Schools and colleges have two weeks to stop discriminating on the basis of race, warns a Feb. 7 "Dear Colleague" letter from the Education Department's acting civil rights chief. If they don't dump DEI, they'll lose federal funding.
Citing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision invalidating affirmative action in college admissions, the letter accuses educational institutions of embracing "repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination." For example, DEI programs "frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not."
"The law is clear. Treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent."
The anti-DEI backlash is "fierce," because so many people were forced to suppress their real feelings, writes Rick Hess in Education Next.
"Over the past half-decade or more, I repeatedly heard K–12 and higher education faculty tell of sitting silently through professional trainings replete with politicized groupthink," he writes. They used words such as “re-education,” “Orwellian,” and “McCarthyite.” But quietly.
He also heard from "livid parents with tales of 3rd graders saying they were ashamed of their 'whiteness' or tut-tutting their parents for using outdated gender norms," such as "boys" and "girls."
"People got fed up with the drumbeat of land acknowledgements, pronoun mandates, trigger warnings, language policing, and hypocrisy," Hess writes. "Most Americans got tired of being hectored, lectured, and ridiculed for embracing old-school values like equality, color-blindness, and responsibility."
People were accused of "bigotry" for questioning whether lessons about sexuality and gender were age-appropriate, he writes. "Broadly popular policies, like reserving women’s locker rooms and sports teams for biological girls and women, were denounced as 'anti-transgender' (rather than, say, 'pro-biology').
DEI sounded good, writes Hess. Many people want to engage with people with diverse views, treat people fairly and try make everyone feel valued. But, when DEI's reality soured, it was impossible to speak up. Not if you wanted to get federal grants and donor funding -- or to avoid being attacked by young staffers, "de-platformed" and "canceled."
Web sites are being scrubbed of once-mandatory buzzwords. "DEI" is being rebranded as Belonging or Community or Engagement. (I envision the VIN --- Vague Inoffensive Nice -- staffers welcoming students to campus in the fall.)
Will we get a sensible course correction? It's awfully hard to throw out the bathwater and hang on to the baby.
The "Dear Colleague" letter is overkill, writes Andrew Rotherham. It's also "turnabout" for Obama administration letters on Title IX and school discipline. These letters "are intended to coerce action without having to go through the regulatory process or Congress," and they matter. Facing a federal investigation is a nightmare.