Conservative activists claimed a major win this month when Claudine Gay resigned as Harvard University’s president. Gay, who’s Black, was brought down by plagiarism allegations and backlash to her congressional testimony on campus antisemitism. But to some on the right, her ouster symbolized a bigger cultural victory over the growth of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at universities. Diversity efforts on college campuses — and the conservative backlash to them — were both turbo-charged in the wake of social justice protests in 2020. Plus, more than 20 states passed or considered laws limiting DEI last year.
One influential group of anti-DEI activists is based in Upland, California: The Claremont Institute, which has ties to former President Donald Trump and Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.
New York Times Reporter Nicholas Confessore says it’s unclear why Gay resigned. He says her critics believe she originally got the job because the university promised to hire a Black woman. She was also involved in expansions of the school’s DEI programs and in incidents that some saw as an overreaction to the “DEI apparatus” there.
He explains that the Claremont Institute rejects modern-day anti-discrimination rules and regulations.
“What they would say is: If there are not that many Black doctors, but there are a lot of Black basketball players, that's okay. And that efforts to get rid of those disparities are going to end up changing the country in terrible ways. And they we're trying to figure out how to express these ideas in a way that wins over more people.”
Confessore says members of the Claremont Institute felt like their point of view was endangered with the rise of Black Lives Matter, the George Floyd protests, and former President Donald Trump’s defeat — and “that there was a political racialism on the rise in American society, and they had to combat it.”
Why is this group honing in on higher education DEI programs?
“They think America is in great crisis, and so they believe that in order to stop … the modern social justice left as they consider it, they had to go after the schools. Because in their mind, universities and their DEI programs are factories of leftism. And so if they can dismantle these programs, they can dismantle the left.”
Confessore obtained emails between key players at The Claremont Institute and other groups, including the Manhattan Institute. Those missives reveal beliefs on race and sexuality, which he says underlie their objections to DEI programs.
One email is from Boise State University Professor Scott Yenor, who Confessore says leads the anti-DEI project at The Claremont Institute.
“He writes in one of these emails about how an editor of his for an article he is writing for a conservative journal is pushing him to be more upfront. And essentially, his editor had written a sentence saying that homosexuality belongs back in the closet, and that a healthy society requires patriarchy. And Dr. Yenor was debating with some friends and colleagues whether he should be that explicit in his views. And in the end, in the article, he is more tame. He gestures at these ideas, but doesn't see them quite as explicitly.”
Another email is from the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald, the author of When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.
“I see this one email where she's talking about walking along in her neighborhood in Manhattan, and seeing what she calls ‘nannies of color’ walking children back to their apartments after school. And her thought when she sees this is that it's really a shame that New York is full of women trying to make partner at law firms, while they outsource their child-rearing to caregivers from what she calls ‘the low-IQ third world,’ and she called it ‘a curse of feminism.’”
Overall, Confessore says these groups want to replace what they view as liberal indoctrination with conservative teachings and ideas.
“If they can, it's replacing one indoctrination with another. And that's the ultimate goal. They want lawmakers and officials in red states, in conservative states to reassert their control, their hold over publicly-funded universities, and remold them in a conservative image and direction.”