Tag: DEI

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general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Excellence in Success

space, freedom, NASA, SpaceX, DEI, quota

The NASA Jet Propulsion Lab has “parted ways with” — I’m guessing fired, despite the glowing words that attended the parting — DEI officer Neela Rajendra.

The Free Beacon reports that NASA seems to have been nudged in this direction by a Beacon report that despite the anti-​DEI policies of the new U.S. administration, the Jet Propulsion lab had tried to retain Rajendra by changing her title. She still had many of the same responsibilities, including managing “affinity groups” like the Black Excellence Strategic Team.

The propulsion lab is now replacing its DEI department with a new one called “Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success.” 

Even assuming that race and gender consciousness are now no more — probably not a safe assumption — we may wonder why such a department, solely devoted to “excellence and success,” is necessary.

If it is, how did the NASA of the 1960s, including Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin, ever manage to reach and land on the moon? Surely this kind of accomplishment must have required pervasive excellence. Maybe, back then, commitment to excellence was one of the requirements for getting and keeping NASA jobs to begin with?

Among Rajendra’s own excellences: hostility to deadlines and criticism of SpaceX for being “fast-​paced” and failing to promote DEI, as she complained in 2022. 

A few years later, it was a SpaceX capsule that enabled the rescue of NASA astronauts stranded on the International Space Station. 

Now that’s “team excellence”!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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DEI Realities Unreported

DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion

The high tide of DEI policies — which reward racial affiliation, gender affiliation or gender wishing, group-​think, and group-​wackiness at the expense of sanity and individual merit — seems to be starting to recede. 

But we’re not on safe ground yet. One example of rearguard action by the proponents of these lunacies is the willingness of major publications to hide evidence of harm caused by DEI.

Colin Wright reports that both The New York Times and Bloomberg have “shelved coverage of a groundbreaking study that raises serious concerns about the psychological impacts of diversity, equity, and inclusion pedagogy.”

The Network Contagion Research Institute finds that DEI ideology incites hostility (between members of favored and disfavored groups, you see) and authoritarianism (by bullies eager for new weapons to intimidate and control others).

When presented with various scenarios, participants in the study who had first been exposed to DEI propaganda were much more likely than participants who hadn’t been thus exposed to impute racism to agents in the scenario — even when no evidence to justify the accusation was also presented in the scenario.

Wright suggests that at both the Times and Bloomberg, reports-​in-​progress about the research were killed outright by editors whose decisions to spike the story “align conspicuously with the ideological leanings” of those editors.

NCRI’s work confirms what we know about the dishonesty, injustice, and destructiveness of the DEI enterprise. 

As does the conduct of certain gatekeepers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling folly

Disaffirmative Action

DEI, race, bias, affirmative action

Even making the horrific DEI steamroller illegal can’t deter the determined indoctrinators at the University of Oklahoma.

As we all know by now, woke administrators and educators, chanting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” endeavor to induce guilt in (and otherwise punish) persons of certain races, sex, etc., for the grave sin of allegedly benefiting from “systemic” “privileges.” DEI arbiters are ever eager to promote preferential treatment that benefits members of currently favored groups as defined by unchosen physical traits.

Since December 2023, Oklahoma state law has prohibited universities from requiring anybody “to participate in … or receive any education … to the extent such education … grants preference based on one person’s particular race, color, sex, ethnicity or national origin over another’s.”

Nevertheless, Oklahoma University requires undergrads pursuing a degree in education to take a course preaching alleged white-​person complicity in institutional racism.

We do find organizational racism in today’s world. But not quite in the way preached. It’s not hidden beneath surfaces and doesn’t have to be arbitrarily imputed. The course itself, full of topics like “Critical Whiteness in Education” and “Microaggressions in Educational Spaces,” manifests such racism.

A spokesman for the governor’s office says it’s “insane that this is a required course. It’s time to look at the accreditation entities that are pushing courses like this and bring common sense back to the classroom.”

DEI policies somewhat resemble the affirmation action policies of yesteryear. But they aspire to be much more thorough and pervasive. They are animated by a mentality of totalitarian control, a mentality loath to, let us say, course-correct.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Nondiscrimination as Discriminatory 

DEI, diversity, quotas, race, racism, regulations, education

Two parts gall, three parts random irrationality; eye of newt, toe of frog. 

That’s how you cook up the latest leftist madness.

According to the wizards running Columbia University, deliberately race-​neutral policies are discriminatory if they have a “disproportionate impact.”

Columbia has updated its antidiscrimination policy about bad things you can do on campus that might get you investigated and sanctioned. The revised policy declares that one bad thing is “having a neutral policy or practice that has a disproportionate and unjustified adverse impact on actual and/​or perceived members or associates of one Protected Class more than others.” 

This, the policy asserts, “constitutes Discrimination” — with a capital D.

Those “protected classes” make up a formidable list. If the idea is that treating another person abusively subjects one to penalties, why not just say this? Then no groups need be listed.

But Columbia University seems to find focusing on discriminatory nondiscrimination a more productive way to spend its time than coping with unambiguous racial and ethnic hatred on campus.

Columbia is among the schools that has responded to vicious harassment of Jewish students with little more than pro forma protest. Even as a Columbia representative tells USA Today that “calls for violence have no place at Columbia,” anti-​Israel and anti-​Jewish students keep calling for violence. Will they be kicked out?

Eliana Goldin, a Jewish student at the school, says that the administration is well aware of “the credible threat to Jewish students, and they’re still playing both-sideism.”

Which strikes me as Discrimination with a Capital D.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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DEI Box Office Drubbing

Matt Walsh, racism, DEI

It “came out of nowhere,” declared The Hollywood Reporter, and as “one major Hollywood studio exec” put it off the record: “The picture has clearly hit a nerve.”

This is the second hit by the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and director-​producer Justin Folk: they made the movie What Is a Woman? in 2022, and now Am I Racist? is at No. 4 on the movie charts having “gross[ed] $4.5 million in its nationwide box office debut,” THR reports, “a huge sum for a nonfiction feature.”

In the film, Matt Walsh sits down with “some of the biggest people in the anti-​racism movement,” including Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, founders of Race2Dinner, and Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

For $5,000, Rao and Jackson will come over for dinner to make as many as eight white women confront their inherent racism. Who would know better? Rao and Jackson actually wrote the book, White Women.

“This country is not worth saving,” Rao declares at one dinner. “This country’s a piece of sh*t.”

It cost $15,000 to get the meeting to film DiAngelo for the documentary. Well, only $14,970 if you consider the $30 in reparations that DiAngelo was shamed into giving a black member of Walsh’s documentary crew.

“The mind-​blowing part,” explains Savannah Edwards of Savvy Film Reviews “is that he was able to get them to say what they said on camera.” She adds, “The fact of the matter is all Matt Walsh does in this movie is let these people talk.”

Go see the movie.

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Sobering Up After DEI

DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, regulations

Some universities and companies have been retreating from their obnoxious DEI policies. We can now add Jack Daniel’s to the list.

One of the lamentable ideological fads of recent years, DEI (“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”) programs are a vicious form of race-​based and sex-​based affirmative action.

All such policies subordinate merit to irrelevant but politically preferred physical characteristics.

So far as I know, old-​style affirmative action at least was not normally accompanied by mandatory indoctrination and mandatory testimony by applicants about how they would cherish and uphold the ideology of compensatory racial and sexual discrimination. But such indoctrination and litmus tests are standard features of many contemporary DEI regimes.

Which are now minus one, thankfully, as Jack Daniel’s announces that it will be ending DEI initiatives, such as a social credit system and “quantitative workforce and supplier diversity ambitions.”

The Dallas Express says that the whiskey distiller is decoupling from DEI because it is “facing backlash.” Specifically, thanks to the impending attention of Robby Starbuck, “an activist known for successfully putting a spotlight on companies like Harley-​Davidson and John Deere” for their DEI policies.

Starbuck said on Twitter that he had been “set to expose” Jack Daniel’s, which perhaps was tipped off by his visiting of employee LinkedIn pages. “We are winning and one by one we will bring sanity back to corporate America.”

He adds that if you want your own workplace’s DEI policies exposed, you can email “tips and evidence” to him at EliminateDEI@​protonmail.​com.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Vance Plan for DEI

DEI, J.D. Vance

Will certain items on Senator J. D. Vance’s legislative agenda be expedited by his new status as Donald Trump’s running mate?

For example, Congress could pass his kill-​DEI legislation immediately. But Biden would have to sign the bill, and it’s Biden’s administration which has been pushing the horrific DEI federal mandates.

An initialism for “mediocrity, inequity, and exclusion” — “diversity, equity and inclusion,” actually — DEI designates enforcement of race-​based, gender-​based, irrelevant-​characteristics-​based criteria for hiring and promotion. It’s a continuation of old-​style affirmative action quotas but nastier, and often attended by extra helpings of censorship and hectoring indoctrination.

On June 12, 2024, Senator Vance and Representative Michael Cloud introduced legislation that would, per their press release, “eliminate all DEI programs from the federal government.”

More specifically, the Dismantle DEI Act would “eliminate all federal DEI programs and funding for federal agencies, contractors which receive federal funding, organizations which receive federal grants, and educational accreditation agencies.” 

Seems to cover the waterfront.

Vance argues that our tax dollars should not be “co-​opted” to promote an agenda that “breeds hatred and racial division.”

One of the bill’s cosponsors, Senator Kevin Cramer, observes that DEI “doesn’t promote diversity of thought or merit-​based employment and promotion,” which is something of an understatement. DEI doesn’t merely neglect but actively opposes rewarding of merit whenever doing so would conflict with the DEI agenda.* An agenda that obtrudes continuously.

Of course, Vance’s attack upon DEI doesn’t require Vance to be Vice President, what is required is a Republican president to sign the legislation, should it pass through Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* More than a few commentators have suggested that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was a DEI hire and that contributed to last weekend’s utterly botched Secret Service protection of Donald Trump, previously discussed.

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Accountability crime and punishment national politics & policies

The Slope of Service

Trump, sniper, Secret Service, DEI

“Heads should roll at Secret Service,” I declared on Monday.

That was before I stumbled upon Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle explaining to ABC News the strategic situational thinking employed by the agency in determining not to place agents on top of the roof of a building where the assassin fired multiple rounds, hitting former President Trump in the ear, killing a man attending the rally with his family and seriously wounding two others. 

Director Cheatle offered that “the Secret Service was aware of the security vulnerabilities presented by the building Crooks took a sniper’s position on to aim at Trump,” Fox News reported. “However, a decision was made not to place any personnel on the roof.” 

So much for “awareness.” And why was this decision made?

“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point,” she pointed out. “And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.”

Competing safety factors, eh? The former president’s and that of novice roof-​climbers in the Secret Service.

Instead, three local law enforcement sharpshooters were stationed inside the building as the shooter easily climbed up onto that ever-​so-​dangerously slanted roof and opened fire.

The finger-​pointing at local police by Secret Service officials, who claimed that securing that building was a local law enforcement responsibility, is simply passing the buck.

Cheatle acknowledged that her agency “is responsible for the protection of the former president,” adding “the buck stops with me.”

Good, I’m looking for immediate change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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DEI Virally Decoded

DEI, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

Is “Didn’t Earn It” — the latest scam-​decoding translation of officialdom’s acronymic jargon for race-​conscious and gender-​conscious affirmative-​action policies, DEI — really catching on?

If so, maybe we’ll get back all the sooner to sanity. 

That is, in universities, workplaces, and other hunting grounds of the DEI dictators who have inherited the mantle of reverse discrimination first inflicted on Americans via the affirmative-​action quota policies of the 1970s.

John Tierney suggests that the popularizers of the apt “Didn’t Earn It” meme may well help rid us of “today’s most egregiously indefensible phrase: ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.’”

These woozy words are supposed to divert our attention from what DEI policies really mean: systematic discrimination against academic, professional, and other merit in favor of typically irrelevant physical characteristics like skin color and gender.

DEI discrimination is being imposed on ever more of our institutions, even at the cost of risking our lives. If unqualified applicants are being admitted into UCLA Medical School in order to appease the arbiters of DEI, then failing basic tests of medical knowledge after they get in — what happens if and when they start treating patients?

A single telling phrase (Tierney credits journalist Ian Cheong and cartoonist Scott Adams) can’t shoulder the whole burden of stopping DEI. True enough.

Fortunately, it’s got help. 

In Congress, Republicans have introduced legislation to shut down DEI offices and forbid federal contractors from imposing the ugly indoctrination of DEI training and DEI statements.

We can all pitch in.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights general freedom

Letting DEI Die

MIT, DEI, college, racism, collectivism, sexism

The good news? 

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will no longer require applicants to make DEI statements.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth says the school can “build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”

Correct on both counts, but a bit blah as indictments go. And inadequate. Forget “inclusive.” This is merely a pledge to refrain from being arbitrarily exclusionary.

But the new policy is better than the status quo.

DEI (“diversity, equity, and inclusion”) may sound innocuous, at worst pointless. But DEI guidelines have functioned as a particularly odious form of ideological litmus test. The goal has been to force instructors to toe certain leftist (or collectivist) ideological lines as if the ideas imposed were as self-​evidently true as declarations that the cloudless sky is cerrulian blue.

For example, if you dare disagree that race-​conscious “antiracist” policies making skin color — and maybe also “gender” — more important than quality of work or some reliable leading indicators of productivity, your views may put you on the wrong side of the DEI divide.

So MIT’s dropping of mandatory DEI-​fealty statements is a big step in the right direction. By as prestigious an institution of higher learning as any in the world.

The bad news? 

MIT has apparently not fired the “diversity deans” that it hired in 2021 — and hired not on the basis of excellence of qualifications: serious plagiarism complaints have been filed against two of these personnel!

If MIT retains six “diversity deans” in place, able to run around causing trouble for those faculty who reject DEI edicts, it hasn’t purged itself of the poison quite yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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