#DEI bureaucracies

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/20/corporate-diversity-job-cuts/

As DEI gets more divisive, companies are ditching their teams

Zoom and Snap are among companies that have cut roles in recent weeks

By: Taylor Telford

Published: Feb 18, 2024

After George Floyd’s murder in 2020, companies made big pledges about racial equity, hiring teams dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion. Now corporate America is pulling back — cutting DEI jobs and outsourcing the work to consultants.

DEI jobs peaked in early 2023 before falling 5 percent that year and shrinking by 8 percent so far in 2024, according to Revelio Labs data shared with The Washington Post. The attrition rate for DEI roles has been about double that of non-DEI jobs, says Revelio, which tracks workforce dynamics.

In recent weeks, Zoom axed its internal DEI team amid broader layoffs, and Snap cut workers who worked on retention and engagement efforts for employees from underrepresented groups. Meta, Tesla, DoorDash, Lyft, Home Depot, Wayfair and X were among major corporations making steep cuts in 2023, slashing the size of their DEI teams by 50 percent or more, Revelio’s data shows.

“The overall number of DEI officers has decreased,” said Lisa Simon, Revelio’s senior economist, “but it’s not enough to destroy all the strides that happened after 2020.”

At Zoom, chief operating officer Aparna Bawa told employees that the company would replace its internal DEI team with DEI consultants who would “champion inclusion by embedding our values … directly into our people programs rather than as a separate initiative,” according to a Jan. 29 memo seen by The Post.

Colleen Rodriguez, the company’s head of global corporate communications, said Zoom “remains committed” to DEI work.

Snap made a similar decision in February, according to reporting from Business Insider. Snap did not respond to a request for comment.

Corporate America’s retreat from DEI has coincided with increased legal risk and political animosity toward systemic efforts to boost racial equity. State legislators have introduced at least 65 anti-DEI bills since 2023, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The resignation of Claudine Gay, Harvard University’s first Black president, amid plagiarism allegations in January was billed as “the beginning of the end for DEI in America’s institutions” by the conservative activist who led the campaign to oust her. Mentions of DEI on corporate earnings calls have plunged in the past year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

For companies that were never really committed, “this is the perfect air cover for backing off diversity,” said Joelle Emerson, CEO of DEI consultancy Paradigm.

Not all companies downsizing teams are giving up on the work, Emerson said, noting that some employers overhired when they established their DEI teams.

“I don’t know that it ever made sense to have a 25-person diversity team sitting to the side of a core business function,” Emerson said. “Companies should be able to say, ‘We’ve tried this, it didn’t have an impact, we’re going to try something different.’”

The recalibration is happening under serious legal pressure. Last year, when the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, the decision didn’t apply directly to employers. But the ruling kicked off an effort, driven largely by conservative activists, to dismantle race-conscious policies in other domains of American life.

In July, 13 Republican attorneys general sent a letter urging Microsoft and other Fortune 100 companies to reexamine their DEI policies in response to the ruling. America First Legal, a group backed by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, has filed legal complaints over diversity practices at scores of companies, including United Airlines, Kellogg’s, Nike, and organizations such as the FBI, National Football League and Major League Baseball.

Edward Blum, the conservative activist behind the lawsuits that toppled affirmative action in college admissions, is suing venture capital firm Fearless Fund over its grant program for early-stage businesses owned by Black women. Blum’s group has also found success targeting major law firms over their diversity fellowships: Three big law firms — Perkins Coie, Morrison Foerster and Winston & Strawn — opened their fellowships for students of color to applicants of all races and backgrounds after being sued. A fourth law firm, Adams and Reese, ended its diversity fellowship after receiving an Oct. 9 letter threatening litigation.

Even before the tide turned last summer, DEI work was an uphill battle. As companies’ commitments have wavered, DEI professionals have had their work challenged.

“Any time I’d raise something with the word ‘equity’ … I was told it scares people away,” said a former head of DEI for a gaming start-up, who was laid off in January. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid violating his separation agreement.

After stepping into the role in 2020, he said he was disheartened by resistance from executives to pay-transparency policies and employee resource groups. The DEI budget kept facing cuts, he said, and he was constantly under pressure to show a “return on investment.”

When it comes to DEI, businesses are “interested until they’re not,” he said. “These positions are going away every day.”

Some groups have been imploring companies to maintain their DEI focus. On Monday, the executive board of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus sent a letter to CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, inquiring about efforts to improve Asian American diversity and encouraging them to stay the course amid growing attacks on DEI. The group noted that Asian Americans remain “severely underrepresented at the senior-most levels of the largest U.S. corporations.”

“Without executive leadership representation at Fortune 100 companies, AANHPI employees have fewer role models and fewer internal champions to guide and mentor them,” the letter reads. “Corporate leaders also have fewer internal resources to guide them in fully understanding the needs and aspirations of AANHPI consumers.”

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus sent a similar letter in December to acting labor secretary Julie Su, inquiring about tech layoffs that were disproportionately affecting Black workers.

“Tech companies who previously agreed to address bias and discrimination and create greater opportunities in the workforce are now quietly defunding diversity pledges,” the letter reads, according to TheGrio.

Some companies are bucking the trend. J.M. Smucker, Victoria’s Secret, Michaels, Moderna, Prudential and ConocoPhillips were among big corporations that expanded their DEI teams by 50 percent or more in 2023, according to Revelio’s data. Packaged-food giant Conagra Brands and NASA both doubled the size oftheir DEI teams.

With 30 years’ experience in diversity work, Cristina Jimenez, head of DEI at RHR International, a leadership consulting firm, says she has “watched the pendulum swing back and forth” between support and resistance. But this moment seems particularly fraught, she said. Her clients feel like “they’re in a battle zone all the time.”

“They’re not sure what to do next,” Jimenez said, “but they understand if they don’t do something, their talent strategies, their culture, their ability to succeed is all at risk.”

==

Many of the organizations that took on DEI ideology did so as True Believers. Disney is infested with it from top to bottom, resulting in billions lost at both the box-office and in stock price, and vandalized franchises such as Star Wars and Marvel where fans have gone from annoyed to no longer caring. Your paying customers no longer caring is worse than them being angry.

But many more took it on either as a "wokescreen" - to cover and distract from their far greater sins, such as Disney thanking a concentration camp in the credits for Mulan. Or as a form of Woke Passover, painting DEI blood over the door and hoping the activist plagues will pass over them and attack someone else.

[circleandsquarecomic]

Circle Abhors a Vacuum

[irreplaceable-spark]

Message to CEOs

CEOs need to stop saving the world with the globalists, narcissists, and eternal builders of the tower of Babel, and stand up for what they are and what they do. If they deliver what they're paid to deliver, there is nothing to feel guilty for.

[philosophicalconservatism]

DEI

The political Left's desire for power is far greater than its desire for inclusion. This is why it has been forever opposed to the policy with the most potential to bring about meaningful and lasting inclusion: the policy of school choice. Rather than artificially elevating unqualified candidates because of race or sex, why not simply assure that these individuals have a solid foundation of early education that enables them to become qualified candidates? The answer is because it would take away too much power from the education bureaucracy. It would destroy their unconditional control over the education curriculum to which millions of children are subject. The market would now make clear which approaches work and which do not, and parents would be empowered to act on that knowledge.

[beardedmrbean]

Some of the same hard leftists who have been on the forefront in denying free speech rights to those deemed politically incorrect have now begun to champion the First Amendment in defense of those who advocate the killing of Jews.

Among the worst offenders is Harvard's President Claudine Gay, who for years—both as dean of the faculty and as president of Harvard—has championed the idea that it is more important for students to feel safe, and not have their ideas challenged, than for free expression to be allowed on campus. The bureaucracy through which this notion operates is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), which punishes microaggressions and other forms of speech that certain students claim makes them feel unsafe. The entire woke progressive movement rests on restricting expression that alienates or upsets protected minorities.

In her disastrous testimony in front of Congress, President Gay swore under oath that we at Harvard "embrace a commitment to free expression." If only that were so. For years now Harvard has been suppressing expression deemed by some to be politically incorrect, as reflected by its last-place ranking among American universities in protecting free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Lectures have been canceled because of content some deemed offensive. Students have been reprimanded for microaggressions. Acceptances have been rescinded for allegedly racist or sexist speech engaged in by high school students. A former president—Lawrence Summers—was forced to resign over comments about women in engineering. An atmosphere of intimidation has permeated the campus. Freedom of expression was dying a slow death at the university whose motto is "Veritas" but whose actions have suggested "Pravda."

Then suddenly, following the barbarous Hamas attacks of October 7 and the flurry of antisemitic rhetoric immediately following them, the same groups that denied free speech to those who criticize minorities protected by DEI have discovered the First Amendment as a protection for those who are calling for the death of Jews.

"Free speech for me, but not for thee" has been the unspoken mantra of the hard Left. Or, more specifically, "freedom of speech to make Jews feel unsafe but not to make favored minorities uncomfortable."

There are two principled responses universities may take to this unequal application of freedom of expression. The first, and the one which I personally prefer, is to allow total free speech consistent with the First Amendment on all campuses. This would permit advocacy, but not incitement, against all and any groups. This pure and equal approach to the First Amendment is what the Supreme Court has demanded of the government in most circumstances. It allowed Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, and communists to advocate the overthrow of the government. It does not allow direct and immediate incitement to violence. The line between advocacy and incitement has been a difficult one to draw since the Supreme Court mandated that distinction. But it is the law, in theory if not always in practice.

The First Amendment is not directly applicable to private universities and other non-governmental organizations. Universities remain free to impose speech codes and other limitations on free expression that they feel enhance the learning experience and the safety of students. Public universities have greater restrictions, but they too have some flexibility in adapting the First Amendment to the special needs of educational institutions.

If private universities, such as Harvard, MIT, and Penn decide not to adhere to the standards of the First Amendment and impose limitations on free speech, they should do so equally and without preference for some groups over others. Few universities, if any, satisfy that criteria. Most prefer certain minorities over others, as well as certain political views over others.

If Harvard had a history of applying a single standard, its president would have had an easy time answering the question of whether Harvard's rules prohibit the advocacy of genocide against the Jews. Here's what she would have been able to say: "under the standards Harvard has applied in the past, there is no doubt that calling for genocide against the Jews is a clear violation of Harvard rules." But she refused to acknowledge the truth—that Harvard has not embraced "a commitment to free expression" equally for all of its students and faculty.

It can be hoped that perhaps the Harvard Corporation's decision to retain President Gay will actually result in a change in its policies toward free speech. Perhaps Harvard will finally "embrace a commitment to free expression" for all. This may be wishful thinking, especially in light of the continuing influence of the DEI bureaucracy over who can say what about whom, without fear of university reprisal. But it is the right thing to do.

[byneddiedingo]

Dhritiman Chatterjee and Soumitra Chatterjee in An Enemy of the People (Satyajit Ray, 1989) Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Dipankar Dey, Rama Guha Thakurta, Mamata Shankar, Subendu Chatterjee, Manoj Mitra. Screenplay: Satyajit Ray, based on a play by Henrik Ibsen. Cinematography: Barun Raha. Production design: Ashoke Bose. Film editing: Dulal Dutta. Music: Satyajit Ray. Writer-director Satyajit Ray's adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's play 1882 play is one of his last films, made three years before his death. His health had been severely weakened by a heart attack in 1983, and his consequent lack of vigor shows in the film's static character: limited camera movements and a restriction to only a few sets, mostly interiors. It's very much a filmed play -- even in the final scene we hear but don't see the crowds outside proclaiming their support of Dr. Gupta. Ray's screenplay follows Ibsen in general outline, while shifting the scene from a Norwegian town to an Indian one. The title character, Dr. Ashok Gupta (Soumitra Chatterjee), is concerned about a sharp increase in diseases that are typically water-borne, such as hepatitis and cholera, so he sends a sample of the town's water, including that from the newly built Hindu temple, for analysis, and his suspicions are confirmed. He writes an article for the local newspaper explaining his findings and suggesting that the temple be closed until necessary water treatment measures are taken. But he is opposed in this by his own brother, Nishith (Dhritiman Chatterjee), the equivalent of the town's mayor, who fears that closing the temple will hurt the economy, especially with a festival approaching that is likely to attract religious pilgrims. Nishith enlists a priest from the temple to proclaim the water safe and pressures the newspaper's publisher into killing his brother's article. Dr. Gupta calls a town meeting, but it is taken over by Nishith, who even goes so far as to call his brother's faith into question. Religious fundamentalists attack the Guptas' home and the landlord asks the doctor to move; the doctor's daughter loses her job as a teacher, and his privileges in the local hospital are revoked. Ibsen's play ends with his Dr. Stockmann standing firm, with only his family's support, but Ray softens his film's ending with the off-camera sound of the rallying supporters of Dr. Gupta. It's not really a cop-out ending, however. Ray has shifted the focus of his film from Ibsen's attack on bureaucracy and capitalist privilege to one he believed more relevant to his country: the clash of science and religious fundamentalism. What saves Ray's An Enemy of the People from preachiness and its lack of cinematic finesse is the director's usual involvement in his characters and the deep conviction of his actors, particularly Soumitra Chatterjee, who made his film debut in The World of Apu (1959) and worked with Ray on more than a dozen films over the next three decades.

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

by Jay Greene and Mike Gonzalez | Which state’s public universities have the largest diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies? It is not a deep-blue state, like California or Oregon. It is the decidedly purple state of Virginia. When Heritage Foundation analysts measured the size of DEI bureaucracies in the 65 universities that were members of one of the Power 5 athletic conferences (the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac-12, the Southeastern…

[gwydionmisha]

The death of academic freedom.  

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jay P. Greene

Published: Dec 8, 2021

Universities ostensibly employ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) staff to create more tolerant and welcoming environments for students from all backgrounds. A previous Heritage Backgrounder documented that the number of people devoted to DEI efforts has grown to about 45 people at the average university. This Backgrounder examines whether these large DEI staff are, in fact, creating a tolerant and welcoming environment on college campuses. In particular, this Backgrounder examines the extent to which DEI staff at universities express anti-Israel attitudes that are so out of proportion and imbalanced as to constitute antisemitism.

To measure antisemitism among university DEI staff, we searched the Twitter feeds of 741 DEI personnel at 65 universities to find their public communications regarding Israel and, for comparison purposes, China. Those DEI staff tweeted, retweeted, or liked almost three times as many tweets about Israel as tweets about China. Of the tweets about Israel, 96 percent were critical of the Jewish state, while 62 percent of the tweets about China were favorable. There were more tweets narrowly referencing “apartheid” in Israel than tweets indicating anything favorable about Israel whatsoever. The overwhelming pattern is that DEI staff at universities pay a disproportionately high amount of attention to Israel and nearly always attack Israel.

While criticism of Israel is not necessarily antisemitic, the inordinate amount of attention given to Israel and the excessive criticism directed at that one country is evidence of a double-standard with respect to the Jewish state, which is a central feature of a widely accepted definition of antisemitism. Frequently accusing Israel of engaging in genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and other extreme crimes while rarely leveling similar criticisms toward China indicates an irrational hatred that is particularly directed toward Jews and not merely a concern for human rights.

The evidence presented in this Backgrounder demonstrates that university DEI staff are better understood as political activists with a narrow and often radical political agenda rather than promoters of welcoming and inclusive environments. Many DEI staff are particularly unwelcoming toward Jewish students who, like the vast majority of Jews worldwide, feel a strong connection to the state of Israel. The political activism of DEI staff may help explain the rising frequency of antisemitic incidents on college campuses as well as the association between college and graduate education and higher levels of antisemitic attitudes. Rather than promoting diversity and inclusion, universities may be contributing to an increase in anti-Jewish hatred by expanding DEI staff and power.

The Context

There has been a sharp increase recently in antisemitic incidents worldwide, in the United States, and particularly on college campuses. According to Hillel International, the main university organization for Jewish students, there were 244 antisemitic incidents reported during the mostly virtual 2020–2021 school year compared to 181 during the prior year when everyone was on campus for in-person instruction.

DEI staff are supposed to be working to prevent such incidents rather than foment them. According to the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education Standards of Professional Practice, “Chief diversity officers work with senior administrators and campus professionals to develop, facilitate, respond to, and assess campus protocols that address hatebias incidents, including efforts related to prevention, education, and intervention.” DEI staff are supposed to prevent hate/bias incidents directed at any student group: “Chief diversity officers have ethical, legal, and practical obligations to frame their work from comprehensive definitions of equity, diversity, and inclusion—definitions that are inclusive with respect to a wide range of identities.”

But the activities of many DEI staff lend credence to the title of David Baddiel’s recent book that “Jews don’t count.” Not only do DEI staff fail to attend to Jewish concerns, including scheduling events on Jewish holidays, but there have been reports of diversity officials expressing antisemitic attitudes. The most prominent example of this from the corporate world was when Kamau Bobb, the head of diversity at Google, wrote that Jews have an “insatiable appetite for war” and an “insensitivity to the suffering [of] others.” Amazingly, Bobb was only reassigned to work on STEM education efforts for Google. Bobb let the mask slip by accusing “Jews” of these crimes rather than simply saying “Israelis” or “Zionists.” If DEI staff maintain that cover, they might be able to get away with expressing virulent antisemitic statements without even being reassigned to new positions. This Backgrounder examines empirically how common these kinds of antisemitic statements are from university DEI staff.

The Method

The previous Backgrounder, “Diversity University,” identified 2,933 DEI staff at 65 “Power Five” universities. Primarily using Google searches, we found 797 Twitter accounts linked to these DEI staff. Of those 797 accounts, 56 were “protected” so that tweets could not be viewed. That left 741 accounts that could be searched for antisemitic content.

Almost all of these were personal accounts, not operated by the universities themselves. Thus, they provide a window into what these DEI staff believe and how those beliefs may shape their university work.

The publicly available Twitter feeds of these DEI staff were searched for comments related to Israel and, for comparison purposes, China. The specific search terms to find comments related to Israel were Israel, Palestine, Palestinian, and Gaza. The search terms for China were China and Chinese. The searches found all mentions of these terms in the tweets, retweets, and “likes” of tweets associated with these accounts. Researchers coded whether each tweet indicated a positive or negative view toward Israel and China, respectively.

Of course, this approach does not find all public communications from DEI staff regarding Israel and China. Not all DEI staff have accounts on Twitter. Some accounts may not have been found by Google searches involving their name and institution, especially if individuals avoid mentioning their real name and employer on social media. Some people automatically delete their tweets, retweets, and likes periodically, making it impossible to find earlier communications. People may describe Israel or China using words other than those that were used as search terms. Moreover, the application used to facilitate searching truncates some tweets and places a cap on how many tweets can be searched per user. For all of these reasons, the results presented in this Backgrounder are a conservative undercount of public communications. Nonetheless, the patterns that this imperfect method yield are likely an accurate presentation of the broader picture of DEI staff sentiment toward Israel and China.

The Results

DEI staff have a disproportionate interest in Israel relative to China and are far more likely to be critical of Israel than they are of China. In total, there were 633 tweets regarding Israel compared to 216 regarding China—three times as many—despite the fact that China is 155 times as populous as Israel and has 467 times the land mass. China has also had many reasons to be in the news recently, including being the origin of the pandemic, conducting a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong, mass imprisonment and mistreatment of China’s Muslim Uyghur population, increasing confrontation with Taiwan and other countries in the Pacific Rim, and severe internal repression of political dissent and private corporations. One who is genuinely interested in human rights around the world had many more reasons to be paying attention to China than to Israel.

Of the 633 tweets regarding Israel, 605 (96 percent) were critical of the Jewish state. Of the 216 tweets regarding China, 133 (62 percent) expressed favorable sentiment.

Examples of Tweets About Israel

The severe tone and extreme content of the tweets, retweets, and likes critical of Israel are even more illuminating. There is no reason to identify individual DEI staff, but quoting from their tweets and counting the use of hyperbolic rhetoric is important.

For example, the word apartheid appears 43 times in DEI staff public communications about Israel. One retweet by a Multicultural Student Affairs staff person asserted that “the State of Israel is guilty of the human rights crimes of apartheid and persecution. Settler colonialism is fundamentally violent. And it begets violence.” Another remark retweeted by someone in an Office of Inclusion and Diversity stated that “one cannot teach radical geog/critical urban theory without a curriculum on this settler colonialism & apartheid.” A tweet by a Multicultural Student Center staff person declared, “Condemn the Apartheid State of Israel for their Human Rights Violations against the Palestinian.” An assistant director of an Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity lamented, “no apology for a pro apartheid Zionist organization holding a reception? I guess there’s no justice for Queer Palestinians here.”

Some variant of the word colonial appears 39 times in tweets, retweets, or likes by DEI staff. A person working for Graduate School Diversity Programs liked the message, “Y’all love to add the word liberal in front of the most evil things and it’s unhingedddd. Wtf is a liberal Zionist? What’s next? Liberal Nazi? Liberal colonizer? Liberal murderer? Liberal imperialist? Liberal fascist?” One staffer at a Multicultural Student Involvement and Community Advocacy Center endorsed the following: “You cannot disentangle the colonization experienced by indigenous ppl from the racism experienced by black ppl from the xenophobia experienced by latinx ppl from the imperialism experienced by palestinians. They’re all different extensions of the same oppressive project.” A person in an LGBTQ Equity Center retweeted, “Re Palestine, you gotta understand: there’s no ‘controversy.’ Most people around the world know that Israel brutally colonizes the Palestinians. The issue is only ‘controversial’ because Zionists pitch a fit whenever anybody speaks this truth.”

The word genocide appears nine times, the term ethnic cleansing appears seven times, and the accusation that children are specifically targeted appears 27 times. The assistant director of an Asian Pacific student center tweeted, “#Gaza is under attack. This is genocide. #FreeGaza.” One DEI staffer retweeted, “what you need to understand is that these are entire BLOODLINES being wiped out. generations upon generations completely GONE. their indigenous history with them.” A staffer in a Center for Educational Outreach retweeted, “israel has a particular loathing for children. they target them with violence specifically and intentionally every single day.”

The public communications of DEI staff embrace the genocidal phrase from the river to the sea five times. One message declares that “‘from the river to the sea’ means that we will decolonize every block and every grain of sand in palestine. go ahead and fuel people to make us look like we’re bloodthirsty for the death of jews when you’ve just killed 42 family members in one airstrike.” Another states, “Every Israeli bomb and bullet used against Palestinians and paid for by USA dollars has been consummated by the blood and soil of American Indians. From the river to the sea and from sea to shining sea, we shall be free.”

Angela Davis, the former vice presidential candidate for the Communist Party who was accused of supplying the guns that resulted in the killing of a judge, features prominently in DEI staff tweets. So does former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired by the network for his antisemitic statements. One LGBTQ center staff person who is also an instructor tweeted, “I ordered ‘Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique’ which I think I’m going to pair with Angela Davis’ ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle’ in my LGBTQ activism class in the spring!” The director of an African American Cultural Center posted a photo with the following description and quotation from Davis: “The Black Panther Party & a Palestinian delegation at the first Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers, 1969. ‘The Black radical tradition is related not simply to Black people but to all who are struggling for freedom … our histories never unfold in isolation.’—Angela Davis.”

While American Jewry is rarely mentioned specifically in these public communications from DEI staff, their alleged role in facilitating Israeli crimes is often in the subtext. An Outreach and Engagement librarian retweeted, “Tell U.S. Jewish leaders: Stop defending #Gaza assault.” One multicultural consultant liked the message, “Jewish people are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, but we are responsible for calling out violence and human rights abuses when we see them, especially when the people committing the violence claim to be doing so in our name.” A DEI staffer at a Big Ten school was clearly describing the supposedly insidious influence of American Jews when he liked this message: “There’s a vast philanthropic-lobbying complex in the US that works tirelessly to present Israelis as benevolent, peace-loving, and fundamentally reasonable victims of Palestinian aggression, and meanwhile in actual Israel no one bothers with the pretense.”

The relatively small number of tweets, retweets, or likes by DEI staff favorable toward Israel—28 in total—are tepid compared to the fire-breathing tone of those that are critical. Sometimes the praise is mixed with criticism of Israel. For example, a leader of an Office of Diversity and Inclusion liked this mixture of praise and criticism: “Dear Israel, you have a story to tell that is important and often glorious. But you don’t tell your story by keeping people out. You tell it by opening your arms, sharing the complexity and challenges and inviting exchange and ideas.” An associate dean for diversity and inclusion praised Israel’s democracy while denouncing its leader: “The beauty of a democracy is the right of people to elect the wrong person. Jerusalem, Israel.”

Other positive comments lamented insufficient attention to Israeli and Jewish contribution to progressive causes: “why no coverage in the media?: Thousands of Jewish protesters join 500,000-strong Women’s March… via @timesofisrael.” But most of the favorable tweets were about trips to Israel, Israeli scientific innovations, or expressions of support for memorials. The closest thing to a full-throated defense of Israel can be found in this tweet liked by an associate at a Multicultural Engagement Center: “The Jewish people are indigenous to Israel, the birthplace of our identity and unique culture, and have maintained a documented presence for over 3,000 years.” But this tweet is the only one like it among the more than 600 tweets, retweets, and likes found in DEI staff Twitter feeds.

Examples of Tweets About China

The favorable tweets about China also tended to be more tepid than those that were critical, but they were far more common. For example, some positive tweets focused on partnerships between the DEI staff person’s U.S. university and government or educational institutions in China. One Big Ten DEI official stated, “A real pleasure to meet China’s Vice Minister of Ag and Rural Affairs Han Jun in Beijing last night to discuss Ag and food innovation…. Wonderful conversation with great plans for the future.” An assistant provost at another university praised the success of her institution’s president at establishing partnerships with Chinese universities: “President Stresses Internationalization Opportunities on Trip to China. [University president] signed five cooperative agreements with Chinese universities and was a featured speaker at an event for globalization in academia.”

Another common type of tweet favorable to China was to extoll China for its efforts to combat COVID-19. An associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion endorsed this message: “Chinese medics have just arrived in London to help us fight Covid-19. The media won’t tell you for some reason.” A multicultural consultant at another university affirmed, “Thank you to psychologists from Wuhan, China for helping @APA to learn from their experiences of #COVID and improve our ability to care for the #mentalhealth & needs in the #USA.”

Other DEI staff expressed favorable sentiment toward China to counteract what they perceived to be anti-Chinese bias. A staff person at a Center for Multicultural Affairs expressed concern: “when are people going to realize that anti china propoganda [sic] directly correlates with a rise in hate crimes against Asians.”

A few people offered strongly worded praise of China. An LGBTQ staff person seemed to think that it would be better to be a trans person in China: “i wonder a lot if it would feel easier to come out to my parents if i was a ~binary trans woman~ or what the f*** ever b/c they at least have a frame of reference for trans women celebrities in China.” Another DEI staff person endorsed this tweet from the People’s Daily newspaper in China touting how China had improved the lives of people in Tibet: “China’s Tibet Autonomous Region had lifted 530,000 people out of poverty during the five years to 2017, reducing poverty rate to 12.4% from 32.3% at the end of 2012, the regional poverty relief office said Friday.”

The smaller number of tweets regarding China that expressed criticism tended to focus on human rights issues. An associate dean for diversity and inclusion retweeted, “Human rights experts estimate that 1.5 million Uighur Muslims and members of other ethnic minority groups, including Chinese-born Kazakhs, have been detained in Xinjiang since 2016.” The assistant director of campus inclusion and community responded to a Bloomberg news headline that said, “China looks at cutting inequality in order to boost the economy” by asking, “Good for China. But also are they still doing that Muslim genocide? Why we ain’t also talking about that?”

A number of negative tweets about China addressed the treatment of African residents in China. An associate provost for inclusive excellence retweeted, “In China, African residents are alleging anti-black racism resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.” Others expressed concern about Chinese efforts to use technology for surveillance. An assistant dean for equity and inclusion endorsed these concerns: “Google built prototype of a censored search engine for China that links users’ searches to their personal phone numbers, thus making it easier for the Chinese government to monitor people’s queries.”

The extreme language used in tweets regarding Israel almost never appeared in tweets regarding China. There are no occurrences of the words apartheid and ethnic cleaning, nor is China ever accused of targeting children in these tweets, retweets, and likes. The term colonial does appear twice, but it is used favorably toward China. For example, one tweet asserted that people “talk about China like a British colonial officer from 1850.” The term genocide does appear four times in tweets about China, but that is less than half as common as the term was used with respect to Israel.

The overall picture, however, is that DEI staff were less likely to offer criticisms of China than of Israel, and those criticisms tended to be less strongly worded. It would be impossible to review the inordinate attention that DEI staff pay to Israel relative to China, the nearly universal attacks on Israel versus general praise of China, and the dramatically different tone used in discussing Israel and China without concluding that DEI staff have an obsessive and irrational animus toward the Jewish state.

The Definition of Antisemitism

Some people might object that just because DEI staff express criticism of Israel frequently and forcefully does not necessarily mean that they are antisemitic. According to a widely accepted definition of antisemitism, however, criticism of Israel constitutes antisemitism when it exhibits certain characteristics. This definition was formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and has been endorsed by governmental bodies around the world, including the European Parliament, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which oversees the activities of DEI staff at universities.

The IHRA definition suggests the following as examples of antisemitism:

“Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”;

“Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”;

“Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”; and

“Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

The tweets, retweets, and likes of DEI staff documented here provide instances of all of these antisemitic qualities. The frequent use of terms such as apartheid and colonialism are meant to portray Israel as a racist endeavor and deny its right to exist as the homeland of the Jewish people. The forceful denunciation of Israeli responses to rocket and terrorist attacks prominently feature a double standard, as only the Jewish state is expected not to defend its citizens in a way that all other countries would. The sparsity of criticism of China relative to Israel is also strong evidence of a double standard. Accusing Israel of genocide or ethnic cleansing is clearly meant to equate Israeli policy with that of the Nazis. And demanding that U.S. Jewish leaders denounce Israeli actions or accusing them of hypocrisy for failing to do so are clear examples of holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s behavior.

Conclusion

According to Gallup data, 95 percent of American Jews support Israel. While that figure is lower among younger Jews, a large majority of Jews at American universities feel connected to the state of Israel as part of their Jewish identity. Even if the hyperbolic and obsessive criticism of Israel expressed by university DEI staff did not meet the definition of antisemitism (which it clearly does), attacking a central feature of Jewish students’ identity would be entirely contrary to the stated purpose of having DEI staff: to welcome students from all backgrounds, make them feel included, and prevent or address incidents of hate and bias. But it is clear that DEI staff at universities actually function as political activists, articulating and enforcing a narrow and radical ideological agenda.

Truly achieving diversity, especially ideological diversity, and helping all students feel included requires a dramatic change in how universities approach DEI. Existing staff need to be dramatically reduced, and the remaining DEI infrastructure needs to be reoriented toward serving the true purposes of diversity and inclusion.

Jay P. Greene, PhD, is Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Education Policy, of the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation. James D. Paul is Director of Research at the Educational Freedom Institute.

==

If you were shocked by the rampant antisemitism on college campuses after October 7, you shouldn't have been. DEI cultists were building and encouraging it for years. October 7 was just when they said, "now."

[curious-glitch]

Emergence Revisited

Quantity changes quality. This is such a powerful concept. Think about ants and anthills, cars and traffic, investors and the economy, neurons and consciousness.

The property of emergence is one of the most mysterious, counterintuitive, and explanatory forces of reality.

It explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions, or why selfishness can be heroic in the economic sense. Because we only see at an individual level, rarely the second or third order effects to the entire system.

Look at the university system. Affirmative action and DEI came from a good place, but ended up messing with the whole system. It resulted in universities no longer being reliably meritocratic.

Look at governance. Communism had grand goals of producing surplus food, but ironically it resulted in famines. Because it did not believe in human incentives. Because it was bogged down by bureaucracy that was only 1/10 as productive as private enterprise. It didn’t allow for nonsense stuff, while capitalism was freewheeling and just let everything happen, and it turned out that nonsense niches were driving the economy.

What is good for the individual may be bad for the system. What is good for the system may be bad for the individual. There is that inherent, invisible tradeoff decision to be made.

Complex dynamic systems all operate on some form of emergence.

What is the most prudent approach then?

Well, ‘stay in your lane’ may be the wisest move here. Micro is empirical, empathetic, based on lived experience. It is deontological, focusing on our own sphere of influence, the serenity prayer of changing what we can change instead of grand old proclamations about changing the world. The humble path is the path towards truth.

It is the ultimate paradox that those who seek to change the world mostly destroy it, while those who are aware and humble enough to stay in their lanes, end up changing the world in more positive ways.

[beardedmrbean]

Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, headed by critical race theory activist Ibram X. Kendi, revealed last week that it was laying off about 40% of its staff as part of organization restructuring. About 15 to 20 of its approximately 45 employees were let go. Testimonies from former employees have exposed alleged mismanagement of Kendi’s center, which in turn has exposed the fraudulence and fragility of the diversity, equity, and inclusion complex.

Disgruntled former employees have accused Kendi of mishandling grant funding, failing to complete major projects, and fostering an exploitative company culture in which he ruled with an iron fist yet was routinely missing in action. The center has raked in $43 million since its inception, according to 2021 budget records obtained by the Daily Free Press. It received corporate support from Peloton, Deloitte, Stop & Shop, TJX Companies, and Deckers Outdoor Corporation, according to a 2020–2021 donor report. Only six weeks after its launch, then-CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey gifted $10 million without conditions.

“Your $10M donation, with no strings attached, gives us the resources and flexibility to greatly expand our antiracist work,” Kendi posted at the time. “The endowment is vital, as we build our new Center.”

Despite the investments, the center did not deliver on some key priorities, such as the much-hyped Racial Data Tracker that would document racial inequities in all sectors of society to finally root out racism.

“I don’t know where the money is,” Saida Grundy, a BU professor who worked at the center from fall 2020 to spring 2021, told the Boston Globe after the staff cuts.

Multiple other BU professors served as faculty leads on various projects at the center. Professor Sanaz Mobasseri of BU’s business school led the Antiracist Tech Initiative, professor Kaylene Stevens of BU’s education school led the “Designing Antiracist Curricula” team, and political science professor Spencer Piston led the Policy Office, for example.

In December 2021, Grundy emailed BU provost Jean Morrison that the organization had been showing a “pattern of amassing grants without any commitment to producing the research obligated” by them.

Like its umbrella idea DEI, “antiracism” actually translates to, well, nothing of note. Serial academics such as Kendi have built careers around racial fearmongering, even inventing new disciplines to study racism and its early-stage minutiae “microaggressions” and “implicit bias.” Rather than confront actual crimes of racism, these courses seek to aggressively manufacture racist intent.

Despite all this bureaucracy, academic DEI projects have unclear aims and products. Kendi’s center published just two research papers since its founding, the Washington Free Beacon reported. A January paper, "Association of Neighborhood Racial and Ethnic Composition and Historical Redlining With Build Environment Indicators Derived From Street View Images,” found that predominantly black neighborhoods had more dilapidated buildings than white neighborhoods. The center released a report from its "Antibigotry Convening” from fall 2021 and winter 2022 that included many intersectionality themes such as “Ageism,” "Anti-fat Bigotry,” and “Transphobia,” further confusing its purpose.

Rachel Lapal Cavallario, spokeswoman for Kendi’s center, told the Boston Globe Wednesday that BU had “received some complaints from individuals questioning whether the center was following its funding guidelines. We are currently looking into those complaints.”

However, the center rejects the “characterization of it not having produced important work insofar as antiracism is concerned,” she said.

To raise Grundy’s question again, where did the money go? Echoing that sentiment, BU has launched an “inquiry” into the center amid the scandal, the Daily Free Press said.

The situation is reminiscent of the lawsuits against Black Lives Matter, another embattled racial justice organization. In 2023, Black Lives Matter reported a $9 million deficit for 2022 after raising $90 million in 2020. Only 33% of that massive sum went to charitable activism, federal filings showed, as a significant chunk was squandered on the leaders’ mansions, personal expenses, and favors for friends. Both Kendi’s center and BLM followed a similar model: drum up rumors of racism, prescribe DEI, create an apparatus, lure in donors, get paid.

The racial grievance business welcomes little accountability — or accounting, for that matter — which explains why it’s found a home in academia. Many colleges, such as Boston University, or my alma mater Boston College down the road, charge their students exorbitant tuition for useless degrees and boatloads of debt. Tenured professors collect big paychecks while hawking critical race theory, turning students into activists instead of real scholars.

Despite its self-destructive tendencies, the DEI racket continues to spread throughout academia. Some colleges are trying to meet demand for so-called DEI experts by creating a corresponding major, USA Today claimed. At least six colleges across the country offer DEI degree programs or will in the future, according to the publication’s analysis. Tufts University and the University of Pennsylvania even have DEI graduate programs.

Some universities have also woven DEI into their academic missions. Duke University in 2020 launched a Racial Equity Advisory Council, composed of four subcommittees including faculty members and students, which will propose “measures to assess and foster racial equity” to the university’s leadership. Every year since fall 2020, the Duke Endowment has sponsored professors with seed grants to pursue research proposals related to race as part of the school’s anti-racism mission. That’s more money down the drain.

DEI in America’s prestigious colleges contributes nothing, wastes money, and fuels a bubble of empty courses, professions, and promises. But if the shakeout at Kendi’s BU center is any clue, it might be starting to pop.

[reasoningdaily]

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - Harvard's Claudine Gay cited 'racial animus' in her resignation letter

In Claudine Gay’s resignation letter on Tuesday, Harvard University’s first Black — and now former — president cited the fear of being “subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus” while battling allegations of plagiarism and her congressional hearing comments related to the Israel-Hamas war. But Gay and DEI — or diversity, equity and inclusion — experts point out that racial animus was not the only driving factor that led to her resignation.

“She was targeted partially due to her race, but as part of the larger, extremist, right-wing push to reverse social progress under this banner of anti-wokeness,” Lily Zheng, a DEI strategist and best-selling author of DEI Deconstructed, told Yahoo News.

Here’s what racial animus means and how it fuels the resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion in academic and corporate spaces.

What is racial animus?

Zheng defined racial animus, in plain terms, as “racial hostility.”

“She is talking about having a target on her back for being a Black woman, the first in Harvard's history. That's essentially what I am reading, when I see her words, ‘racial animus,’” Zheng said.

A day after stepping down, Gay penned an op-ed in the New York Times in which she said she was “called the N-word more times than I care to count,” in her short six months at Harvard.

“It is not lost on me that I make an ideal canvas for projecting every anxiety about the generational and demographic changes unfolding on American campuses: a Black woman selected to lead a storied institution,” Gay wrote.

Racial animus is fueling resistance to DEI

Civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton said on Tuesday that the resignation of Harvard’s first Black president (she’s also only the second woman to hold the position) was “an assault on the health, strength and future of diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Gay also shared her views on diversity, calling it a “source of institutional strength and dynamism,” and said she advocates for a “modern curriculum.”

But as the academic world and corporations moved to create or enhance DEI initiatives in the wake of the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, conservative leaders in the U.S. have attacked such initiatives as “tactics of liberal elites who suppress free thought in the name of identity politics and indoctrination.”

“Understanding our current racial landscape as a zero-sum game, where only one group of people can ‘win’ is at the heart of a lot of the current anti-wokeness, anti-DEI movement," said Zheng.

In her op-ed, Gay spoke of the conservative campaigns that “often trafficked in lies” to oust her and “often start with attacks on education and expertise.”

“They recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament,” Gay wrote.

In an email to Yahoo News, Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who has taken credit for leading a conservative campaign to push Gay to resign, compared Gay’s “racism” to that of her critics.

“Evidence that Gay is racist: she oversaw a discriminatory admissions program ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; led a discriminatory DEI bureaucracy that sought, among other things, to reduce the visual presence of ‘white men’ on campus; minimized antisemitism and the call for the violent ‘decolonization’ of Jews; supported policies that reduce individuals to racial categories and judge them on the basis of ancestry, rather than individual merit. Evidence that Claudine Gay's critics are racist: Claudine Gay claiming, but providing no hard evidence, that some unknown person or persons sent her mean emails,” Rufo wrote.

“It is a shame that some people appear to be using the tragedy playing out in the Middle East to further their agenda around attacking what they see as a too-liberal institution of higher education,” Sarah Soule, a professor who teaches organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, told Yahoo News. “If such attacks on higher education hadn't been playing out in other places in recent years, such as in Hungary, it might seem surprising. But it is just plain terrifying.”

‘Extremely strong desire’ for social progress

Zheng says that DEI efforts have historically been about “eliminating discrimination, creating fairness” and building organizations and universities that work for everyone.

“There are articles from Harvard themselves essentially admitting to, in the past and in the present, the social networks of these kinds of prestigious universities have been typically rich white men, building social, political and financial connections with other rich white men that weaves the fabric of America's political and corporate landscape for decades to come.”

Zheng added that this model of Ivy League institutions needs to change.

While Gay’s resignation, political efforts to ban DEI initiatives and the Supreme Court striking down affirmative action have been “disheartening,” according to Zheng, the decisions have not deterred people’s attitudes toward social progress. Zheng said DEI continues to be an “extremely strong desire” for working Americans and students pursuing higher education.

“There’s value for DEI for institutions at Harvard, institutions that have in the past, and in the present, continue to be bastions of this ‘old boys club,’ this kind of informal network that is fundamentally anti-meritocratic, and is about people from one set of social groups helping others from the same social group,” Zheng affirmed.

“We need to build institutions that actually work for everyone, that support everyone, that give everyone a fair shot for success that open up the doors of opportunity for everyone.”

[oskarlevant]

Alan Dershowitz op-ed on Harvard's firing of Claudine Gay 

Harvard prez Claudine Gay’s exit is just the first step in saving our universities

Harvard President Claudine Gay has resigned, likely as the result of pressure from the Harvard Corporation.

She was appointed largely because of her deep commitment to the diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy, which has dominated Harvard and other universities since the 2020 killing of George Floyd.

Accordingly, she is only a symptom, albeit an important one, of the destructive impact DEI is having on universities throughout the country.

Unless the DEI bureaucracy is dismantled, universities will continue their decline as institutions of objective learning.

Over the last several years many universities have changed their mission from objective, fact-based scholarship to “social justice.”

But it turns out social justice for some has resulted in social injustice for others.

It has been a zero-sum game in which African Americans have benefited at the expense of Asian Americans, Jewish Americans and other out-of-fashion minorities.

Indeed, the DEI bureaucracy has been a major source of, and stimulus for, the recent increase in antisemitism on campuses.

Central to the DEI ideology has been a phony academic construct called “intersectionality,” under which the world is divided into oppressors and oppressed, based entirely on identity politics.

The oppressed can do no wrong, while the oppressors can do no right.

White males, especially Jewish ones, are accused of being the primary oppressors.

It is acceptable therefore to silence and marginalize them while giving loud voice to the oppressed.

The power of these oppressors, DEI says, is enhanced by meritocracy.

Judging individuals by their hard work and accomplishments, according to the racist underpinnings of identity politics, guarantees the continued empowerment of the oppressors.

So meritocracy must go, along with grades and other criteria of individual accomplishment.

Meritocracy must be replaced by equity, which evaluates individuals based on characteristics beyond their control, such as race and sexual identity.

The Harvard Corporation, which made the mistake of appointing President Gay in the first place, comprises largely DEI supporters, as do the boards of many other universities.

But Gay’s forced resignation demonstrates that these elite boards need not be given the final word.

Universities consist of more than the current faculty, student body and boards.

They are made up of large numbers of alumni as well as future students.

And since universities represent our future leadership, the general public also has a stake in who governs them.

So the success of these “outsiders” in forcing Gay’s resignation is an important first step in changing the ill-conceived direction in which many of today’s universities are heading.

If the process ends with Gay’s resignation, nothing much beyond symbolism will have been accomplished.

But if it marks the beginning of a fundamental reconsideration of the universities’ mission, it will have accomplished much.

The next, and more important, step must be the complete dismantling of the DEI bureaucracy.

The good news is most of these newly hired bureaucrats do not have tenure and do not have the qualifications to become professors.

They can easily be fired, at the savings of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The bad news is they have become a powerful force at many universities.

It will take courage and resolve to get rid of them, but it must be done.

The DEI mindset must be replaced by the prioritization of meritocracy, broadly defined beyond mere grades but based on hard work and accomplishment.

Grades, however, are an important component of any meritocracy, and they must be restored along with other methods of evaluation.

We must return to a time when we all shared Martin Luther King’s dream of a society, as well as a university, where people are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The short presidency of Professor Gay may be a turning point in the history of American academia, but only if we take it to the next step and learn the appropriate lessons from her mistakes — and of those who appointed her.

[sutrala]

By Micaela Burrow Daily Caller News Foundation A compromise version of Congress’ annual defense bill unveiled late Wednesday freezes hiring for the Pentagon’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy and temporarily caps salaries of DEI administrators. The House’s...