People say I shouldn’t be angry at colleagues for the impending elimination of departments and programs. I’m trying very hard to not be angry. I pray, I meditate. It’s very unpleasant to be choking with rage at your own colleagues. I’d so much rather detest only the administration.
But when I raised the question of how many DEI workers will be fired together with tenured professors, I was screamed down by tenured professors, some of whom are getting fired for sure. When I questioned how come there is money to hire DEI specialists from Washington, DC but no money to teach languages, colleagues pretended to be offended on behalf of DEI specialists. We are doing a 3-month DEI course with the DC specialists. I don’t want to imagine how much this costs because it’s not just the workshop but software to measure how thoroughly we are DEI-ed, the analysis of the testing, additional workshops to correct the insufficient DEI-ing of the remaining faculty, and so on. The only – literally the only one – person questioning this is me. Everybody else seems very sincerely to believe that this a fantastic way to spend money. Maybe they are faking but it changes nothing. Nobody is asking these questions openly and I’m getting tired of being the only person who cares.
Yesterday, when our Dean was announcing additional details about the firings, a professor who’s getting fired with 90% certainty interrupted. “This is because of Trump, right?” she said hopefully. “This wouldn’t be happening if he wasn’t in the White House, right?”
Even the Dean was taken aback with the ease of this extraordinary self-sabotage.
How is one supposed not to be angry at all this?
Clarissa's Blog 
Clarissa, watching this from France, it seems to me that your colleagues are frightened and desperate, hence their attitude, which means “Don’t fire me! I am a good person, I support DEI!”
I read somewhere that only 8% of Americans support wokism/DEI. Your colleagues will get no sympathy from the 92%. When Biden purged the military of Trump supporters in 1921, what did they say?
LikeLike
I don’t see fear. I see upbeat, cheerful indifference. I can identify fear but this isn’t it.
LikeLike
“upbeat, cheerful indifference”
They’re still fighting the good fight (in their view) and if losing their jobs is part of sticking it to the man (Trump)… then they’re okay with that.
Best guess I have…. don’t ask me _how_ losing their jobs is sticking it to Trump but they clearly want to link the two.
Maybe their thoughts are roughly: “Trump can make executive orders against DEI but as long as I support it… Vive la revolution!”
LikeLike
You are justified in your anger. How you channel that anger will make all the difference. You have legitimate points. Can you frame them in the form of a question to get people thinking? It seems many of your colleagues are not using their critical thinking capabilities. Or are they not able to use critical thinking skills? Have they truly been brainwashed by the DEI propaganda?
I wish share with you that in past years (2020 and before), I would try to argue about DEI initiatives and quickly found myself being labeled a racist.
Who are the people making these decisions at the college? Is it a board? Or individuals governing bodies? Is there anyone to appeal to? Just curious.
LikeLike