The Woke Virus Has Landed Deep in the Heart of Texas
1st February 2023
U.T. Austin is in Travis County, and Travis County is where all of the Wokerati in Texas go to fester.
“Wokeness” is often associated with small liberal arts colleges and the Ivy League, but it’s also found a home at one of the largest public universities in one of the reddest states in the country: the University of Texas at Austin.
The state’s flagship public institution now subjects faculty to “mandatory training in anti-racist pedagogy and cultural competency.” Its medical curriculum requires students to “examine” the “intersectionality” of their “multiple identities.” Several of its programs require the completion of diversity, equity, and inclusion courses, and incorporate so-called DEI principles into faculty hiring. At UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering, for example, tenure and promotion decisions must “explicitly consider efforts related to DEI.”
These measures are summarized in a Jan. 20 report by John Sailer of the National Association of Scholars, a conservative education nonprofit. They indicate that DEI can come for any university—including in states like Texas where political leaders have sought to purge critical race theory from public classrooms.
“Red states are just as bad as anywhere else,” said Sailer, who has written extensively about DEI programs in higher education. “When I think of places that have really robust and invasive DEI bureaucracies, I could name Berkeley and University of Michigan, but I could also name UT Austin.”