Category Archives: DEI

Anti-Asian Discrimination is Condoned in Fairfax County

Posted on July 9, 2023 by | 30 comments

by Carl Noller

People have been coming to America for centuries, many of them drawn by the opportunities this country offered. It was less who you knew or who you could bribe and more what you knew. Martin Luther King may have put it best when he encouraged us to judge others by the content of character, rather than skin color. Recently, however, Democrats have been telling us that this is all wrong — that race is the critical factor. Diversity, as a social goal, trumps all others.

We have been electing Democrats in recent years, and, not surprisingly, they have begun implementing that vision, which inflames racial tensions. This can be seen very clearly with the changes in admissions criteria at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, ranked the best high school in the nation. The School Board deemed the Fairfax County high school too Asian. The student body needed to be more “diverse,” more reflective of the community. The School Board engineered this under a revised admissions process, which eliminated the standardized admissions test, eliminated the $100 application fee, and reserved seats in the freshman class for the top 1.5 percent of applicants from every middle school in the county. The effect was noticeable and will increase over the next three classes before leveling off, as those chosen under the old rules graduate.

Continue reading →

30 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Culture wars, DEI, Education (K-12), Elections, Uncategorized

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Setting the Stage for the Great Race-in-Admissions Debate

Posted on July 1, 2023 by | 115 comments

Should admissions be color blind?

by James A. Bacon

People have been asking me what I think about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting colleges and universities from using race as a specific basis for admitting students. I’m not a legal scholar, so I won’t offer any opinions on the legal or constitutional merits of the decision. I speak as a citizen.

My sense is that the Court has made a huge step forward in the generations-long campaign to build a color-blind society. If you share the ideal that a man should be judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin, you will applaud the ruling regardless of its legalities. And if you believe that the condition of Blacks and Hispanics can be elevated in American society only through preferential treatment of their race and ethnicity, you will see it as a blow in furtherance of White supremacy.

The immediate impact will be to generate waves of punditry on how colleges and universities should implement the ruling — or evade it. Prevailing commentary seems to hold that most university administrators will “take a hard look” at their admissions policies, then tweak them to accomplish what they want — higher percentages of Blacks and Hispanics — without triggering lawsuits.

That certainly seems to be the case at the University of Virginia, where President Jim Ryan and Provost Ian Baucom have said in a statement to the university community that they will follow the law but also “continue to do everything within our legal authority to recruit and admit a class of students who are diverse across every possible dimension and to make every student feel welcome and included here at UVA.” Continue reading →

115 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, DEI, Education (higher ed), Race and race relations

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A Simple Statement of Fact about the Public Schools

Posted on June 30, 2023 by | 24 comments

by James C. Sherlock

I know. Schools. Again.

But Virginia’s schools have been shown to be getting worse faster than those of other states.

Perhaps we should do something.

Read the National Assessment Board’s press release from June 21st. One paragraph drew my attention:

The LTT assessments in reading and math measure fundamental skills among nationally representative, age-based cohorts and have been administered since 1971 and 1973, respectively.

Students were generally making progress until 2012, when scores started declining.

Scores took a sharp downturn during the pandemic. Today, the average score for 13-year-olds on the LTT reading assessment is about where it was in 1971.

Despite the large decline in math, the average score in 2023 remains higher than in 1973.

Declining since 2012 nationwide.

Virginia’s have been declining since 2017. In a hurry.

Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, DEI, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Law enforcement

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Virginia: Look West To See What’s Coming

Posted on June 29, 2023 by | 108 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Reason #5,692 not to vote for ANY Democrats running for the General Assembly this fall:

We all know that Virginia’s leftists in Richmond yearn for our lovely commonwealth to be more like California. When last they controlled the state legislature these nuts directly tethered our energy policies to that “progressive” utopia.

It won’t stop there, so let’s see what else is on its way from the West Coast.

Looky here! It’s Assembly Bill 665, working its way through the legislature. When this passes — and it’s just wacky enough to win approval — it would essentially emancipate some 12-year-olds, allowing them to seek mental health care without their parents’ approval. Continue reading →

108 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Culture wars, DEI, Elections, General Assembly, Parental Rights, Uncategorized

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VMI’s DEI Chief Resigns — “Vitriolic” VMI Critics Implicated

Posted on June 6, 2023 by | 54 comments

Jamica Love

by James A. Bacon

Virginia Military Institute’s chief diversity officer, Jamica Love, has resigned nearly two years after taking on the job of implementing Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at the military institute.

While Superintendent Cedric T. Wins noted that Love served with distinction and professionalism, VMI gave no reason for her resignation. She has issued no statement and turned down an interview request.

My purpose in writing about Love’s resignation is not to highlight her role in the ongoing controversy over DEI at VMI — my sense is that she did exactly what was expected of her — but to explore how The Washington Post has framed her departure. Writer Ian Shapira takes the opportunity once again to recite the litany of racism allegations against VMI and cast the controversy as a good guys/bad guys melodrama with the black hats worn by “a political action committee of mostly White conservative graduates called The Spirit of VMI.” Continue reading →

54 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, DEI, Education (higher ed), Media

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Back in Vogue at UVa: Viewpoint Diversity

Posted on June 4, 2023 by | 38 comments

Douglas Wetmore

by James A. Bacon

The University of Virginia leadership normally keeps its Board of Visitors meetings running on such a tightly scripted schedule that board members rarely get an opportunity to engage in free-wheeling discussion. But Rector Whitt Clement and President Jim Ryan made an exception Friday during the board’s June meeting: they set aside nearly an hour to talk about Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

Board member Douglas Wetmore, a Richmond businessman appointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin, set the tone as soon as the discussion began. On paper the administration values “viewpoint diversity” along with demographic and other forms of diversity, he noted. But unlike the meticulous statistics it compiles on the racial and gender breakdown of students, faculty, and staff, he said, the university does not track viewpoint diversity at all.

“We want a wide range of competing ideas,” Wetmore said. “One hundred percent of statistics are related to race and gender. I haven’t seen one reflecting viewpoint diversity,” he said.

While a few board members suggested that viewpoint diversity was not a serious issue at UVa, the ensuing discussion revolved mainly around how to define viewpoint diversity, how much of such diversity was desirable, and how to measure it while respecting individuals’ right to privacy.

The Board conversation was unprecedented at UVa, where the DEI bureaucracy dedicated to advancing the interests of “marginalized” minorities has grown to 55 employees by the university’s own count. Continue reading →

38 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, DEI, Education (higher ed), Individual liberties

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UVa’s Undergraduate Female/Male Demographics vs. Diversity, Equity and Federal Law

Posted on June 3, 2023 by | 55 comments

UVa President Jim Ryan

by James C. Sherlock

The University of Virginia measures its diversity efforts by statistics. We’ll hold them to their own standards.

That seems only equitable.

President Ryan has said that the demographic composition of students is easy to measure. The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office, proving him right, proudly displays a Diversity Dashboard.

All eyes, including their own, go to race.

But we’ll look at sex. And we’ll remember the requirements of Title IX of the 1972 Federal Education Amendments.

no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

It is demonstrable statistically that males are woefully underrepresented in the undergraduate population of the University of Virginia at rates inexplicable by chance.

We will examine as potential root causes the skewed demographics of:

  • the undergraduate student population on the one hand; and
  • the Undergraduate Admissions Office and Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights on the other.

And then we will see if we can identify any other potential causes of those discrepancies.

It won’t go well. Continue reading →

55 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Culture wars, DEI, Demographics, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Federal, Scandals

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UVa President Ryan Has “No Idea.” Golly Gee.

Posted on June 2, 2023 by | 34 comments

by James C. Sherlock

As a follow-up to yesterday’s story on the slide show for the UVa Board of Visitors on DEI at the University, I think it only fair to offer President Ryan’s preamble to that presentation.

To summarize:

  • He cannot imagine what all the fuss is about; but
  • He assures that DEI efforts at UVa are misconstrued by critics, who he divides into two camps:
    1. those who support the goals of DEI “but are concerned about overreach threatening academic freedoms or seem designed to enforce ideological conformity”; and
    2. “one that asserts that the programs are being used to promote a stringently liberal, if not radical agenda – one that stands in opposition to merit and excellence and unfairly privileges certain groups over others.”
  • He asserts that any fair criticisms will be taken seriously; and
  • He is trying to create a level playing field.

He asserts that:

We ought to define the terms that comprise DEI; assess and resolve instances where DEI efforts are in potential conflict with other core values; and continually examine what is working and what is not and adjust accordingly.

He then proceeds to define the terms diversity, equity and inclusion in a clear attempt to push critics of his DEI program, expanded enormously in a progressive attempt to “never let a crisis go to waste” in 2020, to the edges of reasoned debate.

He professes he has “no idea where this notion” (that equity means equal outcomes) came from. This from a man whose own DEI bureaucracy publishes only statistical outcomes.

“No idea.”

I call this the “golly gee” approach. “Golly gee” indicates surprise, excitement or both from an innocent in the ways of the world.

Seriously?  Spare us. Continue reading →

34 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Culture wars, DEI, Education (higher ed), First Amendment

Equity: Equal Outcomes or Equal Opportunity?

Posted on May 31, 2023 by | 152 comments

Photo credit: Richmond.com

by James A. Bacon

University of Virginia President Jim Ryan begs to differ with critics of “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.” The term “equity” has become a lightning rod in the debate over DEI, he writes in an essay recently published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Somehow, he muses, people got the idea that equity means “equal outcomes” as opposed to “equal opportunity.”

“I have no idea where this idea came from, but it ought to be rejected out of hand,” he says. “I know of no college that assures equal outcomes.”

Where, oh where, could critics of UVa’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion policies have gotten the idea that equity stands for equal outcomes?

Perhaps they got it from “Audacious Future: Commitment Required,” which summarized the 2020 findings of UVa’s Racial Equity Task Force, established by Ryan. The document was endorsed by the Board of Visitors, and never has Ryan, the Board, or anyone else in authority at UVa distanced themselves from its goals and objectives.

The task force report makes abundantly clear what “equity” means to its authors (my bold face): Continue reading →

152 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, DEI

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Martin Brown Is Absolutely Correct: To Achieve Real Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, “DEI” Must Die

Posted on May 25, 2023 by | 34 comments

by J. Kennerly Davis

Martin Brown, a senior aide to Governor Glenn Youngkin, created quite a stir when he told an audience at the Virginia Military Institute that “DEI is dead.” Democrats in politics and the media jumped on the remark, and the Governor’s support of Brown, to assert that the Youngkin administration is hostile to policies and programs that foster diversity, equity, and inclusion. The partisan criticism is baseless. Martin Brown is correct. For Virginia to effectively foster diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI must die.  

Every system of government is based upon an idea, a fundamental concept for its organization and operation, a proposition. Most times, the idea has been small, shabby, uninspiring, and authoritarian. Ultimate authority has been held by a ruling class. The rights of individuals have been understood to be nothing more than malleable artifacts, with their scope and substance and tenure entirely dependent upon the changeable determinations and dispensations of the ruling class.

But sometimes, the idea for a system of government is a grand one, exceptional, inspiring, revolutionary. The idea of America is a grand idea: the revolutionary proposition that all persons are created equal, endowed by their Creator with inherent dignity and unalienable rights; the revolutionary proposition that the only rightful purpose of government, the legitimizing purpose, is to recognize, respect, and protect the shared sacred humanity, inherent dignity, and natural rights of the people;  the revolutionary proposition that the people shall rule, and each shall be able to think and speak and worship and associate freely; the revolutionary proposition that a richly diverse people can form a strongly united nation, e pluribus unum. That is a grand idea!

For more than a hundred years, the regressive authoritarians who wrongly style themselves “progressive” have worked to undermine the grand idea of America and replace it with their own very small idea: the counterrevolutionary proposition that an elitist ruling class of credentialed technocrats, infallible “experts,” should exercise unrestrained administrative power to define the rights, allocate the resources, and direct the affairs of the supposedly unenlightened masses under their paternalistic supervision. Continue reading →

34 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Culture wars, DEI, Democracy and Western Civilization, Ethics, Individual liberties, Politics, Race and race relations, Scandals

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The Virginia NAACP Has Proven Itself an Obstacle to Improving the Educations of Black Children in Virginia Public Schools

Posted on May 23, 2023 by | 45 comments

Courtesy Northern Virginia Black Chamber of Commerce

by James C. Sherlock

I just read that the NAACP has issued a warning against traveling to Florida.

Which must have come as a surprise to the 3.5 million Black citizens of that state.

It did not surprise the NAACP board of directors chairman Leon W. Russell, who lives in the Tampa area. His defense: “We haven’t told anybody to leave.”

I decided to check the Virginia NAACP agenda for education.

I checked to see what they advocate to change the lives of the tens of thousands of Virginia Black public school students who can neither read nor perform math at grade level. Some of these public schools in inner cities have not provided a basic education to Black students for generations.

Certainly the NAACP must be pushing hard for basic changes. Not just pressing for more funding, but also for measures to ensure that children go to school and giving parents alternatives to schools that have failed them and their children.

Right?

Wrong. Continue reading →

45 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Children and families, Culture wars, DEI, Education (K-12), Entrepreneurialism, Excellence and grace

Which of These Persons at UVa Oversees the Educational Development of the Rest?

Posted on May 20, 2023 by | 11 comments

by James C. Sherlock

In order to illustrate the truly insulting nature of the DEI program at the University of Virginia, I offer the following quiz.

See if you can pick out the person pictured who:

directs a range of educational programming focused on educational development for staff, faculty and students.

Nana Last, Professor of Architecture

Ira C. Harris, Professor, McIntyre School of Commerce

Sankaran Venkataraman, Professor, Darden School of Business

Sandhya Dwarkadas, Professor and Chair Department of Computer Science

Tisha Hayes, Professor of Education

Trinh Thuan, Professor Emeritus, Department of Astronomy

Kelsey Johnson Professor of Astronomy

Haibo Dong Professor Aerospace Engineering

Sly Mata, Director of Diversity Education, Division for DEI

Nicole Thorne Jenkins, Dean, McIntyre School of Commerce

Devin K. Harris, Professor of Engineering

Mool C. Gupta, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Tomonari Furukawa, Professor of Engineering

Allan Tsung M.D., Professor and Chair Department of Surgery, Medical School

Sallie Keller, Professor of Data Science

Harsha Chelliah, Professor School of Engineering

 

 

 

 

 


Bottom line.  Good guess.

There is every evidence that Mr. Mata is a fine man. His biography is inspiring.

But the people pictured above who are not Mr. Mata excelled and earned their plaudits and appointments before there was a UVa Division for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).  Even before James Ryan was President. Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Culture wars, DEI, Education (higher ed), First Amendment, Freedom, Marxism, Race and race relations