for making certain compliance with authorized obligations,” concluded there have been 94 DEI personnel at UVA. A report from the conservative Virginia Affiliation of Students and funded partly by the Jefferson Council counted 77 DEI directors in 2021 receiving $6.9 million in compensation. The Affiliation of Students mentioned that was up considerably from 2020.
OpenTheBooks has inserted itself into the void left in lieu of extra detailed numbers agreed upon between DEI proponents and opponents. Its numbers elevate the query of whether or not DEI bills and positions are even definable.
“Finally, there’s no approach of understanding,” Bacon mentioned. “Calculating any quantity,” he mentioned, includes a “limitless variety of worth judgments.”
