CATEGORY: EDUCATION (3 MIN)

Bay Area bureaucracy

Although the economy has improved since the depths of the pandemic, millions of Americans are still struggling. Many businesses can’t find good workers, and many good workers can’t find good openings. But that struggle doesn’t apply to specialists in one field: DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). In current American higher education, there’s always a home for a DEI enforcer.

For City Journal, Christopher Rufo, the author of ISI’s 2024 Conservative Book of the Year, brings his spotlight to the vast DEI bureaucracy at Stanford University. Rufo discovered from sources on campus that the school “employs at least 177 full-time DEI bureaucrats,” a massive expenditure on a force that has dangerous effects. 

Rufo includes comments from Julia Steinberg, a writer at the Stanford Review, one of the flagship papers of ISI’s Collegiate Network. He also links to stories from the Review—stories that highlight the abuse students inflict on their peers and on professors who don’t match the politically correct mold. Such tales are ironic from a university that spends so much on “inclusion.”

Rufo says the DEI employees have pushed discriminatory policies which target demographics they see as over-represented. And since their number has more than doubled since 2021, Rufo believes these bureaucrats will continue to drive Stanford in the wrong direction.

Read Rufo’s piece here to learn more.

Weekly Poll

Is DEI hurting America?

[A] Yes​​
[B] No
​​​​​[C] Unsure

RESULTS: 4/25/24

On a scale of 1 to 5, how surprised are you by the University of Columbia Protests?

[A] 5 (Very Surprised)​​ - 7.8%
[B] 4 - 5.6%
​​​​​[C] 3 - 7.8%
[D] 2 - 17.8%
[E] 1 (Not Surprised) - 61.1%

CATEGORY: INTERNATIONAL (11 MIN)

Eastern economics

China’s policies of censorship have kept the Western world from learning much of what transpires in the Eastern giant. Writers must therefore work much harder to generate accurate scholarship about the past and present of China, but what they create becomes even more valuable on the international stage, especially given the country’s enormous influence.

Samuel Gregg, a guest last year on ISI’s podcast Conservative Conversations, reviews a recent book in this Chinese niche for Law & Liberty. Markets with Chinese Characteristics: Economic Liberalism in Modern China, by Evan W. Osborne, traces the history of the Chinese free market from the mid-1800s to the present. 

Gregg says Osborne’s work reveals a roller coaster-like trajectory for Chinese economic liberalism. After contact with Western powers, some influential Chinese politicians discovered free-market texts and advocated their principles. But the nationalist KMT and the communist CCP, the major parties of the early 20th century, both rejected economic liberalism. 

Shockingly, the free market survived in the minds of a few communist scholars, even as their party nearly destroyed liberalism. And after Deng Xiaoping’s ascension to power, Gregg notes those ideas informed a resurgence in the free market out of necessity, since communist ideas had left millions in poverty.

Gregg argues that China has now turned back to interventionism, bringing old economic woes back to the forefront. To discover more about this fascinating history, read Gregg’s article here. And read Osborne’s book in a linked free PDF here.