The Donald Trump administration is starting with a bang as it issued an executive order ending diversity, equity, and inclusion in government and severely curtailing it in the private sector. I expect that opposition to this effort will crumble quickly and most organizations will rapidly abandon the racial preferences that had oddly become accepted as normal.
Others are not so sanguine, especially when it comes to DEI at universities. As one sympathetic, but pessimistic observer put it: “I’m sorry but DEI bans aren’t going to work. Tomorrow, they change the nomenclature (’belonging and community!’), and this fight all starts again.”
But it is wrong to think of university leaders as so committed to DEI ideology that they will resist efforts to eliminate those programs. The typical university administrator is not like the Japanese fighters toward the end of…
