Jon Schweppe, policy director for the American Principles Project (APP), thinks the University of North Carolina's recent move to ban DEI from its hiring and tenure decisions may indicate a trend.
"People are recognizing, even in corporate boardrooms, that DEI is divisive, that folks really don't like being forced into these seminars every month or so, and that it's not really doing what it set out to do," Schweppe submits.
He says schools may be able to afford DEI personnel during "the good times," but in times of recession or a drop in enrollment, the first jobs to go are the DEI-related ones.
"A lot of these corporations and schools don't even really want to be doing it anyway," he adds, "but they do feel that they've been pressured into it by this really pervasive and powerful woke movement."
In a similar move, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis earlier this year announced an initiative to ban DEI from state-funded schools. He emphasized that unless changes were made to the College Board's Advanced Placement African American Studies course, the Florida Department of Education would bar the course.
"We want education, not indoctrination," the governor stated, arguing that the course pushes a political agenda and "lacks educational value and historical accuracy."
