Social Justice Activists Meet to Plot Reaction to Multiple DEI Office Closures

March 25, 2024

The field of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion appears to be on life support. Governors across the nation are instituting requirements to limit their influence on state-funded institutions.

Many university administrators are reading the tea leaves and flat-out dissolving their DEI offices. Although, for anybody who thinks the DEI establishment intends to go down quietly without a fight, think again.

The DEI warriors are doing what they do best: commiserating at a conference to craft their countermeasures. Unsurprisingly, an ideology built on victim-placing would cloak their intentions with rhetoric to match.

How can we carry on?

Earlier this month, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) held its annual conference in Seattle, Washington. The conference brought together a record number of DEI professionals, with 1,150 individuals in attendance.

The title of this year’s conference was How We Persist, an homage to the recent actions taken by state governors. On the premise of the conference, NADOHE president Paulette Russell said the question needing to be asked by the DEI community is:

“How do we approach what we do strategically because some of us are exhausted and we are running to catch up.”

When providing tips to conference attendees on managing their exhaustion in what appears to be a dying career field, much of the advice unsurprisingly focused on mental health. However, some of the advice focused more on circumventing policies than on functioning within them.

Smile for the camera

Thanks to citizen journalism, many of the ideologies that gained traction after George Floyd’s death have started to lose support. This includes the DEI apparatus.

One nugget of advice to DEI professionals this month was:

“Don’t assume that people who claim to support you are really your allies.”

This helpful tip was largely inspired by recent undercover videos of university DEI administrators admitting to skirting state laws. One such DEI administrator was suspended after disclosing to an undercover reporter that she is continuing to push banned policies.

DEI administrator of Texas UT Tyler, Tarecka Payne, told the reporter that even with the recently signed law banning most DEI practices, it is still being done. Ms. Payne explained in no uncertain terms:

“No, you can still do it. You just have to be creative.”

She went on to state that she spends a fair amount of time crafting ways to work outside the law:

“I plot and plan.”

Texas is one of about 30 states that have introduced bills aimed at eradicating DEI. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey recently signed a bill banning DEI programs across public schools, universities, and state agencies.

The Kentucky House voted to defund DEI offices at public universities. The University of Florida fired all its DEI-associated positions.

Real consequences

The conference wasn’t all full of bad ideas and scheming. President Emeritus of Thomas Edison State University George Pruitt dropped this bit of truth:

“Diversity also means diversity of ideas and perspectives.”

It boggles the mind that a group of diversity professionals would need to be reminded what diversity should’ve meant all along. However, the focus for most in the field, which includes the federal government, isn’t on diversity of thought.

One merely has to look at the grant requirements from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to witness the true meaning of “diversity” being used today. Cornell University is one of many to receive grants from the NIH to support their professors in the following fields:

  • genetics

  • computational biology

  • neurobiology

Each applicant had to submit a “statement on contribution to diversity” to be considered. Universities following the same rules for these Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) grants include:

  • Northwestern University

  • UC Berkely

  • University of South Carolina

  • University of New Mexico

A focus on “diversity,” as the DEI establishment defines it in any scientific field, is dangerous, let alone in genetics, biology, and neuroscience.

Final thoughts

NADOHE president Paulette Russell stated at the conference:

“We should not be in this race, but we are. We took a lot for granted. We took for granted that we were doing the right thing.”

It’s good to know that there is some acknowledgment within the DEI community that perhaps they weren’t “doing the right thing.” San Jose State University Professor of Anthropology Elizabeth Weiss provided this exclusive statement:

“This paranoia of seeing racists under every desk, coupled with petty academic rivalries, is like McCarthyism meets mean girls.”

Ms. Weiss has been the victim of the DEI cult’s attempt to cancel her for speaking scientific truths so much so that she was able to fill a soon-to-be-released book titled On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors. In the book, she discusses her university’s attempt to shut her out of her department for taking a photo with a skull.

Ms. Weiss was also excluded from an anthropology panel because of her scientific statement that a skeleton’s sex is binary. Researcher and astronomer Beatriz Villarroel told us:

“As a postdoc, I had to face some difficult discrimination and harassment from other scientists for my choice to work with a scientist who was canceled.”

Ms. Villarroel went on to assert:

“When a professional research community is ready to punish a junior scientist for his or her associations, they are not fighting harassment but just working on upholding a false image of moral virtue.”

It’s promising to know that state legislators are fighting against the DEI mind virus. It’s critically important to recognize that the DEI machine still exists if only repackaged and sold under a new acronym or masked in grant and job applications.

It won’t be lawmakers who save higher education. It’ll be brave professors willing to risk their jobs to do what they are meant to do—speak the truth.

Now is the time to support and share the sources you trust.The Political Insider ranks #3 on Feedspot’s “100 Best Political Blogs and Websites.”