Wenyuan Wu, the executive director at Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, has some ideas and writes at Minding the Campus:
Can We “Long March” Back through the Institutions?Recently, a San Diego school district superintendent attempted to explain the overall good educational performance of Asian students by highlighting these students’ alleged rich immigrant backgrounds. She said: “people who’re able to make the journey to America are wealthy.” Once her bigoted comments were exposed, the superintendent first apologized and then doubled down and advocated for more diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming. Confronted by parents calling for her resignation, said education leader then absolved herself of any responsibility, accused the dissenters of public lynching, and threatened legal action. The woke mentality is unapologetically invasive.The firm conviction that DEI presents an unquestionable model for success and virtue reflects a bigger, national quagmire—America has become obsessed with race, captured by dressed-up fringe ideologies and paralyzed by the urge to equalize outcomes. The current state of affairs is a result of deliberate institutional changes, which have step by step hijacked liberal designs of individual rights, equal opportunity, free speech, and critical thinking. Teachers unions inject political agendas and activist demands into normal education policymaking through collective bargaining and terrorizing non-conforming members. Higher education programs such as education colleges produce ideologues rather than free thinkers by promoting invasive new pedagogies, such as critical race theory (CRT) and culturally responsive teaching. A major American political party is so smitten with the dogma of DEI that most recent federal policies, whether on national defense or homeland security or banking, have been tinged with its pursuit.It seems that the strategic vision of a “Long March through the Institutions,” shared by Herbert Marcuse, Antonio Gramsci, and Mao Zedong, has come alive in America in the 21st century. The logical follow-up question is obvious: can we long march back through the same institutions, originally designed as part and parcel of the longest uninterrupted experiment of liberal democracy, to undo the damages? If so, how? Let’s consider three possible routes in turn.
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