Incredible! A sociology professor(?!) who doesn’t buy into DEI? He won’t last long:

One of the seldom discussed aspects of the ongoing revolution in contemporary higher education is the problem institutions are having filling courses that are designed to impart the DEI message to students.

In the mediasphere, the conversation on DEI in higher ed is mostly about, e.g., the fear that conservative “politicization” will drive enrollments down. Students, it is claimed, just won’t stand for conservative reforms of the type instituted by Florida’s Ron DeSantis. This, of course, overlooks all the work that higher-education institutions have been doing for decades to politicize curricula and drive enrollments downward via their own politicized mechanisms.

Image: New Horizons in Conservation Addresssing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Challenges Conference.

Wikimedia Commons.org. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

The narrative demands a constant, evil conservative assault on the most important thing any college can teach: DEI.

It is not easy to get data on this [under enrollment] and other aspects of the consequences of DEI expansion on campuses, because institutions are interested in hiding inconvenient details. Yet those of us on college faculties are aware, for example, of how faculty recruitment has been altered in recent years to skew decision making away from scholarly productivity and promise and toward candidates’ identities and DEI politics.

The author, Alexander Riley, is what one hopes all university professors might be: curious:

I did a little research in my own institution, however, drawn by the fact that departments that are having enrollment problems have begun reaching out to the campus community in mass emails to try to stir up student interest.

The English department, for example, recently sent out a campus note that listed “a number of courses with space available.” All of the courses were, by their titles alone (“Latinx Theater,” “Sex, Sexuality, and Rape Culture in the 18th Century,” “Affrilachia: Regional Literature, Race, and Power”), identifiable as classes focusing on the obsession with identity politics that is presented by DEI offices as the new raison d’être of higher education.

English teachers are like Marines: neither can be “ex,” only “former.” I only do grammar on request; former Marines only take beaches on request. I’m ashamed any English department would engage in such sophistry, but they’re not alone:

Another department on campus, History, went even further in endeavoring to shore up faltering enrollments in identity politics-centered courses. They sent out a campus email inviting students to an “informational session,” lasting an hour, on several under-enrolled courses, among them “Black Women’s History” and “Brujas, Machos, y Travestis.” (The latter is in Spanish and means “Witches, Machos, and Transvestites.” “Machos” literally means “males,” but it is also used in slang to refer to male-presenting lesbians.)

This is the first time I can remember seeing this kind of intensive outreach by a department, aiming to recruit students to a class they had not chosen to enroll in.

I wonder why, with catchy course titles like that, the History Department is having trouble finding suckers…er, students. I meant students.

Another way in which schools are endeavoring to fill such courses with bodies is to change curricular requirements such that they fulfill university-wide “learning goals,” which all students must meet in order to graduate. A recent example from my campus is illustrative.

Graduation requirements also pad the tuition account.

Previously, it was required that all students in the College of Arts & Sciences take a given number of courses with the designation “Diversity in the US” to graduate. The process by which a professor got his or her course that designation was distant from the course’s specific approach to diversity. There was, that is, no requirement to present diversity in any particular way other than descriptively. For example, a history professor might say, “The United States has a fair amount of diversity throughout at least its recent history (though the story is different earlier on).”

But that requirement came to be seen by our faculty as too unsubstantial in supporting the DEI regime, so the “Diversity in the US” requirement was eliminated and replaced with a straightforwardly ideological one. The new designation bears the far less subtle name of “Race, Power, and Inequality.”

Dr. Alexander displays a rare dedication to academic integrity. Historically, most college students dealing with graduation requirements tried to find classes that might be at least somewhat interesting. Easy, to be sure, but something that wouldn’t bore them to rage. The words gets around about which professors are boring and unreasonably strict in grading, and which might require a bit of work, but do it in an interesting manner. That contemporary students also use the grapevine, and don’t want to be harangued unto death by dim-witted and lazy DEI profs, can only be seen as a positive and hopeful development.

Hopefully, Prof. Riley has a good attorney, or is planning to retire. Like Bruce Willis, DEI dies hard.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher.  His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.