Texas fights back against DEI ops

 NY Times:

In late 2022, a group of conservative activists and academics set out to abolish the diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Texas’ public universities.

They linked up with a former aide to the state’s powerful lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who made banning DEI initiatives one of his top priorities. Setting their sights on well-known schools like Texas A&M, they researched which offices and employees should be expunged. A well-connected alumnus conveyed their findings to the A&M chancellor; the former Patrick aide cited them before a state Senate committee.

The campaign quickly yielded results: In May, Texas approved legislation banishing all such programs from public institutions of higher learning.

Long before Claudine Gay resigned from Harvard University’s presidency this month under intense criticism of her academic record, her congressional testimony about campus antisemitism and her efforts to promote racial justice, conservative academics and politicians had begun making the case that the decadeslong drive to increase racial diversity in America’s universities had corrupted higher education.

Gathering strength from a backlash against Black Lives Matter and fueled by criticism that doctrines such as critical race theory had made colleges engines of progressive indoctrination, the eradication of DEI programs has become both a cause and a message suffusing the American right. In 2023, more than 20 states considered or approved new laws taking aim at DEI, even as polling has shown that diversity initiatives remain popular.

Thousands of documents obtained by The New York Times cast light on the playbook and the thinking underpinning one nexus of the anti-DEI movement: the activists and intellectuals who helped shape Texas’ new law, along with measures in at least three other states. The material, which includes casual correspondence with like-minded allies around the country, also reveals unvarnished views on race, sexuality and gender roles. And despite the movement’s marked success in some Republican-dominated states, the documents chart the activists’ struggle to gain traction with broader swaths of voters and officials.

Centered at the Claremont Institute, a California-based think tank with close ties to the Donald Trump movement and to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the group coalesced roughly three years ago around a sweeping ambition: to strike a killing blow against “the leftist social justice revolution” by eliminating “social justice education” from American schools.

The documents — grant proposals, budgets, draft reports and correspondence, obtained through public records requests — show how the activists formed a loose network of think tanks, political groups and Republican operatives in at least a dozen states.

They sought funding from a range of right-leaning philanthropies and family foundations and from one of the largest individual donors to Republican campaigns in the country. They exchanged model legislation, published a slew of public reports and coordinated with other conservative advocacy groups in states like Alabama, Maine, Tennessee and Texas.

In public, some individuals and groups involved in the effort joined calls to protect diversity of thought and intellectual freedom, embracing the argument that DEI efforts had made universities intolerant and narrow. They claimed to stand for meritocratic ideals and against ideologies that divided Americans. They argued that DEI programs made Black and Hispanic students feel less welcome instead of more.
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There is much more. 

Where you are least likely to see DEI programs is in competitive sports.  You are unlikely to see a short white guy on an NBA team proving that diversity is not necessarily a strength.  Merit should be the determining factor in all jobs if your goal is to excel in any endeavor, business, or athletic competition.