After ignoring DEI, Idaho education officials take aim at stopping it — maybe
State education board, governor try to preempt a fight at the Legislature
One of the more insidious things government does is fuel ways to divide people, which is central to their agenda of driving fear. People who are fearful are more likely to be dependent on politicians to fix things for them.
Perhaps nowhere has this been more pronounced or more harmful than in the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs embedded in the education system. Proponents of DEI argue that it is merely a “framework that promotes fair treatment and full participation of all people.” In practice, DEI tells minorities that the things about them that make them different — race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. — is a weakness that is at the apex of their identity and must be highlighted and catered to.
Having watched this ideology metastasize in Idaho’s education system over the last two decades, one can see how it leads children to becoming adults who view themselves as victims. The psychological damage of this conditioning is significant. Over the years, minority students with this kind of messaging welded into their thinking have told me that they fear going any place or to any job where people are different from them.
Last week the Idaho State Board of Education’s new executive director, Joshua Whitworth, presented a set of resolutions targeting diversity the (DEI) programs at Idaho’s public colleges and universities. This is interesting, because for several years, I oversaw research reports highlighting the extent at which DEI was embedded in Idaho’s education system. Such research had been categorically dismissed by Idaho’s academic elites, such as University of Idaho President Scott Green, who publicly called us conflict entrepreneurs and Boise State University President Marlene Tromp who pretended she doesn’t know anything about it.
Even during last week’s meeting, member Kurt Liebich tried to discount the issue as it applies to Idaho’s higher education system as one of “perception” due to Idahoans who watch too much national news about DEI doings in other states.
Yet at the same time, Idaho news reports were admitting, for the first time ever, the existence of college programs and offices specifically tailored to students based on gender, sexual orientation, and skin color.
I suspect that the reason these resolutions are being offered now is because the Legislature probably finally has to the votes to end these programs. A public fight over the growing DEI bureaucracy in Idaho higher education would prove embarrassing to Gov. Brad Little, who has done nothing about it under his watch.
But be watchful. Idaho politicians heretofore have tended to produce policies that merely look like they’re doing something meaningful, such as in 2021 when lawmakers passed a bill that pretended to ban critical race theory. But maybe the State Board of Education’s anti-DEI resolutions, in their final form, will be different. If not, the 2025 Legislature hopefully will be.
DEI is racism, pure and simple.