The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch writes about the right-wing white nationalist project, led by the likes of Chris Rufo and hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, to rid higher education of hated "diversity, equity, and inclusion" efforts. Here's a snippet focusing on one institution's cowardice, but the entire op/ed is highly recommended:
The Louisiana Illuminator reports that ahead of governor-elect Jeff Landry’s inauguration, LSU has already scrubbed a diversity statement from the university website, renamed its office dedicated to bolstering racial equity on campus to remove the word “Inclusion” and replace it with “Engagement,” and — in the most Orwellian move — deleted all links to a campus lecture series that was called “Racism: Dismantling the System,” tossing all of it down the memory hole.
Trust me, Harvard is going to be just fine, but the true goal of a bomb-throwers like Chris Rufo or the amorally ambitious Rep. Elise Stefanik is preventing what right wingers see as the rot of diversity, and real learning about American democracy on campuses like LSU or West Virginia University or Youngstown State. These schools educate far more students than the Ivy League (just 0.4% of all collegians) and are the potential growth engines for a thriving, multiracial middle class...
The efforts, of course, aren't limited to higher education. The "Moms for Libertines Liberty" book- banning movement is the K-12 front in the war on education. Expect to see this repeated over and over, especially in Republican- dominated states, until essentially we will have a revanchist white nationalist system in broad swaths of the nation and a system that promotes the American values of freedom, justice and inclusion elsewhere. Sic transit gloria, America.
