Woke in the Heart of Dixie
10th July 2023
Administrators at America’s universities never stop invoking diversity as the salve to heal America’s wounds, and continue to repeat the theme that diversity, unaccountably, is our strength. Diversity is “essential to our mission,” said MIT President Sally Kornbluth. Harvard put out a letter in response to the Supreme Court’s decision lauding how racial diversity brings “progress and change.”
No academic administrator effused more ardently on this issue than the University of Alabama’s dean for the College of Education. Usually diversity is defended as a means to an end. For Dean Peter Hlebowitsh, however, diversity must be “deeply embedded in the telos of the university.” But even that extraordinary formulation understates the importance of diversity. “Diversity,” for Hlebowtish, “is better expressed as the essence of life.”
The diversity industry is setting up shop at the University of Alabama (UA) and Auburn University, as we show in a new report at the Center for the American Way of Life. Both Alabama and Auburn have active diversity strategic plans aimed at transforming the universities. Both have central administrators dedicated to achieving greater diversity among the student body and faculty and to transforming the culture of the universities. Both are transforming university curriculum to emphasize the ideology of diversity. Estimates show that each school spends more than $2.5 million on diversity salaries and initiatives. These schools in the heart of Dixie are going woke in a big way.