Disguising DEI: Schools keep trying to push a discredited ideology

OPINION:

It’s back-to-school season, and some teachers have promised that the racist ideas from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) would not be in their classrooms this year. That’s the good news. The bad news is that many of these teachers and administrators are clearly telling whoppers.

In fact, K-12 schools and colleges around the country are disguising their DEI offices and their racial preferences. Take Maryland, across the border from the nation’s capital and where many federal bureaucrats sleep and send their children to school.

State education officials said schools would comply with President Trump’s executive orders calling on schools to reject DEI, citing the ways in which DEI programs violate civil rights laws.

Yet schools in Montgomery County, precisely where the swamp lives, still have resources on their website dedicated to DEI and critical race theory.

This wealthy school district, which receives $51.5 million in federal taxpayer spending for children in its lower-income areas, offers online classes for teachers on “How to be an anti-racist and anti-racist educator.” These sessions argue that everything around us is racist because not everyone receives the same rewards in life.

So it does not matter how hard you work in life — everyone should have the same amount. That is “equity,” the course materials say. The way equity’s champions rationalize this to themselves is to say that success is the result of “whiteness,” or systemic racism or some such, not the result of effort.

Montgomery County is hardly alone.

In August, the U.S. Department of Education found that George Mason University — just 35 miles from Montgomery County on the Virginia side of the Potomac — had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by “illegally using race and other immutable characteristics in university practices and policies, including hiring and promotion.”

The department’s finding came after university president Gregory Washington told students in February that he had no intention of dissolving DEI programs at the school.

And, in a harbinger of perhaps the model to come, Democrats in the Virginia Senate have thrown out 10 appointments that Gov. Glenn Youngkin had made to GMU’s Board of Visitors. That leaves the board with only six members, meaning it lacks a quorum and cannot fire Mr. Washington.

And then there is Harvard.

Despite a recent court ruling in Harvard’s favor, saying the Trump administration could not freeze federal research spending, whistleblowers have uncovered ongoing DEI activities.

Even in this latest ruling, the court said that “based solely on Harvard’s own admissions … Harvard has been plagued by antisemitism.” Meanwhile, the university has resisted calls to adhere to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that prohibited the use of racial preferences.

Unsurprisingly, the federal judge in Boston who found in Harvard’s favor is Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs — who also found in favor of Harvard in the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions case. 

The U.S. Supreme Court shredded her opinion and ruled against the use of racial preferences. The White House will likely appeal and Harvard continues to try to negotiate a settlement with the administration.

Undercover investigations have found college officials elsewhere admitting that DEI is simply being renamed so the racist activities can continue.

One former administrator at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte told a reporter that if students and faculty want to do “covert” DEI work, “there are opportunities.”

The Trump administration has correctly identified DEI practices that violate civil rights laws, such as training sessions that rely on racial stereotypes, hiring according to racial quotas, and requiring student applicants or potential university hires to write DEI statements as a condition of admission or employment.

The White House issued two executive orders earlier this year that sought to end DEI. The country has turned away from DEI, racial preferences, set asides, quotas, etc. The Trump administration understands this and will continue to make its case. It should also be aware that schools are doing precisely what they tell their students not to do — they’re cheating.

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Jonathan Butcher is the acting director of the Center for Education Policy and Will Skillman Senior Research Fellow in Education at the Heritage Foundation. Mike Gonzalez is Heritage’s Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow.