In case you missed it, laws don’t seem to matter much anymore.
President Joe Biden continues to snub the Supreme Court’s ruling against student loan forgiveness. House Speaker Mike Johnson seems totally okay with the breach of Americans’ privacy without a Constitutionally demanded warrant.
And, in Texas, universities are reportedly skirting a law signed by Governor Greg Abbott in 2023 that bans DEI on college campuses.
According to Fox News Digital, “Texas A&M University responded to a state law banning diversity, equity and inclusion on college campuses by giving the department head a raise before reassigning her and other employees to other departments. It sparked concerns schools are attempting to further ’embed’ the controversial practice at Texas universities despite the law.”
In the months following Abbott’s June 2023 DEI ban, “documents obtained by Fox News Digital show Texas A&M reassigned several DEI employees to other departments, including the vice president of the program, who received a 10% raise, a new position and a nine-month paid leave,” the outlet reports. “A document obtained through a FOIA request showed that, in August 2023, Annie McGowan, vice president for diversity, was given ‘a 5% salary increase in recognition of your performance’ and ‘to address equity issues you will receive an additional 5%.’”
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb is chairman of Do No Harm, an organization that, according to its website, “represents physicians, nurses, medical students, patients, and policymakers focused on keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice.”
He warns that Texas A&M is “blatantly ignoring” Texas law.
GOP lawmakers seek to ban DEI in medical schools: ‘No place for discrimination’ https://t.co/tQXOWouqxs via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) March 20, 2024
“The leadership at Texas A&M are doubling down on their fealty to DEI ideology instead of directing resources to programs that promote academic excellence,” Goldfarb told Fox News Digital. “Giving the former DEI head a raise explicitly on the basis of so-called equity and redistributing staff in the disbanded DEI department to other administrative jobs is an attempt to embed DEI into every department, blatantly ignoring the Texas law passed to ban such practices.
“This ideology is corrosive to the mission of and trust in our institutions of higher education,” he stated. “It must end.”
In September 2023, Texas A&M President Mark A. Welsh made clear his intent to defy the law.
“Just to be clear,” he wrote, “at Texas A&M, we will continue to maintain a welcoming environment for all, and we will continue to appreciate, respect and harness the unique perspectives each of you bring to this institution.”
“Diversity of thought is a cornerstone of great universities,” he continued, “and, quite frankly, it’s a key ingredient to our continued success. Implementation of S.B. 17 will not change that.”
“Texas universities began laying off employees from DEI departments in response to the bill, and Republican State Sen. Brandon Creighton, who wrote the bill, recently warned state colleges should take the legislation ‘very seriously’ and not try to skirt it with sneaky workarounds or they will face financial penalties,” Fox News Digital reports.
“A Texas A&M University spokesperson told Fox News Digital 5% of the raise for McGowan was a ‘standard merit increase for her work over the previous year’ and the other 5% was ‘a salary adjustment granted by the former president to ensure fairness and parity relative to her peers within the school where she teaches,’” according to the outlet. “The spokesperson said the pay bumps were not related to DEI practices.”
Charlamagne tha God admits that DEI is ‘mostly garbage’ https://t.co/hp7kD0h7Md via @BIZPACReview
— BPR based (@DumpstrFireNews) April 5, 2024
Meanwhile, Speech First, a group advocating for First Amendment rights on US campuses, found that “165 of 248 selected institutions — from American University to Williams College — mandate DEI-related classes to meet general education requirements,” according to the New York Post.
An executive summary of the 33-page report states that the DEI classes “place students into identitarian groupings based on racial, sexual, and political characteristics to create a rigid framework amongst students where they only see each other as either the ‘oppressor’ or the ‘oppressed.’”
“[T]his erosion of merit-based principles and build-up of anti-American sentiment has had detrimental impacts on the quality of education and has fostered an environment where conservative voices are systematically marginalized, discredited, and silenced,” the report found.
“As DEI departments have grown on campuses, we have seen an increase in campus policies that regulate, monitor, and restrict student speech,” it revealed. “The inquiry revealed that students are subjected to courses advocating far-left ideological perspectives and pushing far-left political advocacy.”
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Author: Melissa Fine
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