Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE) is a squishy concept offering that organizations might benefit by building teams with people of varying backgrounds, skills, and perspectives — including different races, sexes, ethnicities, etc.

One myth is that there is no such thing as race.  This is false, for example, in high-end competitive sport.  Blacks make up only about 14% of the U.S. population, yet they dominate many athletic professions (National Football League — 70%, National Basketball League — 70%, and virtually all world-class 100m sprinters).

Another myth is gender inequality (bias) in higher education academic positions.  People choose careers based on their interests.  Men and women have different interests — men prefer careers related to working with things, whereas women prefer careers related to working with people.

Secondly, general intelligence is a highly desirable capability needed for processing complex information of any type and for successful performance in high-complexity careers.  Math proficiency — being able to apply concepts, strategies, and reasoning in math learning — and intelligence are connected.  These traits also influence career choices.

Our National Association of Scholars (NAS) study looked at the flimsy implicit bias theory (people’s unconscious prejudice toward another social group) and the Implicit Association Test, or IAT.  We examined two topics: black-white racial bias and higher education gender bias.

Regarding gender bias, using Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) math scores our NAS study and a peer-reviewed paper showed that there are more men with higher levels of math proficiency than women in the population.  The real reasons that men dominate women in higher education faculties like medicine and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) are individual interests and math proficiency skills.  It has nothing to do with gender bias.

A lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.  Liberal activists have quickly used false IAT research claims to impose discriminatory and repressive DIE ideology and woke policies in academia, on all levels of government and the private sector, and laws that undermine individual responsibility.

It is tyranny to force compliance with DIE ideology, yet it is happening to high-end talent in academia.  A suspended professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, Amy Wax, was reported in the Wall Street Journal to have said, “on average blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites.”

The statement is factually correct.  Cognitive ability and intelligence are deeply interconnected, and we already know that intelligence and math proficiency are connected.  Differences in mean SAT math scores for the past 28 years consistently show that blacks underperform whites by about 90 points (see Brookings Institution research here for 1996−2015 and individual College Board reports here for 2016−2023).

In another example, a Duke University Health System emergency physician, Dr. Kendall Conger, was fired when he persistently asked for evidence that white doctors were biased against black patients.  He asserted that he treated an individual irrespective of race.  The hospital administration blindly followed supposed expert opinion — based on irreproducible (false) IAT research — and would not renew his contract.

Why does DIE fester in academia?  A likely reason is that the liberal left has an almost unanimous lock on academic positions in the U.S.  Ian Oxnevad of the National Association of Scholars describes perfectly the effect that academia has on society: “People need to know that academia is not an innocuous place. ... [Academia] is the epicenter for just about everything bad that you're seeing going on right now.”

Actions from higher levels can slay the DIE zombie, which is starting to happen.  Some universities are eliminating DIE positions.  President Trump’s plan for higher education next year is to defund and remove DIE bureaucrats at all U.S. colleges and universities.  Defunding woke institutions and removing DIE bureaucrats will help get these places of higher learning back on track, solving problems for society, not causing them.

S. Stanley Young, Ph.D. is the CEO of CGStat in Raleigh, North Carolina and is director of the National Association of Scholars’ Shifting Sands Project.  Warren Kindzierski, Ph.D. is a retired college professor (public health) in St Albert, Alberta.

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