America's Talking - States Push Back Against Diversity, Equity, Inclusion in Universities

Episode Date: June 3, 2023

A coalition of education experts, governors and lawmakers are pushing back against the "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" policies that have become the norm in public colleges and universities around the country. Several states have legislative efforts underway to require intellectual diversity, and professors tell The Center Square they welcome the change. Texas is the latest state to take on DEI, a broad category that employs teams of administrators to enforce equity and racial policies at the educational institution. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America and Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulib, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief, Casey Harper. How are you doing today, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? Doing well. It's June already. In fact, we're recording this on Friday, June 2nd. It feels like this 20-23 calendar year is just speeding by. But I'm glad summer is pretty much here, if not officially. Casey, there's an ongoing debate across. the country about diversity, equity, and inclusion policies taking over pretty much all aspects of American institutions, including at public colleges and universities. Critics say such programs are really having an opposite effect on what is intended to make sure everyone is included in decision-making and everyone has opportunities to succeed and whatnot. Explain this whole debate to us, including what's going on with the pushback, particularly at public universities

in colleges. Yeah, it's a pretty large debate, as you reference. It's really entangled through all different spheres of society. And the reason is because there's this kind of big top-down effort from the really progressive leadership, both in the U.S. and really globally, to enforce this on Western nations, these ideas of diversity, equity, inclusion, which is really just branding for a lot of the more radical race and gender ideology that has become. really controversial, at least in American politics, less so in the other Western nations that

have largely embraced it in Europe and other places. So, you know, another example, this would be ESG investing. So there is a push to make this stuff normalized, but they can't do it via federal law. So they've infiltrated education, as we're about to get into, but there's ESG investing where so many businesses have to tow the line on a lot of these kind of controversial, progressive equity ideas, even to get investment money, right? And so just why you see a lot of these corporations, And so they've got these bloated administrative, you know, wings of the company with very little to do. Now, the difference between the universities and these corporations is universities and colleges receive taxpayer funding. And that's why we care, Dan, primarily at the center square, we're always covering the taxpayer angle.

And so while Republican Democrat, I mean, this is not necessarily all political because our Democrats who are opposed to this. But while Americans weren't necessarily paying attention, these policies of DEI became widespread at taxpayer-funded colleges. university. Now you might say, how does DEI play out well? For a lot of jobs, if you want to work at a university, you might have to provide a DEI statement where you basically have to write up your ideas and kind of pledge your loyalty to the truths of DEI. It's kind of similar to a, if you're going to a Christian school, you have to write out a statement of faith or something saying what you believe, just to kind of verify that you're actually pulled to some of the basically the basic tenets of Christianity or something like that. It's similar with DEI. You have to write out the statement

essentially saying you agree with the DEI ideas, right? Which includes that there's widespread that our institutions, public and private, there's widespread racism, systemic racism essentially. Right. Yeah. I mean, so this is so big. It's hard to get to get really specific and summarize it. I'm trying, and that was very helpful.

A good case study in what DEI is all about is this, is the idea, the 1607 project? I'm forgetting in the year. Is that the right year, Dan? the New York Times project you're talking about? Yeah, I'm Googling. I think it was the 1607 project. And I can fact take that in a minute. But basically, it's the idea, yeah, it was via the New York Times that America has always been racist. And actually that the true American founding is not in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence, but in 1607 when the first African slaves were brought over to the U.S. right? So there's a reframing of American history. It's not just that, hey, now institutions are racist. But it's that America has always been racist, but not only has America always been racist. But the founding, idea of America at its very core has not been liberty. It's not the Bill of Rights. It's not independence. It is racism at its very core that America is built on racism. The economy is built in racism. It's viewing all of American history through an entirely racial and, you know, critics would say very cynical lens, right? So that's part of it. And to get at these educational

institutions, you have to sign off on it. But now there's been this push from a lot of Republicans at the state level to say, hey, wait a minute, we have some control over this. You can't do this. So Florida governor and now presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, you know, past legislation, really pushing back on a lot of this. He banned state taxpayer funding for DEI programs. Another DEI program would be, let's say, Dan, you say something that's considered controversial. And you have to go sit for, you know, six weeks of reeducation and diversity, equity, inclusion and watch endless training videos on how you're racist in ways you can't even understand. And, right, so that be another example. But Florida banned that.

Ohio's got another bill to do the same. Actually, the Senate just, um, I introduced. there's new legislation in the Senate would basically would ban accreditors from considering or requiring DEI ideas to give accreditation. So this, you know, it's happening in multiple states. It's happening in the Senate. There's finally some coordinated Republican pushback against this DEI, which has become so prevalent, especially in education. First, let me fact check you, Casey. It's the 1619. Thank you. So this pushback now is happening. Of course, we've got a Democratic president whose, who's administration is pushing these DEI policies, the Democrats control the Senate.

So the federal government's not going to do anything about it currently, right? So is it, it's really a state-by-state pushback that's going on right now? It's mostly states. And states do have more control over their own education. It's just kind of how the Constitution's set up. But there is a renewed effort in the Senate, but I don't think Biden will ever sign it. So right now these states are having, but they are getting victories. I mean, and DeSantis has been a leader on this.

He's been a leader on pushing back on CRT and actually getting to dissent. Francis' credit, he actually gets wins and doesn't just send out campaign emails about how terrible it is and not accomplish anything. So that is a strength of his to actually get wins on these kind of the critical race theory issue. We have done reporting at the center square.com. You mentioned up front, the taxpayer angle here. Essentially, these colleges and universities have created entire new departments of diversity, equity and inclusion departments where, you know, the department heads and staff,

are growing exponentially, dozens, where the heads of these departments are put on the same par, make just as much as like the dean of students and people who are involved in curriculum and education or whatever. It's costing individual universities, taxpayers, college students, millions and millions of dollars at each single university. Obviously, if you can, costs go up for everybody then if you're creating these new, some critics would call them fiefdoms. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely going to raise expenses. And it's been interesting, even as tuition has risen, pretty astronomically in the last couple decades for colleges and universities. Tell me about it. I've got two kids in college right now. Right. But it's not as if your kids are getting

one-on-one time with their professors, Dan. I'm sure you know that. I mean, they're not sitting in these classes of 10 or 12 students because you would think, well, you know, the cost's gone up so much. Are they hiring more professors? Are they decreasing class sizes? No, they're actually not doing that at all. So much of this money is going to the administrative wing hiring more and more administrators. And so many of those administrators are the kind of the equity, inclusion, diversity administrators. I mean, you've seen, I don't know if you saw this viral video recently where a conservative, I was like a, I want to say it was like a judge was speaking. at a university and the DEI administrator came because so many students were protesting.

And the DEI administrator for this university came and basically took over the podium and read this very long statement about how harmful and damaging all this stuff was. And so it just totally undercut the speaker that a student group had divided an end and sided with the more radical wing of liberal students in the school. And so it's becoming, it's only growing. I think this Republican pushback is finally organized. Republicans have been upset about it for a long time, but it seems they finally found a way to actually fight back.

Well, this is certainly a story that's not going anywhere anytime soon is going to be ongoing. And listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com. But we are out of time for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McKalep. Thank you for listening and please subscribe.