Conservatives were right about DEI

Harvard's Claudine Gay also proves affirmative action is wrong, too

On August 10, DEI supporters claimed victory in a column in Politico, “First Conservatives Came for Affirmative Action. Now They’re Gunning for DEI Programs.

“Republicans could address changing demographics thoughtfully — instead they’re doubling down on the played-out culture war.”

The column said, “Diversity in America is a given and all institutions have to get better at cultivating successful shared cultures in which everyone feels valued, heard and represented. Pretending race is not relevant to that enterprise is as artificial as pretending that separate was equal for six decades. In a context of omnipresent demographic change and multiple existential challenges, the Republican Party, founded on an anti-slavery plank, offers culture-warring to distract from its anti-tax and anti-worker policies that largely make rich people richer.”

Institutions have since learned that some cultures should be rejected, especially the one that organized and executed the rapes, torture, murders and mutilations of Israelis and their Jewish visitors on October 7 — and the DEI culture that made excuses for it.

The attack on Israel and the support of the Hamas horror by DEI proponents is beginning to shed light on the movement that conservatives condemned years ago. The center is shifting away from the madness.

Now then, every time I write about Peggy Noonan, readers ask why I waste my time on her. The answer is because it is fun. She is the almost virginal oracle for the RINOs, which means she dislikes her Democrat colleagues and abhors the hold-my-beer conservatives that gave us Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and Donald Trump.

I often asked myself, what would it take to wake Noonan up? Being mugged by a burglar with an alarm clock? A shower of cold coffee? An order from Rupert the owner of the Wall Street Journal, which is her main paycheck?

Apparently it was October 7 that brought her to the reality that liberals are not pro-women and peace-loving hippies but monsters who will use any means — necessary or not — to gain and retain power.

It took Peggy two months to get around to condemning the Rape of the Rave for Peace, so maybe Rupert finally memo-ed her because the rest of the newspaper has had no problem siding with Israel against the war crimes of October 7.

On December 12, she wrote, “At first I didn’t understand. Among Hamas’s crimes of 10/7: little children and babies murdered, some burned to death; children forced to watch parents chased, beaten and shot. Old couples murdered in their homes; families who’d taken refuge in safe rooms burned out and killed. Hamas attempted to behead a kibbutz worker, and killed old women standing at a bus stop. Women were abused—raped, it seemed certain. But I didn’t understand why, from day one, the last received such emphasis. Defenders of Hamas kept demanding proof and claiming there was no evidence. It was as if they were saying: Sure we behead people and kill infants but raping someone, that’s crossing a line!

“But now I understand what was done. It was grim and dreadful, but it was also systematic and deliberate. And since there’s going to be a lot of 10/7 trutherism —there already is — we have to be clear about what happened.”

I despise the 10/7 tag because it reduces a horrible atrocity to a number. But it was nice to read and she is quite right about the denials and excuses (trutherism was another tag I dislike because it unfortunately implies the liars are telling the truth; liarism would be more accurate).

NewsNation reported, “30% of Gen Z say bin Laden’s anti-American views were ‘force of good.’”

That shows 70% of young people have rejected the pro-Muslim anti-American propaganda in the media and indoctrination in the schools.

Bur almost a third are Marge Schott about Osama and the terrorists he led.

Readers recall that when she owned the Cincinnati Reds, she said of Hitler, “Everything you read, when he came in he was good. They built tremendous highways and got all the factories going. He went nuts, he went berserk. I think his own generals tried to kill him, didn’t they? Everybody knows he was good at the beginning but he just went too far.”

That pretty much ended her ownership of the team as major league baseball quickly distanced itself from anti-Semitism.

That was 27 years ago.

Today, the people who run Harvard, MIT and Penn side with Marge. Readers recall the presidents of those high-priced schools telling Congress that well, you have to consider the context before condemning someone who says kill all the Jews.

Peggy stood up to this nonsense. She call out Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Marge Schott, who said, “I think we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians.”

Noonan said, “Balanced? How do you balance a story like the horrors of Oct. 7? You don’t, you just find and tell the truth. Some stories don’t have two sides. This is one of them.

“Why is it important? Because it happened. Because it reveals something about the essential nature of Hamas and reflects its ultimate political goals. Progressives admiringly quote Maya Angelou’s advice that when people show you who they are, believe them. October 7 was Hamas showing you who they are. Believe them.”

Peggy’s importance is that she is squarely in the middle of the elitist circle, which means anti-Semitism is out, empathy is in. Her follow-up column on the Three Stoogettes testimony went beyond saying they should be fired. She dared to ask why they were hired.

She began by quoting Fareed Zakaria, a weekend host on CNN, who said, “When one thinks of America’s greatest strengths, the kind of assets the world looks at with admiration and envy, America’s elite universities would long have been at the top of that list. But the American public has been losing faith in these universities for good reason.”

Sometimes, the obvious must be stated if only to place it on the record. But the quote that struck me was, “In the humanities, hiring for new academic positions now appears to center on the race and gender of the applicant, as well as the subject matter, which needs to be about marginalized groups. A white man studying the American presidency does not have a prayer of getting tenure at a major history department in America today. . . . New subjects crop up that are really political agendas, not academic fields.”

Bam.

Diversity, equity and inclusion just got a punch in the eye because it is not diverse, equitable or inclusive; only socialists need apply. DEI uses women, blacks, gays and the rest as human shields for the terrible policies and programs they wish to impose on us.

Harvard’s Claudine Gay represents DEI — which is affirmative action on steroids — perfectly. She is a plagiarist who also fudges data in her work. Fortunately, she is lazy which reduced her production of bad scholarship. She also is inexperienced. Harvard hired her only because it wanted to brag that it had its first black woman president.

Zakaria was not done.

He said, “Out of this culture of diversity has grown the collection of ideas and practices that we have now all heard of—safe spaces, trigger warnings and microaggressions.”

He said schools have instituted speech codes “that make it a violation of university rules to say things that some groups might find offensive. Universities advise students not to speak, act, even dress in ways that might cause offense to some minority groups.”

He also said, “In this context, it is understandable that Jewish groups would wonder: Why do safe spaces, microaggressions and hate speech not apply to us? If universities can take positions against free speech to make some groups feel safe, why not us? Having coddled so many student groups for so long, university administrators found themselves squirming, unable to explain why certain groups (Jews, Asians) don’t seem to count in these conversations.”

Zakaria is making them play by their own rules.

October 7 changed the dynamic in the Palestinian War on Israel because the brutality inflicted upon innocent women and children stripped Palestinians of their victimhood. Barbarians deserve barbarianism.

Defending the Palestinian motto of killing Jews “from the river to the sea” also changed the game on DEI and affirmative action by showing DEI appointees who they really are.