DEI is not what Jefferson hoped for when he wrote ‘all men are created equal’

OPINION:

The ongoing and energetic protests directed at allies of Israel at Columbia University, Stanford University, the University of Texas, etc., are a happy reminder that, despite the very best efforts of folks on the political left, human beings are fundamentally tribal and are disinclined to be propagandized that everyone is the same, that we all believe the same things, and that we are all prepared to honor our differences.

There are people who do not like certain flavors of political thought or certain ethnicities, and that is, unfortunately, the truth of our fallen world.

It is why the rule of law is so essential. No matter what you may believe about another person or group of people, the reality is that the one thing we have in common is that we are all children of God, and the law — at least in the English-speaking world — recognizes that fact by preserving everyone’s rights, irrespective of who they may be or the tribe to which they belong.

This understanding is contrapuntal to the diversity, equity and inclusion crew, which has made significant inroads into American society, as anyone who has been asked in any institutional setting about their preferred pronouns already knows. DEI proponents believe that if people are propagandized enough, if they are subject to enough reeducation and indoctrination, they will become reconstructed and everything will be kosher.

Maybe. But the aggressiveness and hostility of the campus protesters suggest that anything short of wholesale acceptance of the fact that God loves us all equally is doomed to failure.

Fortunately, in anticipation of the spectacular failure of DEI in its homeland of academia, there has been some gathering organized opposition beyond the industrial influencer complex. More specifically, governors in a handful of red states have worked diligently to transfer funding from diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in higher education to more academically productive purposes.

Following legislation endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and passed by the Legislature, the University of Florida became the first major university to eliminate all DEI positions and repurpose that cash to recruit new faculty focused on education.

In Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill last month to ban discriminatory DEI practices in public entities and expand race-neutral student success resources at universities. In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed an executive order in December banning the use of tax dollars from going to DEI programs. With his usual clarity, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters has described DEI as “Marxist at its core. It would be more accurate to call them divide, exclude and indoctrinate.”

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey recently signed a bill to ban DEI at state universities. Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky are working on similar initiatives.

These efforts drew much of their momentum from a recent report from Open the Books on the University of Virginia that found Thomas Jefferson’s university spends $20 million on 235 DEI employees, with the highest-paid member making $587,341 per year. The salaries of the DEI crew at UVa. equal the tuition of almost 1,000 undergraduates. Surely this is not what Jefferson hoped for when he wrote of all men being created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights.

Which brings us back to the current situation at Columbia, et al.

The protesters, who as of this writing have done no material violence to any person, remain within their rights. Those on the other side of the issue are also within their rights to express themselves in a nonviolent manner. Those rights — freedom of conscience, thought, expression and assembly — are given to us by God, and not the state, and can neither be legitimately abridged or enhanced by the state or any of its citizens.

Proponents of DEI are, like most on the left, uncomfortable with a conception of rights grounded in the divine. They would rather create and enforce an unbalanced set of privileges between competing tribes. That always has and always will lead nations down a very short road to ruin.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times and a co-host of the podcast “The Unregulated.”