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August 31, 2024 - 5:00pm
DEI has long been a sacrosanct topic in progressive politics, but now frank discussion about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion could be entering a new phase: woke glasnost. At least if one takes The New York Times as a harbinger of this change.
In the past two days, the Times ran two unflattering pieces about DEI, signalling that expressing frustration with these antiracist training techniques is no longer the sole provenance of angry conservatives. In a news article, The Times highlighted plagiarism allegations lodged in August against celebrity antiracist trainer Robin DiAngelo, the author of the best seller “White Fragility” whom The Times described as “a prominent public intellectual and advocate for racial equity and inclusion.”
The following day, The Times ran a strongly worded guest opinion column by two Stanford University faculty who had served on the university’s Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias. In unsparing language, the professors warned that DEI has been corrupted into an ideological and exclusionary indoctrination practice that crudely stereotypes people by race and brands individuals as oppressors or as victims of oppression.
It’s hard not to notice that the op-ed critiques precisely the kind of confrontational DEI that was developed by activist scholars like Robin DiAngelo who draw their inspiration from critical race theory and whiteness studies. “Rather than correcting stereotypes, diversity training too often reinforces them and breeds resentment,” the Stanford profs wrote. “Overall, these programs may undermine the very groups they seek to aid by instilling a victim mind-set and by pitting students against one another.”
Editorial decisions at The New York Times are leading indicators of the cultural zeitgeist. The Times has already demonstrated a willingness to ask hard questions about another taboo subject, the medical risks of subjecting minors to “gender affirming care”, and these DEI articles show in real time how the Overton Window of acceptable speech on this issue has shifted this year.
Some degree of criticism is now permissible, but conservative criticism is still viewed as morally tainted, largely because conservatives are seeking to ban DEI. Progressive critics are granted leeway to expose the toxicity of the DEI industry — as long as they acknowledge the reality of structural racism and seek to reform DEI rather than eliminate it.
The Times article about Robin DiAngelo cites a complaint filed with the University of Washington alleging 20 instances in which DiAngelo plagiarised other scholars in her 2004 dissertation, “Whiteness in Racial Dialogue: A Discourse Analysis.” The Times takes care to include a comment from a plagiarism expert lamenting that the recent spate of plagiarism allegations against powerful and influential DEI administrators — including former Harvard University president Claudine Gay — has been politically motivated, turning plagiarism into an “ideological weapon.”
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SubscribeThe NYT has begun to be more pragmatic about woke issues since a recent editorial on Clinton H’s description of Maga followers as “deplorables”. The paper suggests this lost the left the 2016 election to Trump. I’ve noticed this DEI switch. What next ! A critical look at Hamas or a move against men invading women’s sports and toilets. Surely not.
Their reporting on Israel and Gaza has been pretty neutral and balanced. The have had opinion essays that are pro Israel and pro Gaza. Brett Stephens, who is a Jew and a columnist, is very pro Israel. The opinion section is for opinions. The rest of the paper remains neutral and sticks to the facts.
I must strongly disagree. The NYT concealed the cognitive decline of Biden J. for two years when it was obvious to all that he was slipping in to dementia. They even apologised for it but only in the context of possibly losing the election to Trump. There is some good journalism to be found on its pages but few would agree with you that ” the paper remains neutral and sticks to the facts “.
I got Perplexity to summarise the NYT article ‘ D.E.I. Is Not Working on College Campuses. We Need a New Approach’
‘The author highlights that many D.E.I. initiatives have become divisive, framing students as either oppressors or oppressed, which can conflict with the traditional educational mission of cultivating critical thinking skills. The article suggests that these programs may not effectively address the needs of all students, as evidenced by the rise of antisemitic incidents on campuses like Stanford University. This indicates that certain groups, such as Jewish and Israeli students, feel excluded from the current D.E.I. frameworks’
It seems that , according to the NYT, DEI was fine for bashing WASPs and Southern Baptists, but it has now gone too far and Jewish and Israeli students are now targets.
That is a very good summary. That last sentence is the main reason for this sudden enlightenment.
This rather builds support for the theory that the American left isn’t really repudiating DEI (they’re busy renaming it instead), but rather, that some of them are bothered at how Jews aren’t treated as a minority worth protecting. The solution so far has typically been to move Jews from the white column into the minority column and then go on about their day. Nothing in that summary disabuses us of that notion.
Every progressive thinks they will be the last one the alligator eats.
The Times has also printed three articles about trans children and gender medicine for children. All three articles used a lot of research and were thoughtful rather than political. The Times not only had to deal with outside trans activists, but it had to protect the writers from other staff (all young) who protested and called for the writers to be fired. Personally, I think the Times is sick of their young staff freaking out over anything they perceive as racist or anti LGBT, among other things. I wish the Times would fire them a la Netflix. Maybe the Grey Lady has realized that she has become the dreaded “woke” newspaper. rather than a newspaper focusing on “all the news fit to print.”
The cynical might say that recently the Grey Lady has focused on “print all the news that fits”.
I do agree. I took advantage of a ‘The Times’ cheap subscription offer just a few weeks ago but found it insufferably ‘woke’ – I try to be open minded but I found the writing – and worse, the comments from other readers were just appalling. Maybe just me …
I did the same to continue Wordle and for a left take on the upcoming election. The comments are quite simplistic and woke, and are all similar. As for the young writers going rogue, the NYT is not a kindergarten and should fire them.
It makes me laugh to tead about a so-called glasnost – as if we should feel grateful that the utter mindlessness is being recognised by supposedly intelligent people.
These erstwhile purveyors of blatant racism will remain forever tainted by the extremes of DEI-ty, just as the Spanish Inquisition is regarded with horror. The “right side of history”? No… the left side.
Quite so. I never understood what was so difficult about trying to treat people as individuals. That these over educated, rather dim people are slowly coming to that realisation tells me that they should never have had influence.
Exactly so. Common sense does not “reassert” itself. Having common sense means that you do not fall into patently stupid groupthinky rabbit holes like DEI in the first place
People speak with such hyperbole. Here using the standard comparison to the Spanish Inquisition, LOL, and earlier (of course) someone had to cite Hitler. I’ve seen the Soviet Union applied several times recently in other forums. (Stalin is always waiting for his cue. Pol Pot has long fallen out of favour. China is racing up the charts, replacing the Soviet Union, having the advantage of being a contemporary bogeyman.)
Embracing these clichés actually showcases the very non-think/group-think “mindlessness” the commentators denounce. In this way, they undermine themselves. Readers who truly value reflection over reflex will have reservations about those who use such stock extremes, even if their core points may have merit.
Where / how do you think totalitarianism begins….
Everyday authoritarian impulses and heavy-handedness are not essentially like the cases of Pol Pot or Stalin or the Spanish Inquisition.
I mean, “tainted by the extremes of DEI-ty, just as the Spanish Inquisition is regarded with horror” is absurd. No sane person experiences “the extremes of DEI-ty” as someone would have experienced the Spanish Inquisition.
Sometimes hyperbole works, to make a point. But you have to think carefully about choices. This variety is void of care and thought, yet some believe it is a cogent argument against “mindlessness” and “groupthink.” Ironically, this just demonstrates “mindlessness” and “groupthink” in action.
Lacking perspective, this viewpoint reduces the world to a constant formation of the severest and most dramatic potential outcomes, as if the maximum is the only or most likely kind.
More irony: such reductive thinking is in fact a common way that totalitarianism begins. “Reds under every bed,” and so on.
I think in this case the hyperbole is directed at the correct target and it’s just a matter of degree and not kind. Hopefully in the case of DEI we will be able to nip this potential horror in the bud.
When DEI reached the US Secret Service it was time to call a halt.
Ditto the American military. What a travesty.
My concern has been that a certain kind of activist, who has let the intensity they feel override effective communication, ends up undermining causes that have merit, not to mention undermining other activists who do not use brute-force tactics to encourage change. I resent these kind of activists because they’ve managed to help poison the very word “activist,” even though they are a minority of them. I think this does harm.
Instead of capturing minds and hearts in a deep and lasting way, they point fingers and blame. They haven’t realized that shaming never, ever works, regardless of the merits a cause may have. They use the same clichéd language over and over. The same hyperbole: X number will die because of you! If you don’t agree with us, you’re an [insert]phobe!
I resent their laziness, their lack of intellectual rigour. They don’t try to learn effective communication and to refine it through practice. They don’t learn from mistakes. They can’t recognize that their impact tends to be skin-deep and can be quickly undone.
They’re too myopic to understand that their tactics play into the hands of those who oppose them, making them easy targets for triggering by that opposition. An intensifying dynamic of back-and-forth results, with such activists convinced they’re fighting the good fight against millions of murdering fascists, and eventually the whole thing rubs most everyone the wrong way. They still don’t see that their impact tends to be skin-deep and can be quickly undone. Meanwhile causing collateral damage.
I suspect, from their behaviour, that these kind of activists co-opt activism to release certain emotional energies that arise from preexisting personal problems. The activism lends this crude purging a righteous and productive cover, and a sense of stability through collective validation.
But look, there’s nothing essentially wrong with the idea of diversity, and equity, and inclusion. There are people who have been excluded, who haven’t been treated fairly. This unfairness ought to be rectified. We ought to learn to recognize it, and have the courage to accept that it’s true, even if doing so would sully our most revered assumptions.
I should also say that I’ve attended a few required courses. Some are badly run and among all sins commit the worst of being boring. The worst so far was an 2SLGBTQ+ workshop, which was a disgorging of clichéd phrases and platitudes, marked by intolerance for the slightest expression of gender critical thought. You must participate to pass, and so, taking care of what you say so as to avoid a notation in your Human Resources file, you end up saying tame, mushy things you don’t actually believe. Speaking of diversity, and of inclusion, you self-censor and do not represent yourself authentically.
On the other hand, I attended required training on Indigenous culture, and it was a profoundly positive experience. The facilitators were skilled and every person was highly engaged. It was a whole-day course, and the time flew by. There’s a second part to the training that is not required, that I’ve signed up due to my experience the first part. They reached our hearts and minds, and I’m grateful.
Now that the NYT has gone so far as to report obvious criticisms of DEI, a little investigative journalism would be refreshing. That would mean an investigation of the peremptory rush of so many universities to construct the DEI bureaucracy during a few years of the 2010s. It would be an exposé of how cabals of Robin DiAngelinos in the “Diversity Consultant” racket got the university admins to switch them from temporary contracts to sinecure appointments within the institutions—a maneuver carried out with the invaluable help of grievance study faculty and carefully organized student groups.
In time people generally may see this abomination against true equal opportunity and common humanity for what it was, a quasi religious elitist power grab and grift… We must never give in to the horse shoe of extremes. the Center must hold.
The question isn’t so much if they understand their creation has caused harm. It’s more whether they will be able to reign in the monsters they unleashed.
They have made it acceptable to be racist against Jews (and whites and Asians) again – you know so that the horrors of WW2 don’t repeat. What a farce. I’m not even talking about the backlash.
People will be pushed into making a choice between anarcho-tyranny and neo-Feudalism. That’s your new Left and Right.
I see a major problem with the newspaper and publication industries in particular. They have plenty of younger staff who have learned the Social Justice worldview at university and who will resent ‘the bosses’ trying to reverse course. It will be easier for big businesses because the financial well being of the organisation is more pressing.
Putting the genie back in the bottle is famously difficult.
Yep. Once you giveth it’s hard to take away.
Very true. And another trouble is that so many people rather like a bit of me-too groupthink: remember Hitler? The Cultural Revolution? Human kind cannot bear very much reality is how TS Eliot said it. And the tragic irony is that getting a ‘higher education’ at a Western university sheep-dip makes this more likely not less so. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/non-binary-sibling-is-entertaining
Hopefully universities in na get sued into oblivion.
New left and FAR right, we don’t have ‘right’ any more thank you very much…
What comes to mind when one thinks of the NYT? Political activism under the guise of journalism.
The reputational damage is irreversible.
Back to the type of thinking that led to the Nuremberg Laws and the ideas of historical grievance that led to the twentieth century’s most disastrous ‘social justice warrior’.
‘Dropped the Times back in 2015…don’t miss it – too many other better alternatives- can’t imagine what would make me resubscribe…
Yet again, the New York Times makes news for acknowledging five years later that which has been clearly plain, visible, obvious, and manifest to moderately observant people this entire time.
“the professors warned that DEI has been corrupted into an ideological and exclusionary indoctrination practice that crudely stereotypes people by race and brands individuals as oppressors or as victims of oppression…. Rather than correcting stereotypes, diversity training too often reinforces them and breeds resentment”
Yes, we KNOW that already, thank you.
At this point, a truly helpful investigation into DEI would actually ask why these powerful institutions have embraced it so enthusiastically, who has gained from its widespread implementation, and find out where the power and money ends up in a DEI regime. (It’s not that hard, just apply critical theory to critical theory.)
In the meantime, I can’t wait for 2029 or so, when maybe I’ll get to read the NYT’s first tentative steps into investigating the coverup of Joe Biden’s failing cognitive condition, looking into the details of the subsequent insider decision to defenestrate him and select Kamala Harris to be the new Savior of Our Democracy, and maybe even asking questions about who was actually running the country five years ago in 2024.
My favorite thing is when committed Progressives stumble upon some obvious truth that the Right has been preaching for years and pretend it’s some brand new bauble that they dug up themselves.
“Is the New York Times turning against DEI?”
No. Don’t be daft. They just ran an article calling for perhaps doing away with the constitution in the name of fairness. They’ll publish a few articles to appear to be giving ‘balanced’ coverage and that’s about it.
I don’t think any establishment media in the US will ever recover real credibility after quite deliberate concealing the state of Biden’s mental health for so long. Why would anyone believe anything they report?
The point-blank refusal to interrogate Harris on policy is almost as bad. Even Pravda and Izvestia ran occasional articles pointing to negative consequences of Politburo policy
Could someone please explain to me why according to most Unherd commenters the media in the USA is apparently always biased towards the Democrats? The current Presidential election is a 50/50 as were the last two so why are there no credible media outlets for Republicans and Trump supporters or is this simply not true? Surely Fox News attracts more attention than the daily newspapers. Did they not report on what we could all see was happening to Joe Biden?
This side of the pond has a much more balanced media albeit with the majority of daily newspapers leaning to the right and supporting the Conservatives.
I don’t think anyone can seriously deny that, with the granted exception of Fox News, all the major cable channels and newspapers in the US have been viscerally anti-Trump since he came down that escalator in 2016.
The reason is simple, really: in 2016 pretty well every major media outlet in the US was owned by a corporation with significant investments in China. So a candidate threatening to disrupt that trade needed to be stopped. The same corporations have had a disproportionate influence on the Democratic Party ever since Bill Clinton figured out you could get more money from Wall Street than from labour unions. A look at who financed Biden’s 2020 campaign is quite revealing in this respect.
Murawski presents a very interesting point about the whole issue when he quotes the two gentlemen from Stanford describing “ideological workshops that inculcate theories of social justice as if there were no plausible alternatives.” Maybe “…acceptable alternatives” would have been more descriptive.
I’ve noticed that a certain sort of small-minded person seems to believe that alternative theories magically capture the minds of any who read about them; a scary and primitive thought. I imagine that, if asked, they would recommend burning all copies of “Mein Kampf” or “Lolita”, just to be safe.
Academia has always been full of nutty theories (e.g. Stonehenge as Druidic temple). They tend to fall of their own instability. I can’t think of another instance in the Anglophone world when devotees of the new theory applied so much energy to shutting down all the others.
I’m quite happy to sit and watch them tumble!
Whatever is written in the New York Slimes is a matter of utter indifference to me. Ditto for the Washington Compost – these papers are propaganda, and poorly written propaganda, which is worse.