To Dismantle DEI, Force It to Compete in a True Free Speech Environment

One of President Trump’s first executive orders immediately and forcefully put an end to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in all federal government offices. The order reads: the federal government shall “terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA [Accessibility], and 'environmental justice' offices and positions (including but not limited to 'Chief Diversity Officer' positions); all 'equity action plans,' 'equity' actions, initiatives, or programs, 'equity-related' grants or contracts; and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for employees, contractors, or grantees.”

That’s a great move for Trump and the federal government alike—as well as for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. But it won’t entirely solve the issue of DEI proliferating where it all started—the academy. After all, private universities and businesses may try to evade the regulation by renaming DEI and turning it into something like “accessibility and engagement,” per one recently renamed DEI position at Meta/Facebook.

There's only one way to truly force the long-term, permanent dismantling of DEI and its associated affirmative action, equity, and critical race theory policies: Force it to fight fairly in a free speech environment with every other idea.

Free Speech-Free

DEI initiatives proliferated at the same time as America languished under the Left's “Free Speech Withdrawal,” where voices were intentionally silenced and "progressive" narratives rammed down people’s throats.

That era, which consolidated voices into a conglomerate of Big Tech and media companies as it sought to censor others, greatly diminished the average American’s ability to see himself as a participant in his government.

Meanwhile, DEI and woke academic ideas were able to completely skip public approval processes because they only had to win over well-heeled members of the oligarchic leftist elite—not the general public. The Biden administration forced DEI initiatives upon many companies with its own executive order (EO 13985) on “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.”

In return for high-paying jobs and authority in elite firms and colleges, DEI officers justified their positions by suppressing ideas and voices they disagreed with and regulating companies into total silence, to the detriment of competing ideas. As Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed on the Joe Rogan Experience, “Basically, these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse.”

As liberal elites gained traction, they used DEI policies to censor others, unleashing the woke free speech crisis we have today—where people feel oppressed by a tyrannical "progressive" out-of-touch regime.

In other words, DEI and free speech are inversely aligned. Fittingly, the best way to dismantle the oppression and discrimination against ordinary Americans is to expose everything to free speech.

De-woking 101

That’s what a group of leaders at Davidsonians for Freedom of Thought & Discourse (DFTD), a nonprofit dedicated to free speech at my alma mater Davidson College, are doing here in Charlotte, North Carolina. We don’t plan on pushing out DEI through heavy-handed regulation. Instead, by revealing that DEI is just one of many competing ideas, our push for free speech will force DEI advocates to defend the merit of their ideas before the entire nation.

DFTD’s proposal to Davidson College is for a “Center of Free Expression” that intentionally fosters a maximally tolerant free speech environment at the college for both students and faculty. Recognizing my alma mater’s overbalance of leftist viewpoints—94 percent of Davidson faculty are Democrats or independents—the center would intentionally hire viewpoints that aggressively counter the dominant views inside the university. These professors—and there are a lot of them—will have students participate in a free and open discourse on DEI.

The center will need safeguards to ensure participants aren't bullied by leftist professors into weakening their stance to avoid punishment. That means having a board independent of the college administrators and populated by people with diverse ideological viewpoints. And such a school must have deliverables in its charter—including well-attended, valuable debates on issues modelled amongst the faculty on various issues. Students should be able to scrutinize faculty and keep them honest.

Of course, among the faculty scrutinized will be DEI directors at the various colleges and universities around the nation. Students should be allowed to directly ask them what results professors wield to support their ideas, what specific agendas and initiative they have planned, and why students should support their vision for DEI over one that's more colorblind and merit-based.

Wither and Die

DEI gets its way by force. DEI—and racial considerations in labor makeup—has inserted itself as a side constraint in hiring and admissions to the point where employee complaints helped spark the anti-DEI movement. So forcing it to compete like any other academic philosophy in the marketplace of ideas, guided by evidence and public trust, will cause it to either moderate or die.

After all, DEI shows no signs of boosting company performance (“we observe no statistically significant difference between the likelihood of financial outperformance,” reads one study), discriminates against non-preferred minorities, and enforces unpopular speech codes and limits on expression to get its way. If DEI were simply allowed to compete as-is on the same playing and grilling field as any other series of ideas, it would wither.

Every time DEI is actually put up for a vote, such as affirmative action in California in 2020, it loses. That is why DEI philosophies skip public approval and go automatically to elites with pre-existing power. They take advantage of that power to force compliance, rather than actually win people over.

These free speech centers are the antidote, because they put these ideas up for debate. The next time a university administrator goes off-kilter and proposes something like DEI, these centers will ask: “Where is the evidence?”

They should be allowed to diagnose any problems in discourse as they remain on campus, and respond to them as they appear. Any ideological off-tilt, any wide chasm in public sentiment, can and should be addressed with aggressive questioning and public debate. Furthermore, it should be expected—and encouraged—that faculty at these centers model free discourse by speaking out and challenging professors in the “courts of public opinion.”

Why is reforming the university this way so important?

I think back to when I learned about the Founding Fathers. How they fiercely debated every issue in America. How rapturous debates on issues like slavery, the federal debt, or going to war, were modelled in the origins of America. America was founded on debate. We need to keep the spirit of debate going in our higher education system because we need to keep the spirit of America going.  

Our students in the next generation will engage in debates that we cannot even yet imagine. We must teach them that they are the judge of ideas—not elites, the people who claim to know so much more about society and life than we do.

To dismantle ideas founded on the condescension of ordinary Americans, we expose them to… the condescension of ordinary Americans. That is the way to dismantle DEI and move forward as a country.