The Numbered Days of DEI

Let’s hope this year brought the last round of DEI training.

On Sunday, November 3, W&L’s freshmen gathered for the yearly ritual of diversity, equity, and inclusion training which pressured them to confess their privilege and acknowledge implicit biases. The following Tuesday, a multiracial, working-class coalition of Americans voted to return President Donald Trump to the White House.

The verdict is in: Americans of all backgrounds united to reject the divisive identity politics once successfully used by Democrats to maintain their coalition — and by college administrators to manipulate students toward progressive ideals.

For years, administrators at W&L have subjected freshmen to the identity compass activity, now a university tradition.

To conduct the exercise, facilitators gather students into the familiar groups of twenty or so peers that form a residence hall. The facilitators give a presentation defining terms such as privilege, bias, intersectionality, and oppression. They then place signs around the room that name types of identity: race, ethnicity, citizenship, religious beliefs, age, health, body size, gender identity, sexuality, and socioeconomic status.

Students are asked to move to whichever sign best answers questions that include “What part of your identity gives you the most privilege?” and “What part of your identity do you think about the most?”, among others. Facilitators ask students to explain their choices, especially those standing alone under a given identity type.

W&L’s DEI programming — innocuously labeled “continuing education” — is actually a manifestation of what Drexel University psychologist Stanley K. Ridgley calls the “Privileged Identity Exploration model (PIE).”

The PIE model puts students at ease by gathering them in peer groups and employing a “welcoming hypercourtesy that comes off as weird.” Students’ trust is further gained by playing games “designed to elicit information about the personal lives of the participants.”

Beneath the positive atmosphere, though, students face immense “interpersonal pressure” to participate and divulge whatever is asked, pressure especially acute for freshmen seeking to fit with the group.

The information they reveal, usually an admission of privilege, then serves as a “critical confession,” a self-betrayal that forces them to question previous convictions and find a new way to rationalize their status — ideally by adopting progressivism’s underlying belief in the ubiquitous oppression of “diverse” peoples.

W&L’s DEI training is, in a word, brainwashing. According to Ridgley, such sessions use the same “techniques developed in Communist Chinese and cultic thought-reform programs.”

Fortunately, W&L and other universities will face increased pressure to discontinue coercive DEI programming and stop profiling their students based on demographic characteristics.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left.” He intends to do so by appointing new accreditors, the groups responsible for ensuring that colleges and universities meet standards sufficient to receive federal funds.

“I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics,” Trump said in a video released in 2023.

“We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards,” he said, standards that include “eliminating wasteful administrative positions” and “removing all Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats.”

Encouragingly, the new public scrutiny, as well as the realization that Americans are tired of their games, has even led DEI administrators to engage in some needed introspection.

In a post-election op-ed for Inside Higher Ed, philosophy professor and DEI facilitator Patrick J. Casey explains that he and his colleagues “are often perceived as thinking they already have the answers” and thus are patronizing their students.

Casey recommends DEI facilitators adjust their approach, “not through training — that is, by attempting to lead members of our campuses to particular conclusions — but rather through a thorough exploration of the issues.”

That exploration, Casey contends, should include different ideological perspectives, avoid canceling heterodox views, and discuss the validity of the frameworks often employed during DEI trainings.

All are excellent suggestions and would provide a welcome departure from the manipulative practices currently employed at W&L.

But count us as skeptics that diversity bureaucrats will self-correct: creating an environment for candid discussion and ideological difference would open the door to challenge the very assumptions upon which DEI offices are based.

If racial oppression is in fact not an ubiquitous reality, then why do DEI offices sponsor so many racial affinity groups? What would platforming proponents of traditional Christian social norms say about LGBTQ lifestyles?

Far better would be to simply end any kind of coerced “training” or “discussion.” DEI departments can be rejiggered to focus solely on providing optional cultural and religious programming that appeals to students of all backgrounds, a legitimate function at small, rural schools like W&L which lack the cosmopolitan opportunities of other institutions. The words “diversity,” “inclusion,” and “equity” should be removed from all job titles, job descriptions, mission statements, and organizational names.

Doing so would put W&L ahead of the curve and alongside prestigious institutions that have already ended or curtailed DEI initiatives, such as the University of Florida and UNC, Chapel Hill.

The DEI lobby has now been shown to be woefully out of step with the American public, which is tired of manipulation by snooty academics and cultural elites. Given the conservative disposition of W&L’s student body, we imagine most W&L students feel the same. W&L should stay ahead of the curve by joining hardworking Americans to reject woke fads and embrace a future that transcends the narrow categories of identity politics.