The infestation of the DEI agenda in higher ed

 Legal Insurrection:

We recently highlighted a comprehensive report by John Sailer on the destructive nature of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) agenda in higher education and beyond.

Sailer has done a deep dive on this topic, specifically at the University of Texas at Austin. At this school, student activists have taken advantage of a compliant administration to drive this agenda into almost every aspect of campus life.

The National Association of Scholars provides an introduction:

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Hangs Its Hat in Texas

A few years ago, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) was another bureaucratic and academic buzzword, often disparaged by America’s Right and celebrated by its Left. Today it is found everywhere, between boardrooms and classrooms. A new study published today by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), Comprehensive Restructuring, details how DEI has gained influence over vast areas of life at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). The report offers a survey of the most influential policies enacted in the name of DEI.

“The University of Texas at Austin is not the same institution it was just three years ago,” said John Sailer, a Research Fellow at NAS and author of the report. “UT Austin, like many universities, has rolled out new DEI initiatives and has sought to restructure everything from curriculum to faculty training to university recruitment policies. This wholesale restructuring has alienated the institution from the population it serves as the flagship university of Texas.”

Sailer’s new report is just as comprehensive as the last one and shows how student activists were the driving force behind this:

Comprehensive Restructuring

In 2016, student activists at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) issued a letter to the university’s administrators, calling for sweeping changes to university policy in the name of social justice. The letter began:

Amidst growing pressure from university student organizations and campus-wide coalitions around the country led by Black students, universities like Missouri and Yale have become the focal point for student organizing and mobilization pushing for comprehensive restructuring of academic policies to address the institutionalized racism that Black students are facing. We, representatives of the Black community here at UT, want to bring the conversation regarding the failure of universities across the country, including our own, in addressing the needs and grievances of students of color.¹

Those students called for a total overhaul. UT Austin has acquiesced, issuing multiple plans to embed “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) into the fabric of the university.

In 2018, in response to the students’ call to action, UT Austin published its “University Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan.”² By the next year, it published a series of progress updates on all the facets of the plan, showing how the university had restructured everything from curriculum to faculty training to university recruitment policies. Already, the plan marked a considerable institutional overhaul, infusing the vague priorities of DEI into the mission of the university. The update notes, for example, that the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost had instructed every college and school to create a committee on diversity and inclusion, to embed these priorities at every level of the university’s administration.

But this was only the beginning. In June 2020, students issued another list of demands, and the university’s president was quick to respond with yet another series of promises.

This agenda is political and decidedly left-wing, as Sailer notes....

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The DEI agenda is tied to Critical Race Theory, gender theory, and every other progressive concept promoted throughout higher education. It is all connected....

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It has also been imposed at the traditionally more conservative Texas A&M system.  DEI is mainly imposed on the academic side of things and not on the athletic departments which usually select student-athletes and coaches based on athletic merit and not on race.  DEI is basically a raced based program that involves job preferences that are other than color blind.  It should be banned the same way we banned racism in the past.  When I was a student at UT I supported integration and I still do both for students and administrative and faculty positions.  

See, also:

How George Soros indoctrinates the next generation

And:

 University of Texas Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policies ‘Vague and Politicized,’ Report Finds

The report evaluated the University of Texas for its internal policies and practices for instances that fit the DEI mold.

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 DEI is a politically and socially progressive concept that aims to change the way institutions operate from the inside, placing emphasis on demographics considered “historically oppressed or disadvantaged.”

McKinsey, a global consulting firm that advises some of the world’s largest companies, defines it as a push “to be supportive of different groups of individuals, including people of different races, ethnicities, religions, abilities, genders, and sexual orientations.”

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