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DEI is persistent.
Will DEI Return to the University of Florida?
Ben Sasse’s replacement is a champion of the kind of DEI policy Sasse managed to avoid.
Bureaucracy is persistent.
‘Before Mr. Ono arrived in Michigan, he served as president of the University of British Columbia, where he was the architect of a vast DEI apparatus. In 2021 he launched the President’s Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence, later saying he was “really proud” of its strategic plan that had become “a standard that is emulated around the world.”
‘That plan explicitly called for “preferential” race-based hiring of faculty, the establishment of a “Black student application program” for prospective medical students, a “zero-tolerance policy” for faculty and staff who resisted DEI re-education, and mandatory training for students and faculty on “colonialism, anti-racism, decolonization and intersectionality.” This isn’t education—it’s indoctrination.
‘Mr. Ono also proselytized for DEI ideology with the campus community, declaring in 2020 that it was time to “dismantle the tools of oppression and white supremacy that remain prevalent and entrenched in our everyday systems.” He later warned that you “cannot take your foot off the pedal” in eliminating “systemic racism,” which he has said “is embedded in every corner of any institution.”
‘In October 2022, Mr. Ono moved to Michigan, making clear in his March 2023 inaugural address that DEI would be a major focus of his presidency. He unveiled a wide-ranging new initiative focused on embedding what he called “DEI 2.0” into every aspect of campus life. The stated goal: “fully institutionalize DEI” and shift “who has power, influence, and voice in priorities and decision-making.” In 2024, the New York Times reported that under his leadership Michigan “doubled down” on DEI—even as many universities were already retreating from it.’
Inside Harvard’s Discrimination Machine
It is interesting to see how institutions that had historically biased policies, skewed in one direction, can evolve to have biased policies, skewed in the other direction.
‘We’ve obtained a trove of internal documents that reveal Harvard’s racial favoritism in faculty and administrative hiring. The university’s DEI programs are more than “unconscious bias” training. They are vectors for systematic discrimination against disfavored groups: namely, white men. As one Harvard researcher told us, “endless evidence” suggests that the university continues to discriminate against the supposed oppressor class in hiring and promotions.
‘For years, Harvard’s DEI department has explicitly sought to engineer a more racially “diverse” faculty pool. The university-wide Inclusive Hiring Initiative provided “guidelines and training” for those involved in the hiring process and was explicitly tied to Harvard’s DEI goals. The stated mission of the initiative is to “[i]nstill an understanding of how departments can leverage the selection process” to build “an increasingly diverse workforce.”
‘In another hiring guide, “Best Practices for Conducting Faculty Searches,” the university recommends several discriminatory practices. At the beginning of the hiring process, Harvard instructs search committees to “ensure that the early lists include women and minorities” and to “consider reading the applications of women and minorities first.” The university counsels that committee chairs should “continually monitor” the racial composition of the candidate list and, as they narrow it down, “attend to all women and minorities on the long list.”
‘Harvard deliberately factors race into the hiring process. The university gives committee chairs privileged access to “self-identified demographic data, including gender, race, and ethnicity” and encourages chairs to “use this information to encourage diversity in the applicant pool, long list, and short list.” Harvard admits that some of its hiring programs have explicit “placement goals” for women and minorities—which, despite the university’s denial, function as a soft quota.’
One class of victims here is the set of student borrowers who actually bought into the former Administration’s manipulation. Of course, this may have been a binary bet on nationalizing all the outstanding student debt over time.
‘Per the NY Fed: exactly as predicted, the Dept. of Education is finally being honest and reporting to credit bureaus on the number of student loan accounts in delinquency - another Biden-era fraud...’