DEI is killing American universities

... symptom or cause?

“Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” … courtesy of Wikimedia

Bari Weiss’s The Free Press has an excellent article on how Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies are taking over universities. In the Biblical fashion, proponents of this expansive philosophy couch their destruction in grandiose language while systematically deconstructing the very foundations of the modern academe: truth, integrity, and merit.

Some choice quotes:

• “‘I find it abhorrent for the University to encourage faculty members to classify and prioritize students based on their group identities. I intend to continue helping all students equally, regardless of their backgrounds.’”

• “Princeton has more than 70 administrators devoted to DEI; Ohio State has 132. They now take part in dictating things like hiring, promotion, tenure, and research funding.”

• “UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering declared that ‘excellence in advancing equity and inclusion must be considered on par with excellence in research and teaching.’”

• “In May, the Board of Governors for California Community Colleges (CCC), the largest system of higher education in the country, decreed that every employee—faculty, staff, and administrators—must be evaluated for their ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ competencies.”

• “It is telling that the CCC system warns against taking academic freedom too far—especially for the sake of avoiding “curricular trauma.” … Applying the language of trauma to this enterprise pathologizes learning itself.”

To some extent, I blame the faculty for meekly allowing these policies to spread, largely unchallenged, throughout most of American academia.

However, at a deeper level, the problem is really one of intellectual rot …
and DEI is simply the invasive weed that is settling into the intellectual vacuum.