The Impact of DEI on College Campuses

My testimony before Congress

Mar 09, 2024

Cross-post from Journal of Free Black Thought

Currently, I am working on a piece of writing describing the approach to DEI that my college has been experimenting with. As the chair of the Faculty Development Committee, I have been working with the Dean of Academic Affairs and outside facilitators to design and implement a non-ideological “invitational approach” to DEI that I hope can provide a model that is not only less divisive but that can build fair, just, and harmonious working relationships in schools, colleges, and workplaces. In the meantime, we need to listen to voices such as Dr. Erec S. Smith, the President of Free Black Thought. The alarm he is raising about Critical Social Justice influenced DEI in this Congressional testimony must be heeded. People are getting hurt and student learning is being severely compromised. -

Steven James Lawrence

DEI

THE IMPACT OF DEI ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

My testimony before Congress

Erec Smith

Editors’ note: On March 7, 2024, FBT President Erec Smith testified before Congress about DEI in higher education in an address to the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development. We present a transcript of his remarks, with hyperlinks, below. A video of his remarks is available here.

Chairman Owens, ranking and distinguished members of the Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee, my name is Erec Smith and I am a research fellow at the Cato Institute. Thank you for giving me a platform to speak on the issue of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education. I have been faculty, I have been a writing program director, and I’ve even been a diversity officer.

DEI is built upon a foundation whose very mission is to perpetuate racism.

Contemporary DEI is not an extension of the Civil Rights Movement. It is undergirded by a quasi-Marxist ideology called Critical Social Justice. The primary tenet of Critical Social Justice is this: “The question is not ‘did racism take place?’ but rather ‘how did racism manifest in that situation?’” So, according to Critical Social Justice, racism is always already taking place. There is no need to think for oneself; the narrative—one of perpetual oppression—does the thinking for you.

Another underlying concept of Critical Social Justice is prescriptive racism: the prescribing of certain values, attitudes, and behaviors onto someone based on race. To shirk these values, attitudes, and behaviors is to be inauthentic, to not be a true member of a particular racial group.

Questioning of this ideology is considered proof of your racism.

I have many stories to tell, but I will share one that illustrates these concepts and the general absurdity of Critical Social Justice.

A prominent figure in my field, which is Rhetoric and Composition, wrote a mass email requesting that people boycott an academic organization because he and others experienced racism during a committee meeting.

However, neither he nor anyone else would actually explain what happened. I wasn’t going to boycott an influential academic organization based on incomplete information, so I asked a simple question: What happened? For this I was vilified by colleagues of all colors and accused of perpetuating white supremacy. Merely asking the question—“what happened?”—was considered a form of racism. You see here that an accusation of racism cannot be questioned; remember, “The question is not ‘did racism take place?’ but rather ‘how did racism manifest in that situation?’”

Another story involves two professors who always allow their black students to write in black vernacular (or African American Vernacular; some people say “Ebonics”). However, the students’ refusal to do so, because they were there to learn standardized English, was seen by these professors as a form self-hatred and internalized racism.

A prominent figure in my field, who is a self-proclaimed Marxist, went as far as to say these students were being “selfish” and “immature” for wanting to write in standardized English because that would just perpetuate a status quo of whiteness. As black students who wanted to write in standard English, they shirked the attitudes and values those professors prescribed to them as black students. Their desire to write in standard English was treated like a kind of pathology.

Whenever I hear stories like this, I always say the same thing to myself: Thank God these weren’t my professors when I was in college. I would have been steeped in negative emotionality and learned helplessness. If I had hopes and dreams, I would not have the courage to chase them.

I know some people out there are trying to do DEI in a way that does not assume racism at all times, does not prescribe behavior based on race, and does not shirk critical thinking to abide by a narrative. But those doing DEI undergirded by Critical Social Justice—and there are many—are not fighting racism. They are perpetuating racism.

I don’t know if you’ve all noticed yet, but I’m black and I’m against DEI. Why? Because I really like being black. And this ideology is infantilizing, it is anti-intellectual, and since I am a mature intellectual person, it doesn’t align with me. I am too good for contemporary DEI, and so are many others.

I hope we can have a good conversation today. Thank you.

Erec Smith is a research fellow at the Cato Institute, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania, a co-founder of Free Black Thought, and a co-editor of the Journal of Free Black Thought. He has been a Writing Fellow for Heterodox Academy and a Senior Fellow for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. His scholarly and extra-scholarly research focuses on the rhetorics of anti-racist activism, theory, and pedagogy. His third book, A Critique of Anti-racism in Rhetoric and Composition: The Semblance of Empowerment, appeared in 2019, and his fourth book, The Lure of Disempowerment: Reclaiming Agency in the Age of CRT, appeared in 2022. Follow him and Free Black Thought on Twitter/X.