Richard Hanania is the founder and president of the Centre for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. He is not on board with what Trump is doing to dismantle DEI. It's an interesting read.
"ON HIS SECOND day in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order ending affirmative action in government contracting. I took it as a sign that my work over the years advocating against DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programmes and broad interpretations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had made a difference, particularly my 2023 book, “The Origins of Woke”, and my participation in Project 2025, the presidential-transition project for Trump 2.0.
Unfortunately, it is now clear that, rather than sticking to the principles of colour blindness, merit and individual liberty that I believe in, the Trump administration seeks to implement its own version of thought control and federal-government overreach.
This can be seen most clearly in the letter of demands the administration sent to Harvard on April 11th and its announcement that it was cutting off research funds to the university. The letter stated that Harvard must cease all DEI and affirmative-action policies in hiring, promotions and admissions.
So far, so good. It was the Civil Rights Act and later Title IX that were used to force race- and sex-conscious policies onto universities and private business in the first place. Beginning under Richard Nixon, the attitude was that if higher-education institutions wanted federal funding, they had to play by the government’s rules. In an Orwellian twist, the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on discrimination was read as a charter to all-but-mandate race and sex preferences in hiring and admissions. By trying to undo some of the damage, the Trump administration is acting in accordance with the 14th Amendment of the constitution, the Civil Rights Act and Supreme Court precedent.
Yet on top of sensible proposals, the administration made a series of radical and unprecedented demands. It called for the audit of entire fields of study, in part on the grounds that they “reflect ideological capture”. Even more far-reaching is a requirement that steps be taken to achieve viewpoint diversity across academic fields and departments.
The administration cites no law here. While the Civil Rights Act banned discrimination based on certain protected characteristics, political ideology is not one of them. Harvard, as a private university, is therefore free to be as liberal and anti-Trump as it wants.
It gets worse. At the same time as the administration accuses Harvard of being ideologically captured, it demands new ideological screening of foreign students, so as not to admit antisemites, supporters of terrorism or “students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence”.
Given how much Americans debate their values and constitutional principles, there is no way such a requirement can be anything but an ideological litmus test for who gets to study at Harvard.
Even if the law did allow such steps, there is a direct contradiction between the goal of viewpoint diversity and the principle of merit, which the administration is claiming to defend. We all have an interest in our top institutions selecting students and faculty based on intelligence, competence and their fit within a programme. Having ideological litmus tests for professors and scientists would do more damage to the principle of merit than race and sex preferences ever have, given how few individuals with advanced degrees identify as conservatives. A study in 2022 showed that among donations by scientists to the two major political parties in federal elections, less than 10% went to Republicans. Are we to give the small minority of Trump supporters in science something approaching half the available jobs in the name of equity? It is hard to imagine a DEI programme that is more radical than that.
It is understandable where the concern with ideological diversity comes from. Conservatives have been discriminated against by universities through practices like diversity statements, which screen for the acceptance of certain left-wing ideas. That said, the theory that one needs present discrimination to overcome past discrimination is the precise logic of DEI. Conservatives in that case understand that the cure can be worse than the disease, as forcing factors unrelated to merit into the processes of hiring and admissions ends up creating more unfairness and resentment. Moreover, certain fields have nothing to do with politics at all. There are few reasons to worry about a left-wing bias in mathematics. The position that there is no such thing as politically neutral scholarship is another terrible idea from the left that conservatives would be better off not borrowing.
Harvard is now suing, and is likely to win, if only because the administration did not follow proper procedures to cut off funding. Yet the damage to American institutions is likely to be long-lasting. The careers of young scientists have been thrown off track, as research into topics as important as curing cancer and reversing ageing has been frozen. American science will be in a perilous state as long as this administration sees universities as enemies that need to be destroyed, rather than institutions that can be reformed within the confines of existing law.
Conservatives have been correct to criticise and fight against DEI programmes and other perversions of civil-rights law. They have been winning this battle politically, in front of judges, and in the court of public opinion, and I am proud to have played a part in the process. It is now time to reject the nihilistic approach that seeks to dismantle institutions via demands that are both illegal and unworkable. Harvard may never be an institution where MAGA has a large constituency. Accepting that is necessary for being at peace with the idea of America as a pluralistic society."