Everywhere you look, there is a growing backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that implement racist, sexist, and exclusionary policies masquerading as solutions to those very problems. A cultural revolution that divides society into immutable victim and oppressor classes, inflames resentments and suspicions, facilitates anonymous denunciations, promotes segregation, ostracizes critics, aggravates mental illness, throws due process to the wind, and silences any attempt to analyze the actual effect of such policies will inevitably go too far. The most recent crime/tragedy perpetrated by a school shooter driven mad by trans ideology, and the woke world’s inability to rationally process it, demonstrates that we have reached that turning point.
Welcome to the counterrevolution.
Poll after poll shows that DEI policies are destroying what they supposedly aspire to create—a shared sense of community and belonging. This not a bug, but a fundamental feature that has fueled DEI’s spectacular growth, an industry forecast to reach $17 billion in revenue by 2027. It accomplished this by activating the syndrome that many failed policies leverage to ride to ever greater disasters: if a social program isn’t working, empowered advocates demand that we do more. As a result, an enormous administrative class dedicated to self-aggrandizement has commandeered the heart and soul of our colleges and universities, elevating the most extreme voices while terrorizing students and faculty into silence.
Restoring sanity to our campuses, and thence to society, is an urgent imperative. Yet a heavy-handed frontal assault on DEI is unlikely to succeed outside of taxpayer-funded institutions in red states, whose politicians have the fortitude to withstand media misrepresentation and accusations of censorship, hypocrisy, and academic oppression. Broad attacks from outsiders only serve to increase the solidarity of what, at root, is a faith-based, multi-confessional cartel. This is especially true at private colleges and universities, particularly in blue states and at the elite universities where the DEI movement first gained traction.
All Jacobin revolutions—built on self-contradictory principles propelled by fanatics who recognize no limiting principles—end up eating their own. The most effective way to fight the DEI Leviathan is to accelerate a process of disintegration that has already begun.
Developing a sound strategy begins with the recognition that not all DEI bureaucrats, advocates, and administrators are alike. Yes, there are plenty of true believers in critical race theory who have made common cause with fourth-wave feminists, postmodern ideologues, Marxist fellow travelers, gay crusaders, transgender zealots, and intersectional activists. But the DEI industrial complex also includes well-meaning, old-school liberals, mild-mannered bandwagoners, browbeaten accommodators, unprincipled social climbers, opportunistic grifters, venal corporate exploiters, compromised bureaucrats, Stockholm Syndrome hostages, and run-of-the-mill, non-ideological minions who are happy to have a cushy, low-skilled job because it’s better than working at Starbucks. DEI successfully assembled a big tent movement. The task at hand is to methodically disassemble it.
The question DEI opponents must ask, then, is how to best foment internecine warfare that gets these people to rebuke, denounce, and fight each other. Where are the fault lines into which a prybar can be inserted? What suppressed enmities, jealousies, and resentments can be inflamed? How can whistleblowers be incentivized? How can apostates be valorized? These are not idle questions; they all have rational answers buried within the obfuscated contradictions that make up DEI dogma and the destructive polices promulgated on campus. Hence, strategy development starts with creating and prioritizing a list of potent wedge issues.
What are some candidates? The best place to start is at the radical extreme, which, in this case, means focusing on the transgender insanity. The constellation of beliefs that sex is not a binary but a spectrum, that gender is a fluid social construct, that it is not only acceptable but should also be the medical standard of care to administer puberty blockers to children or amputate body parts of confused teenagers rather than let them grow out of their dysphoria or grow up to be healthy, normal, gay adults, that male athletes declaring themselves female should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, that male serial rapists who suddenly “transition” after being convicted should be housed in women’s prisons, and that sexualized drag shows are appropriate for children is rife with contradictions and nascent conflicts that can be aggravated to undermine the solidarity of the DEI movement. QT must be separated from LGB, the latter slowly realizing the threat this unnatural alliance represents to their beliefs and agenda.
Next up would be a careful examination of the hierarchy of oppression as it clashes with the de facto zero-sum spoils system that DEI programs have established in higher education admissions, hiring, and promotion. The anticipated SCOTUS decision on affirmative action should add a welcome infusion of energy to that approach.
Why are overrepresented, middle-class, heterosexual white women garnering more than their fair share of DEI largesse? Why are native-born African Americans getting pushed aside by Latinx illegal immigrants? Why has the fight against “Islamophobia” been widely embraced despite Islam being the least woke of all religions, while anti-Christian sentiment is tacitly endorsed and antisemitism is actively inflamed? How can the blanket category of “Asian” that lumps together Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Philippine, Indian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Pakistani ethnicities—all with different cultural capital and lived experiences—provide a rational justification for ranking individuals when doling out preferences or imposing handicaps?
Finally, there is the issue of administrative bloat as the professoriate gets hollowed out by the extensive use of cheaper adjuncts. Why should growing DEI empires be supported in an era of runaway college costs and budgetary belt-tightening? At what point does hiring another flock of non-teaching, unproductive bureaucrats at the expense of tenure-track faculty become an existential threat to an institution’s mission?
That’s the strategic environment. What about tactics?
Unless you’re a red-state politician who has cracked the code on how to make electoral hay out of the DEI counterrevolution, you will be fighting an asymmetric war against a heavily entrenched establishment. Which means it’s time to dust off your old copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and take a page or two from the evil genius who helped set this whole cultural train wreck in motion half a century ago.
[Related: “The State of the University: An Anthropologist’s Perspective”]
Every campus is different; hence, we need a tailored insurgency at each. What works at a STEM institution like MIT—whose cultural integrity has only been partially compromised and whose faculty and student body have not been wholly infected by the woke mind virus—may not be effective at a liberal arts university like Yale, which may be beyond hope. A sympathetic president who realizes she has a problem, rather than one that has drunk the DEI Kool-Aid, can also make a huge difference.
Recruiting disgusted and dedicated alumni to the cause is a critical task, particularly older graduates with stronger immunity to employer retaliation or Twitter cancellation. Outreach programs will likely have to bypass established alumni associations, whose missions are to feed alumni the administration’s party line while picking their pockets to finance more bloat. Most alumni have no idea how bad things have gotten at their alma maters, so shining a spotlight on the worst DEI depredations, CRT ideology, and trans insanity will help swell the backlash. You might even consider implementing Saul Alinsky’s Rule #5 (ridicule is man’s most potent weapon) by launching a satire webzine poking fun at the worst campus excesses.
Alumni free speech organizations are sprouting like mushrooms after a rainstorm, providing a nexus for action. If your college or university doesn’t have a chapter of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, consider starting one. Most of these advocacy groups are not explicitly anti-DEI, at least not yet. But they will inevitably pivot in that direction when they honestly examine the root causes of cancel culture, viewpoint orthodoxy, and free speech suppression. As the Overton window shifts, the need for these organizations to accommodate prospective members who are afraid to join a group that opposes DEI will diminish.
It is apparent to all, including advocates, that DEI programs cannot withstand rational scrutiny or objective assessment. This is why DEI deans refuse to debate, insisting that their dogmas be accepted on faith. A good place to get the wrecking ball swinging is to insist on detailed financial audits and performance reviews. College and university presidents must be pressured into revealing how many DEI deans, assistant deans, associate deans, directors, administrators, consultants, and other staff they’ve hired across all of their different schools, centers, programs, and departments. Make them publish the annual aggregate budget for these personnel and the numerous projects and “training” programs they’ve spawned, explaining where that money is coming from and what else those funds could be doing. On the performance side, what measurable objectives were established when these DEI personnel were hired, what independent party is assessing their performance, and have any of the stated objectives been met?
If it was the intention of DEI programs to foster racial harmony, build a stronger sense of community, promote universal feelings of belonging, and improve the mental health of the student population, they have failed miserably. It’s time to harpoon the Leviathan.
Image: Adobe Stock
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