The recent infiltration of Critical Race Theory into nearly every aspect of life may appear to have exploded into mainstream culture out of nowhere, but the reality is that CRT has been an ideological cancer metastasizing within the halls of American higher education for several decades.

Unlike cancer, however, CRT’s spread throughout higher education has been anything but organic. Rather, it owes its existence to an active and aggressive effort to spread Marxist ideology via the deceptively named “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs on college campuses.

Under the guise of concerns for ensuring fairness and equality, these DEI programs have expanded both within and across America’s universities to the point where DEI program staff outnumber history professors (if not other departments as well) at most institutions.

In a recently released report by The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, Jay Greene found that on a typical college campus there were “1.4 times as many DEI personnel as tenured or tenure-track history professors.” Furthermore, “The average university has 45.1 people tasked with promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The University of Michigan has 163 staff directly tied to the school’s DEI program.

What an organization values is evident by where the money and resources are spent. In the case of America’s institutions of higher learning, it’s clear that DEI programs hold high priority. As Greene’s report notes, “DEI staff listed by universities totaled 4.2 times the number of staff who assist students with disabilities in receiving reasonable accommodations, as required by law.” Furthermore, “The average university had 3.4 people working to promote DEI for every 100 tenured or tenure-track faculty members.”

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) recently noted that the ballooning cost of education is tied to what he called the racket of the federal government nationalizing and subsidizing unlimited student loans, because schools then jack up tuition and other prices. “It has resulted in universities, people on staff and administration getting paid six-figure sums not to teach … but to engage in administration,” Cruz asserted. “Take the University of Michigan. … An in-state student can expect to spend $130,000 during four years … [while] an out-of-state student can expect to spend $300,000. … Why is it so expensive? Well, I’ll tell you; there’s massive overhead. For example, Michigan has 163 diversity and inclusion employees, whose job it is to be administrative overhead. To put that in perspective, [UM] has 2.3 diversity and inclusion officers for every one member of the history faculty. Our universities don’t teach anymore. They are instead paid sinecures for people who go and work for the government — and by the way, they have become some of the biggest donors to Democrats. … And what Democrats are now proposing to benefit universities and keep jacking up costs is to transfer money from working men and women. The top 25% of households with incomes above $173,000 hold 34% of outstanding student loan debt and yet Democrats are proposing a massive wealth transfer away from working men and women.”

Yet the number of DEI staff in America’s schools only tells part of the story, as demonstrated by the outsized ideological impact they have upon the entirety of campus culture and all fields of academic study. Campuses are, after all, full of professionals of all stripes who spend an inordinate amount of time advancing not education but leftist indoctrination.

The result of these DEI programs is ironically exactly the opposite of what the title implies. It’s similar to how the advocates of CRT’s “anti-racism” dogma promote actual racism and racial division. DEI programs seek to recruit and indoctrinate revolutionary activists who in turn take and spread their “woke” ideology across the rest of country. Yesterday’s “diversity” trained student is today’s woke corporate CEO.

The ultimate cost of these DEI programs may not be measured in monetary terms but in social decay, as evidenced by growing divisions, tribalism, and hatred expressed toward the one nation whose hallmark has been promoting freedom and individual rights. Ideas that have literally changed the world for the better are the ones most under assault.