Did DEI die?
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard may prove to be the most important Supreme Court decision on race since Brown v. Board of Education. Like the Brown case, Students v. Harvard used the color blind 14th Amendment to end systemic racism in education. In Brown, the racism was against black people. At Harvard, the racism was against Asians in admissions.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas hit upon the root problem with liberalism.
He wrote, “The great failure of this country was slavery and its progeny. And, the tragic failure of this Court was its misinterpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments, as Justice Harlan predicted in Plessy. We should not repeat this mistake merely because we think, as our predecessors thought, that the present arrangements are superior to the Constitution.”
That applies to so many things. For example, we think we are superior to our forefathers because we can use calculators. They knew multiplication tables and could do the arithmetic in their heads. My grandfather had maybe a second grade education but he knew calculus because he needed to know it to be a toolmaker.
Students v. Harvard case ended affirmative action without saying affirmative action. The 1970s were filled with foolish ideas — avocado green refrigerators — and affirmative action was the worst. Leftists replaced equal opportunity with equal outcome. In college admissions, this meant the bar was lowered for black applicants and raised for Asians.
In Students v. Harvard, the Supreme Court forced colleges to CYA on admissions. The Ivy League brought back SATs and ACTs to determine who gets in. The cream is rising to the top.
USA Today reported, perhaps with a tear in the duct:
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's incoming freshman class this year dropped to just 16% Black, Hispanic, Native American or Pacific Islander students compared to 31% in previous years after the U.S. Supreme Court banned colleges from using race as a factor in admissions in 2023.
The proportion of Asian American students in the incoming class rose from 41% to 47%, while white students made up about the same share of the class as in recent years, the elite college known for its science, math and economics programs said this week.
MIT administrators said the statistics are the result of the Supreme Court's decision last year to ban affirmative action, a practice that many selective U.S. colleges and universities used for decades to boost enrollment of underrepresented minority groups.
I like how liberals couch their racism as a virtue. The court’s decision shook their little world. Suddenly, the once-poisoned Ivys have embraced equal opportunity again, instead of equity or whatever else they are calling quotas these days.
The Constitution does not call for a college student body that reflects the populace; it calls for everyone getting an equal chance to get in. If a black student can get in with a B average and an Asian with an A+ cannot, that’s racist.
So who are these DEI guys? The Columbus Telegram reported, “The University of Nebraska-Lincoln will dissolve its Office of Diversity and Inclusion and eliminate the vice chancellor position that directed its efforts, administrators said on Tuesday.”
That job paid $320,000 a year. Marco Barker held it.
Experience
2019-Present, Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
2016-2019, Associate Vice President for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (Chief Diversity Officer), Westminster College
2012-2016, Senior Director for Education, Operations, and Initiatives, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2006-2012, Director of Educational Equity & Assistant to the Vice Provost, Louisiana State University.
Honors and Recognition
2018, Leadership Utah Class
2018, Utah Business Forty Under 40
2016, Goodmon Fellow, Leadership Triangle Regional Leadership Program
2015, Black Male Appreciation Award by UNC Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated
2006-2010, University Council for Educational Administration Barbara L. Jackson Scholar
Memberships
NCAA Board of Governors’ Committee to Promote Cultural Diversity and Equity
City of Lincoln Lincoln-Lancaster County 2050 Comprehensive Plan Committee
Lincoln Community Foundation Board
University of Arkansas Black Alumni Society Board
He is an example of how to succeed in academics today. Don’t fool around with being a teaching assistant or adjunct and work your way to tenure. Be an administrator. DEI is where it is at.
Or where it was.
DEI was meant to destroy education by replacing good students with bad. Those bad students would go on to be bad professors. Justices have closed that pipeline.
The battle is being fought in the board rooms as well. Conservatives are winning. Under the name diversity, equity and inclusion, socialists are taking over. The DEI candidates all just happen to be Marxists. When conservatives put up a Sarah Palin, Clarence Thomas or Ric Grenell, the Marxist crowd gets extremely hostile because to them the only good DEI man is a braindead one.
The Students v. Harvard decision finally gave conservatives the moral authority and courage to push back against the racist and sexist DEI programs.
In March, NBC bemoaned, “Republican lawmakers in more than 30 states have introduced or passed more than 100 bills to either restrict or regulate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the current legislative session, according to an NBC News analysis.
The story also said, “States such as Florida, Texas and Utah are among the handful whose legislatures have approved bans on DEI efforts in higher education and public offices. In Florida, the Board of Education recently announced a new rule banning public colleges from using state and federal funds on DEI initiatives. Last summer, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law to require all state-funded colleges and universities to close their DEI offices.”
Fighting the battle in the free market is not quite as easy but quite doable if conservatives go after products they actually use.
Spontaneity helps. Bud Light went down before anyone had time to organize a buyout. It is gone where the goblins go below, below, below!
Smart companies are throwing DEI overboard as if were tea in Boston harbor in 1773.
Harley-Davidson is dropping some of its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to a statement released Monday on social media site X.
The motorcycle company said it has stopped consulting the Human Rights Campaign’s metric for treatment of LGBTQ+ employees, and that its sponsorship decisions will now be determined by the company and foundation, which will focus on “retaining our loyal riding community.”
The story left out the part where the annual gathering of a half-million bikers in Sturgis became an anti-Harley protest.
The Daily Mail talked to bikers and reported:
Their full-throttle condemnations of German-born CEO Jochen Zeitz include demands that he quit immediately, with one rider saying: 'They need to figure out a way to get rid of his a**.'
And a 20-year Harley devotee, who has had eight machines from the Milwaukee-based company, told us in a message to the executive: 'Don't f*** with my bikes.'
Harley-Davidsons make up an estimated 90 percent of the motorcycles cruising in the small city of Sturgis, South Dakota, and the adjacent Black Hills for the 10-day, 500,000-strong rally that wraps Sunday, such is the surface devotion by bikers to the brand.
Getting kicked in the Sturgis had to hurt Mr. Harley and Mr. Davidson.
Diversity hires bring a lot to an organization. In February 2023, Forbes gushed, “Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing for Bud Light, is the first woman to ever lead the popular brand.”
Two months later, she hired Dylan Mulvaney and killed the brand. I did not say diversity hires bring anything good. I said only that they bring a lot to the brand.
Moderates tell conservatives they cannot win on social issues, but recent history shows otherwise. The court handed a big victory in the Students v. Harvard case.
But the left bastardized Brown v. Board of Education — which gave kids the right to attend the nearest school regardless of race — turning it into busing black kids past a black school to integrate a white school way over on the other side of town. The result (and therefore the intent) is to alienate parents from schools. Joining the PTA is easier when the school is down the street than when the school is across town. That hurt education but gave educators more power.
Be vigilant in guarding the decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. But it is a big win that may slay DEI. Republicans must keep wielding that sword of legislation.
But a curious thing happened after the court decided in Students v. Harvard: lefties shut up. There were no protests. There were no riots. There were no tents pitched in Harvard Yard. It shows lefties know their racism is wrong and DEI is a loser.
Nobody has done more to eliminate DEI than Robbie Starbuck. He has led boycotts against Harley-Davidson, John Deere, and Tractor Supply and each of these companies quickly ended their DEI practices. The maker of Jack Daniels even ended their DEI program when they heard Robbie was planning to go after them next.
In the late 1950s my eldest brother Gene, having learned the Three Rs - readin', ritin', and the Road to Akron - pulled up stakes and headed down Route 21 to Cleveland, where he found love - a girl also originally from the West Virginia hollers - and started his family. A few short years and five children later all of them were in Cleveland schools - public, of course, since that was what he and his wife could afford.
Along slouches Lyndon Johnson, the Great Society, racial turmoil, and Forced Busing for school children. After two of his girls were intimidated and harassed by the street thugs in East Side ghetto schools, he pulled his kids out of public education and put them all in private schools - a crippling cost for a working stiff from Rock Creek, West-by-God-Virginia. All graduated and did well in the struggle of life.
Fast forward twenty years. An article appears in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the timely death of one Judge Batista, the federal who had presided over the whole goat rodeo called "busing" in the 1960s. It seems that in his old age he was an avid hunter, had received a tick bite while hunting, and died from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. The Plain Dealer was asking for citizen's letters commenting on this "very controversial man's life."
My brother entered the following, written as a classified ad:
"Reward. $2000 for anyone who can locate the tick that bit Judge Batista. I wish to buy him his own dog."