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Trump Executive Orders: The End of DEI as We’ve Known It, But Not The End of DEI

Trump Executive Orders: The End of DEI as We’ve Known It, But Not The End of DEI

My take: EOs will impact “grotesquely discriminatory” programming, but the “core ideological and cultural battles on campuses … are not really addressed by the executive orders, nor can they be addressed by the executive orders. It’s a culture on the campuses that needs to change.”

Trump’s Executive Orders on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) dominated the first days of his second presidency. I addressed the potential impact in my post, Trump’s Merit-Based DEI Executive Order Is A Sledgehammer.

Here is my ‘hot take’ on what it means going forward, excerpted from our full podcast recorded today, Operation Shock & Awe: Trump’s First Week.  You can hear my much longer explanation of the DEI Executive Orders starting here.

Transcript auto-generated, may contain transcription errors.

This is going to have a huge impact. We don’t know how far it will go.

It’s not going to end DEI—this is something I think we need to talk about. People think this is the end of DEI. It’s not.

It may be the end of some DEI practices. You may not see scholarships in the future that say, “Only people of color need apply.”

You probably won’t see it so grotesquely as we do now, but it’s still going to happen behind the scenes, and the DEI ideology is still going to be there. Nothing is going to prevent the universities from pushing the group identity ideology that they have been pushing. They may not be able to implement it in a grotesquely discriminatory manner, but I think that is going to be an issue.

So, Trump’s DEI sequence of executive orders is impactful in itself, may have an even bigger impact, but it is not going to end DEI.

It may end DEI as we’ve known it, but it is not going to get it off the campuses.

And I know at our Equal Protection Project and our CriticalRace.org project, we’re going to continue to focus on those core ideological and cultural battles on campuses that are not really addressed by the executive orders, nor can they be addressed by the executive orders.

It’s a culture on the campuses that needs to change.

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Comments

Dolce Far Niente | January 24, 2025 at 9:43 pm

What is important is not that these actions will kill DEI, but that these EOs will shift the Overton window to the right, and will begin changing the culture which allows gross racial discrimination to flourish.

Most people do not arrive at their opinions and political positions by thoughtful rational analysis; instead they follow the prevailing culture as to what’s right or wrong, good or bad.

Change DEI or support for abortion from trendy to uncool, and people’s opinions WILL change.

    Agree. But I’d argue that we’re seeing a shift from the left toward the center—where we belong—rather than a shift to the right. We would have a long way to go to reach the right fringe. Normal is fine with me. The past 4 years have normalized psychosis. There’s no rational universe in which that’s normal.

The DOJ needs to go after past/present DEl proponents for civiI Rights vioIations. The appointment of Harmeet K. DhiIIon can be a turning point in this fight. The Ieft, for years, has used the DOJ/CiviI Rights Division as their social justice army via ‘consent decrees’ as weII as many other lawfare tactics against their poIiticaI enemies.

E Howard Hunt | January 25, 2025 at 7:41 am

The answer is to sail with the new zeitgeist blowing through the land. Normal people, no longer afraid for their livelihoods, can now speak their minds. The woke agenda must never again be listened to or countered with reasoned argument. It must be dismissed out of hand and mocked. The shift in culture will become evident in popular entertainment and eventually filter down to future, entering freshman classes whose overseers will prioritize career security over crackpot theories.

    For the rank and file. The doom and despair has been replaced with optimism.

    On social issues, it isn’t even cautious optimism. It is straight up awesomeness.

    I can’t say the same for the economy. Biden effed that one up hard. This one I will put in the cautious optimism category.

      coyote in reply to Andy. | January 27, 2025 at 8:24 am

      Dunno. When the economy has a free hand, prosperity seems to happen. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” does a fine job running the economy. Lower taxes and stop regulating people out of legitimate jobs and wealth appears. When wealth, i.e., goods and services, is abundant, the price is low. And when people get to keep more of what they earn, they work harder.

Louis K. Bonham | January 25, 2025 at 8:27 am

Academia is going to want to “resist” laws and decrees that call for the end of DEI programs and practices, especially given that many if not most of those are due to the loud demands of various campus activists who view DEI as a moral imperative (if not a religion). Campus administrators find it easier to just give into these people rather than say no to them. (Soon to be former UT President Jay Hartzell is the paradigm example of such situational cowardice.)

The only way to break the cycle will be for either the government or the courts to deliver a “short, sharp, shock” by making a very public example of a high profile school. E.g., if DoEd OCR or DoJ goes after Columbia or Harvard for obtaining federal funds via a fraudulent nondiscrimination certification (seeking to declare them ineligible for federal funds and recovering 300% of federal funds obtained illegally), I daresay that the boards of most schools are going to demand real changes, lest they become the next peasant hanged in the square.

But another challenge was pointed out in a post this AM on Insta: with all the current momentum against DEI, there now are thousands of unemployed DEI “experts.” As the author accurately describe these DEI kommissars:

“They have useless degrees, minimal skills, wildly unrealistic salary expectations and delusionally-high opinions of themselves.

These people are unemployable.

They’re toxic, bad energy, team-killers, and walking lawsuits.”

So when it comes time for academia to actually lay off the overpaid DEI “experts” that they hired at high salaries in their fits of George Floyd-induced virtue signalling, there are going to be VERY loud accusations of racism . . . not because the firings are actually racist, but because the firees know that there’s no comparable salary awaiting the elsewhere, and it’s the only card they know how to play..

We’ll see whether academia has the stones to do what is required . . . I’m betting they don’t.

    Academia won’t git rid of their DEI commissars, and in most cases they won’t even change their titles. I worked in academia for 40 years, and they will do what they want. If they get sued (unlikely in the past), that’s part of the cost of doing business.

    It’s been clear that racist hiring of faculty and staff has been illegal for decades, yet colleges and universities have routinely set racist criteria for jobs. Typically, if a white male were among the top three contenders for a job, the committee would be told to go back and re-evaluate the candidates. You can’t take the chance of bringing in a white male for an interview, because he might be obviously better than the others, and hiring the others would show racism.

    I once asked a hiring committee if we were going to abide by the college’s nondiscrimination statement. They looked at me like I’d just uttered some unforgivable profanity, and tried to make it sound like what we were told to do wasn’t that big a breach of the NS statement.

    Colleges will do what they want. If you don’t like it and can PROVE that they discriminated against you, then sue them. They will settle out of court to shut you up. Then they will continue with their strict DEI policies and their racist hiring and promotions.

    JohnSmith100 in reply to Louis K. Bonham. | January 31, 2025 at 7:43 pm

    “virtue signalling, there are going to be VERY loud accusations of racism”

    I stopped caring about claims of racism years ago. I love see and work with people regardless of race, but I am especially tired of black racism and hypocrisy.

Agree totally that this is by no means the end of DEI in academia. Just move it a bit underground.
What I think will happen is that less weight will be put on anything objective–SAT scores, etc. They will use a lot of mumbo jumbo like “holistic ” and a bunch of other great sounding but meaningless terms only found in that world. Essentially ” we pick our students and it is none of your business how”.
There has always been a fair amount of this–there has always been a spot for the children of big donors, celebrities, etc.

In mid December Boeing fired CIO Susan Doniz. Disney just hired her as their CIO.

I am close to some lazy-B folks.

Doniz was woke, inept, dumber than a box of rocks and had the speaking talents of Kamala Harris. This queen of pronouns ushered in cost cutting like this:

Heating bill is too high: Get rid of the furnace. It’s like the Ukraine during the wheat famines there. Go read the Boeing subReddit to hear insiders talk about the stupidity.

Her outsourcing of IT was implemented a well as Biden’s Afghan exit. In fact it would make Biden’s exit look like Patton ran it. Then for more cost savings- send work to India (which can’t be performed offshore)… so it doesn’t get done at all. Also— layoffs, layoffs, and more layoffs, POC were never touched… until the last 6 months. So maybe Boeing has learned some of the lesson. But don’t worry- stupidity /ambition without ethics is still alive in well there. In abundance.

Despite her performance…. Doniz somehow ranked as a top female CIO. A ranking put together by woke experts no doubt.

Disney will get what they deserve.

I do understand their logic. She can claim cost cutting and Disney is as broke as Boeing was in 2020. Their Parks cash printing machine isn’t as much of a reliable ATM as it used to be. Low IQ cost cutting is right up there with providing the Critical Drinker tons of horrible movies to slay. This is Disney. However when it comes to low IQ moves like layoffs, Disney is chalked full of do-nothing POCs… and the fat old white men remaining are the ones doing actual work. Work that few possess the knowledge and skill to do. We’ll see how that works out in 5 years.

Being woke is part of a much bigger problem: These execs are just plain dumb.

If you don’t believe me, go watch a video of Susan Doniz….