DEI officially stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. Emeritus Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard University describes its harm to education and society.[1] Like the professor, several bloggers, who find the whole concept distasteful, define it as Didn’t Earn It.

As a professor at the University of Texas in Austin and having served as Chair of the Graduate Studies Committee in my department, I think DEI is an excellent acronym to encapsulate Department, Eligibility, and Inclusion, where I’m using the last word as a synonym for Admission. DEA would’ve been the automatic choice, but the latter is already taken. Alas, the Drug Enforcement Agency under Joe B’s administration has devolved into the Drug Enabling Agency, given his open borders immigration policy. More on the latter in another post.

So, I support the letters DEI in universities only in the context defined above. Professor Dershowitz and the irate bloggers are right on.

One aspect to the DEI discussion is pronoun usage. As a man writing this piece, I shall use the male pronoun. Had I been a woman, of course, the female pronoun would’ve been appropriate. The other pronouns that are in vogue to describe the two sexes appear excessive. It’s unfair to torture the English language just because a few unusually stupid children failed elementary biology and/or continue to be bewildered by their anatomies acquired at conception. One such prominent individual is the most recent appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson. When asked to define “woman” during the confirmation hearing, KBJ replied, “I can’t, I’m not a biologist.”[2]

There are two possible reasons for KBJ’s Supreme Blemish. (A) KBJ really doesn’t know what a “woman” is. (B) Fear of alienating the constituents that put KBJ into the SCOTUS. (A), which is unlikely, would mean KBJ is going to interpret the U.S. Constitution on critical matters, when KBJ, apparently, has trouble comprehending the important role of merely two English alphabets: XY=Male, XX=Female. (B), which is likely, is scarier since it implies, for KBJ, political expediency would likely override upholding the law. Unsurprisingly, KBJ graduated from Harvard University—the Mecca for DEI propaganda.

Curiously, the confused DEI species has no trouble distinguishing Black versus White people, even though each of these words comprise five English letters. Surely, distinguishing sexes is at least as straightforward, even if one were blind. Moreover, we mortal non-biologists have forever managed to identify our gender on countless government surveys, passport applications and medical appointments. The DEI aficionados, dissatisfied with their pronoun attack on the language, try to differentiate sex from gender, even though they’ve been treated as synonyms, well, forever. In any case, to treat them differently only to justify the parade of pronouns is as absurd as forcing everyone to state their race and preferred race.

KBJ’s Supreme Blemish also illustrates a second unfortunate aspect to DEI. By its very construction and practice, it forces people what to think instead of how to think; i.e., mob mentality vs. critical individual thought. It’s evident KBJ practices what to think, and is therefore the darling of the woke DEI mob and media. But the other Black judge on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, is chastised by the same coalition. Horrified, they gasp and blurt out, “How could it be possible for one Black man to know how to think?” This form of derisive bullying epitomizes the forbidding DEI movement. I’ll examine its toxic impact on women’s rights in the next post.

Returning to my definition of DEI, every department on campus before admitting a student, until recently, checked for his eligibility. I don’t recall anyone in my department discussing an applicant’s gender, race, nationality, or color while examining his scholastic record. Each of us would independently rank the students. Then, we met to finalize the offer letters to include (admit) those we felt were best qualified for, and had the best chance of succeeding in, the program. That’s how DEI worked, and should work, in academic institutions.

But somehow, somewhere, someone with disproportionate time at their disposal, decided to first segregate students on race, religion, nationality and color; to do so, they concocted the duplicitous DEI concept. BTW, since when wasn’t white a color? Scholastic credentials be damned, they argued.  I don’t know where the DEI balderdash began, but I suspect it didn’t start in the departments of mathematics, physics, engineering, economics and natural sciences.

Mercifully, in Texas, the state legislature recently banned DEI programs and departments from all publicly funded institutions including UT-Austin. When the policy was implemented, the ones that protested the most where the ones that shouldn’t have been admitted in the first instance. They couldn’t offer a single coherent reason for their disagreement. Instead, their defense pretty much rested on a vague notion: they were being targeted and left out, because they felt they were different. Again, “what to think” was on full display. The groupthink mentality had blunted their ability to question the basis for, and validity of, DEI.

To practice critical thinking, you don’t need race, color, religion, nationality and sex as mental crutches to support a minority point of view.

The individual is the ultimate minority, and the U.S. Constitution—the true Diversity, Equity and Inclusion concept—is its protector.

The fake DEI requirements/practice in schools and corporations is being used to mold impressionable minds only to push a radical, left-wing agenda. You can see its noxious consequences in the current unrest on several college campuses where wokeism is all the rage.

I recall my first white-collar job in the U.S. at a government agency in Texas. We used to jokingly refer to our group as the rational chapter of the United Nations. Our close-knit alliance included Black, White, Americans, Jews, Iranians, Iraqis, Indians, Cambodians, and Colombians. We had acrimonious debates on sensitive topics, but it didn’t adversely influence our camaraderie, unlike the U.N. All the non-American employees, including me, were there legally and were in the process of getting Green Cards, or already had one. Interracial and inter-country dating was natural, unlike the unnatural relationships portrayed in commercials these days which desperately try to showcase a company’s DEI compliance. To this day, most of our group keep in touch. We knew how to think, decades before the DEI inanity was conceived. To think is to differ was our motto, and differ didn’t transform into victimization and violence.

DEI—a snobbish attempt at segregation—should be abolished, just as slavery once was. Both are antithetical to all that America stands for. The Democrat Party, which was largely responsible for the latter scourge in this country, also appears to be behind the former.[3] [4]

[1] https://dersh.substack.com/p/campus-antisemitism-has-become-systemic
[2] https://news.yahoo.com/judge-jackson-refuses-define-woman-122717280.html
[3] https://www.socialjusticesurvivalguide.com/2018/01/08/the-democratic-partys-history-slavery-jim-crow-kkk/
[4] https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/if-we-care-about-institutional-guilt-how-do-democrats-escape-it/

LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND DEMOCRATS – POST 1  |  POST 2  |  POST 3  |  POST 4