As watfly has said, the scientists were mostly immune, but you even see it now in medicine with the new push towards wokeness in medical school. That's turning too. I don't by into the hysteria of this piece, but it is illustrative of the trend. Mathematics is harder because, you know, mathematics doesn't lie....but it's creeping there too....the push in California for equity in math.
They came for writers and professors, and few said anything. Then they came for cops. Now they're targeting doctors
www.theamericanconservative.com
Research again is more on the scientific end of things (though even some of that, particularly on the weaker sciences, is increasingly garbage). After all, how many times has the origin of the Shakespeare plays, the meaning of a Robert Frost poem, or the economics of the Roman Empire need to be turned over to discover something new. Most of it outside the sciences (including law) is busy work....but it's also busy work which pushes away from education (which you think an institution of higher learning would prioritize) and doesn't add a whole lot of value.
I paid no attention to the meritocrats' definition of merit as a result because it's just an illusion. Really it's just a velvet rope (like much of human interactions) signaling I'm in, you're out, I have status, you don't.