by Teresa R. Manning
This week, the National Association of Scholars (“NAS”) and the Heritage Foundation are sponsoring a panel discussion on diversity ideology in higher education. A number of reports have recently been published on the topic, with most documenting monies spent by state universities on “diversity, equity and inclusion” (“DEI“). The Maryland affiliate of the National Association of Scholars released the most recent such report this summer, but the Virginia affiliate issued one last year, while Idaho, North Carolina, Maine, and Tennessee produced similar documents before that.
The Maryland report reminds state officials that “diversity” is usually a cover for race-based practices that are now likely illegal under the 2023 United States Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (or “SFFA”). That opinion found that racial preferences in university admissions were a violation of federal civil rights laws and also the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. SFFA means that any race-based practice in college is presumptively unlawful. As the Court said, “Eliminating discrimination means eliminating all of it … distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their nature odious.”
Virginia’s report is similar to the others with its focus on money, asking Should Virginians Pay for University “Diversity” Leftism? It found that DEI expenditures at Virginia’s state universities have exploded with the University of Virginia (UVA) probably the worst offender. In 2020, for example, UVA spent $4,149,732 on DEI programs with 38 DEI administrators; but within one year, both those figures had nearly doubled. In 2021, UVA spent $6,924,279 on DEI and had 77 DEI administrators. Incredibly, more recent findings show that UVA’s DEI expenditures have skyrocketed even more, with over $20 million spent in 2023 including for 235 DEI employees.
That’s taxpayer money not spent on instruction, library holdings, or lab equipment.
The “diversity” contagion is a relatively recent mind virus. The word was almost unheard of for most of American history, making its first real appearance in a 1978 United States Supreme Court case finding racial quotas in school admissions illegal but allowing some consideration of race for the sake of diversity in education. The brief mention may have seemed innocuous but “diversity” was then seized upon by those hostile to Western civilization to dilute social cohesion in Western nations. (Diversity is not a thing in Japan, which would likely view it as an act of war.)
America typifies the West as it is a product of Great Britain and, for its first 200 years, was populated almost entirely by Western peoples of the United Kingdom and Europe. America’s founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—enshrine Western principles of limited government for a free and presumably moral people. In fact, most founders emphasized that the Constitution would not work without a moral people. And the governance established by the Constitution—its separation of powers, its checks and balances including between the federal and state powers—reflects America’s Christian heritage and especially the Christian notion of man’s tendency toward corruption and sin. Hence the checks on power. As Lord Acton famously explained, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Nowhere in these founding documents does the word “diversity” appear, nor do its partner buzzwords “equity,” “inclusion,” etc. In fact, diversity ideology is not only un-American (that is, not part of our basic laws), it’s arguably anti-American in that it obsesses about race to pit Americans against each other. It also undermines America as the land of opportunity where individuals matter most—their talent, industry, and character.
Where America would value the individual, DEI wants tribes. It’s preoccupied with groups, typically based on race or sex. All this fosters poisonous identity politics where the individual barely matters. This also undermines excellence as the tribe trumps individual talent. It’s no coincidence that collectivist, socialist regimes tend to have crumbling bridges, bad cars, and outdated technologies. They’re against individual achievement. America was never like this. But it’s getting that way now.
Worse, diversity ideologies always have a religious flavor. They’re packaged as moral imperatives and pitched especially to young people as if they’re a “new and improved” ethics. Young people are by definition inexperienced and usually unwise—which is to say, they’re easy prey. Family and societal breakdown has also made them unanchored, free radicals who are even easier to manipulate, indoctrinate, and control. And they’re tragically ignorant not only of their own Western heritage but also of norms throughout the world. For example, young Americans are taught the evils of slavery, where the simplistic story is that African Americans were victims and Americans of European descent were victimizers. But they’re never taught that Africans also participated in the slave trade, with one African tribe often selling another to the Europeans. They also don’t seem to realize that Europeans—“whites”—were the ones to abolish slavery. Even today, slavery remains a common practice in much of the world, especially within the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia. Any praise for Western civilization and especially its religious heritage for this moral progress? Nope. Just more diversity propaganda, the false religion.
America needs to reject these destructive diversity ideologies and return to its place as the land of opportunity for individuals—its citizens. It can start by rooting out DEI in its educational institutions, starting with colleges and universities. It’s none too soon.
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Teresa R. Manning is Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars, President of Virginia Association of Scholars and a former law professor at Virginia’s Scalia Law School, George Mason University. She authored the 2020 Report, Dear Colleague: The Weaponization of Title IX.
Photo “College Students” by UC Davis College of Engineering. CC BY 2.0.
