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West Virginia Bill Would End DEI Initiatives at Public Universities, Colleges

West Virginia Bill Would End DEI Initiatives at Public Universities, Colleges

““I think it’s important that we have carefully crafted legislation that ensures that we have academic freedom”

It really looks like some states are waking up to the threat DEI policies present to academic freedom.

Campus Reform reports:

West Virginia bill would end DEI bureaucracy in public higher ed

A bill has been introduced into the West Virginia House of Delegates aimed at curtailing various diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in public higher education across the state.

Delegate Chris Pritt introduced the bill, designated “Bill 3503” (HB3503), to the House Committee on Education on Tuesday.

HB3503, Pritt told Campus Reform, is intended “to ensure that a lot of the woke ideology that has crept into our public colleges and universities…comes to an end.”

The bill prohibits requiring diversity statements in admissions and hiring processes and forbids colleges and universities from “[giving] preferential consideration to an applicant… due to any opinion expressed or action taken in support of” protected minority groups.

Diversity statements, wherein academic job applicants describe how they would contribute to the values of “diversity” and “inclusion” at the college or university in question, have become a pervasive requirement in higher education hiring practices around the country.

HB3503 also stipulates that public higher education institutions must be “officially neutral with regard to widely contested opinions,” citing critical race theory (CRT), transgender ideology, microaggressions, and anti-racism, among other hot-button topics.

Critics of restricting DEI-related initiatives in higher education, such as John Warner in a recent Inside Higher Ed piece, call such measures an “assault on public institutions and academic freedom.”

Pritt, however, disagrees, arguing that such legislation positively protects academic freedom by ensuring students are not “indoctrinated” into a single point of view.

“I think it’s important that we have carefully crafted legislation that ensures that we have academic freedom,” he emphasized to Campus Reform, “and…that’s what this bill does. It ensures that, for example, student groups, academic research, teaching, none of that’s going to be impacted with this legislation.”

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Comments

The smart folks with the right, relevant idea, needed now — on the right side of history, being the change they want to see in the world, even — always have to hijack institutions corrupt, moribund, and misguided to do their thing for them.

Why does an old school U have to do this DIE stuff — they’re the past.

On this one, nobody’s stopping the righteous vanguard from spinning up their own institutes of DIE-ing, where they can talk, represent, and criticize to their coal black little hearts’ content. Maybe they should get on that, and decrease the surplus population, which I have been reliably informed is also The Worst Thing Ever(tm).