Category: 9th & Congress

A lot of professors at the University of Texas at Austin were really angry when UT President Jay Hartzell announced he was firing 49 people last month who were associated with so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs. Then, after Hartzell followed up a warning to pro-Hamas protesters with a call to the State Police to stop the student “occupation” of campus, the loudest faction of the learned elite on the 40 Acres got out the torches and pitchforks.

657 of them signed a letter saying they have “no confidence” in the UT President and over 800 graduate students signed a letter calling on him to resign. To demonstrate their intellectual acuity, many of them chanted “Hartzell, Hartzell, you’re a clown, we demand that you step down.”

The angry professors had already demanded that all the DEI officers and faculty who were fired be reinstated. Now they are demanding that criminal charges “against students and others” be dropped and that no student face disciplinary action for breaking campus rules for protests.

The professors said, “This is a time for the University to re-establish its reputation as an institution that respects free speech, academic freedom, shared governance, due process, and its own students and faculty.”

But polling released earlier this week by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) makes it clear that a large majority of Texans feel pretty good about the new reputation the University of Texas established by taking a “no nonsense” approach to campus protests.

The ACTA poll, conducted by Texas pollster Mike Baselice, found that 69% of Texans support Hartzell’s “calling in state troopers to arrest and remove students who were violating campus regulations.”

The poll found that the more people knew about the UT protests, the more they supported Hartzell’s action, with support reaching 75% among those who had been closely or even somewhat closely following the news on the protests.

Support for Hartzell did not vary much by age and the gender gap is relatively small – 71% of men supported Hartzell’s action, while 66% of women do, along with majorities of Anglos, Blacks and Hispanics. There’s also no statistical difference in support between college graduates and non-college graduates.

On top of that, 70% of Texans do not believe the UT President should be fired, and there is no gender gap — both 70% of men and women want him to keep his job. There’s also not much statistical difference between college grads and non-college grads, where support for the UT President hovers at 70%.

Media reports echo many in the faculty who insist Hartzell is caving to pressure from Republican legislators and Governor Greg Abbott, both in calling in the state police and firing the DEI officers.

Chelsea Collier, a doctoral student at UT told the Washington Post that “Gov. Abbott is taking a very political opportunity to enforce his agenda, a very right-wing agenda focused on control, not on governance.”

But despite what the UT academics think (and what you see in Texas media) Hartzell has a mandate from a strong majority of Texans including Democrats, Republicans and Independents to keep doing what he is doing to keep the UT campus safe.

Texans also support Hartzell’s clear and decisive action in removing dozens of DEI staffers at UT. Polling conducted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation in early April found that Texans don’t support DEI policies. 68% believe that all students should be treated the same at Texas universities without special programs for Black, Hispanic and Gay students. Only 25% believed special programs should be created for those students to help them fit in and succeed in college. This includes half of African Americans and 63% of Hispanics.

The protesters’ demand that UT divest from companies that do business with Israel was doomed from the start. Texas already has strong laws that prohibit anti-Israeli investment by state agencies and odds are good that legislators will strengthen those laws to make sure academics can’t find a loophole.

It is tragic that American universities across the country – propelled by foggy thinking rooted in DEI – are rioting day after day in support of a terrorist regime that is sacrificing the lives of their own people in order to sway world opinion. Not satisfied with peaceful protests, they break encampment rules and destroy public property while waving Palestinian flags and shouting pro-Hamas slogans. The students don’t appear to see the irony in their championing the masters of genocide – a regime whose only mission is to kill Jews.

There is some comfort in the Lone Star State as we watch this going down around the country. Texas, and the leadership at UT, didn’t give an inch to those who believe supporting terrorism allows them to break the rules.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

Conservatives weren’t surprised by National Public Radio (NPR) Senior Editor Uri Berliner’s recent whistle-blowing account showing how NPR is actively involved in pushing a progressive agenda. Berliner detailed how the taxpayer-funded news outlet simply stopped asking questions and instead took a partisan side on most issues. During the pandemic, NPR declared that to suggest that COVID-19 might have started as a lab leak was racist, so it didn’t interview anyone who believed what finally was found to be true—COVID-19 most likely originated in a lab.

NPR did not cover reports that Hunter Biden’s laptop was anything other than Russian misinformation because, as one of his colleagues told Berliner, “it would help Trump.”

And in 2020, after the George Floyd murder, Berliner noted that rather than investigating charges made by Black Lives Matter that so called “systemic racism” drives every aspect of American life, NPR simply accepted the BLM premise as a given and reported on everything from law enforcement to housing to the economy with the assumption that virtually everything is rooted in “systemic racism.”

Such directives are hardly limited to NPR. Systemic racism in higher education has never been questioned by the Texas press, and coverage of Senate Bill 17, the DEI ban, has been predicated on an NPR-like “no questions asked” directive from the beginning.

Immediately after the bill went into effect, the Austin American Statesman’s overview of the implementation allowed the opponents of the bill to define the issue—the Texas House Democratic Caucus, the Senate Democratic Caucus, the NAACP, the Mexican American Legal Caucus, and LGBTQIA+ all agreed that the lack of resources for DEI initiatives creates “a void in addressing systemic inequalities and fostering an inclusive learning environment for all students.” These advocates did not say how DEI addresses such inequalities, and the reporter didn’t ask.

At the end of the news report, she includes a 7-month-old statement from the author of the bill, Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe:

“With this bold, forward-thinking legislation to eliminate DEI programs, Texas is leading the nation, and ensuring our campuses return to focusing on the strength of diversity and promoting a merit-based approach where individuals are judged on their qualifications, skills, and contributions. What sets SB 17 apart from other proposals is that the legislation delivers strong enforcement with mandates to return Texas colleges and universities to their core mission—educate and innovate.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, as Creighton’s statement challenges everyone else who is quoted in the Statesman’s news report—but the reporter doesn’t unpack it.

That’s because she’s following another directive from the NPR playbook. In addition to pursuing stories that focus on “racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse [and] Israel doing something bad,” reporters were directed to put out stories that show “the dire threat of GOP policies” (my italics).

The “Dire Threat of GOP Policies”

Throughout the debate, passage and implementation of the DEI ban in Texas, the press has portrayed it as a malicious Republican initiative.

After the firing of DEI employees at UT, the Texas Tribune makes it clear Republicans are to blame:

“Republicans have become increasingly critical of the culture at higher education institutions. [UT President Jay] Hartzell and other university leaders must balance the concerns of the students and faculty who breathe life into their campuses, and Republican leaders that provide critical funding that keep the lights on.”

An Austin American Statesman editorial screams: “The Harsh Consequences of The Texas GOP fervor to crush DEI.” It follows a previous editorial calling the anti-DEI ban “a Republican war on academic freedom” and still another decrying Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s “attack on diversity politics.”

The opening line of a Houston Chronicle story reads, “as Republicans attack diversity, equity and inclusion programs on college campuses…” while the Dallas Morning News makes the partisan divide clear in a February news story noting that DEI bans similar to the Texas law are popping up in dozens of states, while Democrats are standing up against them.

Despite the unshakeable fidelity of the Texas press to the narrative, support for the DEI ban is not particularly partisan. The Texas Public Policy Foundation conducted a statewide survey earlier this month asking voters if Texas universities “should create special programs for black, Hispanic and gay students to help them fit in and succeed in college” or if “all students should be treated the same at Texas universities without special programs for black, Hispanic and gay students.” Almost 70% of voters responded that all students should be treated the same, regardless of race or sexual preference. That included 51% of African Americans, 63% of Hispanics and 73% of Anglos.

The Rise of Feelings Over Facts  

When Berliner’s boss, Kathleen Maher, responded to the allegations of bias at NPR, she never said he was wrong. Instead, she said he had hurt everyone’s feelings with his “disrespectful” and “hurtful” comments. The elevation of the relevance of feelings over facts is one of the most frightening things that is happening in journalism today, and Texas media coverage of DEI is riddled with it.

A Texas Public Radio story on the firings at UT reported a student was “devastated” and “felt pretty betrayed” by the actions following the DEI ban. Again, the story provides no clue about why this student’s feelings were newsworthy.

Instead of digging into the facts of DEI programs, some news outlets like KVUE simply found a couple students who said they were sad DEI offices were closing and reported that. One student inexplicably said, “This is just [the state of] Texas … Texas does not want us here. Texas has never wanted us here.”

That is a very strong allegation, but we have no idea what she’s referring to since the reporter asked no follow-up questions.

KXAN reported the feelings of two journalism students at UT who were distraught about losing funding for their student group. One student said she came to UT “with a certain expectation of being, you know, supported and validated and to have spaces where we can be like, fully loved, right?” It is not clear whether that is a realistic expectation for college, even among Generation Z.

The Texas Tribune called UT’s Multicultural Center the “beloved” Multicultural Center so often in news reports that when a national outlet picked up the story they also used the “beloved” adjective before the building’s name. The question “beloved by whom” was not answered by either outlet.

Some outlets garbled hard facts as well as feelings. KVUE reported it was told over a thousand people had protested the firings at UT, but outlets that actually covered the protest gave 200 as the crowd count. For perspective, there are about 51,000 students at UT Austin. The number of people who were let go was also a moving target. News reports ranged from over 40 to almost 60 in a dozen news reports. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) at UT published a list of 62 people, but so far no media outlet as taken the trouble to follow-it up.

The Houston Chronicle pulled in its data team to report that minorities and women were most impacted by the anti-DEI program layoffs at the UT: “Black staffers were disproportionately affected, making up nearly a third of the cuts while accounting for just 7% of the total university staff, excluding tenured faculty. Roughly three-fourths of the employees let go were women, though they make up just 55% of the total staff.”

The Houston Chronicle doesn’t say why it used the official number of 49 from UT instead of the list of 62 of those laid off from AAUP at UT.  It also failed to ask any questions about these numbers. For starters, if only 7% of UT staff are black, how many of them are working in DEI programs? If the answer is most of them, isn’t that a red flag that should be addressed? Similarly, if over half the staffers at UT are women, how many of them are relegated to DEI programs, compared to other departments at the university? Also, a quick look at UT’s website from last year indicates that at least 150 people were working on DEI efforts. Why were only 49 (or 62) of them fired?

Of course, those questions just dance around the big one—why has black enrollment continued to stagnate at under 5% at UT despite millions invested in DEI?

Creighton will hold hearings with the leadership of the state’s universities next month where he will undoubtedly ask for answers to some of these questions, although it is not likely the media will report them. Instead, you can bet reporters will characterize the hearings as one more example of the “dire threat of Republican policies.”

Texans of all races oppose DEI on Texas campuses because they understand it is not the evolution of racial integration or the civil rights movement. The ideology of DEI refutes those constructive movements as “oppressive.” DEI’s goal is re-segregation—not equal treatment under the law, but the creation of what’s been called “hyper-race consciousness” that fuels division and distrust. To see exactly how absurd this “hyper race consciousness” looks in action, note that a leader of the opposition to the DEI ban heads what is called the UT Austin’s Queer Trans Black Indigenous People of Color Agency. It’s not clear what kind of “agency.” The reporter didn’t ask.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

Senate Education Chairman Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, has alerted Texas universities that he will be calling them to the Capitol in May to provide an update on their progress in ridding Texas campuses of DEI, as required by Senate Bill 17. With the support of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Creighton wrote the strongest anti-DEI legislation in the nation and his letter reminds university leaders that failure to comply with the law could ultimately affect their funding.

To be clear on what Sen. Creighton is talking about, DEI is the acronym for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” a deceptively named race-based ideology that divides people into two groups—oppressors, who are mostly white people, although increasingly Jews and Asians are included in the oppressor group, and victims, who are African American, Hispanic or gay. Sometimes women are included in the victim group, though rarely white women. Victims also include those who are suffering from gender dysphoria.

DEI advocates have been working for over a decade to re-segregate university campuses in Texas and across the country so “victims” aren’t required to interact with “oppressors” in classes and activities. Many Texas universities have segregated graduations for Black students and Hispanic students. “Lavender graduations” are held for gay students.

Arguing in favor of DEI programs, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, where only 5.5 percent of students are African-American despite two decades of DEI programs, said, “I don’t feel like I go to a (predominately white institution) because I’m always around my Black friends.”

Imagine if a white student boasted, “I don’t feel like I go to a racially integrated university because I only hang out with my white friends.”

There has been massive blowback on Texas campuses following the passage of Senate Bill 17. The Austin-American Statesman reported that both students and faculty are rattled, exhausted and confused. DEI has infiltrated every aspect of university life because it seems administrators have put forward almost anything in the name of DEI without assessing the impact on students and its relevance to the educational mission of the academic institution.

For example, in a move that harkens back to the “Whites Only” signs before the Civil Rights Act, in the name of DEI, at least one flagship university established separate study rooms in the library for only LGBTQ students. When the library was crowded, other students were required to sit on the floor whether the separate study rooms had people in them or not.

Students at Texas A&M lamented that when the so-called “Pride Center” closed down there would be no place for women students to get binders to smash down their breasts so they looked like men. But administrators at the University of Texas at Dallas bragged that they were able to keep their “transition closet” open to provide cross-dressing outfits and supplies for students who believe they are the other gender. The officials insist they are now using “transition” as a broader term.

When the University of Texas announced that it would change the name of the Gender and Sexuality Center to the “Women’s Community Center,” it stated its mission was to provide “a place for Longhorns of all genders to connect, find resources, and get support around experiences of intersectionality, community, and gender solidarity.”

“Longhorns of all genders?” The wacky notion that there are Longhorns who are some gender other than male or female, like the evil idea that it is good for black students to only hang out with other black students, are two of the prime directives of DEI that permeate campus culture. Instilling these beliefs and others rooted in critical race and gender theory is the mission of DEI at every level.

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published a survey of a number of Texas universities and found some leaders were taking comprehensive steps to adhere to Senate Bill 17. But change will not be quick.

An official at Texas A&M was caught on tape saying that DEI programs were simply being “rebranded.” At the University of Texas at Tyler, an administrator said they were getting around SB 17 by “being creative.” At Texas Tech, an administrator said DEI programs were now all operating under the Campus Access and Engagement program.

Sen. Creighton made clear in his letter to university leaders that none of this is permissible under the law.

These frantic administrators who are clinging to DEI seem unaware that the biggest indictment against it is that it doesn’t work. A British study is the latest to reveal what we have seen in Texas—DEI makes no difference in increasing the recruitment of minority and marginalized students or improving their academic outcomes or career opportunities. Sen. Creighton is right to remind university leaders across the state that the mandate of SB 17 to shut down these racially divisive and ineffective DEI policies isn’t a suggestion—it is Texas law, and could cost them their funding.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.

Wokeness won’t go away quietly, especially in the war against history. In April, a new Texas history organization, created in the aftermath of a critical race showdown within the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), announced it will meet for its first symposium, titled “Texas History in the 21st Century: Looking Back, Moving Forward.”

At this event, to be held at Texas Christian University, college professors can learn about “Writing Against the Master Narrative,” as well as pay tribute to former TSHA Chief Historian, Walter Buenger.

One doesn’t have to read too closely between the lines to get the impression that these historians, almost exclusively academics, apparently believe that there’s some kind of “master narrative” that needs to be challenged.

You may recall that their honoree, Buenger, has dismissed the Alamo as “insignificant,” while insisting that the shrine of Texas liberty has been misused to “commemorate whiteness.”

Is that the “master narrative?”

From commentary in the media, it is clear that this new group believes they are up against the Texas Legislature, which rightly banned the teaching of the 1619 Project—after it had been debunked by seemingly every reputable historian in the country.

Perhaps they also believe it is important to put the book “Forget the Alamo”—written by two partisan reporters and a political consultant, which was also debunked by any historian that matters—in Texas classrooms?

Because they are professors, they may also be fighting against the Texas Legislature’s passage of a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs in Texas public colleges and universities. The Texas DEI bill has nothing to do with teaching history, but it does prohibit classifying every student by the color of their skin, ethnicity, or gender.

DEI ideology on campus permeates every aspect of campus life, especially the teaching of history. It is built on a flawed and racially divisive view of history that allows for only one lens—race and oppression. It’s a worldview that encourages people to make ridiculous statements, such as claiming the story of the Alamo “commemorates whiteness.”

DEI is a simplistic attempt to reduce Texas history, American history—the history of all Western civilization—into a war between villains and heroes. Using their analysis, every hero (in the so-called “master narrative”) is a villain and consequently, every villain must be made into a hero.

(To see how this works in contemporary times, just look at how campuses—students and faculty alike—made heroes out of the terrorists who attacked Israel.)

Real historians cannot be driven by a political ideology. They know that no figure from the past, not one as saintly as Francis of Assisi nor one as despicable as Benedict Arnold, can be portrayed as either fully hero or villain. Human beings are complicated, and so must their historical reckoning be. The shameful institution of slavery did exist in Texas, and no teacher of history can shy away from that. That’s why Texas teachers are required to teach about slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era.

Texans, like all Americans, have not always lived up to the ideals established at Washington on the Brazos. But we have never lost sight of them either.

Here at TPPF, our award-winning “Forging Texas” film series tells the story of the Texas Revolution—but it also tells the story of the first woman to lead a cattle drive across the Chisolm Trail, the Vietnamese migration to Texas in the 1970s and, most recently, investigates the birth of the African American film industry in Texas with our film, “The Making of a Classic.”

The 1836 Advisory Project was established by the Texas Legislature in 2021 and has produced a Texas history summary that is available to everyone at State DMV offices. It covers all of Texas history—the good, the bad and the ugly. Even one of the authors of “Forget the Alamo,” called it “surprisingly accurate.”

Focus groups conducted by TPPF found that most residents of the Lone Star State, whether native-born or recently arrived, African American or Hispanic, are proud to call themselves Texans. They consider the Texas story to be their own story—a story of courage and struggle, striving and success. They certainly do not view it as a white-washed “master narrative.”

We can hope that the Texas Alliance for History doesn’t become just another group of grumbling, left-leaning professors trying to convince Texans that their great state that grew out of nothing to become the seventh largest economy in the world and the job creator for the nation is somehow an evil place.

Over a million people visit the Alamo every year, a site where 200 men courageously fought to the death to ensure that Texas would be independent and free. Some African Americans and abolitionists fought beside Travis and Crockett. Everyone who was there during the siege has a story, and true historians want to learn about all of them. No one who knows the story would describe the sacrifice at the Alamo as “insignificant.”

The New York Post reports that on Super Tuesday, MSNBC’s progressive women’s roundtable got a big laugh out of exit polls showing that illegal immigration was the top priority for GOP voters in Virginia.

Former Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki laughingly insisted that she lives in Virginia and there’s no problem. Joy Reid called the poll proof that Republicans are racist.

Rachel Maddow mockingly quipped, “I guess Virginia does have a border with West Virginia.”

Maddow’s snarky comment will no doubt overtake the 50 year-old legend of a similar clueless remark on the media elite by New Yorker writer Pauline Kael who reportedly said in 1972, “I don’t understand how Nixon won the election. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”

Nixon won 49 states.

Maddow and her friends clearly missed the latest data from Gallup in February which found that immigration is now at the top of the list of critical problems cited by Americans. Or perhaps the MSNBC girls are just getting their information on what is going on at the border from the Texas media.

The Texas press has pretended for years that concerns about the border are simply a trumped up talking point for Republicans designed to incite fear into voters and demonize people who are looking for a better life. The culprits they target most frequently are Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

For the Texas press, describing 5,000 to 10,000 people crossing the border every day as an “invasion” is a crime against humanity. Actual crimes against humanity on the Texas border, including rape trees displaying the underwear of sexual assault victims and sex trafficking of minors, don’t get as much play.

Although it’s big national news, I don’t recall seeing many Texas media reports about the hundreds of terrorists who have been detained at the border or the thousands of Chinese who are coming over now. The Texas media has also ignored thousands of criminal illegal aliens who have been entering Texas though the southern border for years. The press treats them as a figment of former President Donald Trump’s imagination.

After the primary election on Tuesday, the Texas media was as stunned as the women on MSNBC when nearly a dozen House GOP incumbents they thought were too big a deal to fail fell to Republicans who were backed by Gov. Abbott. All over the state, candidates backed by Abbott and Patrick defeated longtime incumbents.

Abbott asked voters to elect representatives who would not give an inch to Democrats, and voters listened to him—because they know the Democrats are responsible for the tragedy that has been happening at the border since President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

The Texas media belittled then-candidate Trump in 2016 when he brought the issue of the border into the national conversation. They stepped up attacks on Abbott for beefing up security at the border and establishing Operation Lone Star. They also attacked Patrick who stood by his election promise to appropriate millions—and ultimately billions—to substantially increase the manpower of the Department of Public Safety at the border.

Of course, if some border politician criticized Abbott, the Texas media was all over that. But even when Trump flipped several solid blue counties to red in South Texas, the Texas media failed to connect the dots.

When Abbott sent illegal migrants to the big blue cities, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post finally reported what the Texas press refused to investigate—what happens to a city or a state when it is overrun with a constant influx of new immigrants in need of virtually everything. What happens when crime skyrockets? What happens when people’s land and homes become migrant stopovers? How do hospitals, schools and other public services keep up?

The Texas press remains mostly silent on the border. Still, not only has immigration become the top issue for Americans, but polls show for the first time that a majority of Americans now support building a border wall.

Of course, school choice was also a critical issue in Texas’ Super Tuesday, but a strong majority of Texans have supported a parent’s right to choose the best school for their child for at least a decade. The Texas media refused to cover that story too. They opted for helping the teachers unions block reforms, rather than writing about parents whose children are trapped in failing public schools.

Abbott’s firm stand on school choice will be transformational for the future of the state, but he was able to win that battle because he bused migrants north and called the bluff of sanctuary cities. He exposed them as simply sanctimonious cities and showed America the truth about what is going on at the southern border.    

He got no help from the people who are supposed to tell these stories—the Texas media—but most Americans get it now… except those women at MSNBC.

Most date the campus launch of the notorious “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) ideology to 2010, with a hyper-escalation in 2020, although its roots go back to the late 60s when socialists created it on college campuses. Until now, the trajectory has always been up.

However, in the last year, DEI has been exposed to business as a huge profit loser by Dylan Mulvaney, Target and most recently the demise of Sports Illustrated after they started putting men pretending to be women on their covers.

On college campuses, the congressional testimony of the three Ivy League presidents showed DEI for what it is: progressive sanctioned racism that denigrates the autonomy of the individual in favor of collective identities linked to the immutable characteristics of race and gender.

Texas’ anti-DEI law, Senate Bill 17, continues to make national news because it is the strongest legislation of its kind in the nation. Texas parents feel safer sending their children to taxpayer funded campuses because the DEI offices have ostensibly been closed. But almost none of the hundreds of people who ran those offices in colleges and universities across the state have been fired, so we can assume they are still spewing phony DEI nonsense from their new perches as Vice President of Belonging, or some other such Sesame Street name.

Dr. Hal Atkins recently noted in the Wall Street Journal that “DEI is down but not out.” The goal of DEI is to convince white Americans that they are all racist, whether they know it or not, and they want black and brown Americans to believe that they are all victims. It’s a $6 billion industry that is not going to go away quietly.

DEI is purposefully never clearly defined by the left, but new polling shows that Americans know it when they see it — and they don’t like it.

When asked if they would like their company to hire and promote individuals based on race, gender or sexually based categories, 66% of all Americans  said no, including 54% of Democrats, 71% of Independents and 76% of Republicans.

Of course, DEI zealots have a poll too that shows just the opposite. A poll was referenced in the New York Times late last month that insisted a majority (56%) of those surveyed by Pew in February 2023, said that “focusing on increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace is mainly a good thing. Only 16% thought it was mainly a bad thing.”

What the New York Times didn’t report is that the same poll shows that people clearly don’t know what DEI is. Diversity, equity and inclusion sound good, but digging deeper into the data is the point in the same poll. 68% of Americans don’t want hiring or university admissions to be determined by race or gender or any kind of sexual identity group. They want fair and open merit-based selection processes in all things. This is a benchmark principle for a bipartisan majority of Americans.

So what will DEI advocates do now that Claudine Gay has been exposed as a plagiarizing hack (who probably wasn’t qualified to be president of Harvard) and Dylan Mulvaney (who is definitely not qualified to be a woman) is driven back to counting her Twitter (X) followers? How will the DEI industry fight back?

A recent front page of the New York Times makes it clear that even after DEI advocates have been exposed as frauds, their strategy will remain the same – demonize and insist that all opposition to DEI is not substantive, just political. The Times attacks Texas Republican leadership for the DEI law, demonizing rather than addressing whether DEI programs are discriminatory and divisive.

I have frequently noted that I have yet to hear a DEI advocate provide examples proving that DEI has been effective in increasing minority recruitment, either in business or in academic institutions, or improving student performance or outcomes on college campuses. No one is providing evidence of success (and tons of evidence is showing it is harmful), but the pro-DEI crowd ignores that question too.

Americans oppose DEI because it promulgates a race-based ideology that pits students – and all Americans — against each other based on their ancestors. It creates guilt in those who have done no wrong and exonerates others from responsibility for their lives.

But DEI is also something much worse: a war against civilization. Viewing the world through the DEI ideology requires pronouncing virtually everything that humans have accomplished since time began as the result of white supremacy, racism or colonialism.  It rejects the principles of individual freedom and autonomy, science, research, advancement, inquiry and discovery. Their worldview is a dark place where everything humans value is proclaimed to be bad and everything human decency condemns as bad is said to be good.

That’s how thousands of DEI indoctrinated students could continue to flood into the streets to support terrorists who are attempting to wipe Jews off the face of the earth. This barbaric madness and other actions like it will continue until DEI is ended.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.  

Pushing out Claudine Gay as president of Harvard may be the biggest academic rejection in American history since Cotton Mather was passed over for the same job in 1702 because of his participation in the Salem Witch Trials. That said, many people do not realize that Gay is still at Harvard as a professor earning $900,000 annually, even though she has not recanted her anti-Semitic statements or apologized to the people she plagiarized. Instead, she essentially called those who criticized her a bunch of racists.

In Texas, the infamous congressional hearing occurred just as Texas academic institutions were rolling out their plans for compliance with Senate Bill 17, the anti-DEI bill that passed in the 2023 Legislative Session and went into effect on January 1.

UT Regent Kevin Eltife made a heroic statement to usher in the end of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” programs at the University of Texas at Austin:

“We really want to make something crystal clear, whether you like the policy or whether you like this law or any other law, the University of Texas System is going to respect the process, and we’re going to respect the law. We’re not going to look for loopholes. We’re not going to look for workarounds. We’re going to implement the law as passed.”

Texas A&M University posted a website message that states:

“As Texas A&M University prepares to comply with Texas Senate Bill 17 regarding diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public universities, staff members previously supporting the Office for Diversity have been reassigned, and this office is closed. The university is transitioning S.B. 17-compliant programs and resources previously offered by the Office for Diversity to other areas of the university and discontinuing programs that are not compliant.”

Here’s how the anti-DEI ban is working on Texas campuses so far: The San Antonio Express-News reported that a campus-wide working group sifted through about 300 “DEI programming items” at the University of Texas at San Antonio and decided that only 10% of the items would be stopped. The president of UTSA did say that the school would not repurpose its Office of Inclusive Excellence.

“300 DEI programming items” gives us an idea of the scope of DEI on that campus. And what exactly is “Inclusive Excellence?” Does that mean everybody gets an “A” like they do at Harvard?

Meaningless naming designed to obscure the true ideology is a critical component of the DEI playbook. On Texas campuses, word salad office names and titles are being exchanged for different word salad office names and titles.

The University of Texas at Austin’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement will now become the Division of Campus and Community Engagement.

The Multicultural Center and Pride Alliance at the University of North Texas will now become the Center for Belonging and Engagement. The president of the University of Texas at Dallas admitted that the programs will continue under a different name.

Everyone knew the Pride Center at College Station wasn’t for most A&M students, so now they are going to call it the Student Life Center.

It’s not clear what the former “Pride Center” did at A&M, but at the University of North Texas, some are lamenting that without the Pride Center there will be no place for students to go to get “‘binders’ which women use to smash their breasts so they look like men. According to one staffer, other ‘gender affirming supplies’ are also likely to disappear along with designated spaces for queer students and students of color.”

“Designated spaces for students of color?” Sounds a lot like the back of the bus.

The five employees who worked at the LGBTQA Resource Center and the Center for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Houston will now be working for the Center for Student Advocacy and Community.

Texas Tech University and San Jacinto College simply closed their DEI offices to comply with Senate Bill 17.  On behalf of the conservative majority of Texas, who overwhelmingly oppose the ideology of DEI and who elected the legislators who passed the anti-DEI legislation, we thank you.

We may not quickly know what Texas academic institutions are doing with the hundreds of DEI employees, DEI focused committees and so-called “DEI programming items” that have become embedded within the universities because many have not reported their deployment of DEI personnel and programs. A professor at Texas A&M School of Nursing recently characterized requests for public information from the American Accountability Foundation as “harassment.”

Other campuses are in hysterics over SB 17. UT professors and administrators are telling the Austin American Statesman that the anti-DEI legislation has resulted in profound “confusion and despair” and morale is at an all-time low. Faculty members say they are exhausted.

And, of course, Pavitra Kumar, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, actually went on the record to say that no one is talking to students to ask what they would feel “safe and comfortable with.”

Kumar seems blithely unaware that when college students across the country hit the streets to support the terrorists who attacked Israel on Oct. 7, including at the University of Texas, nobody asked the Jewish students what they’d feel “safe and comfortable with.”

DEI programs at Texas universities employ hundreds of people and cost millions of dollars. The Texas Legislature passed an anti-DEI ban because those programs foment hate and division, and have had no impact in attracting larger numbers of minority and marginalized students or improving their academic outcomes.

Like Claudine Gay at Harvard, most of those who promulgated the divisive DEI ideology on Texas campuses are still there. There is no indication that any Texas academic institution has fired anyone who formally held a DEI title. Like Gay, those who are committed to dividing students into either oppressors or oppressed based on their identity group still have their jobs. They have simply been moved around or given new titles.

The state of Texas put $43 billion into higher education in the last legislative session and Senate Bill 17 has only been in effect for a couple weeks. However, it is clear that it will take a much more comprehensive and serious effort to eradicate DEI from our academic institutions and return to the principles of real academic excellence – merit, vigilance, open inquiry, free speech and respect for people as individuals – not identity groups.

It is not the best of times. Our country is so hopelessly and hatefully divided that we can’t even agree on enough facts to have a decent argument. Millions of people from all over the world are streaming across the border, it seems like half the country is marching in the streets in support of terrorists and the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court is afraid to define what a woman is.

I had been thinking that 2023 would turn out to be worse than 2022, but as it draws to a close, I am feeling optimistic.

Looking back on the year through my newsletter and podcast — 9th & Congress—there are some clear signs that 2023 may prove to be a turning point that even the media can’t ignore. The world of irrational wokeness—critical race theory, gender identity and equity politics is beginning to crumble, and though it is far from over, there is a sense that we are at the beginning of the end.

Last month I wrote that the three Ivy League college presidents shocked America by their robotic failure to condemn the terrorist massacre of Jews on Oct. 7.

It was a stunning made-for-television moment that is serving as a wake-up call to every parent in America who is considering sending a child to college, because virtually all universities and college espouse the same Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) rubbish those college presidents spit out—even in Texas.

I reported that Texas A&M had its own “what could they possibly be thinking” moment when it hired a woke journalism professor to head up a new journalism school who stated, unequivocally, that some sides of a story should not be reported in the news:

“We can’t just give people a set of facts anymore. I think we know that and we have to tell our students that. This is not about getting two sides of a story or three sides of a story, if one side is illegitimate,” said Dr. Kathleen McElroy.  “I think now you cannot cover education, you cannot cover criminal justice, you can’t cover all of these institutions without recognizing how all these institutions were built.”

Guess who gets to decide which side is “illegitimate?”

At the University of Texas, I spoke with Professor Daniel Bonevac who had testified before the Texas Senate Higher Education Committee that DEI programs function like the “campus thought police” over on the vaunted “40 acres.”

Before Harvard President Claudine Gay embarrassed the oldest university in America in front of the whole country, Harvard had already made big news in 2023 when the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) found that it had the worst record for free speech of any college in America.  That’s why it was so laughable when Gay tried to pretend that “free speech” was the reason she didn’t condemn the protestors supporting Hamas. Laughably, Harvard had suddenly discovered free speech.

But the problem isn’t just at Harvard. We will learn in a couple days whether the University of Texas really has the No. 3 football team in the nation, but as I wrote last year, when it comes to free speech UT is rated number 236—almost as bad as Harvard, which is at the bottom of the list at 248.  Again, according to FIRE, excluding and shouting down conservative speakers is totally acceptable to the majority of Longhorn students.

I spoke with Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, head of “Do No Harm,” which is fighting DEI in medical schools, who told me that some Texas medical schools are no longer looking at GPAs or requiring doctors to take MCAT tests before they are admitted apparently because the tests give an unfair advantage to the people who can pass the tests, regardless of their skin color or gender identity. Texans are not happy to learn this and changes will undoubtedly be made.

The biggest disappointment in 2023 was Texas’ failure to pass school choice, allowing parents to determine what school is best for their child. Just before the final legislative vote in October I wrote about what it has been like to watch this battle for over 20 years in Texas as teachers unions and their allies in the media fight parents and school choice. Though many of the legislators who led the fight against school choice are graduates of private schools and send their kids there, time and time again, they condemned poor and marginalized children to failing schools.

But one of the brightest spots in 2023 is the passage of one of the most important pieces of legislation in our modern history—Senate Bill 17, the anti-DEI bill by Senator Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, which outlaws DEI offices on Texas public university campuses. When a bunch Texas professors threatened to leave the state after SB 17 passed, we all knew they weren’t going anywhere. They haven’t.

Our challenge in 2024 will be to ensure that Texas colleges and universities actually follow the new laws against DEI. So far, not much of what we are seeing is promising. I spoke with Carol Swain, Ph.D., about her latest book, “The Adversity of Diversity,” earlier this month. As a former tenured professor at Princeton who also taught at Vanderbilt, Carol predicted that the DEI bureaucracy will not give up without a fight, which is certainly what we are seeing at Texas universities.

Notably, Carol is one of the people whose work was plagiarized by Harvard’s President Gay. She wrote about it in the WSJ recently noting that the words Gay lifted from her book, “Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress” would have been familiar to others at Harvard who likely ignored the fact that Gay copied her work without attribution.

Much of what is wrong in education is linked to DEI, including its tie to Hamas, as we saw after the attacks on Israel and campuses exploded in support of the terrorists. I certainly wasn’t the only one who blamed DEI programs for the protests.

My colleagues Erin Valdez and Chuck DeVore presented a panel discussion on the “Woke Hamas Alliance” showing the depth of this long and dangerous partnership. We were joined on the panel by Rabbi Dan Ain.

It wasn’t long after Oct. 7 before it was easy to see that Hamas was using its own people to fight a media war. Civilian casualties aren’t collateral damage for Hamas, they are a feature of their strategic plan.  Now, almost 12 weeks later, they are obviously meeting with success as we see Biden waffling and many in the West flinching at the body count.

I talked to Rabbi Ain again earlier this month about how his community is coping with the escalating war in Israel. He told me it had been difficult for many Jewish people to imagine that anti-Semitism wouldn’t be broadly condemned in America. As a native New Yorker who chose Texas as a refuge for himself and his family several years ago, Rabbi Ain’s observations on the war and the protests here are extremely insightful.

Of course, DEI is not only about Critical Race Theory and terrorism. It is also about something called “Gender Theory,” a topic you can major in at a couple of Texas universities. The end of the year fundraising appeal from the Texas Tribune, one of the state’s largest media outlets, assures us that it will continue to report on Texas priority issues in 2024 including “transgender rights.”

Last year, I reported exactly what Equality Texas, the leading advocate for so-called LGBTQ+, views some of those rights to be:

• No restrictions on sex change surgery for children, which Equality Texas calls “lifesaving” and a “best [medical] practice.” No restrictions on cross-sex hormones and puberty blocking drugs.
• All health care providers should be forced to provide sex change surgery to children whether the providers believe in them or not.
• Insurance companies should be required to pay for sex change operations for children.
• There should be no restrictions on classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.
• There should be no restrictions on classroom instruction using nudity and descriptions of sex.
• Men should be allowed to play in women’s sports in Texas colleges and universities.

Equality Texas does not include a “right” to perform drag shows for children in public schools and libraries, although they insisted Texas legislature’s effort to restrict them was “life threatening.”

As a lifelong feminist, it continues to baffle me that there is no bigger outcry against drag shows, which are essentially a woman-focused version of blackface, which is universally condemned. In April I reported that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture describes blackface this way:

“Minstrelsy, comedic performances of “blackness” by whites in exaggerated costumes and make-up, cannot be separated fully from the racial derision and stereotyping at its core. By distorting the features and culture of African Americans—including their looks, language, dance, deportment, and character—white Americans were able to codify whiteness across class and geopolitical lines as its antithesis.”

Change blackness to womanhood and you have a precise definition of drag shows —”comedic performances of women by men in exaggerated costumes and make-up…” As the Smithsonian notes, blackface “cannot be separated from racial derision and stereotyping at its core.” Similarly, drag shows are all about misogyny and utter contempt for women.

Texas passed a law to restrict drag shows in public libraries and in June I wrote that “Texas May Be Winning the War Against Woke.”  As 2023 winds down, it looks like the rest of the country is also having second thoughts about the woke worldview too and not just businesses like Bud Light and Target which learned that it just isn’t worth it to push distorted gender identities. Just this week, big woke tech companies like Google and Meta revealed they are pulling back. Nationally, DEI job postings are down 44%. That’s one more reason to be optimistic about 2024.

Another is that Texans have faced tough times before. In our recent history, it is important to remember that Texas has not always flourished and our state leaders have not always been conservatives. Conservatives did not take control of the Legislature until 2003, just 20 years ago.  That’s why I reached out to several people who were part of the effort to change Texas from blue to red, including nationally known pollster Mike Baselice, media guru David Weeks and communications expert Ray Sullivan to learn how Texas got it right over two decades ago. Their stories say a lot about who Texans are and what they believe.

Then, as now, Texans want small government, individual liberty and freedom and governing principles that allow businesses to prosper and make our state a force in the global market.

They also want to protect our history from the woke forces of DEI.  The state of Texas is finally building a world-class history site at the Alamo after overcoming assaults from the “Forget the Alamo” crowd who want to deny that anything heroic happened there.

I talked with legendary Texan and historic preservationist J.P. Bryan who has been fighting that battle his entire life, making sure that left-wing historians don’t re-write our history to reflect their Marxist world view. Every Texan should be very grateful that J.P. hasn’t backed down from this fight. Next week I will host Judge Ken Wise, President of the Texas State Historical Association, on the podcast. It should be interesting, so listen in.

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. Subscribe to her 9th & Congress newsletter to be the first to receive columns like this.

TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester sits down with Rabbi Dan Ain, Founder of “Because Jewish,” to discuss how Texas’ Jewish community is coping with the continued strife in Israel.

Listen to the 9th & Congress podcast on Apple or Spotify.

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During the legislative battle last spring to end the racially divisive and cynically named “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs in Texas academic institutions, faculty members called the effort racist and extremist. Hundreds of University of Texas at Austin students and professors flooded into the Capitol building to smirk and boo former HUD Secretary, Dr. Ben Carson, the pre-eminent African American physician, who explained that DEI is a sham. Many stood with their backs toward lawmakers and Dr. Carson—like petulant children—to show their disdain.

Fearful that funding would be cut, administrative leaders from Texas flagship universities insisted to legislators that DEI was simply a program to help students who needed extra support to succeed in college—minority and marginalized students, first generation students, even veterans. Who could be against that?

The truth about DEI—that the world is divided into two groups, oppressors and the oppressed, has been difficult for normal Americans to comprehend. With academic administrators insisting they were simply continuing the work of making college accessible to everyone, donors, parents and students haven’t really pushed back. Texas and Florida are the only states that have banned DEI outright, and major universities like Michigan have doubled down.

All that changed last week when over a billion people viewed video clips of three elite university professors who declined to condemn threats of Jewish genocide on their respective campuses.

People who have been mystified by pro-Palestinian student marches since Oct. 7 that proclaimed America to be an evil oppressor while insisting the Hamas terrorists are the good guys finally have an answer—these awful sentiments are coming from the top.

When the now-notorious college presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard, Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Liz Magill from the University of Pennsylvania, told a congressional committee that calls for genocide and intifada by students on their campuses would have to be “considered in context,” their frightening insensitivity shocked some sense into the country.

These DEI “pod people” presidents repeatedly refused to condemn threats of genocide and violence against Jewish students even when given several chances to recant. Their worldview is so distorted that they could not bring themselves to say what is obvious to most Americans—attacking and calling for the deaths of Jews, or any group of people because of their race or ethnicity—is wrong, unequivocally. There is no “context” in which it would be okay.

The blowback was immediate. The presidents were called on to resign and donors threatened to withdraw millions in contributions from their universities. Magill, at the University of Pennsylvania, is already out, although the move is hardly a setback for her. She is still a fully tenured professor in the UPenn law school.

Apologies also came quickly as Gay at Harvard explained that she was focused on the free speech policies at Harvard rather than the recent demonstrations.

Free speech is a good argument to make, but the president of Harvard cannot credibly make it. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Harvard has the worst record on free speech of any university in the country.

At Harvard, the failure of anyone—student or faculty—to call a man who thinks he’s a woman “she” can get you fired. In fact, Devon Buckley, a radical feminist, was disinvited from speaking at Harvard because she has written that “gender is binary.” Even Lawrence Bacow, a former president of Harvard, was drummed off the stage there because students disagreed with his position on disinvestment from Israel.

Every Harvard student must take Title IX training where they learn that expressing any hint of “transphobia,” “fatphobia,” or “cis-heterosexism” is abusive.

Magill and Kornbluth also apologetically said their focus in the Congressional testimony was free speech, but their records are no better than Harvard. The Arab Alumni Association of MIT demanded that Miri Eisin, a former colonel in the Israel Defense Force, not be allowed to speak on campus and she was disinvited. Former CIA Director John Brennen was shouted down at the University of Pennsylvania and his lecture had to be cancelled.

To take a credible stand for free speech, you must stand up for all speech—but these presidents and all universities that are steeped in the ideology of DEI simply don’t allow that.

The Kalven principles, adopted by the University of Chicago, has a different free speech model. It proscribes that every issue is open to debate and universities should be neutral, protecting all sides to speak. University of Chicago students are rallying for Palestine on that campus, but Jewish students are rallying as well. Though there is backlash from both sides, the recently stated position of the University of Chicago on the Middle East is that they have no position—on this or any other issue. Students are free to speak.

If the three presidents had told the congressional committee that their institutions did not take positions on issues, the hearing would have been over, but, again, their record makes it clear that’s not true. While they ignored the attack of Hamas terrorists on Jews on Oct. 7, all three institutions spoke out almost immediately after George Floyd was killed. Harvard not only affirmed its support for Black Lives Matter, it also attacked the Harvard University Police Department. MIT quickly issued a statement promising to increase its diversity and equity efforts, and at the University of Pennsylvania, the official statement issued immediately said that the University community “weeps for the loss of life.”

Their statements called on the community to embrace Black Lives Matter. They also essentially reiterated the DEI principle that we are all either oppressors or oppressed and must continue to fight the racism inherent in everyone, whether they know it or not.

It would be a mistake for universities or any of us to demand that Jewish people be moved from category A (oppressors) in the DEI dichotomy to category B (oppressed). What we should see clearly in the weak and evasive testimony of the three elite university presidents is that the entire ideology of DEI must be overthrown. There is no place for it in academic institutions where all ideas are debated freely and every individual must be judged on his or her merit, achievement and character, not group identity. When that happens—and terrorists launch a genocidal attack on people anywhere—it should be resoundingly condemned, no matter who the victims are.

Oct. 7 should have been an easy call. It is tragic these academic leaders couldn’t make it.