Our university has abolished diversity statements in hiring. Not that I ever required them for my department, and policy be damned, but now they are officially gone. Exactly zero people objected.
The tide has turned. Wokeness is dying. Remember, it always begins and ends on campuses.
That is great news!
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“The tide has turned.”
From your lips to God’s ears. I think it’s too early to say this, though I agree that it’ll start from college campuses.
Just like with the bud light boycott and Claudine Gay’s resignation, I feel we’re celebrating too early. Auron Macintyre lays out the conditions of victory:
1) Enemies are fired.
2) Friends are hired.
3) The company donates money to your patronage network.
4) HR trains employees never to cross you again.
The left’s victories look like the above. Meanwhile Claudine Gay still has her job and a 900k salary, Budweiser hasn’t even apologized, and conservatives are celebrating.
The world of business is so far gone, it’s incredible. Unlike academia, there are very few actual believers in corporate. They simply honestly think it’s good for the brand. They need to lose profit and they’ll get reeducated pretty fast.
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I agree. I think zoom classes during Covid helped demystify these places, too. That was the first time parents actually saw the substandard teaching provided by these so-called elite institutions. The brand is rotting.
“New Harvard admissions data shows early applications have declined by 17% year-on-year.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-college-early-applications-down-amid-antisemitism-row-2023-12#:~:text=New%20Harvard%20admissions%20data%20shows,%25%20year%2Don%2Dyear.
Are we certain that we *want* our terms of victory to be reflections of the left’s? They seem determined to win at the cost of making every system completely dysfunctional. Would it be enough to simply have a working institution with an improved immune system for recognizing and fighting off dysfunction in the future?
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Absolutely. And that’s what it’ll take to have “working institutions with an improved immune system for recognizing and fighting off dysfunction in the future”. And I don’t think this constitutes a mirror image of the progressive left. Like, nobody on the anti-woke side is arguing for pro-white, pro-asian institutions. It’s literally a call for sanity, meritocracy, and color-blindness, as practiced for maybe a brief period in the 90s. Note that color-blind policies are literally illegal now and anyone advocating for them is immediately marked as a racist. That’s the result of a lot of hard work from the left. All credit to them.
The right is so afraid to wield power. When the left has power they put permanent structures in place to deliver to their constituents. And rightly so. All politics is patronage. You reward your friends and punish your enemies. The left has learned this lesson and we’re still quibbling over how unseemly it looks.
Look at student loan forgiveness. Who does that target? The professional managerial class, which are 100% a part of the dem coalition. If you wanted to to target a “fairer” cross section of the american society you’d do something like medical debt forgiveness, which benefits everyone equally. But that’ll never happen.
Another example. This is a bus stop in LA that is supposed to provide “shade” to commuters, proudly announced by the LA city council.
https://x.com/AlecStapp/status/1660306154801487873?s=20
“The concept of La Sombrita originated from the supposed need to address gender equity within LADOT’s operations. It was introduced as part of their Gender Equity Action Plan, an initiative stemming from the findings of the 2021 study called “Changing Lanes.””
Think of all the clients who get paid:
The NGOs that write these reports,
The “green” design firm (also an NGO) that executes this idea (https://www.kounkuey.org/)
“Kounkuey Design Initiative is a community
development and design nonprofit. We
partner with under-resourced
communities to advance equity and
activate the unrealized potential in their
neighborhoods and cities.”
And everyone in between (with the right mix of race/gender/sexuality).
All done with taxpayer money. That’s how you build a permanent client base.
You are so very right about this Stringer Bell.The patronage system is unbelievable. A lot of “green” posturing are these same people getting ready to empty yet more government coiffers in their NGO’s. Follow the money!
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This is a great point about the medical debt forgiveness. And nobody ever brings it up.
We have a free college scheme here in Illinois that’s destroying our university. We have a high minimum wage which, as I kept saying from the start, made it impossible for us to hire as many student workers as we used to. I know hire less than a half of the people I used to because the total amount of money I have for them didn’t change while the minimum wage doubled. These policies sound good on paper but in reality they are ruinous.
But hey, our governor is getting reelected into the infinity on the basis of these policies and people are too confused to figure out why theyr standard of living is dropping amidst such great new policies.
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Like I said, it’s too early to declare victory.
https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1760690739896582462?s=20
“Texas banned DEI in universities. What happened? University of Texas changed the name of its DEI bureaucracy and just went on as before, keeping most of their diversity goals and programs on the website. One bureaucrat didn’t even bother changing her job title at LinkedIn.”
And this is the red state of Texas.
Not gonna let those cushy jobs go easy!
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That’s why we need purges.
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95% of academia is very liberal. So is at least 80% of business leadership. The 17-25yo crowd, even from conservative, religious families, are ultra liberal, in particular on matters of race.
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But it is at least a little bit related to jobs. People really do adapt their beliefs to fit their work culture– it’s at least a little bit possible that toning that stuff down in the work culture will cause some people to adjust their beliefs accordingly. Is legislation the way to do it? Meh. I don’t know. Seems like an experiment worth trying though.
Watched this happen with a family friend, over many years. Was a very reasonable affable liberal-ish person with whom you could have a friendly political discussion, disagree, and still be friends. Got hired on at the local uni, and then gradually progressed to diehard progressive with whom no disagreement was possible. It was very sad. It seemed very much an adaptation to his job. The worst part was that he was a scientist, in a field that had absolutely nothing to do with any liberal social anything. You’d think they’d be left alone to do their own thing. Nope. If you don’t want to be a pariah…
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I’m completely in favor of closing every single DEI program and never using the expression again. But the problem is deeper, is what I’m saying. DEI is extremely attractive to many people. They will still choose it no matter what it’s called. That’s the edifice we need to take apart.
Yes, it’s attractive to many people– particularly those who dislike taking personal responsibility for anything. But I think a large proportion of people who hold apparently genuine beliefs… are just malleable and going along to get along because they’re generally agreeable people and that’s what agreeable people do. That contingent will change beliefs as soon as the prevailing attitudes contradict theirs. They can’t handle being disliked.
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DEI wasn’t forced on universities. People willingly and happily embraced it. This means it won’t be forced out either. People will have to be persuaded.
There won’t be a magic pill. The Left put decades of work into making DEI wanted. We’ll have to put as much work into destroying its prestige.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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