Zachary Marschall, adjunct assistant professor at the University of Kentucky, writes that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) litmus tests are suffocating the intellectual diversity and academic freedom that universities are supposed to protect.
“DEI litmus tests must go because they do not serve students. In reality, they are about power. DEI loyalty oaths fortify campus leaders’ power to reduce diversity, equal opportunity, and access initiatives to a set of counterproductive far-left policy prescriptions that ultimately marginalize, limit, and exclude students,” he writes.
He notes that conservative lawmakers and scholars see that these ideological oaths do more harm than good, undermining the very mission of higher education. Several major universities are starting to move against DEI statements as problems are being recognised. According to Marschall, they have even been traced to growing “antisemitism and general intolerance” on Cornell University’s campus.
Yet, Marschall writes that nearly half of major universities require DEI statements for tenure. This allows a select group of ideologically driven professors to dictate who succeeds in academia, effectively branding dissenters with a “Scarlet Letter.”
Marschall suggests that it is time for external leaders to intervene and reclaim universities from this ideological grip to restore their true mission: to foster inquiry and challenge ideas.
first published at The Centrist