DEI has permeated every level of education and culture. At the Legal Insurrection Foundation, we have been actively combatting, cataloguing, and exposing DEI and its various acronym iterations for over a decade.

The newest Trump administration has taken swift action against many DEI strongholds, but it’s our view that the death of DEI is far from imminent.

If you missed our online event live, you may watch it here:

criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/ released a report in which we dove into how larger schools in states that have taken legislative action against DEI and CRT have handled new restrictions.

The results were disappointing and prove how deeply ingrained DEI and CRT have become in university thought, policy, and culture.

Our full report is here.
(more…)

On June 25, 2024, the Legal Insurrection Foundation held an online event, China’s Troubling Funding Influence in Higher Education.

From the announcement:

China’s influence in all facets of our country has expanded rapidly in recent decades. Incredibly concerning is the vast stranglehold China has on research institutions. In this webinar we will discuss how Chinese funding of our major research institutions and universities is impacting higher education and what can be done to stop the damage.

This event is hosted by the Legal Insurrection Foundation. We’re pleased to host Paul Moore, Paul R. Moore is a Senior Fellow supporting the Prague Security Studies Institute’s Economic and Financial Statecraft Program. He previously served as Chief Investigative Counsel at the U.S. Department of Education, where he led the Department’s investigations of undisclosed foreign financial involvements at America’s colleges and universities. Mr. Moore served for 12 years at the U.S. Department of Justice, including as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Boston, Massachusetts and Alexandria, Virginia economic crime units. At DOJ, he also served as Senior Counsel in the Office of Legal Policy and as Counsel to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General.

Mr. Moore was General Counsel for a U.S.-based defense contractor, has worked for two governors, and has provided testimony to the U.S. Congress regarding nefarious efforts by foreign powers to access American intellectual property at university-affiliated research institutions.

Legal Insurrection Foundation founder and president, William Jacobson will also participate in the discussion moderated by Kemberlee Kaye, Operations and Editorial Director for Legal Insurrection Foundation.

Here is the event video. (Sorry, no transcript excerpts this time.)

On May 8, 2024, Legal Insurrection Foundation and its Equal Protection Project hosted an online webinar, Who Is Funding Anti-Israel Campus Protests? 

(more…)

This article originally appeared in The Daily Iowan and catalogues how our Equal Protection Project efforts have prompted universities to re-examine their diversity policies.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court ended race-based admissions by striking down affirmative action in June 2023, dozens of institutions have changed their admissions policies. Now thousands of dollars in scholarships aimed at people with diverse backgrounds are under review, including at the University of Iowa.

UI officials told The Daily Iowan that the school began reviewing scholarships after the overturning of affirmative action and when some civil complaints started to be filed against other universities.

In a statement to the DI, UI Assistant Vice President for External Relations Jeneane Beck wrote that the university consulted with the Iowa Attorney General’s Office and the Office of the Iowa Board of Regents on the matter.

“Based on the principles articulated by the Supreme Court, the university is reviewing and amending scholarships and other financial aid offerings that use certain protected class characteristics (e.g. race, gender, age, or sexual orientation) as selection criteria,” Beck wrote.

Since the end of affirmative action, higher education institutions in the U.S. have had to quickly figure out the new law.

Julie J. Park, an associate professor of education at the University of Maryland and researcher of racial equity in higher education, campus racial climate, and college admissions, wrote in an email to the DI that the restriction on race-based admissions caused by the Supreme Court decision technically should not affect scholarships.

“That said, people are drawing the conclusion that if we aren’t allowed to directly know an applicant’s race/ethnicity during undergrad admissions, that scholarships that cater to particular groups are also subject to be challenged,” she wrote.

UI diversity scholarships under review

UI officials said less than 10 percent of all university scholarships are being reviewed and not all of those will have to change. The criteria and wording for affected scholarships will likely be changed to be inclusive of people from all backgrounds, as opposed to people from a specific ethnic or racial group.

Some UI scholarships have already been impacted, including the Advantage Iowa Award. While the award was previously reserved for incoming first-year students from historically underrepresented populations, including those with African American, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, and multiracial backgrounds, it will now be a need-based award for students of all backgrounds.

At this time, it is undetermined when the review will be completed. UI officials told the DI that they will have to read through each scholarship to see if it includes a protected class characteristic in its criteria, then meet with each scholarship donor to assess whether they are willing to change the wording and criteria of their fund.

In an email to the DI, regents’ Senior Communications Director Josh Lehman wrote that each university is handling its review individually.

“The universities consulted with the Board office on this issue. As financial aid is managed at the institutional level, the universities are currently reviewing their financial aid offerings to ensure compliance and consistency among all regent institutions,” he wrote.

Iowa State University and the Iowa Attorney General’s Office did not respond to requests for comment on the reviewing process.

University of Northern Iowa Director of University Relations Pete Moris wrote in an email to the DI that all scholarships are based on merit or financial need.

“There are various criteria across the many colleges and departments, but none of them involved protected class characteristics,” he wrote.

Higher education institutions face lawsuits

Multiple lawsuits were filed against universities that continue to have programs and scholarships designated for students of a certain race or background. One example is a complaint against Kansas State University filed on Aug. 16, 2023, for providing a “racially discriminatory” multicultural student scholarship.

The scholarship, titled the Joey Lee Garmon Multicultural Scholarship, is “directed toward students of historically underrepresented backgrounds. The applicant must be of an ethnic group that have been historically and traditionally oppressed in the achievement of academic and leadership endeavors to include applicants of African American, American Indian, Asian American, and Latinx American heritage.”

The complaint, which was filed with the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education by the Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, argues that the scholarship violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits intentional discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in any ‘program or activity’ that receives federal financial assistance.”

Title VI also “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in federally funded programs,” and thus “applies to universities receiving federal financial assistance,” the complaint states, quoting from the case Rowles v. Curators of the Univ. of Mo.

“The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal,’” the complaint states, quoting the case.

Now, other complaints similar to the ones filed against Kansas State University are impacting other institutions, including Big Ten school the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is facing a complaint from the same company for “supporting and promoting a program that engages in invidious discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin.”

Read more here.

We have been warning for years about the pernicious and corrosive impact of the racialization of education under the umbrellas of Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
(more…)

This article was originally published on Legal Insurrection and is based upon the original research of criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/.

___________________

This article was originally published on Legal Insurrection and is based upon the original research of criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/.

___________________

criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/, a project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, has unique and unparalleled interactive maps and databases demonstrating how Critical Race Theory and its progeny, such as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Ibram Kendi’s misnamed “anti-racism,” have deeply penetrated every corner of academia. The racialization of education is all but complete.

We now cover over 700 institutions covering Higher Education, Elite K-12, Military Service Academies, and Veterinary Schools.

Perhaps our flagship database covers Medical Schools. Our prior rollouts of the top 25, and top 100 ranked medical schools generated enormous attention.

We have now completed research into all 155 accredited U.S. medical schools. Fox News covered the release, Critical race theory-related ideas found in programs at 108 of 155 top American medical schools:

The "racialization of medical education" has created a "national emergency" because many of America’s future doctors are being inundated with critical race theory (CRT) and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), according to the founder of criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/.

criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/, which monitors CRT curricula and training in higher education, has expanded its Medical School Database to include all 155 accredited U.S. medical schools. Findings revealed a staggering 70 percent provide mandatory or voluntary CRT-related coursework or training for students.

"The extent to which CRT/DEI and related programming has worked its way into medical schools is truly shocking and worrisome. Racial and other activism should not be the focus of medical education," William Jacobson told Fox News Digital….

"The ideological capture of over two-thirds of medical schools demonstrates that CRT/DEI has become a part of the fabric of medical education. We are training future doctors to look at patients through a racial lens, with potentially frightening consequences for society," Jacobson said.

"It's often said that collapse happens slowly, and then very suddenly. Medical school education is slowly collapsing, but it's not too late," he continued. "We need to stop the CRT/DEI medical agenda before that collapse becomes irreversible."

criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/ also found that over 50 percent of medical schools mandate CRT-related coursework or training, while nearly 40 percent mandate such trainings for faculty and staff. The subjects of mandatory trainings and coursework are worded differently by institution, using terms such as "anti-racism," "cultural competency," "diversity, equity and inclusion," "equity," "implicit bias/anti-bias," and CRT.

The database of 155 accredited medical schools indicates that 108 have some form of mandatory or voluntary student training or coursework and 66 have offered materials by left-wing authors Robin DiAngelo or Ibram Kendi, whose books explicitly call for discrimination, according to Jacobson….

"Unfortunately, the medical establishment, from the American Medical Association on down, is on board with the racialization of medicine. The groups that should ensure that medical education and care focus on individual patients, not political struggles, have not only abandoned the medical ship, they are helping sink it," Jacobson said.

* * *

"The racialization of medical education and medicine constitutes a national emergency, and needs to be addressed by governors and state legislatures, as the current federal government and medical establishment is on board with the CRT agenda," Jacobson said.

The recent Supreme Court decision on Affirmative Action will have an impact:

Jacobson feels the Supreme Court's recent ruling striking down affirmative action, while in the context of school admissions, applies equally to patient care.

"The racialization of medicine almost certainly will end up in the Supreme Court. Two Supreme Court Justices recently cautioned that ‘in the event that any government again resorts to racial or ethnic classifications to ration medical treatment, there would be a very strong case for prompt review by this Court,’" he said.

As a result, many institutions have offered statements about the ruling. criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/ performed a "segmentation analysis of these responses based on the substantive content presented within those statements. At the outset, it should be noted that all 38 medical school individual responses either convey outright disappointment or disagreement with the SCOTUS ruling or, alternatively, reaffirm the school’s diversity or social justice admissions goals notwithstanding the ruling," the group wrote.

Our databases at criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/ have become a go-to resource for parents, students, and researchers. We have had almost 3 million page views and almost 8 million user actions since inception. The website has been linked and cited almost 150 times by other media.

Our criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/ project also is transitioning beyond the databases. W are beginning to produce substantive analysis and research. This year we have been conducting detailed parent surveys and intensive ‘deep-values’ interviews, to understand better what help parents feel they need. We expect to have the results of this research, and a parents’ guide, by the end of the third quarter of this year.

We do what no one else is doing, and having an impact. Your donations to support this effort would be appreciated.

This op-ed by Bill Jacobson and Kemberlee Kaye was originally published on Fox News Digital.

___________________

You probably think the Supreme Court just ended racial discrimination in university admissions, euphemistically called affirmative action, and a new day of equal treatment without regard to race or skin color has dawned.

You are mostly wrong.

Yes, SCOTUS invalidated the race-conscious practices of Harvard and UNC, holding that under the 14th Amendment a “student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual – not on the basis of race.”

That is a very important statement of our guiding constitutional principles. Yet already schools like Harvard are suggesting they will skirt the ruling by considering applicants’ experience with race as opposed to the applicants’ race itself. These games are not surprising and have been in the works for months.

In anticipation of the expected ruling, new evasive ploys were developed to implement undercover racial preferences as part of a “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” agenda.

At EqualProtect.org, the nonprofit we run championing equality and opposing DEI discrimination, we have seen how the landscape changed prior to the SCOTUS ruling, and how that preparation will now play out.

We have challenged bigoted university and public school programs open only to non-Whites, one that excluded only White males, and we even stopped segregated teacher meetups. Yet because racial and other discrimination to achieve de facto quotas is now so deeply ingrained in academia, government and corporations, we have already witnessed some of the ways the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision will be evaded.

First and foremost, the evidence of discrimination, not the discrimination itself, will be eliminated. Already, there is a trend to dispense with the standardized testing that proved the discrimination against students of Asian descent. Many universities have eliminated mandatory SAT testing, and professional schools are now toying with eliminating the LSATs and the MCATs.

Without standardized testing to keep the process honest, discrimination will increasingly take place behind closed doors in higher education and elsewhere using “holistic” approaches similar to what Harvard developed in the 1920s to limit Jewish enrollment, and are now used against Asians.

Offloading the discrimination onto third parties is yet another method to evade accountability. For example, we recently filed a civil rights complaint over SUNY-Albany’s participation in a Black-only fellowship program at the Albany Public Library using a private foundation grant.

Similarly, we filed a complaint regarding a Providence new teacher loan forgiveness program open only to non-Whites funded by the Rhode Island Foundation, and a Missouri State University business boot camp supported by private funding that excluded only White males. Offloading discrimination is no legal excuse, but it’s become a favored maneuver.

Another tactic is to disperse DEI programming in response to budget cuts or department elimination. At the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, there is an effort to transfer DEI personnel and programs to other areas of the university. DEI will still exist, but in a different form and place. Creating moving targets will become more common.

Word games are another ploy, with “first generation,” “historically underrepresented group” or “marginalized populations” serving as crude proxies for race and skin color.

Technology is yet another emerging evasion. Algorithms operating unseen will be used to manipulate pools of applicants to achieve desired quotas. And it will not be limited to academia; this has already spread to corporations and the government.

We are seeing signs that even artificial intelligence is under pressure to return desired quotas. The Biden White House has jumped aboard the equity train claiming AI discrimination, thus justifying manipulation of AI parameters to achieve racial quotas.

We certainly are glad to see that the Supreme Court has rejected “race-conscious” discrimination. Yet no one should be deluded into thinking the battle has been won.

Kemberlee Kaye is operations and editorial director at the Equal Protection Project.

This article was originally published on Legal Insurrection and is based upon the original research of criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/.

___________________

Our latest database has been unveiled at criticalrace.org.betasites.soundst.com/wp/. Our stellar research team there dug into the country’s top 10 veterinary medical schools (two schools tied for 10th).

As we explain in our op-ed in the New York Post, we started digging into vet schools half-seriously at first, cracking jokes about it, pretty sure there was no cause for concern and that our initial efforts would come up dry. Boy were we wrong.

You can easily access the vet school database by clicking here, and our entire database that catalogues over 500 institutions of higher education, elite private k-12 schools, military academies, and med schools by clicking here.

The gist of our vet school findings which we outlined in our article in the NY Post are as follows:

Lamentably, DEI has penetrated deeply into the training of veterinarians who will take care of your pets, based on claims that “the industry was exclusively for White people” and, as Cornell says, “building anti-racism in animal welfare” is needed.

White pet owners “not wanting a Black veterinarian treating their pet” is allegedly pervasive, per the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Legislation targeting pit bulls may reflect “biases towards persons of color,” a University of Pennsylvania graduate thesis says; indeed, “implicit racial bias in the United States adversely affects the welfare” of the breed.

Though “biases” come into play whenever a vet makes “a judgment toward treatment” — or so insists a paper titled “Preparing veterinary hospitals for greatness through DEI initiatives.”

Late in 2020, the American Veterinary Medical Association, with the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges, created the Commission for a Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Veterinary Profession to promote “the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout the veterinary profession” and encourage and help “veterinary medical associations and animal health companies to measure and improve diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Its recommendations include giving “guidance” to vet schools on “creating a brave space for DEI issues and discussions, implicit bias and microaggression training” — and, of course, “a permanent DEI position,” along with incorporating “DEI content in the professional program.”

Eight of the top 11 schools now have CRT/DEI curriculum or training; three have school-wide mandatory CRT training.

The staff and faculty training prognosis is much worse. Eight of the 11 schools have some sort of mandatory faculty and staff training. Six of the 11 integrate DEI into their search and hiring processes.

Last, but not least, a majority of the top 11 schools have bias-reporting tools that allow for the anonymous reporting of alleged DEI violations.

DEI is rapidly taking over not just academia in general but even the training of Fido’s veterinarian.

DEI in veterinary schools is a somewhat comical microcosm of the larger DEI problem. But the damage to society from the hyper-focus on race is no laughing matter.

Every single facet of our educational systems is overrun with this pernicious and divisive DEI grossness. And we’re here to shine light on the spread. Because as Professor Jacobson is fond of saying, sunlight is truly the best disinfectant.

[Note: Prof. Jacobson is scheduled to be on Stuart Varney’s show on Fox Business at 10:50 a.m. on Monday. April 24, 2023]