Great news! The University of Mississippi has just announced it will be closing its DEI department, the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement.
The University’s DEI department has been the driving force behind “Pathways to Equity”, a five-year university wide strategic plan committed to equity and racial justice.
Under “Pathways to Equity”, the University not only committed to spend more on DEI in order to “address systemic racism head-on”. Everything at the university – including curriculum content – has been increasingly managed and run through the prism of intersectional ideology.
MCPP has been leading the fight against DEI.
According to public records requests that MCPP submitted, Ole Miss has not held back, spending millions on its various DEI initiatives. The head of the Division of Diversity, Shawnboda Mead, alone was on $246,881 a year.
If Ole Miss really is going to dismantle the apparatus of woke ideology, great. I fear, however, that this might merely be a rebrand.
Chancellor Glenn Boyce must surely sense that the political climate is changing. Alumni are increasingly reluctant to donate to what they perceive as ‘woke’ academics who despise their values.
Even if the Mississippi state Senate leadership managed to kill off an anti-DEI bill that was presented in the 2024 session, momentum for reform is growing. The Senate leadership will not be able to roadblock reform on this issue forever.
Efforts to outlaw DEI die in the Senate. Why?
Governors in many nearby states have taken effective action against DEI ideology, issuing Executive Orders. Curiously our Governor has chosen not to take any action against ‘woke’ ideology despite mountains of evidence action is needed. I suspect this may change.
At the same time, the rising generation of Republican leaders in our state, such as State Auditor, Shad White, are clear that they want to see an end to using public money to promote divisive, race-based DEI ideology.
Chancellor Boyce’s move seems to me as much an attempt at deflection, as it is a serious effort to root out woke ideology. What the university really wants is to head off legislation that would outlaw this nonsense.
The Division of Diversity might be going, but it is to be replaced by a new Division of Access, Opportunity, and Community Engagement. Indeed, the new Division will be run, it has been reported, by the same head who ran the old one.
Mediocre academics at the Department of English will, I suspect, continue to “embrace diversity, inclusion, and equity as central to the scholarly mission” while “recognizing the ongoing legacies of systemic inequity within the institutions of our academic field”.
If Boyce is serious about ending DEI, he would commit to running the university on the principle of equality – treating every person equally – not equity – the idea that outcomes should be manipulated to tackle perceived or historic disadvantages.
What is encouraging is that Boyce and his team are not seeking to defend DEI from first principle.
In just three years, DEI has become indefensible. MCPP will keep punching the bruise until this deeply divisive, extremist ideology is no longer being pushed on young minds using your tax dollars. The moral case for discriminating against some of today’s students because of what happened before they were even born has collapsed.
I am not convinced that rebranding the DEI department is going to be enough to stave off legislation. I doubt that all the free tickets to all the football games will be enough to prevent change.
