Higher education in the United States is under fire, and much of it is deserved. News of its illiberal and divisive diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, as well as pedagogy and student activism, has made anything DEI or DEI-adjacent a target.

While DEI looks innocuous and indeed welcoming in principle, in practice, it often entails outright racial discrimination in faculty hiring and student enrollment, suppression and censorship of research, and restrictions on free speech that run counter to the American tradition of free expression and the campus tradition of academic freedom.