Chad Topaz Queer DEI Race Traitor's Avatar

Chad Topaz Queer DEI Race Traitor

@chadtopaz.bsky.social

Data science + math for social justice. Violist, yogi, husband, dad to human & dogs. πŸ³οΈβ€πŸŒˆ Views do not represent my employers. Author of Unlocking Justice: The Power of Data to Confront Inequity and Create Change. Preorder at: https://bit.ly/4nT7qUh

8,917 Followers  |  1,388 Following  |  455 Posts  |  Joined: 29.07.2023
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Posts by Chad Topaz Queer DEI Race Traitor (@chadtopaz.bsky.social)

Thanks Noah!!! I genuinely appreciate the assessment. πŸ™

05.03.2026 14:35 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

remember, I Am Not A Lawyer. So I am clueless here.

05.03.2026 13:59 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

If this is a terrible signal, I CAN TAKE IT. Just want an honest assessment. Uh, @evanbernick.bsky.social @profloriann.bsky.social @msmith750.bsky.social @narosenblum.bsky.social anyone?

05.03.2026 13:58 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 0

Law profs, what does it mean if I *still* have not heard from 95% of the places I submitted. Is this a sign of... anything? Like I have had a tiny handful of rejections and otherwise: silence, and it's now 5 weeks in. Help me out, I am so inexperienced with this.

05.03.2026 13:51 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

tagging @davidblakejohnson.bsky.social. Dude, this really makes me wonder about our paper under submission at a Wiley journal. Very concerned it is just... forgotten due to lack of reminders. See above^^^^.

05.03.2026 13:20 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Ruler lady at Northwestern was SO NICE back in my day. Like I think we secretly wanted to be friends.

05.03.2026 12:49 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Gah numerics, stupid spellcheck. Numerical analysis and scientific computing.

05.03.2026 12:48 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

For funsies, my comps were in PDE, numerical, and nonlinear dynamical systems. Except they weren’t funsy. But I did pass.

05.03.2026 12:47 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Oof. Well thanks for being on the stern reminder end of things. 😍

05.03.2026 12:14 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Oh interesting (and appalling)

05.03.2026 12:09 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Yeah I mean I don’t disagree. But maybe it will be speedy horribleness rather than slow horribleness 😭

05.03.2026 12:08 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
Hello,

It has been a week since your last message, and the manuscript still shows a status of "in peer review" in the system. There has been no decision.

I would like to be direct about where things stand. It has now been 515 days since initial submission, 76 days since we submitted our final revision, and 52 days since the last reviewer returned their report β€” a report that was completed three days after the reviewer accepted the assignment. The reviewer did their job in three days. The editor has had the report for 52. I have now been told on February 11 that a decision would come "in the coming week," on February 18 that it would come "within the coming few weeks," and on February 26 that it would come "soon." None of these turned out to be true.

I understand that you personally do not control the handling editor, and I appreciate that you have been responsive. But whatever internal steps are being taken are not working. I also want to flag something practical. The preprint of this paper on SocArXiv has been downloaded 1,059 times. There is clearly an audience for this work. Every week of delay is a week in which readers are citing and engaging with the preprint rather than the journal version. Is it really [REDACTED]'s intention to lose those reads to the preprint because an editor will not log a decision?

Sincerely,

etc. etc.

Hello, It has been a week since your last message, and the manuscript still shows a status of "in peer review" in the system. There has been no decision. I would like to be direct about where things stand. It has now been 515 days since initial submission, 76 days since we submitted our final revision, and 52 days since the last reviewer returned their report β€” a report that was completed three days after the reviewer accepted the assignment. The reviewer did their job in three days. The editor has had the report for 52. I have now been told on February 11 that a decision would come "in the coming week," on February 18 that it would come "within the coming few weeks," and on February 26 that it would come "soon." None of these turned out to be true. I understand that you personally do not control the handling editor, and I appreciate that you have been responsive. But whatever internal steps are being taken are not working. I also want to flag something practical. The preprint of this paper on SocArXiv has been downloaded 1,059 times. There is clearly an audience for this work. Every week of delay is a week in which readers are citing and engaging with the preprint rather than the journal version. Is it really [REDACTED]'s intention to lose those reads to the preprint because an editor will not log a decision? Sincerely, etc. etc.

Please clap for the most aggressive email I have ever sent to a journal. I promise this was only sent after delays at every stage, and on my end, a very slow and polite escalation over many months, each time recognizing the difficulty of the work that people running a journal have to do.

05.03.2026 11:34 β€” πŸ‘ 20    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 2

Also, sid not know this about Wiley. Oof. Danger Will Robinson.

05.03.2026 11:54 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I have written the EIC to request this multiple times. No response so far.

05.03.2026 11:53 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I JUST submitted a paper to Sociological Science which has a totally different model (basically, no reviewers β€” expert editors do everything and the promise is decision within 30 days). Am very interested to see how this goes. Esp since I am not a sociologist lol.

05.03.2026 11:52 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

BTW the APC for this journal is several thousand dollars lol.

05.03.2026 11:44 β€” πŸ‘ 8    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

It does. This is the worst offender but I have so many papers in almost as bad situations. Like one paper I submitted two months ago and it hasn’t yet made it to an editor… like, the status is just β€œsubmitted.”

05.03.2026 11:43 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Hello,

It has been a week since your last message, and the manuscript still shows a status of "in peer review" in the system. There has been no decision.

I would like to be direct about where things stand. It has now been 515 days since initial submission, 76 days since we submitted our final revision, and 52 days since the last reviewer returned their report β€” a report that was completed three days after the reviewer accepted the assignment. The reviewer did their job in three days. The editor has had the report for 52. I have now been told on February 11 that a decision would come "in the coming week," on February 18 that it would come "within the coming few weeks," and on February 26 that it would come "soon." None of these turned out to be true.

I understand that you personally do not control the handling editor, and I appreciate that you have been responsive. But whatever internal steps are being taken are not working. I also want to flag something practical. The preprint of this paper on SocArXiv has been downloaded 1,059 times. There is clearly an audience for this work. Every week of delay is a week in which readers are citing and engaging with the preprint rather than the journal version. Is it really [REDACTED]'s intention to lose those reads to the preprint because an editor will not log a decision?

Sincerely,

etc. etc.

Hello, It has been a week since your last message, and the manuscript still shows a status of "in peer review" in the system. There has been no decision. I would like to be direct about where things stand. It has now been 515 days since initial submission, 76 days since we submitted our final revision, and 52 days since the last reviewer returned their report β€” a report that was completed three days after the reviewer accepted the assignment. The reviewer did their job in three days. The editor has had the report for 52. I have now been told on February 11 that a decision would come "in the coming week," on February 18 that it would come "within the coming few weeks," and on February 26 that it would come "soon." None of these turned out to be true. I understand that you personally do not control the handling editor, and I appreciate that you have been responsive. But whatever internal steps are being taken are not working. I also want to flag something practical. The preprint of this paper on SocArXiv has been downloaded 1,059 times. There is clearly an audience for this work. Every week of delay is a week in which readers are citing and engaging with the preprint rather than the journal version. Is it really [REDACTED]'s intention to lose those reads to the preprint because an editor will not log a decision? Sincerely, etc. etc.

Please clap for the most aggressive email I have ever sent to a journal. I promise this was only sent after delays at every stage, and on my end, a very slow and polite escalation over many months, each time recognizing the difficulty of the work that people running a journal have to do.

05.03.2026 11:34 β€” πŸ‘ 20    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 2

What if I’m fighting Pennywise from It tho.

04.03.2026 22:01 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Boo.

04.03.2026 15:33 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

JFC. So... I actually quote this dude VERY BRIEFLY in my book that is coming out and the thing that I quote is... true and accurate I think? But now I *really* wish I had found a different source.

04.03.2026 15:32 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

FFS

04.03.2026 15:29 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

omg @evanbernick.bsky.social I just looked up his publications and "When Should Governments Invest More in Nudging?". I'M DONE.

04.03.2026 15:29 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I might get in trouble here but... I am assuming this dude is white?

04.03.2026 15:27 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 0

I need an explainer because I don't know the context or what these words mean lol. Should I mentally equate this with people who say increasing the minimum wage hurts low wage workers?

04.03.2026 15:24 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

<Insert Ayatoll’d’ya so joke.>

04.03.2026 07:22 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I didn't know the author but I just googled him and the first phrases my eye saw on the screen were "Raised in a Christian covenant community" and then "Quillette" and I'M DONE

03.03.2026 22:47 β€” πŸ‘ 28    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
The Retreat from DEI:
The Impact of Legal and Political Developments
on DEI Language in U.S. Private Foundations

Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, large private foundations in the United States widely adopted language related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) on their public-facing websites. In 2023, a series of legal and political developments began reversing the institutional pressures that had encouraged this adoption: first the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023), then state-level anti-DEI legislation, and culminating in President Trump’s Executive Order 14151 (2025). Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, we constructed a longitudinal corpus of 3,612 archived web pages from thirteen large U.S. private foundations and tracked the frequency of sixty-seven DEI-related terms from 2019 to 2025. Among the nine foundations with data in both years, a Wilcoxon signed-rank test indicates a decline from 2023 to 2025 (one-sided p = .029, two-sided p = .059), with median usage falling approximately 40 percent. The decline was broad-based across many terms. These patterns are consistent with coercive isomorphism: the same process that drove widespread, convergent adoption of DEI language after 2020 now appears to be reversing it. The findings establish an empirical baseline for tracking how political pressure reshapes organizational communication about equity.

The Retreat from DEI: The Impact of Legal and Political Developments on DEI Language in U.S. Private Foundations Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, large private foundations in the United States widely adopted language related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) on their public-facing websites. In 2023, a series of legal and political developments began reversing the institutional pressures that had encouraged this adoption: first the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023), then state-level anti-DEI legislation, and culminating in President Trump’s Executive Order 14151 (2025). Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, we constructed a longitudinal corpus of 3,612 archived web pages from thirteen large U.S. private foundations and tracked the frequency of sixty-seven DEI-related terms from 2019 to 2025. Among the nine foundations with data in both years, a Wilcoxon signed-rank test indicates a decline from 2023 to 2025 (one-sided p = .029, two-sided p = .059), with median usage falling approximately 40 percent. The decline was broad-based across many terms. These patterns are consistent with coercive isomorphism: the same process that drove widespread, convergent adoption of DEI language after 2020 now appears to be reversing it. The findings establish an empirical baseline for tracking how political pressure reshapes organizational communication about equity.

🚨What if some intrepid students and I decided to see if private foundations' public stances on justice were thin enough to fold under anti-DEI pressure? We tracked their website language using Wayback Machine. The retreat is real and it seems political vibes alone supercharged it. osf.io/29gda_v1

02.03.2026 10:21 β€” πŸ‘ 158    πŸ” 66    πŸ’¬ 7    πŸ“Œ 2

2026 and we’re still fucking doing the Crusades.

03.03.2026 11:42 β€” πŸ‘ 14    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Best example is where after two minor rounds of revision final reviewer holdout returned a report in a day. There’s no way it doesn’t say β€œall good”. Waiting for the editor to process it now. For two months.

03.03.2026 11:53 β€” πŸ‘ 12    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0