The death of DEI approaches– right on schedule
Since last fall, Dr. Marschall has argued that 2024 is the beginning of the end for DEI. Violent anti-Israel activism has made America see the reality of DEI’s detrimental effects on education.
The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion cult that has long dominated higher education has lost major footing this year, as reports of slashed social justice programs, state funding cuts, and outright legal bans on such policies mount.
This week, Campus Reform Editor-in-Chief Zachary Marschall appeared on The National Desk to discuss the prevailing national trend against DEI in higher education– a trend apparent (and relieving) to many with personal investment in the state of higher education. But why now?
“This process was accelerated because of the anti-Israel protests,” Marschall explains. “The connection between DEI programming and values and the vitriol we see on campuses for Jewish students…is connected back to DEI values that sow division between groups.”
“America woke up to it, and they now realize that DEI must die on college campuses for all students to be safe and welcome,” he added.
[RELATED: 2024 FORECAST: Higher ed stories expected to dominate the next year]
The DEI complex is a highly expensive set of programming and protocols that sow division between groups and college campuses, lowering educational standards and student achievement. Campus Reform has spent years reporting the problem with DEI in higher education.
And now, for months, Marschall has argued that 2024 is the beginning of the end for DEI, though he says the process will be gradual and with multiple setbacks. Violent anti-Israel activism has made America see the reality of DEI’s detrimental effects on education.
Back in December 2023, he told Campus Reform readers to “expect this [anti-DEI] trend to accelerate in 2024 as DEI programming becomes more widely known as a driving force of campus anti-Semitism.”
Since the Oct. 7 attacks, Marschall has highlighted that the DEI programming complex has enabled hateful anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist, pro-Hamas activism to spread on campuses. Anti-Jewish terrorism, Marschall notes, has made university and political leaders see that DEI facilitates the radicalization of undereducated youth.
During a January interview with John Solomon on Just the News, Marschall marked “the beginning of the end for DEI,” predicting that 2024 would be a year that ushered in a return of “traditional values” in higher education.
Weeks later, in a Washington Examiner op-ed titled “Why I’m bullish on the end of the Left’s power over higher education” Marschall asserted that in the months following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, “America woke up to the true extent and depth of higher education’s moral rot.”
“The wave of post-Oct. 7 antisemitism revealed to America what I have been arguing for years: Radical ideas such as anti-racism and critical race theory are innately antisemitic, and diversity, equity, and inclusion offices have been the leading force in implementing them across higher education,” wrote Marschall. “Like the Committee on Public Safety, which sent people to the guillotine during the French Revolution, DEI offices use their nice-sounding name to hide their atrocities.”
At that time, Marschall pointed out that the strategy he described was already falling apart, pointing out that public universities in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas had already begun to crack down on DEI policies and programs.
Optimistically, Marschall promised that “The country is finally paying full attention to the problem left-wing university radicals have created, and the mood in America is shifting back to sanity, decency, tolerance, and truth.”
And he wasn’t wrong. The University of North Carolina, Virginia public universities, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and Wyoming have restricted or cut funding for DEI practices. MIT dropped required DEI statements in faculty job applications.
Campus Reform continues to cover new stories each month about institutions and governments cracking down on racist, divisive, and yes– often anti-Semitic DEI policies.
To stop the Intifada from spreading off college campuses, Marschall says universities must continue to go after the fount of incitement and division: DEI programming and values.
