DEI: “Don’t think it’s over. These people are digging in. They’re not going to give it up.”
I appeared this morning on the Michael Patrick Leahy radio show, the Tennessee Star Report.
I collaborated with Michael back in the day — 2012 when he was at Breitbart — when we and a small number of others drove the investigations of Elizabeth Warren’s Cherokee deception. So it was good to catch up with him.
We talked about my view that there is an irrational exuberance that Trump’s DEI Executive Orders will cause DEI to DIE. Next week Legal Insurrection is having an online event on Wednesday, February 19, at 12:30 ET where we will discuss this, Reports of the Death of DEI Are Greatly Exaggerated (access is free, but preregistration is required).
Here’s the key portion of the interview on DEI:
[if video fails to load, click here]
Transcript auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity
Leahy: Tell us about reports of the death of DEI being greatly exaggerated.WAJ: Sure. Well, we have, in addition to legalinsurrection.com, two projects, two websites. One is criticalrace.org, which has interactive maps documenting the spread of critical race theory and it’s offshoots like DEI, throughout education, mostly higher education, and equalprotect.org, which brings legal challenges. So we’re very familiar with the landscape and we’re very familiar with how deeply, deeply embedded these ideologies are throughout the education system, including K through 12 nowadays.And so what we are trying to call people’s attention to is what Trump is doing with his executive orders is great, it’s fine, it’s going to be impactful, particularly to the extent it cuts off the flow of federal money to these programs. But nobody should kid themselves. This is not going away. They’re already bringing lawsuits, they’re already organizing, they are not going to give up what for most of academia has become its reason to be, which is diversity, equity, and inclusion.It’s really got a quasi-religious feeling to it on the campuses. And that we are just concerned, that while we’re all in favor of cutting off the flow of money, this is all good, people should not get complacent. People should not think that just because Trump signed a half dozen executive orders, this stuff is going away. And that’s what we’re trying to highlight.We’ve got an online event coming up next Wednesday, people can sign up at the website, and we’re going talk about that, that this is all good, but don’t get complacent. Don’t think it’s over. These people are digging in. They’re not going to give it up.
Here’s the full segment, in which we reminisced, talked about what it’s like for me to live in deep blue states, and whether I was more or less optimistic about the country than when I started the blog in 2008:
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY