Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part XCVII

As important as it is to count the number and type of warships the People's Republic of China (PRC) is building for their navy is, how productive their shipyards are, and even the negative impact of their crashing demographics - there are other things that are arguably more important to track in order to see what the challenge will be before it comes over the horizon. 

That is what we have been doing for the last 18-years of the "Long Game" series on the PRC - looking further than the threat of the next few POM cycles. The PRC is playing a long game, we should do our best to understand it.

Where a warship has an effective life of 30-yrs or a bit more, there are assets that last much longer, continually modernize themselves, and when combined together, are much more powerful in aggregate than the sum of the individuals - that is human capital, specifically intellectual capital.

In 2023, the American taxpayer and their elected representatives would not stand by and accept if our defense contractors were building warships, aircraft, and armored vehicles for the PRC's military (one hopes). No arguments from industry about profits or the number of jobs these contracts would bring to communities in the USA would gain traction (one hopes). If anything, it would bring a popular revolt (one hopes).   

If that is true, then why would the American higher education system be any different? Specifically I am referencing the top research universities - which almost all American taxpayers pay for - STEM undergraduate, and especially the very few masters and PhD programs? 

I don't care if they are paying full price - why are we helping the PRC develop their future technology?

Anyone who, like your humble blogg'r, has kids and relatives of college age whose graduation ceremonies you attend can tell, PRC passport holders are taking up a HUGE portion of available slots. In a highly competitive environment, the difference between getting a spot or not in highly competitive programs at our top universities is a matter of small degrees. For each PRC national getting a PhD in chemical engineering at a top tier university, that is an American citizen - or the citizen of an allied nation - who is not.

This has been going on for decades. What is the result? 

Over at Breaking Defense there is a nice wakeup call to what we have helped create;

In a new report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), the US comes second to China in the majority of critical technology research areas examined, like artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology and quantum technology and specifically in defense and space-related technologies. The report uses ASPI’s new Critical Technology Tracker, a tool that lets users track 44 technologies considered “foundational” for national security, economies and more areas.

...

China is outpacing the US and other democratic nations in 37 out of 44 technology research areas considered advanced and critical, setting the stage for potentially devastating immediate and long-term consequences if western nations don’t “wake up,” according to a think tank’s latest findings. 

In a large part building off the first generation of people educated in the USA and other Western nations' best universities, the PRC has some good universities ... but they cannot hold a candle to the culture of innovation and research at ours. In dual use technology areas ... we are not just helping them get a technological edge, we are helping them bring their military closer to a qualitive equality - eating away at our hedge against the quantity a nation 4x the size of ours will bring to any fight.

In many of these areas, the PRC is not a "pacing" or "rising" threat - they've already lapped us;

“To close, and surpass, the technological gap China is creating, the US not only needs to invest more, but also harness the power of commercial data to inform strategic investments to expel foreign influence and adversarial capital from our industrial base,” she added. “Only then can we begin to find America’s edge in the fight against China.”

People matter.

We cannot change the mistakes of the past. The PRC has what they have.

“In the long term, China’s leading research position means that it has set itself up to excel not just in current technological development in almost all sectors, but in future technologies that don’t yet exist…,” the report says.

What we can do is control our decisions for the future. If someone from the PRC wants to come to the USA to get a PhD in Gender Studies; knock yourself out. Comparative French Literature? Sure.

Other things ... naw ... 

ASPI made a total of 23 recommendations in its report, calling for increased investments in areas like research and development, talent development and the production of intelligence strategies, while also advocating for governments to come up with more creative policy ideas and more collaboration between partners and allies. 

This is the point of the article that I started to get frustrated. You can almost feel the author trying NOT to propose what is the most logical first step; stop training your adversaries.

Until we stop underwriting the development and ongoing modernization of the PRC's intellectual capital, their strength and dominance in existing and emerging strategic dual use technology will only grow.

Universities will not do it. At the State level, citizens need to tell their governors and state legislatures they don't want their universities sending citizens away in order to take PRC money. At the federal level, Congress must act where appropriate.

Graph credit Eric Rosenblum.

Diversity Thursday

Some developments on the "Diversity Statement" front ... or "DEI Statement" or "DEIA Statement" or whatever they are calling it this week.

How do you connect the U.S. Naval Academy to the University of South Carolina, Florida, VMI, and the University of North Carolina System? 

Let's check in where the other school's are, and then we'll finish up what is happening at our Navy's undergrad institution.

Thanks to John Sailer we have a look behind the curtain at the not so innocent "Diversity Statements" that so many colleges are making people fill out when applying for a teaching or tenure track position. Sure, they may tell you that there is no correct answer ... but ...   

The rubrics punish candidates who espouse race neutrality.

They dictate a low score for anyone who states an “intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same.’” pic.twitter.com/TuQD31NAWG

— John Sailer (@JohnDSailer) March 1, 2023

Oh, how about those sectarian "Affinity Groups" our Navy is so in love with?

The rubrics likewise punish candidates for failing to embrace controversial DEI practices.

They dictate a low score to candidates who object to the practice of racially-segregated "affinity groups." pic.twitter.com/fk4LVog4ku

— John Sailer (@JohnDSailer) March 1, 2023

As Sailer points out, this is being pushed via the federal government grant system - so you're paying for it to the tune of a quarter billion dollars.

In Florida, Governor DeSantis is going right after that part of issue - paying for it. As we've covered on Thursdays for almost two decades, the costs are huge.

“As the Executive Office of the Governor prepares policy and budget proposals ahead of the 2023 Legislative Session, it is important that we have a full understanding of the operational expenses of state institutions,” Spencer wrote in the memo.

The memo said colleges and universities are required to “provide a comprehensive list of all staff, programs and campus activities related to diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory.”

In addition, they are directed to detail “costs associated with the administration of each program or activity,” including a description of the activities, paid positions and how much of the money is provided by the state.

...and at one public university - the first of hopefully many moves was made;

New College of Florida's Board of Trustees abolished the office handling diversity, equity and inclusion programs during a contentious and emotional meeting Tuesday ... only recently was the faculty handbook revised so that prospective hires are asked to submit a statement in their job application outlining how they will promote diversity.

Oh, did they? Well, so much for that.  

Under the new regulation, DEI will be defined to include "any effort to manipulate or otherwise influence the composition of the faculty or student body with reference to race, sex, color, or ethnicity."

The definition of DEI also would include: "Any effort to promote as the official position of the administration, the college, or any administrative unit thereof, a particular, widely contested opinion referencing unconscious or implicit bias, cultural appropriation, allyship, transgender ideology, microaggressions, group marginalization, anti-racism, systemic oppression, social justice, intersectionality, neo-pronouns, heteronormativity, disparate impact, gender theory, racial or sexual privilege, or any related formulation of these concepts."

I do love the gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes due to the Greatest Governor in the USA;

If DeSantis gets his way—and he likely will—diversity, equity and inclusion efforts will be eliminated from every public college and university in Florida. https://t.co/JEvIHzhANa

— VICE News (@VICENews) March 1, 2023

The Free State of Florida leads the way!

Heading up to the Mid-Atlantic, there is a quasi-civil war going on at VMI. The weapon of choice is one the left has used for a long time - money. Things got so bad, the mass of alumni are rising up;

The Virginia Military Institute continues to face intense pushback from an alumni group that opposes the military school’s ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The activists in recent months upped their efforts by seeking to redirect the institute’s alumni fundraising in an effort to persuade campus leaders to pull back on critical race theory policies and programs.

“The only way you can influence them is by hurting their pocketbook,” alumnus Gene Rice told The College Fix in an interview.

In a Jan. 23 letter to their fellow “Brother Rats of the great VMI Class of ’74,” concerned alumni requested that for their 50th reunion class gift, they do not donate to VMI Alumni Agencies but instead to the Cadet Foundation.

“All contributions directed to the Cadet Foundation would be used to fund programs and projects that directly benefit cadets but not those that would impose divisive changes derived from political agendas and policies on the Corps, Ratline and Honor System,” the letter stated.

“…We desire to take a stand and save what is left of the VMI experience,” the letter added. “… DO NOT fund programs and policies that force changes on the Corps, Ratline, and Honor system, resulting from political agendas and ideologies such as CRT, a divisive DEI Program, and others.”

The donation disruption effort is the latest in an ongoing campaign by a large and vocal company of alumni, cadets, parents and friends of VMI calling for the discontinuation of DEI programs at the school.

Last week there is an even stronger pushback in the University of North Carolina System - which is a lot more than just Chapel Hill;

The University of North Carolina (UNC) System announced plans to ditch diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as well as compelled speech requirements from hiring decisions following a board of governors meeting on Thursday.

The System, which includes 17 public universities serving nearly a quarter of a million students, will no longer “solicit nor require an employee or applicant for academic admission or employment to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles regarding matters of contemporary political debate or social action as a condition to admission, employment, or professional advancement,” the resolution reads.

The statement added that hiring practices will further prohibit “statements of commitment to particular views on matters of contemporary political debate or social action contained on applications or qualifications for admission or employment included as criteria for analysis of an employee’s career progression.”

How does this circle back to the U.S. Naval Academy? 

Well, there are a lot of things going on in the background there - a few we've covered here before - and others involving hiring which are off the hook bad that are not my place to publish ... but notice all the concern about the "Diversity Statements" - especially the South Carolina example above? Remember how that shows how they is operationalized.

"Diversity Statements" are already thick in the hiring decisions at Annapolis.

If you want to teach Midshipmen - depending on your academic area of expertise - you will be required to;

"... submit a ... diversity statement" or send "A diversity statement that gives applicant’s experience with or commitment to diversity in service, research and/or teaching."

At the link above you can hunt around all the job openings, but in my brief review I saw a pattern ... a little hint of an internal civil war. Inconsistency.

If you are interested in teaching or applying to an tenure track position in English, Russian/Eastern European History, Mechanical Engineering, Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, you may get variations of the above such as;

(provide) A description of the candidate’s experiences and approach to working with students from diverse backgrounds. For more information on the range of student backgrounds our faculty interact with daily, please see the USNA 2025 Class Portrait (https://www.usna.edu/Admissions/Apply/Class-Portrait.php)

They are already well trenched even in some of the hard sciences and Rickoverian majors - which though not calling them "diversity statement" even Aerospace Engineering is asking for one.

In the teaching or research statements as appropriate, candidates should describe their experiences and approach to working with students from diverse backgrounds, as doing so is integral to success as an educator at USNA. 

Sailing Instructors, Wrestling Coaches,  and those teaching Math will have to read "diversity" a few times in the job posting, but no statement required. You will have to suffer through this;

Applicants are encouraged to submit a Demographic Information on Applicants Form to the Academy's Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by emailing the form to Renee Sharps at rsharps@usna.edu.  Your responses are optional and will not be shared with the search committee or anyone else involved in the selection process for this position.

I guess the kind would say this is just to feed the metrics that need reporting ... but really ... do you really believe that statement? "Optional" ... "not shared" ... ummm. Sure. 

If you don't know where to start in writing your Woke Shahada, universities are nice enough to provide a bevy of examples of correct thinking and goodthink.

Will the USNA alumni grow the spine of the VMI alumni? We'll see.

There is an action point here, and Governor DeSantis is showing the way. At some point, a (R) will be in charge of the Executive Branch and will be Commander in Chief.

All (R) looking to have that job need to be asked at some point if they are willing to go after the diversity industry in the military service academies as Florida has at its public institutions?

If not, they really don't know what time it is and (R) inclined voters should be encouraged to look elsewhere for someone who does. 

Diversity Thursday

I almost passed on this story because it is all derived from digging into someone's twitter history.

This has a spotty track record, as most of it is when people intentionally take things out of context, have no sense of humor, or just plain assign motives and meanings to things that only had the malfunction of being less than 240 characters.

However, after reading it a few times and letting the draft post sit for a few days I decided that, no, this is pretty straight forward.

If at least two members of Congress are willing to call it out, the least thing we can do it bring it out here ... because it is about made to order on the type of people we've been discussing here for the better part of two decades - and worse - these are people injecting their venom in to the veins of the children of servicemembers.

On occasion, the diversity industry provides a moment of clarity where they simply and directly validate their critics.

As we've outlined on Thursdays for almost a couple of decades, though you will on occasion find a well-meaning true believer, they are the exception. Most of the time you find the otherwise unemployable people in the diversity nomenklatura willingly seeking out opportunities to externalize their internal sectarianism, grievance, and brainstem desire to "other" some group of people they have decided to blame for their own inadequacies - and get paid for it.

A story as old as our species - and you know it when you see it.

Though they will usually couch their sectarianism in nice words or cute posters - or even in the often laughably Potemkin Village like photo spreads - because they live and exist in an isolated, self-affirming intellectual terrarium - the less clever of their cohort will often say the quite part out loud and then look for top cover from their fellow travelers and the cowed administrators who live in fear of their own creation.

We have a perfect case today, but before we get to the details I'd like you to remember a few things. This isn't just your money paying for this, this is your nation's military paying for this. This is the kind of person they want forming policies that directly impact the children of servicemembers who have no choice but to send their kids to a DOD school. 

More than 67,000 students attend 159 schools operated by DoDEA worldwide.

This individual was chosen not by accident, but my intention. Higher leadership appointing mid-level leadership.

Not all bigots hide in the shadows.

The Pentagon official who oversees diversity, equity and inclusion for the Defense Department’s schools is at the center of an inquiry from lawmakers who said she made “racially disparaging” comments.

Now, Kelisa Wing, who has led diversity efforts for the Department of Defense Education Activity since December 2021, is pushing back against those claims in an exclusive interview with Military Times. She emphasized that she is speaking only as a private citizen and educator, and not on behalf of DoDEA.

Oh. 

Would anyone in a leadership in DOD be given a pass for saying these things out of uniform ... pick any racial or ethnic group.

I'm not as focused so much on the error, I am a bit permissive to people making mistakes, owning them, and moving on ... humans can have weak moments - but she defends her comments. She sees nothing wrong with them. For her, they are just a normal part of her "personal life." I will give her credit for owning them - but there is little room for nuance here.

Does she get a personal carve out here between her work and non-work statements? Is this a grey area open to interpretation? Are other people on the opposite political side of her - and make no mistake this is political - get the same carve out? Would she give them the grace she is asking for here?

“No, I did not make disparaging comments against white people. I would never categorize an entire group of people to disparage them. I’m speaking now as a private individual, about my private free speech from July of 2020,” she said.

Ponder the above as you read this;

“I’m so exhausted at these white folx in these PD [professional development] sessions this lady actually had the CAUdaacity to say that black people can be racist too … I had to stop the session and give Karen the BUSINESS … we are not the majority, we don’t have power.”

It appears that she specifically has a problem with caucasian females and uses "Karen" as a general descriptor. 

The lawmakers also cited press reports stating that Wing tweeted she was “exhausted by 99% of the white men in education and 95% of the white women.”

Those reports are wrong, Wing said. Fox News correctly reported in September that the tweet was made by another Twitter user, she said. Fox reported that she responded to the tweet, saying “If another Karen tells me about her feelings … I might lose it …”

Perhaps she should submit a statement on what she defines as a "Karen." That would be fun.

Again, twitter is a horrible place where it is easy to have things come off not quite the way you might want it to. You can reply to people or retweet someone who you don't know who is actually quite odious if you dug around a bit, so we should all give some room for twitter's clunkyness, but this is not such a case. 

You would think that Wing must know that if the races were reversed here, she would not have a job. I'm not sure she is self-aware enough to understand this.

In another tweet from 2017, Wing described herself as a “woke administrator.”

Wing told Military Times that, for her, “woke” means “being conscious, being aware, being aware of my surroundings, being aware of everything … that’s what it means to me and what it’s always meant to me.”

In their letters to Austin, the House representatives also referred to comments in books associated with Wing, saying she “reportedly disseminated her woke invectives.” The books are part of a series of children’s books on racial justice in America, with titles including “What Does It Mean to Defund Police,” “What is White Privilege?” and “What is Anti-Racism?”

The front covers of the books list each author and “with Kelisa Wing.” However, Wing said, “I want to go on record that I’m not the author of those books.” She describes her role as a “content adviser,” helping lay out what the general themes and purposes of the chapters should be.

A review of all the DoDEA school libraries by the group Open The Books, a nonprofit government watchdog, found that 11 of the schools collectively carried 45 copies of these racial justice series books.

Wing said she doesn’t promote these books through her DoDEA work, and she doesn’t receive royalties from the sale of those books.

Wing is the author of four books: “Conversations” (2006); “Weeds & Seeds: How to Stay Positive in the Midst of life’s Storms” (2017); “Promises and Possibilities: Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline” (2018); and “If I Could: Lessons for Navigating an Unjust World” (2020). She was a also contributing author of “Becoming a Globally Competent Teacher” (2019)

In one professional development video from 2021, she mentioned to her DoDEA audience that she is proud of her book “Promises and Possibilities: Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline,” and held it up, saying “shameless plug.”

To be fair, in time and place that she was pushing her books, the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gilday was pushing even worse books.

The very highest levels of leadership are the problem, really, Wing is just a symptom.

“Kelisa Wing is exactly the right person to lead our efforts in building on the foundational work done to support meaningful change in our organization,” said DoDEA Director Tom Brady in the 2021 announcement. “This new position will take a holistic approach to identifying and improving how we integrate the practice of diversity, equity and inclusion in every aspect of DoDEA, from curriculum and assessment to hiring and professional development.”

You get what you hire.

Diversity Thursday

We should savor the victories when they come our way. Elections matter, and the average American does not want to have sectarianism, division, and hate injected in to their children using their money.

As we've said here for 18-years, those promoting division based on race, creed, color, and other immutable characteristics have no place in a diverse 21st Century Republic.

Elections mean things because for some reason, it can be hard to find leaders with the moral courage to do the right thing. 

Governor DeSantis on Tuesday announced a legislative proposal to eliminate programs, courses, and bureaucracies dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory (CRT) at public Florida universities on the grounds that taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize harmful, divisive ideologies.

“We are going to eliminate all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in the state of Florida. No funding, and that will wither on the vine,” he said at a press conference. The removal of such departments, he suggested, will serve as an “ideological filter” and “political filter” for the schools. 

The proposed legislation would prohibit DEI spending in state university budgets, which would effectively starve DEI departments of resources, giving them no choice but to discontinue classes and fire administrators.

If you are a regular here, you know we've documented the bloat, growth, and expansion of the Navy's branch of the diversity industry - especially at our educational institutions in detail. 

One day, hopefully soon, someone like Governor DeSantis - perhaps DeSantis - will be elected as President and will do at the federal level what we are not doing in Florida.

The amount of wasted time, wasted resources, and empty hours listening to tenured radicals tell service members - most born in the 21st Century, that they should first and foremost see each other by the most artificial characteristics and then use that difference to position for advantage, conflict, and disorder firmly stuck in aspic from the perspective of the early 1970s..

Take a moment to listen. Good stuff. 

Take the "W."

 

#BREAKING: Gov. Ron DeSantis announces proposal to eliminate all funding for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Critical Race Theory at public universities

"All DEI and CRT bureaucracies in the state of Florida - no funding, and that will wither on the vine." pic.twitter.com/8B0yQbZYsC

— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) January 31, 2023 

Remember, there is nothing stopping every (R) governor from doing this in their state but moral courage.

There is also nothing from stopping a (R) President - the Commander in Chief - from ordering his military to do the same, as it should.

Diversity Thursdsay

Do I ever tire of DivThu? Yes, every Thursday I tire of it ... but we've been at it so long, why not?

Do I get tired of the topic? Well, sure. Heck, almost 13-years ago I tired of seeing higher education organizations - always claiming poverty - spending millions of dollars a year, especially at the service academies, doing nothing but promoting the division of young men and woman on the basis of race and ethnicity.

...but ... especially in the last few years, there has been a wonderfully blossoming of the understanding of this cancer in higher education that bleeds out in to the general culture.

That glimmer of hope and the fact that we seem to be getting traction is, really, why I keep going here.

To really start to turn to a 21st Century construct of race relations - something that is becoming more and more needed as we have many more mixed race citizens - we need leaders. Serious leaders with a record of success is the one thing that has been missing. Leaders who understand how to use power and influence to effect change through access to the levers of power. That is how the diversity industry got where they are today, and that is the only way you are going to excise them from their bastions.

We now have open advocates in the House of Representatives and the Senate ... but not yet the majority. They are growing in number and influence. What was once only whispered is now openly called out.

The Supreme Court - even at its slow pace - is really ahead of everyone in this area, as I believe we will see further proof soon with the upcoming ruling against Harvard and UNC almost a decade in the making.

To really take action to the next level towards a better, more unified nation, we need help in the Executive Branch. 

It won't take much, but it does take vision and courage. 

What do I mean by "much?" Simple. The best things usually are simple. We just need a leader willing to say, "No." Refusing to let there be any more discrimination and division based in immutable characteristics.

To do the right thing;

Governor Ron DeSantis can ask Florida public universities for information on their spending on critical race theory and “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” a federal judge ruled recently.

...

The requested data includes detailing how the campus programs involve CRT and DEI and the number of employees allocated to them, as previously reported by The Fix.

Follow. The. Money.

If you didn't already, look at the "13-years" link above. It was millions of dollars at USNA alone then, it has to be much more now. I would offer that those asking for metrics need to be careful, as was shown recently, the diversity industry will try to hide what they are doing. 

You have to look not just at the full time and part time nomenklatura, you need to look at "targeted recruiting," travel, and hosting expenses for racialist speakers, panels, and affinity group activities. That is where you are going to find the real expenditure of money. 

You also need to interview faculty under Chatham House rules. From PhD students to professors at civilian and military schools of higher education, I continue to almost daily get reports - most on background not for attribution or sharing - on what is going on. They are in some combination horrified at what is being done, disgusted with what they are participated in, and terrified that they will be seen as not "onboard" with this cult of division.

It's a racket - and a counterproductive one at that. Forget the morally reprehensible insistence that people self-segregate based on self-identified sectarian divisions, even ignore preferential treatment or punishment based on same ... no ... just look at the fact that as what Rod Dreher points out,  what even the well-meaning are doing is counterproductive;

Over the years, social scientists who have conducted careful reviews of the evidence base for diversity trainings have frequently come to discouraging conclusions. Though diversity trainings have been around in one form or another since at least the 1960s, few of them are ever subjected to rigorous evaluation, and those that are mostly appear to have little or no positive long-term effects. The lack of evidence is “disappointing,” wrote Elizabeth Levy Paluck of Princeton and her co-authors in a 2021 Annual Review of Psychology article, “considering the frequency with which calls for diversity training emerge in the wake of widely publicized instances of discriminatory conduct.”

Dr. Paluck’s team found just two large experimental studies in the previous decade that attempted to evaluate the effects of diversity trainings and met basic quality benchmarks. Other researchers have been similarly unimpressed. “We have been speaking to employers about this research for more than a decade,” wrote the sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev in 2018, “with the message that diversity training is likely the most expensive, and least effective, diversity program around.” (To be fair, not all of these critiques apply as sharply to voluntary diversity trainings.)

If diversity trainings have no impact whatsoever, that would mean that perhaps billions of dollars are being wasted annually in the United States on these efforts. But there’s a darker possibility: Some diversity initiatives might actually worsen the D.E.I. climates of the organizations that pay for them.

That’s partly because any psychological intervention may turn out to do more harm than good. The late psychologist Scott Lilienfeld made this point in an influential 2007 article where he argued that certain interventions — including ones geared at fighting youth substance use, youth delinquency and PTSD — likely fell into that category. In the case of D.E.I., Dr. Dobbin and Dr. Kalev warn that diversity trainings that are mandatory, or that threaten dominant groups’ sense of belonging or make them feel blamed, may elicit negative backlash or exacerbate pre-existing biases.

Many popular contemporary D.E.I. approaches meet these criteria. They often seem geared more toward sparking a revolutionary re-understanding of race relations than solving organizations’ specific problems. And they often blame white people — or their culture — for harming people of color. For example, the activist Tema Okun’s work cites concepts like “objectivity” and “worship of the written word” as characteristics of “white supremacy culture.” Robin DiAngelo’s “white fragility” trainings are intentionally designed to make white participants uncomfortable. And microaggression trainings are based on an area of academic literature that claims, without quality evidence, that common utterances like “America is a melting pot” harm the mental health of people of color. Many of these trainings run counter to the views of most Americans — of any color — on race and equality. And they’re generating exactly the sort of backlash that research predicts.

If you think the worse of what we are seeing in academia isn't at the US Naval Academy, West Point, USAFA, or USCGA - well then you either have not been a loyal reader of DivThu for the last 18-years or so, or you live in willful disbelief.

If you don't think it isn't elbow-deep in to the military ... well ... I'm not sure how far it will take to get you our of your denial.

Again, we will have to wait for the right chief executive, but there is no reason the ground cannot be prepared by Congress.

If Republican really care to act instead of signal, then there are simple things to do. Like Governor DeSantis has done in Florida, they can effect change at our service academies. They need to ask ... no belay my last ... demand that the service academies answer the same question about funding. Be both broad and very specific on the request and audit the answer you get. Salaries, BA/NMP, collateral duty, travel, speakers, panels, consultants, seminars, affinity groups based on DEI's usually subject areas, all of it.

...and interview, in private, the active duty and civilian instructors who are there. 

No one said doing the right thing is easy.

Make sure and come back next week where we will be reviewing some of the nasty-bits in the "Academic Year 2021-22 Institutional Effectiveness Assessment Report" from the US Naval Academy.

Yes, it is about as bad as you think.

Diversity Thursday

Unless you have kids of college age like I do, you may not be up to speed with just how far things have gone.

Some of you were a little shocked with what we covered back in September about the goings on at the US Naval Academy.

They're playing catch up, really. There is a lot worse going on at USNA that I am not at liberty to share (sources and methods, etc) - but trust me, it is getting worse as the faculty and leadership there chase the latest trends at other government and private universities.

Shall we check in on what is going on in larger academia? Why, yes, we should. It is coming your way sooner more than later.

Here's a little pull quote from an extensive report by John Sailer over at The Free Press, How DEI Is Supplanting Truth as the Mission of American Universities. 

Many American college students are now required to take DEI, anti-racism, or social justice courses. At Georgetown, all undergraduates must take two Engaging Diversity courses. At Davidson College, the requirement goes under the title of Justice, Equality, and Community, which students can fulfill by taking courses like Racial Capitalism & Reproduction and Queer(ing) Performance. Northern Arizona University recently updated its general education curriculum to require nine credit hours of “diversity perspectives” courses, including a unit on “intersectional identities.” 

DEI is also becoming a de facto academic discipline. In 2021, Bentley University in Massachusetts created a DEI major. Last year, the Wharton School announced its introduction of a DEI concentration for undergraduates and a DEI major for MBA students.

Meantime, the open faculty position listings at universities across the country illustrate how a focus on race, gender, social justice, and critical theory can be crucial to landing a job. Last year, the University of Houston–Downtown sought an instructor in Early Modern British Literature, including Shakespeare, with a preferred specialization in “critical race studies.” At Wake Forest University, an applicant for assistant professor of Spanish should be someone “whose critical perspectives are linked to the experiences of groups historically underrepresented in higher education in ways that inform and influence their pedagogical approach.” Williams College recently sought an assistant professor of German who works “in the areas of migration, race and anti-racism, post- and decolonial approaches, disability, and/or memory studies.”

These imperatives often come from the top. In May, the Board of Governors for California Community Colleges (CCC), the largest system of higher education in the country, decreed that every employee—faculty, staff, and administrators—must be evaluated for their “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” competencies. Each district in the system ultimately decides how to enforce the new rule, but the Chancellor’s Office released a list of recommended competencies. It suggested faculty create a curriculum that “promotes a race-conscious and intersectional lens” and advocate for “anti-racist goals and initiatives.”

What can be done? Is there anyway to get this nightmare back in the bottle?

Well, yes - but while simple, it isn't easy.

For decades conservatives retreated from and were pushed out of the institutions. Conservative leaders did nothing. From your local university to the Boy Scouts to Annapolis, those who others who were relied on to hold the line surrendered every hill that they decided was not worth fighting for. Now their enemies hold all the high ground and they are surrounded.

Lesson learned here; no longer support that kind of "leader." You know, the kind who accepts the slander against them and their allies in silence, and are more willing to deal with their enemies than they are in supporting their friends.

Look for leaders who not only know what time it is, but don't care what names they are called and will take action.

You know, like Governor Ron DeSantis of the Free State of Florida;

...DeSantis announced the appointment of six new board members at the small Sarasota college, many of whom were ultra-conservative political players and academics. Sharf, a trans woman, said that she returned to shore—and her phone—to find it had blown up with messages from people telling her the news.

“I got really sad and then just, like, laid down,” she told The Daily Beast.

Among the appointees on Friday were Charles R. Kesler, a professor and editor for a publication of the far-right Claremont Institute; Mark Bauerlein, a Trump-allied Emory University professor; and Matthew Spalding, a professor at conservative Christian University Hillsdale College in Michigan.

“It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida’s classical college… more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South,” DeSantis chief of staff James Uthmeier told the right-wing Daily Caller, laying out their plan.

But what immediately caught Sharf’s eye were tweets by incoming board member Christopher Rufo, who only days before had declared that “Gov. DeSantis is going to lay siege to university ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ programs.” In addition to being perhaps the key figure behind the bogus right-wing backlash to mostly nonexistent use of “critical race theory” in schools, Rufo has also been an avid opponent of what he calls “radical gender theory” in education. And among other appeals that form part of his admittedly ruthless political playbook, he has issued callouts on Twitter for “documents, PDFs, audio-video, and training materials related to gender, grooming, and trans ideology in schools.”

Yes, I pulled the quote from The Daily Beast, because their tears are precious to me.

A better bio of the players can be found here.

The Governor's spokesman;

In a state full of large public universities, the New College of Florida stands out as an anomaly. With just under 700 students, the liberal arts college is by far the smallest of the 12 institutions that make up the State University System of Florida.

Because of its size, NCF has been in the crosshairs of the state Legislature in recent years, with lawmakers arguing that it’s too expensive to operate. A failed 2020 bill would have stripped NCF of its independence and made the college part of Florida State University.

DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin said by email that New College of Florida “is a public institution with a statutorily stated mission of ‘provid[ing] a quality education.’ Unfortunately, like so many colleges and universities in America, this institution has been completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning. In particular, New College of Florida has reached a moment of critical mass, wherein low student enrollment and other financial stresses have emerged from its skewed focus and impractical course offerings.”

We'll see what happens ... but imagine a Chief Executive actually pushing back against the illiberal left on campus and giving taxpayers and option in education. 

There is hope - you just need to vote for it.

Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part XCV

We started doing the "Long Game" series about the rise of the People's Republic of China to challenge American's place in the world. At the end of that first post in the series in July of 2004, I wrote;

Say what you want about the Chinese, they are very focused on their long term strategic needs. They will continue to study the way we do business at sea, and they will make sure they are ready when the call comes. Are we?

A lot of folks hear rustling in the woods behind us.

There were a lot of us, but few were listening. 18.4 years later, they are now.

That is part of the reason it has been since May of this year since I did a Long Game post. I've written a fair bit about the PRC since then, but did not use the "Long Game" tag. Why? Simple, we are here. Over 18 years is a "long time." All but the most compromised see the threat from the PRC and the game is afoot.

It is military, economic, and academic - and it is in our face.

I still think the tag is helpful in that while the PRC is now ready to call our bluff west of Wake, they are the nation with thousands of years of history, and they have a plan ... we just need to keep an open eye and mind to see it.

If you want to get the view from the official organs of the US government towards the PRC, a good place to look would be the recently published review of military and security development in the PRC by the USA's Department of Defense. 

There is one paragraph early on that I think is the most important;

Sensitive, dual-use, or military-grade equipment that the PRC have attempted to acquire include radiation hardened integrated circuits, monolithic microwave integrated circuits, accelerometers, gyroscopes, naval and marine technologies, syntactic foam trade secrets, space communications, military communication jamming equipment, dynamic random access memory, aviation technologies, and antisubmarine warfare (ASW) capabilities. 

How will they acquire all this dual use technology? If you are thinking it is Spy-vs-Spy old school espionage, you are only looking at a very small portion of what is going on.

You need to look at the very sober fact that they are getting that technology the most efficient way - they are convincing us to give it to them. It starts at our universities and pipelines right in to industry.

First of all, let's look at some charts from Statista. 

Even with the COVID effect, the numbers are staggering. Here's the number of college and university students from China in the United States from academic year 2010/11 to 2020/21 :

Note the decline to the USA is not the same as the decline globally. Here's the number of students from China going abroad for study from 2010 to 2020;

The numbers here are hard to come by and I would consider the above to be on the high side. SCMP puts the number at 290,086. A 2020 study from Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service have about half those numbers, but the commentary to the study is sound;

The results speak to ongoing policy conversations about the risks and benefits of Chinese students enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs at U.S. universities. These conversations have been hampered by a lack of granular data on the number of enrolled Chinese students by field and degree level. For example, it is currently impossible to calculate the financial impact of Chinese students on the U.S. university system because we do not know how many Chinese graduate students are in master’s programs (and thus likely to pay full tuition) versus Ph.D. programs (for which they often receive university or federal funding). This paper seeks to provide such data and to identify remaining data gaps that should be filled.

Because there is no single database of domestic and international students in the United States that includes all the relevant information, analysts have had to produce estimates using several different data sources. These sources often count slightly different things over possibly different periods, complicating the analysis and increasing the risk of inadvertent errors. Our findings differ from widely-cited government estimates. Whereas those estimates suggested that 25 percent of U.S. STEM graduate students and 15 percent of STEM undergraduates are Chinese, we conclude with high confidence that the numbers are 16 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

That's right kiddies; one of the nation's top universities that happens to be in our nation's capital with incredible connections to our federal government finds, "..no single database of ...international students in the United States..."

In case you were wondering, the number of Americans studying in China in 2020 was 2,481. I can't find out how many are completing a full program of study or just doing a semester ... or what their majors are ... but just look at that delta.

From that study, it is clear that they are not in the USA to get Gender Studies degrees.

Look at how close the numbers of undergrads and graduate students are. Note that they're all STEM.

You cannot classify math. You cannot classify dual-use research. You cannot remove knowledge gained. Just look at those numbers. Look at those fields. Look up-post what areas the PRC wants to advance in.

We are making our #1 competitor better, and taking away opportunities for the children of American taxpayers who especially with land grant universities, paid for these universities to exist to serve them.

I don't blame the PRC's citizens for wanting to come here to study, for both personal and professional reasons. However, they never really leave their dystopian nation behind;

On the bucolic campus of Purdue University in Indiana, deep in America’s heartland and 7,000 miles from his home in China, Zhihao Kong thought he could finally express himself.

In a rush of adrenaline last year, the graduate student posted an open letter on a dissident website praising the heroism of the students killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

The blowback, he said, was fast and frightening. His parents called from China, crying. Officers of the Ministry of State Security, the feared civilian spy agency, had warned them about his activism in the United States.

“They told us to make you stop or we are all in trouble,” his parents said.

Then other Chinese students at Purdue began hounding him, calling him a CIA agent and threatening to report him to the embassy and the MSS.

Kong, who goes by the nickname Moody, had already accepted an invitation from an international group of dissidents to speak at a coming online commemoration of the Tiananmen massacre anniversary. Uncertain if he should go through with it, he joined in rehearsals for the event on Zoom.

Within days, MSS officers were at his family’s door again. His parents implored him: No public speaking. No rallies. 

That powerful hook back home isn't just used to keep people under control - but to get them to do further things for the PRC.

In August 2015, an electrical engineering student in Chicago sent an email to a Chinese national titled “Midterm test questions.”

More than two years later, the email would turn up in an FBI probe in the Southern District of Ohio involving a suspected Chinese intelligence officer who authorities believed was trying to acquire technical information from a defense contractor.

Investigators took note.

They identified the email’s writer as Ji Chaoqun, a Chinese student who would go on to enlist in the US Army Reserve. His email, they say, had nothing to do with exams.

Instead, at the direction of a high-level Chinese intelligence official, Ji allegedly attached background reports on eight US-based individuals who Beijing could target for potential recruitment as spies, according to a federal criminal complaint.

The eight – naturalized US citizens originally from Taiwan or China – had worked in science and technology. Seven had worked for or recently retired from US defense contractors. The complaint says all of them were perceived as rich targets for a new form of espionage that China has been aggressively pursuing to win a silent war against the US for information and global influence.

It would be one thing if we took an active roll here in the US and other Western nations (like The Netherlands in the link below), but we allow not just PRC police and intelligence services to run free, we allow other students (many the same people) to act as enforcers. 

26-year old UG student Meng avoids interacting with Chinese government supporters altogether, if she can. ‘These Pinkies are way too sensitive’, she says, using the nickname for young Chinese Communist Party supporters. ‘They are always very aggressive and feel they represent the side of justice.’

I’m always careful about choosing people to talk to

She is also careful when talking to people she doesn’t know well. And when she participated in a protest in Amsterdam this summer, remembering the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square that cost hundreds of lives and left thousands wounded when the Chinese government opened fire on protesters, she wore a mask and disguised herself in cheap clothes. ‘There were Chinese people there who kept taking pictures of us with their mobile phones’, she remembers. ‘When the protest was over, my companion and I walked to a place where no one was around. We changed our clothes and threw the outfit we had on in a trash bin.’

The FBI is, in theory, on the hunt - but read this from NPR and tell me if you think they are getting all the help they need from universities.

"The Chinese intelligence services strategically use every tool at their disposal — including state-owned businesses, students, researchers and ostensibly private companies — to systematically steal information and intellectual property," FBI Director Christopher Wray said at the Council on Foreign Relations in April.

Former FBI agents say the bureau's recent visits to universities are merely an extension of long-running efforts to collaborate with the private sector and academia on national security issues.

Speaking of dual use, not only are many of the finite number of PhD programs going to foreign nationals - and as this is a zero sum game - and not US citizens; so are the jobs.

Chinese and Indian students make up nearly half, and “most stay long after graduation”. “In February 2017, approximately 90% of Chinese nationals and 87% of Indian nationals who completed STEM PhD programmes in the US between 2000 and 2015 were still living in the country, compared to 66% of graduates from other countries,” the report states.

"Wait..." you say, "How can they help the PRC's military if they are working for American companies and universities?"

Well, its complicated - and made more so by the numbers being so large. It is hard for the FBI to keep track of what the threats are when the pool of candidates are so large and the connections so varied. Heck, the problem people don't even have to be from China;

The China Initiative’s most high-profile case has been that of Charles Lieber, the chair of the chemistry department at Harvard and a perennial Nobel Prize candidate, as well as the recipient of more than fifteen million dollars of federal funding, including from the Department of Defense. From 2012 to 2017, Lieber participated in China’s Thousand Talents, the most vaunted talent program; his contract paid him fifty thousand dollars per month, along with generous startup fees to establish a lab in Wuhan. He had, however, neglected to inform Harvard of his double-timing in China, and, when approached by federal investigators, he continued to conceal the arrangement—and the sacks of cash he had smuggled through customs. In December, he was convicted of lying to federal authorities, falsifying tax returns, and failing to report foreign earnings. Some felt that this was just another anti-Chinese expedition; a D.O.D. official testified that the investigation was prompted by the sheer number of Chinese students working in Lieber’s lab. But John Krige, the historian, has noted that Lieber’s contract stipulated that he work on the development of batteries for high-performance electric vehicles, an area of industrial competition. “The academic research community must ask itself if it is morally or politically acceptable to engage in international scientific collaboration with China in fields that can seriously harm the domestic economy,” he wrote.

This problem of our own creation is worthy of a few books and won't be solved here - but policy makers have to address:

- Too many of the finite numbers of US STEM graduate program seats are being taken up by citizens of the PRC.

- These STEM degrees feed the knowledge base for dual-use technology.

- PRC nationals working in cutting edge technology jobs received by having been given one of those limited positions make them the target for PRC exploitation.

- Even if PRC nationals take nothing material when they go home, they take their education and exposure with them.

- For a quarter century, us government and educational institutions have developed close and unequal relationships from entities controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

This should be a non-partisan issue - but an American issue.

Diversity Thursday

A lot of you are experiencing official discrimination on a regular basis and share what you are going through with me. The vast majority of it I don't share because it is sent on background to me as people are terrified of being found out by the diversity zampolits. 

The most scared people - even more than those in the military - are those in academia. It isn't just the college admission process, it is the red in tooth and claw discrimination in hiring faculty giving special consideration to some racial and ethnic groups while at the same time taking specific negative action against other racial and ethic groups.

I've written way too much in a rambling way on the topic over the years, but in the latest legal case against this overt and official discrimination, I think I found a smarter person with a much more succinct response when asked, "What is wrong with our policies?" 

As reported by Aaron Sibarium in the Washington Free Beacon, I give you University of Texas at Austin finance professor named Richard Lowery;

"These discriminatory, illegal, and anti-meritocratic practices have been egged on by woke ideologues who populate the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at public and private universities throughout the United States," Lowery’s lawsuit says. "The existence of these offices is subverting meritocracy and encouraging wholesale violations of civil-rights laws throughout our nation’s university system."

Nice summary.

This has the potential to be as important as the case we will soon see come out of SCOTUS on the discrimination in admissions.

Racial discrimination of any kind has no place in official policy in 2022.

Diversity Thursday

 

The legal system works at the speed of smell, but we are getting closer to what may be one of the most important civil rights cases to come in front of the Supreme Court in the last half century.

There are new readers coming to CDRSalamander every day, so once again let me set the foundation. The cornerstones are rather simple but essential for our wondrously polyglot experimental republic to survive; persons deserve to be judged as individuals; individuals deserve equal opportunity; people deserve to be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin; no favor should be given to nor ill-favor placed on any person based on something they can do nothing about – their race, creed, color, or national origin, etc.

With that out of the way – it really should be self-evident, but the excessively emotive on this topic sometimes need a reminder – let us get back to the subject of todays DivThu.

The case in question is Students for Fair Admission v. President and Fellows of Harvard College & the University of North Carolina that is finally on the docket of SCOTUS. In summary, universities have shamefully been discriminating against different ethnic groups in favor of those they deem more desirable. Merit, objective criteria for success, academic excellence, and all those things one would expect to be determining factors are not what is driving the zero-sum game that is admissions. No, the diversity industry (those who derive financial, power, or psychological gain from promoting discrimination), have their metrics and they must be met. Turning their stated goals on it head, they are not about equal opportunity or the elimination of discrimination or sectarian division, instead they have decided that they want to use these evil methods to pursue their own goal; equity.

Stuck in a mid-20th Century mindset, they desire to legally be able to discriminate against people born in the 21st Century based on their race, creed, color, etc while at the same time, picking a desired group that they want to give preferential treatment to based on self-identified criteria.

Regulars of DivThu know the extended commentary. New people can click the “Diversity” tab to review if they wish.

This is where the military comes in.

It didn't have to weigh in on this political topic - but ideologs decided they needed a shield of political retired General and Flag Officers ... so be it.

Shots fired. Let the battle be joined. 

As we have documented through the last two decades – the military (especially at the service academies) have protested that they do not discriminate in admissions, but of course we know they do. Many of us have seen the data. As the data became known, then the excuses and smoke screens came out, but in the last half decade or more as the light of truth became brighter on their actions, they decide to turn in to the skid and claim, “Yes, we discriminate. Discrimination is a good thing. We will keep doing it. You will like it, and if you protest against our bigotry we will call you a bigot.” 

You know the drill.

In this case that involves college admissions, the natsec left decided that they would service-shame the civilian side of the house by gathering a bunch of retired senior officers to – and this is the amazing part – say, “Universities need to be allowed to discriminate, because if you don’t let them discriminate, then we won’t be able to discriminate. We love discrimination and we will lose all our wars if we can’t continue.”

Strange flex, and I’m taking a little artistic license with their verbiage, but there it is.

Well, some interesting things have come out that connect two cases, one from 2015, and the other the one that is the subject in today’s post.

I’d like you to look over two amici curiae. The first one from 2015’s Fisher vs. University of Texas at Austin.  You can read the details of the case here.

There was an amici curiae filed in 2015 that you can read here signed by 34 retired senior officers, a former Senator and Medal of Honor recipient, and one of Bill Clinton’s Army Secretary, Joe Reeder. Remember that name…he is one of the major players in the 2015 and 2022 efforts.

In their amici curiae they state;

In Grutter, Justice O’Connor, writing for the majority, stated:

It has been 25 years since Justice Powell first approved the use of race to further an interest in student body diversity in the context of public higher education. . . . We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today. 539 U.S. at 343. 

History may prove Justice O’Connor’s prediction prescient, but the day that racial preferences are no longer necessary to achieve student body diversity in the context of public higher education has not yet arrived. 

That was always a great gift to those who have been fighting this fight for so long. At last, a high profile “Ref. A” out in the open so that no one is silent due to a whole variety of reasons, that, yes, the military does discriminate.

People – though a shrinking pool of the ideological and ignorant – still claim that this does not take place, but even those who did not see it firsthand now at least had a Ref. A. to push

So, we now have Students for Fair Admission v. President and Fellows of Harvard College & the University of North Carolina. If you need the details of that case, click here.

We have a 2022 amici curiae for this case as well with Joe Reeder and his law firm again at the front.

We have this time 35 (33 retired GOFO plus Sen. Kerry and Reeder) signing on vice 36. Their Summary of the Argument seven years later from Fisher reads in part;

Prohibiting educational institutions from using modest, race-conscious admissions policies would impair the military’s ability to maintain diverse leadership, and thereby seriously undermine its institutional legitimacy and operational effectiveness. Amici respectfully request that, in considering whether to reverse decades of precedent affirming the constitutionality of such admissions policies, the Court will continue to consider how such policies enable the military to serve our Nation’s security interests.

What a gift to truth. Their policies can never survive the light of day. They can try to defend it – but especially as our nation becomes even more mixed-heritage – as the people are WAY ahead of the entrenched sectarians – fewer people are going to see any positive attribute to having government institutions line up with some outdated “one drop” rule, or look the other way to red in tooth and claw racial self-identification fraud for fun and profit.

Nope, however, there are some retire GOFO who are quite happy to. 

Let’s look at those 34 GOFO who signed on in 2015 and see which way the wind is blowing. Of those 34 GOFO, 15 returned to sign the 2022 document.

Huh.

What about the other 19? Well, three have passed away (Clemins, Griffith, and Neal) and one LTG Becton, USA (Ret.) is 96 years old. That leaves 15 who decided that 2022 is a different time and it was time to reassess.

Those who signed on in 2015 but did not return in 2022 were Abizaid, Brown, Casey, Dunwoody, Fogleman, Giambastiani, Keane, Maddox, Magnus, Powell, Prueder, Regni, Rondwau, Schwartz, and Tilelli. 

The highest profile the non-repeats are Abizaid, Casey, Fogleman, Keane, & Powell. That begs  the question, "What caused them not to join?" They will have to answer that on their own.

Who are the repeat defender who are doubling down on pro-discrimination? Blair, Christman, Clark, Hill, Inman, Jumper, Lennox, Lyles, Mullen (of course), Myers, and Oelstrom.

Look aback at who the high-profile non-repeats are. That is quite the group who did not return. Who replaced them? Abbot, Bolden, Bostick, Brooks, Carter, Caslen, Dunford, Haney, Johnson, McRaven (of course), Miller, Robinson, and Scaparotti. 

Who is high-profile in this group? Dunford, McRaven, and Scaparotti I think.

This is a great filtering mechanism to see who is who in the zoo, so to speak. A Salamander Pardon to 2015 alumni will be provided to those who did not show up in 2022, and BZ to a few high profile people whose name is not on either and will given a respectful nod to.

However, to come back in 2022 knowing the details of what this case is … that is just plain clear as day what these people support.

Noted. 

A final note, an organization called Veterans for Fairness and Merit also submitted an amici curiae for the latest case. You can read it in full here, but of note; remember the alumni from 2015? General Ronald R. Fogleman, USAF (Ret.) is on that amici curiae. He saw the light and didn’t just demur, put his name to it.

BZ.

Watch this case. It is time that we meet the promise of our nation’s founding and to address the reality of the 21st Century. The time for racial discrimination and preferences is over. No more sectarianism.

Diversity Thursday

For the last decade and a half or so of DivThu we've often discussed the "Diversity Industry" and tried to describe to those who have yet to encounter it, just how large of an industry it is.

Instead of working towards a society that looks past the useless characteristics of race, creed, sex, color or national origin - they work towards division, promote segregation and unequal treatment ... on your dime.

Sadly, the commissariat has only gotten larger as they have refined their business model of insertion and growth through threats, etho-masochism, well-meaning useful idiocy, leveraging institutional cowardice, and naked careerism to expand their empire.

Few can or will say no to them, as their track record on cancelling and dissociating those who they consider heretics from their religion and gravy train is impressive.

Thanks to Professor Mark Perry, we have a little snapshot of just one little tributary to their empire - The Ohio State University.

Enjoy it Ohio taxpayers, Ohio State alumni, parents, and students - you're paying for it.

Just out today: @OhioState has a small army of 132 "diversicrats" at an avg. salary of $77,000 and total est. payroll cost of $13.4M, which would cover in-state tuition for 1,120 students https://t.co/C80vP05kvJ @jennsmola @CollegeFix @FreemanWSJ @stevenfhayward @charliekirk11 pic.twitter.com/piuXgBy4Rv

— Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) December 6, 2021

Here is the full list ... and while you are looking through it, think about what your university, your government, your military service - what is their bill for this communal folly of investing in sectarianism and division? An entire cadre of otherwise unemployable people who have no metric for success but efforts they make to justify their paycheck and open up additional avenues for paid positions and tribute to the main arms of this multi-billion dollar industry.

Think of the opportunity cost. How many tutors and half-ride scholarships for low income students would $13.4 million dollars cover. Well, we know that is 1,120 full ride scholarships ... imagine 2,000 half-ride and 220 full time tutors in math and science to help those from low performing high schools excel in the fields that our 21st Century economy needs.

Imagine.

If nothing, you have to respect the hustle.