DEI at Washington and Lee: Is the End in Sight?
On June 4, 2021, three tragedies occurred for the Washington and Lee University community. Lee Chapel lost its name and its interior was stripped. Further, two annual rituals were erased after 150+ years: Founders Day and the namesakes’ images on all future diplomas.
Concurrently, a new tradition was established, what The W&L Spectator described as “innocuously labeled continuing education” for all freshmen students. This mandatory annual training, known in shorthand as the DEI program, uses mechanisms such as the Identity Compass and Critical Confessions to indoctrinate students and bring to life both the make believe and real, hard punishing worlds of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
Numerous articles have been published trumpeting the destructive impact these exercises in identity-based politics have on students. After the nationally troubled summer of 2020, triggered by the tragic death of George Floyd, Cancel Culture descended upon and enveloped W&L’s historic campus and its broad and diverse community.
Fast forwarding, other developments have occurred since The Spectator’s latest DEI roundup. Most notable is the reelection of Donald Trump as President of the United States.
He campaigned on and has delivered an Executive Order that banishes DEI training from higher education, threatening the loss of federal funding for non-compliance. Trump has slashed DEI in all federal government agencies. And a steady stream of notable American corporations have followed suit, finding DEI claims were irrelevant to their operations. Bottom line, America’s voters flipped the culture overnight on DEI’s arguably radical and racist practices.
In the world of national journalism, Washington Post’s owner Jeff Bezos recently declared a 180 degree turn for its Opinion Pages, stating that freedom will be the centerpiece theme. According to Bezos: “I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.”
Critical byproducts of this change follow naturally: freedom of speech, viewpoint diversity and prohibitions on compelled speech for individuals and institutions. DEI, as practiced at Washington and Lee and thousands of other colleges, cannot exist in a culture whose bedrock is the freedom to enshrine in law, life practices, and civil exchange those foundational liberties which people value most. These are sacred rights and shall not be abridged by a band of radical activists.
With that overview, my purpose is to highlight an argument against DEI that is not often featured. To that end, I am pleased to introduce Owen Anderson, Ph.D., who is a Professor of Religion; Natural and Philosophical Theology, Epistemology and Ethics at Arizona State University. Among other honors, he was a William E. Simon Research Fellow in Religions and Public Life at the James Madison Program, Princeton University, in 2013-2014. The below source is a recent article he published in Substack entitled The Argument Against DEI.
Professor Anderson opens by citing DEI proponents, who use name calling to intimidate opponents. He argues they do so, as they cannot logically defend their case. DEI activists cleverly leverage positive language to mask the inherent discrimination that exists in DEI’s worldview.
Anderson skillfully works through the many ways that DEI champions the deconstruction of the American experience. He successfully attacks their goal of social justice; the inherent fallacies of equal outcomes when compared to the benefits of meritocracy; the double standard of claiming its philosophy anti-racist when, in fact, it is racist; and promoting inclusion as a pathway to wealth redistribution. Throughout his paper, Anderson cites the clever rhetorical sleight-of-hand manipulative skills of DEI activists.
He identifies liberal white Christians as a key driver of this rhetorical maneuver. According to Anderson, these white liberal Christians use scripture to distort the concept of Social Justice and push their wealth redistribution campaign.
In many ways, DEI has become a pseudo-religion embracing The Social Gospel and select teachings. But Anderson writes eloquently that DEI is a False Gospel, a bumpy path that leads to tyranny and ultimately results in a failed vision of social salvation.
In closing, Professor Anderson makes a strong case that DEI is what I call an unshakeable mind virus that incorrectly posits white males as oppressors of other minorities. He does this by making the opposite case: that DEI practitioners and activists themselves are the true authoritarians.
Click the below link to read more:
https://drowenanderson.substack.com/p/the-argument-against-dei
Thomas P. Rideout ’63
Chairman
The Generals Redoubt