The Patriot Post® · Do We Really Need DEI?

We as a nation were already alarmed at how badly our school-age students fell behind thanks to ill-advised school closures during the pandemic. But a large-scale analysis of academic test scores by The Heritage Foundation found a significant trend in the reams of data: Test scores for minorities at schools that had embraced the leftist concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion fared even worse than the depressing normal.

As Jay P. Greene and Madison Marino of Heritage observed: “School districts create chief diversity officers or similar-sounding positions ostensibly to close racial achievement gaps by advocating for minority students and their particular needs. In practice, these bureaucrats enforce ideological orthodoxies on matters of race and gender that are educationally harmful for minority students. … Hiring a senior district official who insists that Black and Hispanic students not be held to the same standards of behavior or academic achievement as other students because of structural racism obviously undermined minority student success.”

Back in the day, President George W. Bush called this “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Moreover, when you add in the stamp of approval to this madness from both of the largest teachers unions, which worry more about “intersectionality” than learning, you find the reason that those who truly cherish their children and can make the sacrifice are bailing out on public schools left and right for private schools or homeschooling.

Yet the problem now persists into higher education as well.

Dr. Tabia Lee was one of those DEI officers who was doing it all wrong — she was actually trying to bring diversity of thought into the classroom. As she told the New York Post: “I made the mistake of trying to create an authentically inclusive learning environment for everyone, including Jewish students. Turns out, a toxic form of DEI (which is more accurately called ‘critical social justice’) demanded I do the opposite.”

While her main point was that of revealing the “blatant anti-Semitism” on college campuses in the wake of the barbaric and unprovoked Hamas attack on Israel, she also notes that DEI divides colleges into two groups: the oppressors and the oppressed. And it’s simply based on skin color.

Another recent piece by historian Victor Davis Hanson goes even deeper into both the anti-Semitism and the division becoming all too prevalent on campuses today:

“Racially segregated housing reappeared years ago as ‘theme houses.’ Effectively segregated, no-go areas are euphemistically known as ‘multi-cultural rooms.’ Any critics who have objected to such institutionalized racism, in Orwellian fashion, have been smeared as racists,” wrote Hanson. “Events that are off-limits to particular races on campus — like separate but equal graduation ceremonies or campus activities — are heralded as ‘celebrating diversity.’”

“Separate but equal”? Didn’t we do away with that back in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education?

Hanson puts forth some excellent suggestions in an article well worth reading, but he concludes by getting to the crux of the problem: These institutions need to be hit in the pocketbook in order to bring about change.

“In short,” he writes, “colleges are now a bad deal — far too costly, too political, and too incompetent in fulfilling their mission to the country. They no longer can deliver on what they were created for, and they simply will not stop fueling things that are not just unnecessary, but downright injurious to the country, scary, and destructive.”

“Who wishes to continue with all that?” asks Hanson, and it’s a valid question. Those of us who graduated from college a little while back are likely wondering what happened to the academic rigor we were put through. Preparation for vocations like architecture, business, law, and medicine was somehow replaced with classes on diversity and gender studies and whatever other coursework could be conjured up to prepare … a future DEI officer.

Just a generation ago, as Millennials were coming of age, it seemed like we were making real progress on this equality and diversity (of thought) thing. But something came along to divide us, and here we are.

It’s time to put an end to this disastrous DEI experiment.