Religion is a Mental Illness

DIE-ing Schools

And Glimmers of Hope

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The hysteria in the Ivy League does not start there. Those students shrieking Hamas slogans in the squares of New York were not radicalized overnight. It is in schools that civilization is built or destroyed. Schooling determines the calibre of a nation’s governing class, if not its ideology. This is well understood by the Left, which has transformed Western pedagogy since the 1968 publication of the third most-cited work of social science of all time, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by the Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freire. Freire’s book took the USA by storm in the 1970s, helping to decimate such tyrannical norms as the authority of the teacher over the pupil, the memorization of knowledge, and even the idea that knowledge is good for its own sake (he claimed that the sole value in teaching is to reveal the “oppressive nature of reality” to children). So, while the unholy trinity of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (D.I.E.) has enjoyed a growth spurt in the last decade, we can trace its roots back to good old-fashioned 20th century Marxism. Soviet-funded subversive ideology surviving its mother’s demise, yet again.

D.I.E. is, in turn, the mother of poor standards: dumbing down logically proceeds from the ideology of “emancipatory education,” which attacks “logocentric” (or, more recently, “Eurocentric”) knowledge for being the fruit of Dead White Male labor. This explains the lack of classroom rigor and teaching authority that underpins the appalling standards in American public schools. US literacy and numeracy scores have now dropped to their lowest level in decades. (Though there is some evidence suggesting this has partly to do with demographic changes.) This decline preceded 2020 but was undoubtedly worsened by the closure of schools during the pandemic.

But poor test scores are only part of the problem: the ideological equivalent of paranoid schizophrenia, poorly concealed by woke buzzwords like “inclusion,” now has a stranglehold on the schools. Children are being fed ideas which are not just nakedly ideological, but bewildering: there are as many genders as there are numbers and racial color-blindness is oppressive. This allegedly pastoral education eats into the time that children might otherwise spend learning a language. 

Top institutions are not invulnerable to the ideological madness and philistinism of D.I.E. In some cases, they lead the charge: flagship independent schools like Eton and its American parallel, Philipps Exeter (attended by now-disgraced Harvard President Claudine Gay), have officially DIEd a demeaning death. 

At Eton, English master Will Knowland was fired in 2020 for refusing to retract his statements in a lecture entitled “The Patriarchy Paradox,” in which he challenged the idea that masculinity is by nature toxic. In defending masculinity, Knowland sought to emancipate a classroom full of boys from the idea that their sex is irrevocably stained with the sin of “patriarchy.” Knowland’s goal – and crime – was to encourage boys to have confidence. This was too much for the school: Knowland was fired at the hands of Head Master Simon Henderson, who, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, pledged to teach a school of English boys the fanatical dogma of the American left: that society is plagued with “systemic racism” and (in a nation which abolished slavery throughout much of Africa) must be “decolonized.” 

The events in May 2020 likewise prompted a period of insanity at Phillips Exeter. “Intersectional” studies of science and race abound, as do “queer readings” of Shakespeare; most alarmingly, children are subject to cynical “anti-racist training,” based on the idea that white children are inherently racist – an idea which is sure to shatter the self-confidence of those children. 

It may sound elitist to mourn top institutions like Eton and Exeter rather than focussing on the abject conditions of state-funded schools in the Anglosphere. To that I say: yes! The health of the body politic depends on the health and caliber of its political elite. It is in any nation’s best interest to be governed by men and women who know right from wrong, are well-versed in the languages and literatures of their global allies, and conduct themselves with responsibility rather than racially motivated neurosis or self-victimization. At the very least, can’t politicians possess the basic knowledge required to do their jobs? It seems not: last month, it was revealed that the chief secretary to the Treasury in the UK, educated at top grammar school Oxted and Pembroke College, Oxford, doesn’t know how to interpret statistical data. 

But education isn’t just instrumental. Knowledge may be power, but it is also true “emancipation.” The perversion of D.I.E is that it removes the real freedom which excellence and emotional robustness gives children, shackling them with poor-quality learning and a host of neuroses. This particularly betrays children from unstable backgrounds, whom D.I.E. claims to help. The distress which anti-colorblind dogma brings children is palpable: parents have reported that their children leave classrooms in tears because they are white, therefore monstrous oppressors. Chaya Raichik, known for her Twitter account “LibsofTikTok,” has drawn attention to dozens of cases of overt anti-white propaganda in American schools, many of which are elementary schools; typical occurrences include schools hosting playdates which exclude white children. Despite her primary tactic being to simply repost content which teachers and schools willingly publish themselves, Raichik has come under fire for “inciting hatred” (as a glance over her outrageously partisan Wikipedia page reveals). Since her platform has such a wide reach, her critics claim she is irresponsibly drawing attention to humble elementary school teachers; it doesn’t occur to them that these teachers should probably restrain themselves from posting about their ideological schemes on TikTok, the most popular mobile app in the USA.

Perhaps even more pressing is the explosion of transgenderism in schools. As a recently censored study shows, “rapid onset gender dysphoria” is a real and growing phenomenon. The contagious nature of trans identities contradicts the claim that these identities are innate; evidence of exploding numbers of insecure, pubescent children identifying as transgender in social clusters shows otherwise. 

The social contagion effect in schools is compounded by ideologically driven teachers who work to alienate parents from their children by concealing and abetting their young pupils’ new identities. In April 2022, Chaya Raichik exposed footage of an 8th grade English teacher in Owasso, Oklahoma, who stated in a video "If your parents don't accept you for who you are, f*ck them. I'm your parents now. I'm proud of you. Drink some water. I love you." Tyler Wrynn, the teacher in question, is far from alone in his stated mission to “emancipate” children from parents who are concerned that their children might seek out and access cross-sex hormonal therapy, which risks sterilization and myriad permanent ailments. In this way, D.I.E. in schools poses a threat to fundamental unit of society which overwhelmingly determines outcomes for children: the nuclear family.

Parents are waking up. Demand is growing for classical schools where great books will be devoured rather than dismissed as relics of a world of Dead White Men. Schools which champion the principles of authority, stability, order, and emotional fortitude are already boasting unusual academic success and good discipline: Michaela Community School in London, run by the effervescent Katherine Birbalsingh, is a testament to how strict authority can transform the prospects of children who come from deprived, largely nonwhite backgrounds. Birbalsingh discourages the victimhood mentality which is typical of Generation Z, eschewing appeals to “mitigated circumstances” if homework is late.

Often described by the British press as the “strictest school in Britain,” Michaela attained among the best GCSE results (the rough British equivalent of the Iowa tests) in the country in its very first student cohort. In 2022 and 2023 the school boasted the highest “value-added” (or progress) score in the country, all while autocratically banning mobile phones and making it compulsory to sing the National Anthem. In Alberta, Canada, Caylan Ford (who has written incisively about the pernicious philosophy underpinning Freire’s Pedagogy) has been overwhelmed by the demand for her newly-founded classical charter school, Calgary Classical Academy. The Great Hearts School network, exploding across the American southwest, is another heartwarming example.

Stuffy, strict, concerned parents: take stock. You are not alone.

Is this the end for DEI?

“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” hiring policies are unprofitable, patronising and regressive. Some companies are finding a better way.

andrewdoyle.substack.com

“There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal. Upholding meritocracy is good for business and is the right thing to do.”

“You’re ‘disrupting’ current hard-fought standards you don’t like, by reverting to a system rooted in bias and inequality that asks less of you as a hiring manager and as a leader” – Dan Couch (He/Him)

“Curious to see how hiring processes can effectively (and objectively) measure one’s ‘merit’, ‘excellence’, and ‘intelligence’, all of which are very subjective terms” – Cole Gawin (He/Him)

“What is merit and how do we measure it?” – Rio Cruz Morales (They/Them)

“This sounds a lot like excuse making for casting off DEI principles” – R.C. Rondero De Mosier (He/Him)

1. We will never discipline or fire members of staff on the basis of pressure from online activists.
2. We have no interest in our employees’ political opinions, and how they choose to express themselves outside the workplace is no business of ours.
3. We will not probe into our employees’ thoughts with “unconscious bias training”, or force them to undertake workshops that presuppose the existence of “systemic injustice”.
4. We will never make statements of fealty to any given cause, political or ideological, or claim to promote certain “values”. Our aim is to make a profit, not preach to our customers.
5. We will not tolerate the public shaming of employees if they cause offence, either through a joke or poor phrasing, and will instead seek to resolve internally any disputes that naturally occur when human beings work together.
6. We reject the current predominance of identity politics and will simply treat everyone equally (staff and customers alike) irrespective of their race, gender, sexuality, or any other immutable characteristic.

DEI: the great misunderstanding

On the collectivist nature of diversity, equality, and inclusion ideology.

socialimpurity.substack.com

The occupation of university campuses by terrorist supporters celebrating the October 7th massacre of Israeli citizens and visitors to the country by Hamas and calling for more Jewish blood makes abundantly clear the extent to which our academic institutions have been damaged by the ideology of diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI, sometimes also called EDI). Yet, against the backdrop of positive news (MIT dropping DEI statements, UNC System votes to repeal its DEI policy, UT Austin laying off multiple DEI employees, multiple universities re-instating standardized testing for admissions), there are continued calls to reform, rather than eliminate, DEI, claims that diversity, equality, and inclusion are “important values”, as well as paradoxical remarks that with proper definitions of the three terms, the ideology can be salvaged, returned to its original “good intentions”.

In my view, the problem here is that many Westerners misunderstand what DEI is, how it works, and why it is so destructive. They misunderstand it because they were born, grew up, and lived in democratic, capitalist societies that valued individual freedoms and responsibilities, while DEI at its core is a collectivist ideology. Therefore, its comprehension comes easier to those of us who experienced collectivist notions first-hand.

A good example of this misunderstanding is the term “DEI hire” that is being applied to individuals, most recently the disgraced former president of Harvard University Claudine Gay and the democratically elected Mayor of Baltimore Brandon M. Scott. The problem is that DEI does not operate at the level of individuals, but on the scale of the entire society, by modifying the selection criteria for admissions, hiring, and promotion. The term, therefore, is an oxymoron; everyone hired in academia in the past decade or so has been a DEI hire, and that is precisely why the ideology is so destructive. DEI works by replacing selection criteria that have previously been based on merit with those based on an allegiance to the ideology, propagating its destruction in the space of multitude of institutions, and in time—through generations of faculty and students. Whereas in the past, hiring and admission decisions were based on one’s ability to do the job, thirst for knowledge, and aptitude to pursue it, now they are based on one’s ability to perpetuate the ideology and its growing bureaucracies. The result is a communist dream, where those who were nothing, are becoming everything—with the associated destructive consequences.

A detour is needed here to address one of the most pervasive myths behind the need for DEI: that academia was never a meritocracy. This nonsense is being repeated ad nauseum in the hopes that repeating it will somehow make it true. One argument is that it could not possibly have been a meritocracy because the applicant pool was limited: e.g., women were not admitted to educational institutions, quotas were instituted limiting the admission of Jewish candidates, etc. Yes, imposing such limits on the applicant pool is a bad thing. Progressive societies have been doing away with these practices (unlike regressive societies, cue the Taliban). Yet, the principles that were used to select candidates from the limited pool – those principles were based on ability and aptitude and were, at their core, meritocratic, much like sex-segregated athletics or chess remain meritocratic in each sex category.

A more poignant criticism is not that academia wasn’t meritocratic, but that meritocracy itself is imperfect; that the failure of nominally meritocratic procedures resulted in the selection of the proverbial “wrong man for the job”. This, of course, is true: anyone who’s ever set foot on a university campus has no doubt encountered people of very questionable qualifications. Coupled with limited applicant pools, such failures of meritocratic selection evoke a deep sense of unfairness: why should someone incompetent be selected over someone who had no chance to compete in the first place? They shouldn’t, of course.

Meritocracy is imperfect. That is a fact. Arguing with facts is counterproductive. Admission, hiring, and promotion procedures must continuously be improved. Yet, it is imperfect in the same sense as democracy or capitalism are imperfect: there simply is no viable alternative—as long as we want things to work, that is; for the human race to continue to survive, peacefully prosper, and progress. After all, we know very well what happens to societies that exchange the imperfection of democracy and capitalism for the perfection of communism, socialism, or national socialism. Indeed, DEI has already led to some spectacularly unqualified individuals infiltrating academia—Claudine Gay is merely one example—and the storm of violent, antisemitic, pro-Hamas protests.

DEI grew out of authoritarian ideologies and is repeating their tried and tired destructive paradigms. It is based on the fallacy that a fair selection must reflect the composition of the population, on fighting “overrepresentation”—the same notions were used by the Nazis to justify their antisemitic policies in German and Austrian universities, and beyond, in 1930s; It is based on the notion that everyone must first and foremost be an activist, guarding ideological purity and promoting contemporary notions of morality and social justice—the notion adopted in the USSR, where every act and statement were imbued with political significance, one that was either in accordance the party line, or against it.

This brings me to my final point. According to Theodosius Dobzhansky, a Russian-American geneticist and evolutionary biologist who was fortunate to have escaped Lysenko’s purges by defecting to the West, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Neo-Marxists occupying Western universities, following in the anti-Darwinist footsteps of their forebears, criticize the “survival of the fittest” approach to admissions, hiring, and promotion. But a living system subject to a selection pressure will always evolve; the only question is, what will it be evolving towards? In other words, “survival of the fittest” is a universal law. What changes with the nature of the selection pressure is not whether the fittest survive—they always do—but what they are fit for. Those, who survive the selection based on DEI ideology, are fit for activism, cowardice of mobs, bigotry, antisemitism and other forms of racism, violence and destruction. This is exactly what we see in today’s campus protests, and this has always been the point: to produce generations of activists who not only lack knowledge, but who were robbed of the skills needed to develop it, of the curiosity to seek answers to their questions beyond the “party line”. There never were any good intentions.

Love Wins

Love has always won; there’s no reason for it to stop now.

news.fairforall.org

So, I have a confession: I am a Kenny Chesney fan. His song "Get Along" has always been a favorite of mine, but it didn’t achieve great significance in my mind until I started this job. As many of you know, I am the Director of Legal Advocacy for FAIR, and a big part of my job is fielding complaints from people who have faced discrimination at work or their children’s schools. Some have been outright barred from participating in events and activities based solely on their skin color. Others have been compelled to participate in discriminatory practices against their wishes for the same reason. Suffice it to say, the stories I hear are often quite grim and don't showcase the best of humanity. Instead, they frequently highlight discriminatory “DEI” efforts—present discrimination as a means of correcting past discrimination. These tactics are inherently flawed and bound to fail.

When the so-called “great awokening” began to sweep the country in 2020, my primary feeling was confusion. We were told that America is a systemically racist country and that the opportunity to succeed depended entirely on one's skin color. That racism was not in fact discrimination against an individual based on their race, but that racism = prejudice + power. The proposed solution was to decolonize America—a revolution.

I was confused by these proclamations because, as far as I could tell, they were not entirely accurate; many were themselves fundamentally racist. Has America and its leaders made horrid, unthinkable mistakes throughout history? Definitely. Do racist people still exist in America today? Of course. It’s the sweeping generalizations of the new orthodoxy that are suspect. Quite frankly, based on what I can see with my own eyes, it’s nonsense. However much actual racism there is in the world today, it is amplified 10X the moment you open social media. I have found that if we let it, sometimes the real world might just pleasantly surprise us. 

Every member of a group categorized based on shared skin color does not think or act the same as the others. Nor does one’s likelihood of success in life depend on which group they are assigned to. Race-essentialist and reductive notions like these aren’t just crude, they’re wildly improbable. They’re also dangerous. What could go wrong in resurrecting the pernicious principle that the law might rightly treat people differently based on their immutable traits, so long as it fits the popular narrative of the day? The current dogma of “intersectionality” and “oppressors versus oppressed” is ultimately a losing proposition. It will logically fail on its own, and I believe that failure will be accelerated by love.

Fifty-seven years ago today, the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Loving v. Virginia, the case that challenged anti-miscegenation statutes in several states. The plaintiffs, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia and then returned to Virginia to establish their marital home. Soon after, a grand jury indicted the Lovings for violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage. The Lovings appealed, and once their case reached the Supreme Court, justice was finally served. The Court ruled that our Constitution does not allow a state to prevent you from marrying someone simply because you don’t share the same skin color. For me, this history gives the slogan “Virginia is for lovers” a special meaning.

We’ve all probably felt the power of indeterminable forces trying to divide us based on immutable characteristics. After searching widely to find the exact source of this power, I still couldn’t tell you what it is. But I grow more and more convinced that it’s mostly imagined, fueled primarily by our willingness to give it oxygen. Thankfully, these misguided forces are weak; they only survive when we choose to breathe life into them. At the end of the day, they are built upon one critical, fatal flaw—they ignore that our common humanity transcends immutable traits. Love overlooks those differences, and now, so too does the law.

On this Loving Day 2024, we’d do well to remember that fact. Instead of allowing the ideological forces to divide us, we should take Kenny Chesney’s advice: “Always give love the upper hand. Paint a wall, learn to dance. Call your mom, buy a boat. Drink a beer, sing a song. Make a friend.” Do these basic human things and live by love—the rest will work itself out.

Republicans Introduce Bill To Ban DEI in Government, Federal Contracting

Congressional Republicans introduced a bill on Wednesday that would eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion positions in the federal

Washington Free Beacon

Congressional Republicans introduced a bill on Wednesday that would eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion positions in the federal government and bar federal contractors from requiring DEI statements and training sessions.

The Dismantle DEI Act, introduced by Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio) and Rep. Michael Cloud (R., Texas), would also bar federal grants from going to diversity initiatives, cutting off a key source of support for DEI programs in science and medicine. Other provisions would prevent accreditation agencies from requiring DEI in schools and bar national securities associations, like NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange, from instituting diversity requirements for corporate boards.

"The DEI agenda is a destructive ideology that breeds hatred and racial division," Vance told the Washington Free Beacon. "It has no place in our federal government or anywhere else in our society."

The bill is the most comprehensive legislative effort yet to excise DEI initiatives from the federal government and regulated entities. It offers a preview of how a Republican-controlled government, led by former president Donald Trump, could crack down on the controversial diversity programs that have exploded since 2020, fueled in part by President Joe Biden’s executive orders mandating a "whole-of-government" approach to  "racial equity."

From NASA and the National Science Foundation to the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S Army, all federal agencies require some form of diversity training. Mandatory workshops have drilled tax collectors on "cultural inclusion," military commanders on male pregnancy, and nuclear engineers on the "roots of white male culture," which—according to a training for Sandia National Laboratories, the Energy Department offshoot that designs America’s nuclear arsenal—include a "can-do attitude" and "hard work."

The Sandia training, conducted in 2019 by a group called "White Men As Full Diversity Partners," instructed nuclear weapons engineers to write "a short message" to "white women" and "people of color" about what they’d learned, according to screenshots of the training obtained by the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo.

The bill would ban these trainings and close the government DEI offices that conduct them. It would also prevent personnel laid off by those closures from being transferred or reassigned—a move meant to stop diversity initiatives from continuing under another name.

The prohibitions, which cover outside DEI consultants as well as government officials, would be enforced via a private right of action and could save the government billions of dollars. In 2023, the Biden administration spent over $16 million on diversity training for government employees alone. It requested an additional $83 million that year for DEI programs at the State Department and $9.2 million for the Office of Personnel Management’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility—one of the many bureaucracies the bill would eliminate.

A large chunk of savings would come from axing DEI grants made through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has a near monopoly on science funding in the United States. The agency hosts an entire webpage for "diversity related" grant opportunities—including several that prioritize applicants from "diverse backgrounds"—and has set aside billions of dollars for "minority institutions" and researchers with a "commitment to promoting diversity." All of those programs would be on the chopping block should Vance and Cloud’s bill pass.

Cosponsored by Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), Rick Scott (R., Fla.), Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.), Bill Cassidy (R., La.), and Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.) in the Senate, the Dismantle DEI Act has drawn support from prominent conservative advocacy groups, including Heritage Action and the Claremont Institute. At a time of ideological fracture on the right—debates about foreign aid and the proper role of government bitterly divided Trump’s primary challengers, for example, both in 2016 and 2024—Wednesday’s bill aims to provide a rallying cry most Republicans can get behind: DEI needs to die.

"It’s absurd to fund these divisive policies, especially using Americans' tax dollars," Cloud told the Free Beacon. "And it’s time for Congress to put an end to them once and for all."

The bill has the potential to free millions of Americans—both in government and the private sector—from the sort of divisive diversity trainings that have become an anti-woke bête noire. Its most consequential provisions might be those governing federal contractors, which employ up to a fifth of the American workforce and include companies like Pfizer, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, and Verizon.

Each firm runs a suite of DEI programs, from race-based fellowships and "resource groups" to mandatory workshops, that have drawn public outcry and in some cases sparked legal challenges. By targeting these contractors, the bill could purge DEI from large swaths of the U.S. economy without directly outlawing the practice in private institutions.

Targeting accreditors, meanwhile, could remove a key driver of DEI programs in professional schools. The American Bar Association and the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredit all law and medical schools in the United States and derive much of their power from the U.S. Department of Education, have both made DEI material—including course content on "anti-racism"—a requirement for accreditation, over the objections of some of their members.

Those mandates have spurred a handful of law schools to require entire classes on critical race theory. The transformation has been even more acute at medical schools, which, per accreditation guidelines released in 2022, should teach students to identify "systems of power, privilege, and oppression."

Yale Medical School now requires residents to take a mandatory course on "advocacy" and "health justice," for example. And at the University of California, Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine, students must complete a "health equity" course that promotes police abolition, describes weight loss as a "hopeless endeavor," and states that "biomedical knowledge" is "just one way" of understanding "health and the world."

While the bill wouldn’t outlaw these lessons directly, it would prevent accreditors recognized by the Education Department from mandating them. Such agencies, whose seal of approval is a prerequisite for federal funds, would need to certify that their accreditation standards do not "require, encourage, or coerce any institution of higher education to engage in prohibited" DEI practices, according to the text of the bill. They would also need to certify that they do not "assess the commitment of an institution of higher education to any ideology, belief, or viewpoint" as part of the accreditation process.

Other, more technical provisions would eliminate diversity quotas at federal agencies and end a racially targeted grant program in the Department of Health and Human Services.

Unlike past GOP efforts to limit DEI, which have focused on the content of diversity trainings and the use of explicit racial preferences, the bill introduced Wednesday would also ax requirements related to data collection. It repeals a law that forces the armed services to keep tabs on the racial breakdown of officers, for example, as well as a law that requires intelligence officials to collect data on the "diversity and inclusion efforts" of their agencies.

Though officials could still collect the data if they so choose, the bill would mark a small step toward colorblindness in a country where racial record-keeping—required by many federal agencies—has long been the norm.

"DEI destroys competence while making Americans into enemies," said Arthur Milikh, the director of the Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life, one of the conservative groups supporting the bill. "This ideology must be fought, and its offices removed."

White House 'Equity' Requirements Holding Back EV Charging Station Construction, Internal Docs Show

In 2021, the Biden administration pledged it would build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations by 2030. So far, it’s built seven. Last

Washington Free Beacon

In 2021, the Biden administration pledged it would build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations by 2030. So far, it’s built seven.

Last month, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg—who administers the funds apportioned for EV charger construction in the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Act—said Americans should not be surprised at the time it takes to stand up "a new category of federal investment."

"It’s more than just plunking a small device into the ground," Buttigieg said in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation.

But internal memos from the Department of Transportation obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, as well as interviews with those who are responsible for overseeing the implementation of the electric vehicle charging station project, say the delay is in large part a result of the White House’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

"These requirements are screwing everything up," said one senior Department of Transportation staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It’s all a mess."

President Joe Biden has reportedly expressed frustration with the pace at which his much-touted infrastructure projects are getting built. A "close ally" of the White House told CNN last December that Biden "wants this stuff now," and a White House spokesman added that the president "constantly pushes his team to ensure we are moving as quickly as possible."

But Biden may only have himself to blame.

Shortly after taking office, the president signed an executive order mandating that the beneficiaries of 40 percent of all federal climate and environmental programs should come from "underserved communities." The order also established the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which monitors agencies such as the Department of Transportation to ensure the "voices, perspectives, and lived realities of communities with environmental justice concerns are heard in the White House and reflected in federal policies, investments, and decisions."

In order to qualify for a grant, applicants must "demonstrate how meaningful public involvement, inclusive of disadvantaged communities, will occur throughout a project’s life cycle." What "public involvement" means is unclear. But the Department of Transportation notes it should involve "intentional outreach to underserved communities."

That outreach, the Department of Transportation states, can take the form of "games and contests," "visual preference surveys," or "neighborhood block parties" so long as the grant recipient provides "multilingual staff or interpreters to interact with community members who use languages other than English."

"This all just slows down construction," says Jim Meigs, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who focuses on federal regulation.

"These ‘public involvement’ requirements are impossible to quantify and even open builders up to lawsuits by members of the community where an electric vehicle charging station is set to be constructed."

How these equity requirements are relevant to the construction of a single electric vehicle charging station is unclear, Meigs said. But all applicants for federal funding must in many cases submit reports that can total hundreds of pages about how they will pursue "equity" every step along the way.

This leads to delays and increases costs throughout the construction process, one senior Department of Transportation official told the Free Beacon. "Highly Qualified" applications, internal memos state, must "promote local inclusive economic development and entrepreneurship such as the use of minority-owned businesses."

That can take the form of funding "support services to help train, place, and retain people in good-paying jobs or registered apprenticeships, with a focus on women, people of color, and others that are underrepresented in infrastructure jobs." A firm’s "workplace culture" should "promote the entry and retention of underrepresented populations."

"These onerous diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements handcuff professionals from making proper evaluations and prevent the government/public from funding the most deserving projects, instead funneling money towards less qualified applicants," the senior Department of Transportation official said.

Those regulations are visible throughout more than 500 federal initiatives across 19 agencies, according to the White House’s chief environmental justice officer Jalonne White-Newsome, who spoke during a White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council meeting on Wednesday. The Free Beacon accessed that meeting, which took place over Zoom and included more than 15 speakers from various federal agencies.

"Since the President took office, the number of publicly available charging ports has grown by over 90 percent, with more than 184,000 publicly-available EV charging ports operational today and 1,000 more coming online each week," a Department of Transportation spokesperson said. "There are currently projects underway in partnership with states and local grantees for 14,000 federally-funded EV charging ports across the country under the NEVI and CFI programs that will build on the 184,000 chargers operational today."

The first electric vehicle charging station funded by the bipartisan infrastructure bill opened last December in a small Ohio town, and no one used the station within the first hours of its opening. Ohio has some of the lowest electric vehicle adoption in the country, with just 0.33 percent of all vehicles in the state operating on battery power, according to Nasdaq.

But the propensity for a local population to actually use an electric vehicle charging station appears to be an afterthought for the Biden administration, Meigs said. Instead the various regulations seem to serve more as a way to pay off Democratic constituencies—in the form of minority-focused contracting and hiring—at the expense of completing any projects in a timely or cost-effective manner.

"At a certain point you have to ask, is the point of these programs to reduce emissions or is the point to spread taxpayer money around and support groups that vote for the Democratic Party?"

White men have least chance of getting on BBC trainee scheme

Applicants coming from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds were two and a half times more likely to be accepted for the training

The Telegraph

Non-white applicants to the BBC’s flagship journalism training scheme were almost two and a half times more likely to get in than their white counterparts.

Since 2022, an average of 22.5 per cent of applicants were classed as coming from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME).

However over that same two-year period, BAME individuals made up 41 per cent of participants on the scheme.

In contrast, whites made up an average of 77.5 per cent of applicants but only 59 per cent of participants, since 2022.

This means that non-white applicants were 2.4 times more likely to be given a place on the highly coveted scheme than their white counterparts.

The two-year scheme, referred to as the Journalism Advanced Apprenticeship, provides participants with training and a potentially permanent role at the Corporation.

The findings were released via the Freedom of Information Act. Female applicants also had a stronger chance of getting in than men, but by a lesser degree.

Since 2022, an average of 60.25 per cent of applicants were women. But in that same period, women made up 71 per cent of participants.

In contrast, men made up an average of 39.75 per cent of applicants but 29 per cent of participants, meaning that womens’ chances of getting onto the scheme were 1.6 times higher than their male counterparts.

Neil O’Brien, who until the election was the Conservative MP for Harborough, said: “Unlike previous BBC schemes which have stated they are BAME-only, this scheme markets itself as open to anyone. But in practice there is discrimination.

“These practices will go into overdrive if Sir Keir Starmer becomes prime minister.

“People are not being treated fairly. We need to get back to hiring the best person for the job rather than basing it on the colour of your skin.”

In April, the Telegraph revealed that one in three participants on the scheme identified as white British.

A BBC spokesman said: “Similarly to The Telegraph’s Newsroom apprenticeship scheme, our apprenticeship courses enable people from a range of backgrounds to enter the media industry. We always offer places based on merit.

“We’re committed to our recruitment processes being fair to everyone, and attracting applicants that represent all parts of the UK, and like the Telegraph Media Group we’re committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture at the BBC.

“The BBC runs many apprenticeship schemes, so it’s unclear what analysis can be determined from applications made to one course.”

The Diversity Leadership Fallacy

Exploring the efficacy and ethics of diversity initiatives

news.fairforall.org

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has taken America by storm. It’s in almost every public school, college, corporation, and organization you can imagine, including pharmaceutical companies, entertainment companies, and even the United States Department of Defense.

To its critics, DEI represents an insidious Neo-Marxist virus infecting the culture of the West, one that could spell the doom of democracy, critical thinking, and Enlightenment values, leading to the death of the West and America with it.

To its advocates, it is a clarion call to fight what they believe is the greatest struggle of our era—racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, along with all other forms of identity-based injustice. It is sword, shield, and holy book in the fight for so-called social justice.

Those less zealous yet still supportive of DEI believe that surface-level diversity, particularly of race, ethnicity, and gender, can lead to positive workplace outcomes, such as better leadership. For example, HR consulting company Zenefits recommends that companies “prioritize hiring executives, directors, managers, and other senior leaders from diverse backgrounds,” which includes factors like “gender, gender identities, ages, abilities and special needs, races, sexual orientations, religious backgrounds and beliefs, cultures, and nationalities.”

But even this more moderate brand of DEI falsely correlates leadership ability with diversity status and runs the risk violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Rather than treating each person as an individual with unique attributes, this brand of DEI relies on dubious claims that a person brings benefits to an organization merely by virtue of possessing certain identity-based characteristics. Supporters of diversity-based initiatives therefore often embrace the same kind of broad generalizations about race, sex, and other identity characteristics that civil rights laws were meant to counteract.   

Diversity researchers Alice H. Eagly and Jean Lau Chin are typical of scholars who attempt to justify DEI initiatives based on broad assumptions about identity. In arguing that surface-level diversity leads to better leadership, they say that “leaders and followers from diverse identity groups generally face some degree of pressure to behave like leaders from the majority group” while continuing to “express their own cultures to some extent” and this increases their multicultural competence while explaining some of the challenges that hold minorities back.

These claims rely on two fallacious assumptions that certain characteristics flow necessarily from a person’s identity. First, the authors assume that leaders and followers from “diverse identity groups” feel pressure to behave like the leaders from majority groups because these leaders are from a “majority” group, not because these leaders are in a position of authority that these “diverse” people may want to move into one day. It’s common for people to imitate the behaviors of those they want to be like or those whose benefits they wish to attain. This is why professional speakers study famous speakers and speeches, artists study great artists and art, writers study great writers and writing, and businesspeople study the entrepreneurial strategies of startup titans. We imitate that which we wish to become, and this isn’t necessarily predicated on race or gender.

The second assumption is one that we see far too often: that race and culture go together. Race can be correlated with culture in some cases, but it isn’t all the time. A black man born and raised in Houston, Texas is going to have a very different culture and “lived experience” than a black man born and raised in Ghana or London. A Hispanic woman born and raised in New York City is going to have a very different culture and “lived experience” than a Hispanic woman born and raised in Guatemala or Spain. And a white man born and raised in Nebraska or Oregon is going to have a very different cultural and “lived experience” than a white man born and raised in Sweden, South Africa, or Italy. Race doesn’t always correlate with culture.

Eagly and Chin continue with more broad and unsubstantiated assumptions about identity, saying non-white leaders “may be especially concerned about integrity and justice as they relate to the inclusion and fair treatment of individuals from diverse identity groups.” Although this may sound like a reasonable assumption on the surface, it assumes that these non-white leaders are concerned with inclusion and fairness rather than gaining competence, wealth, power, authority, prestige, or other benefits, let alone that they’ve personally experienced based exclusion and injustice that would make them uniquely sensitive to other minorities’ needs. This assumption also is blind to the fact that there are millions of non-minority people concerned with inclusion and justice for people of “diverse identity groups,” as evidenced by all the white people who fought to abolish slavery and secure civil rights for minorities and continue to fight for “racial justice” and “social justice” today. It is also blind to all the “diverse” people who have committed horrible crimes against other “diverse people,” such as Idi Amin (aka the Butcher of Uganda), Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong, as well as every Hutu who participated in the Tutsi genocide, every non-white person who owned a non-white slave, and every non-white soldier who has ever fought in a civil war against people of the same “diverse” group, to name a few.

Eagly and Chin’s claims include many other unsubstantiated generalizations about identity: that “executives from sexual minority groups might be especially adaptable and therefore embrace change;” that minority leaders may gain certain advantages from their “ability to modify and switch between minority and majority perspectives depending on their immediate cultural context”; that people from minority groups sometimes engage in a “strength-based rhetoric” which may involve “explicit claims that their group’s way of leading is better than those of the heterosexual White man who traditionally have exercised leadership;” and that “individuals belonging to diverse identity groups are often good leaders [because] the experiences that such individuals have had because of their differences from the majority group do confer special qualities.”

All of these claims rely on broad generalizations about beneficial leadership characteristics that supposedly flow from identity.  But we have evidence that the surface-level diversity that Eagly, Chin, and others like them are obsessed with does not necessarily contribute to good leadership on its own.

For example, in a rebuttal to Eagly and Chin, University of Maryland researchers Kristen M. Klein and Mo Wang provide four reasons why surface-level diversity does not equate to strong leadership.

First, we shouldn’t assume that just because someone belongs to a certain identity group they’ve automatically been a victim of discrimination. 

Second, the diversity leadership fallacy assumes that individuals who have experienced discrimination experience long-term consequences to their well-being, but this is not necessarily true either. 

Third, the diversity leadership fallacy assumes that those who have experienced discrimination have integrated these experiences into their life in positive, constructive ways—specifically in ways that improve their leadership abilities—rather than in negative, destructive ways, such as becoming bitter, resentful, or hopeless.  And finally, the diversity leadership fallacy assumes that a person’s surface-level characteristics expose them to more character-building adversity than non-surface-level characteristics, such as growing up in a low socioeconomic background or a single-parent household. But of course this mistakenly assumes that a white person from an impoverished single-parent household surrounded by drugs and crime would have faced less character-building adversity than a black woman who grew up in a safe, wealthy community with two loving, supportive parents. 

You cannot measure the adversity or discrimination a person has experienced purely by their surface-level characteristics. Further, there is no correlation between a person’s surface-level characteristics and the content of their character, or the competency of their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Those who suggest there is a connection are not destroying negative stereotypes, as they may claim. They are merely switching negative stereotypes to a different identity group and continuing the cycle of ignorance and resentment. 

As Klein and Wang point out, “a substantial body of research on deep- and surface-level diversity in the workplace has repeatedly shown that whereas the negative impacts of surface-level diversity decrease over time in workgroups, deep-level similarity (e.g., in values, goal orientations, and personality) consistently predicts positive workplace outcomes (e.g., turnover, job attitudes, team performance).”

While it’s true that some surface-level traits tend to vary with deeper-level qualities—women tend to rank higher on average in the personality trait of agreeableness than men—this doesn’t mean that these traits always vary together, that they have a strong relationship with one another, or that one causes the other. We cannot derive deep-level qualities, such as beliefs, attitudes, values, and skills, from surface-level traits and use these as proxies in employment decisions. Yet this is exactly what many DEI supporters propose.

Hiring and promoting employees, especially for leadership positions, based even in part on surface-level diversity causes enormous harm. Why should employees trust or accept the outcome of a hiring or promotion decision if they know that one of the qualities under scrutiny is an arbitrary characteristic unjustly treated as a competency? Why should people remain committed to an organization if they realize that the trajectory of their future is partially based on surface-level characteristics they can’t change?  Would you truly feel valued as a whole, multi-faceted human being if you knew or suspected that your organization assessed your qualifications based on the color of your skin or your sex? And how could you trust the people around you if you knew that they, too, may have been selected because of their surface-level qualities, not their competence?

However well-intentioned DEI initiatives may be, they rely on fundamentally flawed assumptions and broad, unfounded generalizations about identity, which reinforce old negative stereotypes and create new ones. Competence, not identity, should be the primary criteria for hiring, promotion, and leadership, not arbitrary surface-level qualities like race, ethnicity, or gender. 

Every time an organization encourages people to divide themselves by these surface-level characteristics, the organization entrenches stereotypical thinking and all but guarantees negative organizational outcomes. We shouldn’t encourage people to shackle themselves to stereotypes and call it liberation. Instead, we should hire and promote people based only on their job-relevant experience, knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics that have real value. 

We should train leaders to foster shared organizational values, goals, and attitudes among their subordinates which will contribute to deep-level similarities within their teams and the organization over time. We must look beyond the surface and stop pandering to those who would trap us in outdated thinking wrapped in a shiny new public relations pitch.

Yale Tells Hopeful Scientists: You Must Commit to DEI

One department seeks applicants who "feel personal responsibility for helping to create an equitable and inclusive environment."

https://www.thefp.com/

Want to be a molecular biologist at Yale? Well, make sure you have a ten-step plan for dismantling systemic racism. When making hires at Yale’s department of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, faculty are told to place “DEI at the center of every decision,” according to a document tucked away on its website. 

Meanwhile, every job advertised on the site links to a DEI “rubric” that tests candidates’ “knowledge of DEI and commitment to promoting DEI,” their “past DEI experiences and activities,” and their “future DEI goals and plans.”

The questions are designed to find out how they would infuse diversity, equity, and inclusion—a focus on race, gender, sexual orientation, and other categories of “marginalization”—into their work. 

Applicants for professor and lecturer jobs, currently advertised on the site, will get “zero” points if they:

• Have “no knowledge or awareness about DEI issues” 
• Do “not feel personal responsibility for helping to create an equitable and inclusive environment” 
• Were “not involved in activities that promote DEI” 
• Have “no goals or plans for promoting DEI”

But they are marked “exceptional” if they:

• Have “clear knowledge of DEI issues” 
• Can demonstrate “strong interest in contributing to promoting DEI in teaching” 
• Have a “sustained track record of multiple efforts in promoting DEI” 
• Show a “clear and detailed plan for promoting DEI through teaching”

The assessment puts the thumb on the scale for those with progressive sensibilities. Scientists earn a high score in the category of “DEI knowledge” by showing they understand the “specific challenges faced by underrepresented minorities”—a criterion likely to favor those with a strong faith in the concepts of microaggressions, implicit bias, and systemic racism.

Diversity statements raise serious issues about free expression, and they also signal an ill-advised shift in priority—away from disciplinary excellence and toward social activism. 

As one of the world’s most influential universities, Yale has popularized diversity statements. But they are finally past their expiration date. Yale should wield its influence and join MIT in putting an end to this misguided experiment.

Immersive Outreach Programs May Be a Better Investment than DEI Initiatives

No matter what ideological foundation a DEI program has, funds are better spent on programs like The Hidden Genius Project and MITES.

Cato Institute

Growing up, I was never really in a place where a majority of the people looked like me. In the program, I enjoyed being around people who look more like myself and connecting with them. Throughout my life, all of the schools I attended were predominantly white or Hispanic students so joining The Hidden Genius Project was a sigh of relief and comfort for me.

As a Black man who has only ever had at most two other Black boys in my grade, to suddenly having a group of Black males who look like me was eye‐​opening. Being taught and surrounded by excellent Black minds, inspired me to believe that I could always better myself, which was a feeling I had never felt before.

MITES connected me with so many other brilliant and passionate people and gave me an avenue to explore a brighter future for myself. It gave me the opportunity to learn about career paths that would have otherwise been inaccessible. And, to apply and assert myself in challenging courses. Most of all, it gave me guidance and helped me grow into someone who is more confident, hard‐​working, and optimistic about the future.

Peter Boghossian: Can you like, nutshell what is what were you trying to do with "Cynical Theories" when you published that, was 2019 right?

Helen Pluckrose: Yeah, and I was trying to show how postmodern concepts of knowledge, power and language, in which we are to understand that knowledge is socially constructed by the people who are powerful in society - typically straight white men - in order to serve their own interests, they then make that knowledge legitimate and then everybody speaks according to that legitimized knowledge, and that perpetuates things like white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, transphobia, homophobia, etc. So, we need to then address the language, the discourses

And so I wanted to show that so many of the ideas that we're seeing now, which really sort of mystify people who believe that humans can actually talk to each other and exchange ideas and evaluate ideas for themselves, I wanted to show how this is tracing back. So I went backwards, really, started with the theories we're seeing now, and because I studied postmodernism in other contexts in University as well, just trace the citations back and the trail is very clear. I mean, Foucault is standing out right at the top of most cited people. And that's because that's where most citations lead.

Boghossian: So then you went from "Cynical Theories" and you've been writing about liberalism. There's so much confusion about liberalism and authoritarianism. Let's see if we can clear some of that up would you please, for us? How do you define liberalism?

Pluckrose: Okay, at its most simple, the overarching principle of liberalism is that we let people believe, speak and live as they see fit, provided it does no harm to anyone else nor prevents them from doing the same. So, that's John Stewart Mill's harm principle and that essentially comes down to the principle of anti-authoritarianism. I sometimes find with people who don't like the word "liberal" because they associate it with other things in their particular tradition, if I say anti-authoritarian, that is something that they will agree that they can commit to.

On another level, sort of philosophical, liberalism can be a disposition, a broader set of principles which takes this idea of live and let live essentially - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - and draws from it a lot of other ideas like democratic institutions and the free exchange ideas as a way of producing knowledge, the idea that there should be no barriers preventing anybody from accessing everything. All these ideas are drawn from that that liberal tradition.

Boghossian: So, what we see now is competing forms of authoritarianism? Right, we see much-- critical social justice is the attempt at the imposition of certain conclusions upon-- that people have to either believe or pretend to believe. Have you noticed that in the anti-woke space or on the right, there is an emerging kind of authoritarianism in response to, or is a backlash to, critical social justice?

Pluckrose: I have certainly noticed this, yeah. And this is what I've been addressing quite a lot as well, because of course there has always been authoritarianism on the right, but what we're seeing now as well is a kind of, I call it reactive overcompensation, because it-- just to take one example.

So racism has always been a form of white identity politics. This isn't new. You know, typical racism, say in an American context, is a form of white identity politics. That we made significant progress on a consensus that that was both stupid and unethical. And then when we had so many of the critical theorists of race in particular, constantly linking their own theories with black people or brown people, then we had this kind of reaction to the theories but which were actually hitting black and brown people, who may or may not subscribe to those theories. So that's the authoritarianism that's kind of come back, because people possibly who are already inclined to hold racist ideas, can then present them as an anti-woke position, as criticizing an ideology.

It’s no surprise that Facebook, Nike fell for DEI con artist who preyed on fear of being called racist

The law of attraction dictates that you attract what you are, so it is by no coincidence that the Diversity Industrial Complex often attract

New York Post

The law of attraction dictates that you attract what you are, so it is by no coincidence that the Diversity Industrial Complex often attracts con artists.

It’s an industry predicated on siphoning phoning money from gullible corporations who are desperate to project themselves as societal changemakers.

This is how immoral people like ex-Facebook and Nike diversity program manager, Barbara Furlow-Smiles, were able to extract millions of dollars from resource abundant corporations.

Smiles, who led the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs for Facebook from January 2017 to September 2021, pleaded guilty in December to a wire fraud scheme that helped her steal more than $4.9 million from Facebook and a six-figure sum from Nike.

Atlanta US Attorney Ryan Buchanan lamented how Smiles was “utilizing a scheme involving fraudulent vendors, fake invoices, and cash kickbacks.”

“After being terminated from Facebook, she brazenly continued the fraud as a DEI leader at Nike, where she stole another six-figure sum from their diversity program,” Buchanan stated.

Smiles used her authority to approve invoices to pay for services and events that never occurred, funneling the money to several personal associates and pay Smiles in kickbacks.

She would later submit fake expense reports claiming her associates completed work for Facebook, such as providing marketing help and merchandise fulfillment.

Smiles’ lavish lifestyle will be replaced with a stiff punishment of five years imprisonment, three years of supervised release and an order to pay back the money she stole from both Facebook and Nike.

There is something apropos about a sham employee like Smiles being able to climb the ranks of a sham sector of corporate America.

Post-George Floyd’s death, business enterprises fell in love with — or were backmailed into — the idea of a marriage between capitalism and social philanthropy.

DEI job positions increased 123% between May and September of 2020, according to Indeed.

It was no longer enough to have financial success in the business environment, they now wanted to become adored by the public — or at least not be accused of white supremacy.

But when you’re desperate for an outcome, there will always be fraudsters waiting to exploit you.

DEI is a sham because you can’t quantify if it’s succeeding. There are never enough programs or seminars or representation — it just keeps expanding.

Smiles likely was able to get away with what she was doing for years at Facebook because DEI is treated like a new romance; constantly given the benefit of the doubt despite their red flags.

Falling for a scam has nothing to do with intelligence or experience; literally anyone can get scammed.

We fall for scams when we become so desperate for an outcome that we’re willing to suspend belief and overlook common sense.

The problem is that ego prevents industry leaders from hearing our warnings about the falsehoods they’re being fed.

People who believe they’re always the smartest ones in the room won’t conceive how they’re being played by ideological nitwit college graduates who are motivated by ending capitalism.

They’re scared of being accused of being racist, and thus surround themselves with con artists who enjoy manipulating their empathy to drain their wealth.

Corporate America loves chasing love; DEI loves their money.

Adam B. Coleman is the author of “Black Victim to Black Victor” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing. Follow him on Substack: adambcoleman.substack.com.

Ex-diversity boss at Facebook, Nike who orchestrated fake events to steal $5M gets five years, must pay back hefty sum

Barbara Furlow-Smiles, 38, set up fake business deals, invoices and events — including a Juneteenth celebration — to line her own pockets.”

New York Post

Under attack, DEI quietly transforms - The Washington Post

archive.ph

Last year, Eli Lilly’s annual shareholders letter referenced the acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion 48 times. This year, “DEI” is nowhere to be found.

In March, Starbucks got shareholder approval to replace “representation” goals with “talent” performance for executive bonus incentives. At Molson Coors, “People & Planet” metrics have displaced environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, and the acronym DEI has disappeared altogether.

Amid growing legal, social and political backlash, American businesses, industry groups and employment professionals are quietly scrubbing DEI from public view — though not necessarily abandoning its practice. As they rebrand programs and hot-button acronyms, they’re reassessing decades-old anti-discrimination strategies and rewriting policies that once emphasized race and gender to prioritize inclusion for all.

It’s a stark contrast to 2020, when the murder of George Floyd unleashed a racial justice movement that prompted companies to double down on policies aiming to increase opportunity for groups that have historically faced discrimination. Less than a year after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in colleges and universities — a landmark ruling that found race-conscious admissions violated the right to equal treatment under the Constitution — a growing contingent of critics is arguing that DEI creates inequalities of its own. Some conservatives have blamed DEI for a variety of problems, such as the Baltimore bridge collapse and Boeing’s safety woes, without providing evidence. Dozens of anti-DEI bills are being considered by state legislatures across the country, and DEI looks poised to become a wedge issue in this year’s presidential election.

Johnny C. Taylor Jr., chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management, said that practitioners of DEI and its antecedents traditionally have focused on improving representation for historically marginalized groups, believing that “the magic bullet was diversity.”

“We underestimated that inclusion was the real challenge,” Taylor said. “Now people are saying, ‘Not only should we probably call it something different, we should probably evolve it.’”

This shifting landscape is forcing companies and consultants to adapt on the fly, with many acting pre-emptively to guard against the legal threats that have led some firms to recast or discard race-based initiatives. They’re renaming diversity programs, overhauling internal DEI teams and working closely with lawyers. Some are moving away from using racial and gender considerations in hiring and promotion, and toward approaches that focus more on inclusion.

To be sure, some companies have successfully fended off challenges. In April, a discrimination lawsuit against an Amazon grant program for Black, Latino and Native American contractors was dismissed by a federal court in Texas, though the plaintiffs have appealed. Pfizer and Starbucks have prevailed in court against similar legal attacks, though Pfizer modified the DEI program in question to make it race-neutral, according to court filings.

And many companies have held onto their programs since the Supreme Court ruled against Harvard and the University of North Carolina last June. Six months after the ruling, the employment law firm Littler Mendelson reported that 91 percent of the 320 executives surveyed said the ruling had not lessened their prioritization ofDEI. In fact, 57 percent said they had expanded their DEI programming in the past year.

But that sentiment is far more subdued than it was in 2020, when corporate America poured more than $50 billion into racial justice causes. Meanwhile, the DEI industry — which was worth an estimated $9 billion in 2023, according to market researcher Fact.MR — is also rethinking its public face, consultants say.

Last fall, a few months after the Harvard-UNC decision, Taylor was already noticing growing antipathy toward the methods that companies, institutions of higher education and other organizations used to diversify in their ranks. So instead of referring to DEI, Taylor switched to calling these efforts “IED,” putting the focus on “inclusion” as DEI accrued cultural and political baggage. SHRM, the human resources association he heads, changed the name of its annual DEI conference to “Inclusion 2023.”

Some practitioners and executives dismissed the rebrand as superficial, Taylor said, a concession to political correctness. But months later, his strategy has proved prescient.

A growing number of companies — including language app Duolingo, JetBlue and Molson Coors — are either listing DEI as a “risk factor” in shareholder reports or removing mentions of diversity goals outright. A Bloomberg Law analysis found that two dozen public companies have incorporated similar risk-factor language into their filings. And several companies, including Kohls, Salesforce and Workday, have dropped references to diversity goals in regulatory filings, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Eric Ellis, CEO of Integrity Development, a DEI consultancy, said he’s seen the “branding merry-go-round” playing out for decades, tracing back to the wake of the civil rights movement. He expects the language to keep changing in response to public attacks, especially those by high-profile figures like Elon Musk, who in January wrote on his social media platform X that “DEI is just another word for racism.”

“If every day you’re getting pummeled and there is no effective strategy to protect the brand of DEI, there’s no doubt it’s going to be hard for it to survive,” Ellis said. “We keep adjusting.”

Starbucks is “a case in point” for how companies are altering terminology around DEI, said Brian Bueno, ESG practice leader at Farient Advisors, an executive compensation consulting firm. After Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, the company was among the first wave of firms incentivizing executives to achieve DEI targets, he noted.

In its proxy statement last year, Starbucks said it was “holding our senior leaders collectively accountable” for goals that focused “on improvement in Black, Indigenous, and Latinx representation at the manager level.” It also had goals around executive mentorship for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other people of color) employees, scores on inclusive leadership surveys and other metrics, Bueno said.

But starting this year, Starbucks is weighting its incentive plan more toward financial performance, tethering representation-related rewards to “talent” goals. The company’s 2024 proxy statement references a goal to “ensure that leaders have accountability” for “creating a culture of belonging.”

“Starbucks was an interesting case because they did come out with very specific goals,” Bueno said. Now, “they’re moving them from a more prominent area of the bonus plan to a little more backstage.”

Bueno estimated that 35 to 40 percent of large-cap companies — those with a market capitalization of $10 billion or more — have some DEI targets in their executive bonus criteria. About half of them frame these policies around quantitative targets, while the rest take a more qualitative approach. Still, “companies are treading carefully,” given the legal climate, he said.

Starbucks has already withstood legal scrutiny of its policies: In September, a federal judge in Washington state threw out a lawsuit alleging Starbucks violated its duty to shareholders by endeavoring to diversify its workforce. The suit targeted the company’s goals for hiring people of color and awarding contracts to “diverse” suppliers and advertisers, as well as its tethering of executive pay to diversity goals.

Betsy McManus, a spokeswoman for Starbucks, said the company has a goal of achieving “racial and ethnic diversity of at least 30 percent at all corporate levels and at least 40 percent at all retail and manufacturing roles by 2025” in the United States.

“Real inclusion requires intent, and diversity creates stronger communities and workforce,” McManus said in a statement emailed to The Washington Post. “With that in mind, we continue to make improvements and changes to ensure Starbucks remains a diverse, inclusive, equitable and accessible company.”

Eli Lilly scuttled DEI from its proxy statement this year and dropped mentions of “racial justice” — from eight times in 2023 to one in 2024. It also eliminated a section on progress toward meeting its racial justice commitments, which had been included in 2023.

Yet the pharmaceutical giant still ties executive compensation to general goals of fostering diversity within the company — and it cites fostering a diverse workforce as a core priority. In a statement to The Post, the company said it removed the references to DEI “to avoid redundancies in reporting.” Information about the company’s diversity efforts and racial justice commitments are detailed in its latest “ESG report” as well as in a separate DEI report published last fall.

“Lilly is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion — they are foundational in every part of our organization and essential elements of our success as a company,” Eli Lilly said.

Molson Coors, meanwhile, erased DEI references from its “People & Planet” metrics, a change from 2023. This year, it says, fostering an “inclusive culture” is central to its efforts. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Many large companies see a correlation between a diverse workforce and financial success, and routinely tout the “business case” for DEI. Companies with the highest racial, ethnic and gender representation are 39 percent more likely to financially outperform, according to a 2023 study by McKinsey & Co. involving more than 1,200 firms worldwide. In June of last year, a study by the ratings agency Moody’s found that companies with higher ratings tended to have a greater racial diversity on their boards and in their executive ranks.

In his annual letter to shareholders this year, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon emphasized that DEI “initiatives make us a more inclusive company and lead to more innovation, smarter decisions and better financial results for us and for the economy overall.”

Still, he said, JPMorgan will “scour” its programs to ensure they comply with the changing legal landscape. Similar assessments are playing out at Meta, Snap, DoorDash and Home Depot, which have culled their internal DEI teams in the past year. Others, such as Zoom, have outsourced their DEI work to consultants.

Marilyn Fish, an Atlanta-based employment attorney who specializes in affirmative action, said she’s seen companies “looking at policies more holistically” since the Harvard-UNC decision. Many of her clients — among them Fortune 500 companies — have renamed their programs to put “inclusion” up front, hoping it will resonate with employees.

Some of her clients recently moved away from employee resource groups that had identified some people as “members” and others as “allies.” Some opened up mentorship programs that were reserved for employees of certain races to people of all backgrounds.

“I do think that some programs were operating with an exclusivity that was potentially problematic,” Fish said. She doesn’t think the new labels matter much from a legal perspective. “What matters most is how their programs are being implemented.”

Joelle Emerson, chief executive of DEI consultancy Paradigm, considers corporate DEI to be “one of the most visible civil rights initiatives of the past decade.” Much like affirmative action before it, DEI has faced resistance from within organizations and outside them — and now it’s being thrust into the political limelight at a moment of acute polarization.

“DEI has only been the acronym du jour since 2020,” Emerson said. “Regardless of what we call it, we’ve done a really poor job storytelling what this work is actually about.”

The rebranding is clearly being sparked by the “baggage” now associated with DEI, Emerson said. She pointed to conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who led the campaign to oust Harvard’s first Black president, Claudine Gay, framing her exit as “the beginning of the end for DEI in America’s institutions.”

“Companies with leaders that might be particularly supportive of DEI might also be the ones that are uniquely averse to drawing scrutiny,” Emerson said. “A lot of the companies that were vocal in the past have already been sued.”

Rhonda Moret, founder of Elevated Diversity, a DEI consultancy, said she’s seen “a shift in what we’re being asked to do.” Demand for programs such as unconscious bias training — high a few years ago — has dried up, she said. But there’s been a spike of interest in employee resource groups, particularly those that aren’t race-based, such as groups for caregivers, veterans and first-generation Americans.

Like many consultants, Moret has been tweaking the terminology she uses to describe her work, now framing it as L&I (leadership and inclusion). She prides herself on having always taken an “inclusion-forward” approach, and she’s noticed the movement away from emphasizing “diversity” in her field.

But she’s conflicted about whether to follow the tide and change Elevated Diversity’s name.

“I am what someone thinks of when they think of diversity,” said Moret, who is Black. “Do I want to change who I am to be able to fit into another model? I still haven’t decided.”

We found that the relationships between demographic, job-related and cognitive diversity, and team performance arsignificant and positive, but insubstantial (|r| < .1). Even considering a wide range of moderators, we found few instances when effects were substantial – though correlations were more positive when tasks were higher in complexity or required creativity and innovation, and when teams were working in contexts lower in collectivism and power distance. Contrary to expectations, the link between diversity and performance was not substantially influenced by teams’ longevity or interdependence.

Don’t Expand DEI. Dismantle It.

We come from two sides of the political spectrum, write Christopher F. Rufo and Jenin Younes. But both of us agree that the Antisemitism Awa

https://www.thefp.com/

What should be done about the turmoil, violence, and explicit antisemitism that have engulfed college campuses over the past months? Political leaders in Washington have reacted to the escalating chaos with an understandable and predictable instinct: do something. 

In this case, the student protests have motivated a bipartisan coalition of legislators in the House of Representatives to compose the Antisemitism Awareness Act. It passed on May 1 with 320 votes (and 91 against). 

The goal of the Act is noble: to prohibit discrimination against Jewish students and employees on campus. As is often the case, however, the impulse to “do something,” even when supported by a bipartisan majority, does not always mean the resulting actions are wise or productive.

We come from two sides of the political spectrum. One of us (Christopher) is a conservative, the other (Jenin) is on the left. We also take very different positions on Israel—one of us believes that Israel deserves America’s support in its fight against Hamas; one of us believes that the denial of Palestinians’ right to self-determination is the primary impediment to peace. But both of us agree that the Antisemitism Awareness Act is profoundly misguided.

First, the main purpose of the legislation is to codify a definition of “antisemitism” as a point of reference for civil rights enforcement on college campuses. Legislators outsourced this definition to a nonprofit, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which defines antisemitic conduct and speech in a broad manner. Under this standard, “claiming the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” and “accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel” will be deemed antisemitism. 

It’s important to note, despite the hysteria of many online, that the Antisemitism Awareness Act does not, in itself, criminalize such speech. What it does is instruct bureaucrats to apply what could be, in effect, “hate speech” analysis to civil rights complaints. The Department of Education would gain the authority to withhold funding to institutions of higher education that do not punish violators.

This is a move in the wrong direction. 

Existing laws against trespassing, violence, and property destruction are sufficient to deal with unlawful expressions of antisemitism on campus. And campus codes of conduct, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and ethnicity, cover much else. 

“Hate speech” provisions, on the other hand, are unnecessary, ill-defined, and often in conflict with fundamental First Amendment rights. Contrary to popular belief, the First Amendment protects “hate speech,” in part precisely because of the difficulty defining the term, and also because such determinations are subjective. Under this new legislation, certain phrases and arguments, some of which are subject to reasonable contestation, could be treated as de facto evidence of discriminatory intent. (For example, arguing in favor of a one-state solution to the Israeli-Hamas conflict could be deemed violative on the grounds it denies the Jewish people a right to a state.)

Rather than enacting dubious legislation, the proper approach is to protect the rights of protesters to express their opinions, even when those opinions are abhorrent, while enforcing laws and regulations that prohibit tent encampments, campus disruption, and acts of violence. 

The second problem with the Antisemitism Awareness Act, especially for conservatives and civil libertarians, is that it operates using the same coercive and corrosive principles as DEI. The legislation codifies an ideologically charged definition of antisemitism into law, provides special protections based on group identity, and expands anti-discrimination enforcement to include constitutionally protected speech. 

This is precisely how existing DEI bureaucracies operate on campus, with disastrous results. 

From a political perspective, this legislation is also a failure. While the left has embraced special protections for their favored minorities, it now appears to many that the political right is doing the same, only now for Jewish Americans. Similar bills are passing through numerous state legislatures from New York to Georgia.

Anyone who worries about pitting identity groups against one another, or is repelled at the idea that some Americans deserve more protections than others, should oppose all of this proposed legislation. It violates our country’s most fundamental principles, including the letter and spirit of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, which guarantee Americans the rights to free speech and equal treatment under the law, regardless of their racial, ethnic, or religious identity.

The only constitutional and moral approach is to establish a single, color-blind standard applicable to all individuals, regardless of their background. Any policies which, by definition, subordinate the individual to the group and suppress our speech will harm our nation in the long run and exacerbate, rather than resolve, racial and ethnic prejudice. 

In this heated moment, we must return to the principles that have made this country exceptional: the rule of law, equality under it, free speech, and the protection of our individual, natural rights.

Section 647c - Unlawful obstruction of free movement of person on street, sidewalk, or other public place

Every person who willfully and maliciously obstructs the free movement of any person on any street, sidewalk, or other public place or on or in any place open to the public is guilty of a misdemeanor.

Nothing in this section affects the power of a county or a city to regulate conduct upon a street, sidewalk, or other public place or on or in a place open to the public.

Two-thirds of US colleges, universities require DEI classes to graduate: report

Most American colleges and universities require the completion of courses that emphasize Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)-related topic

New York Post

Most American colleges and universities require the completion of courses that emphasize Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)-related topics to graduate, according to a new report surveying public and private institutions.

Speech First, a group advocating for First Amendment rights on US campuses, released an investigation on Thursday that found 165 of 248 selected institutions — from American University to Williams College — mandate DEI-related classes to meet general education requirements.

The classes “place students into identitarian groupings based on racial, sexual, and political characteristics to create a rigid framework amongst students where they only see each other as either the ‘oppressor’ or the ‘oppressed,’” the executive summary of the 33-page report states.

Speech First looked for trainings and courses that included an “anti-racist” approach, which often denounces “whiteness” or “white supremacy,” as well as the existence of forced “DEI Statements” in which faculty pledge to promote the ideology if hired.

The group also searched for the use of terms like “intersectionality,” “toxic masculinity,” “critical gender theory,” “ableism,” “implicit bias,” “systemic racism” and “social justice.”

“Consequently, this erosion of merit-based principles and build-up of anti-American sentiment has had detrimental impacts on the quality of education and has fostered an environment where conservative voices are systematically marginalized, discredited, and silenced,” the report states.

“As DEI departments have grown on campuses, we have seen an increase in campus policies that regulate, monitor, and restrict student speech,” it adds. “The inquiry revealed that students are subjected to courses advocating far-left ideological perspectives and pushing far-left political advocacy.”

Last year, the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions practices at Harvard University, a private institution, and the University of North Carolina, a public institution, ruling that the universities’ affirmative action policies violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which guarantees US citizens “equal protection under law.”

Chief Justice John Roberts declared in the decision that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it” and “universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”

Both Harvard and UNC made the Speech First list, along with Cornell, Dartmouth, and Princeton of the Ivy League.

Prominent flagship state schools that made the list include the universities of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Notable private institutions shamed by Speech First included Boston College, Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Fordham, Georgetown, MIT, Purdue, Syracuse, Vassar and Wellesley.

Every university surveyed came from at least one of four groups: Spring 2023 NCAA Division I institutions, schools ranked among the best in the nation in 2023 by US News and World Report, those with endowments above $1 billion and those in the top 100 of undergraduate enrollment nationwide.

The 67% of schools with DEI offices and programs included at least one institution in every US state and the District of Columbia — several of which have recently outlawed the practices, such as GOP-led Florida and Texas.

Some anti-DEI legislation is also pending in Democratic-controlled states like Illinois, the report shows, and states where power is evenly divided between the major political parties like Pennsylvania.

To be counted, the universities or colleges needed to have mandatory DEI courses or sensitivity training, DEI electives that are required for graduation, or general education learning outcomes that include DEI language.

The report suggests that the banning of DEI and critical race theory courses and the adoption of free speech programs during freshman orientation would change the leftward drift of America’s higher education institutions.

It also advocated for a return to the study of the nation’s founding principles under the Constitution as a part of general education requirements nationwide.

“Obviously, a commitment to free speech on campus requires academic freedom for professors within their classrooms,” Cherise Trump, the group’s executive director, said in a summary of the report.

“But American universities are increasingly institutionally stacking the deck by requiring students to sit through classes that, rather than impart knowledge or build saleable skills, infuse an ideological worldview that is in many instances hostile to key tenets of the American way of life,” she added.

“Taxpayers may well wonder why they subsidize academic institutions that require training in a hostile ideology as a graduation requirement.”

DEI Conquers Stanford

The university now has at least 177 bureaucrats dedicated to left-wing racialism.

City Journal

Stanford University, its campus lined with redwoods and eucalyptus trees, has long been known as a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship. But in recent years, another ideological force has taken root: “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” a euphemism for left-wing racialism. DEI, in fact, has conquered Stanford.

I have obtained exclusive analysis from inside Stanford outlining the incredible size and scope of the university’s DEI bureaucracy. According to this analysis, Stanford employs at least 177 full-time DEI bureaucrats, spread throughout the university’s various divisions and departments.

Stanford’s DEI mandate is the same as those of other universities: advance the principles of left-wing racialism, hire faculty and admit students according to identity, and suppress dissent on campus under the guise of fostering a “culture of inclusion” and “protected identity harm reporting.”

Julia Steinberg, an undergraduate and journalist at the Stanford Review, believes that DEI is a “black box” system of rewards and punishments for enforcing ideological adherence. “I’ve observed as students are reported by their peers for constitutionally protected speech,” and professors are denounced and accused of discrimination by other students “for the crime of not being PC enough in their research or in class,” she says. “Who fits or doesn’t fit into the DEI caste system determines a student or professor’s summary judgement.”

DEI’s growth at Stanford has been fast. In 2021, the Heritage Foundation counted 80 DEI officials at the university. That number has more than doubled since then.

Sophie Fujiwara, a recent graduate, explains that DEI has become “unavoidable” for students, with “mandatory classes” and “university-spon.sored activities.” Left-wing students increasingly believed that this wasn’t enough. Following the George Floyd revolution of 2020, these students “demanded more initiatives and funding from the university for DEI-related subjects.”

Stanford’s DEI initiatives are not limited to humanities departments or race and gender studies. The highest concentration is in Stanford’s medical school, which has at least 46 diversity officials. A central DEI administration is led by chief DEI officer Joyce Sackey, with sub-departments throughout the medical school. Pediatrics, biosciences, and other specialties all have their own commissars embedded in the structure.

In the sciences, DEI policies have advocated explicit race and sex discrimination in pursuit of “diversity.” The physics department, for example, has committed to a DEI plan with a mandate to “increase the diversity of the physics faculty,” which, in practice, means reducing the number of white and Asian men. Administrators are told to boost the representation of “underrepresented groups,” or “URGs,” through a variety of discriminatory programs and filters.

Ivan Marinovic, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that DEI programs have had a disastrous impact on campus. He describes DEI as a “Trojan horse ideology” that undermines “equality before the law, freedom of expression, and due process.”

Given Stanford’s current trajectory, DEI will likely keep growing. At each step, it will degrade the quality of scholarship and academic rigor. The question is whether dissenters—professors, students, and alumni who reject the ideological capture of the university—will have enough power to dislodge more than 100 full-time bureaucrats. Stanford’s new president, Richard Saller, was hired in part to moderate ideological influence on campus. But according to sources familiar with Saller in his previous role as dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, he probably lacks the strength to push back against DEI.

The fight ahead will be tough. As it has been before, Stanford may once again serve as a leading indicator of where American higher education is going.