Excerpts from "Going Woke in Dixie?"

Fundamentalist conservatives and limited government purists in Alabama are already well familiar with their state legislature's inexcusable failure to pass a critical anti-CRT bill during the last two legislative sessions. Further underscoring the urgency of decisive action in curbing this socialist infiltration of our state's academic institutions, the Claremont Institute published their report “Going Woke in Dixie?: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at the University of Alabama and Auburn University.” this past week. Having thoroughly read the document and digested the material, the Examiner has collected what they found to be the most salient points made within the study.

While it is highly encouraged that all concerned parties read the article in its entirety, please enjoy this sneak peak of some of its highlights;

President Bell’s (president of The University of Alabama) DEI committee issued the Path Forward Diversity Report, which serves as a DEI strategic plan. What followed was a bevy of programs to recruit more minorities to Alabama and a radical plan to oversee the hiring of faculty designed to bring in more minorities. The culture would also be transformed. Sororities and fraternities would be overseen by diversity bureaucrats. Athletics would be made to show pride in all things LGBTQ+. Task forces would revisit the names of buildings and the presence of campus monuments. The work, still underway, has coincided a watering down of the University of Alabama’s academic commitments. It has slipped in the U.S. News and World Report rankings from no. 31 among public universities to no. 64 in Fall 2022. Its Honors College no longer requires SAT or ACT scores. As a measure of the University of Alabama’s transformation, it boasted in 2019 that “over one-third of UA’s undergraduate curriculum (36%, 1083 courses) is diversity-related.” The goal of student recruitment is equity—as elements within the university look for a way to ensure “an undergraduate population that reflects the racial and economic demographics of the State of Alabama by employing high impact diversity practices.”

Social activism in previously underrepresented communities now helps faculty earn tenure at the University of Alabama, as opposed to a solid teaching and research record. The renaming of buildings is also supposed to create a more inclusive culture through recognizing heroes among underrepresented minorities while dishonoring those who are not. Along with “student leaders” at the University of Alabama, the College’s DEI committee spearheaded efforts to rename two buildings affiliated with the College as part of its effort to increase perceptions of belonging, inclusion, and support. A. B. Moore Hall, named for a history professor and the first dean of the University of Alabama’s graduate school, was renamed in honor of Archie Wade, the first black faculty member at the University of Alabama; and Bibb Graves Hall, named for the thirty-eighth governor of Alabama, was renamed in honor of Autherine Lucy Foster, the University of Alabama’s first black student. Renaming campus buildings without the approval of the state legislature is illegal under the 2017 Alabama Memorial Preservation Act, but the College renamed the buildings anyway.

The (University of Alabama) athletics department also promotes “LBGTQIA+” resources and events, such as “Cinnamon Rolls, Not Gender Roles,” a weekly LGBT discussion group, as well as an LGBT support group. The department is a proud member of the national “Safe to Pee” initiative to combat “discrimination against gender variant people in public restrooms.” Athletics boasts of ten gender-neutral restrooms on their facilities, and invites all people identifying as all varieties of genders to find them through the University of Alabama’s interactive restroom locator.

With twenty (full time) staff members earning an average of $100,000, Auburn is spending at least $2 million on DEI personnel. Its highest paid official vice president and associate provost for inclusion and diversity, Taffye Benson Clayton, earns over $275,000 annually. Others, like Deputy Chief Diversity Officer JuWan Robinson earn nearly $119,000; Assistant VP for Access and Inclusive Excellence Ada Wilson earns over $215,000; and Director of Inclusion and Diversity Education Jocelyn Vickers makes over $92,000. Several other analysts like Senior DEI Analyst Rizwan Hussain earn in the $85,000 range.

Since these intensified DEI efforts, the percentage of black students at Auburn University has declined from a high point of 8.17 percent in 2006 to under 5 percent in 2022. Black enrollment has actually shrunk since at least 2010, both as a percentage of the student body and in absolute numbers. DEI efforts may, it appears, have deterred prospective black students from applying to Auburn. Although the decline in absolute numbers of black students was first visible between 2010 and 2014, the decrease between 2014 and 2018 was more rapid; it was steeper still between 2018 and 2022.

Alabama and Auburn can experience course correction through concerted political action on the model of Florida. Florida has undertaken serious reformist efforts to eliminate DEI offices across its university and college systems and to reform its general education curriculum to cultivate a reasonable patriotism and a serious professionalism. Florida has banned mandatory DEI trainings and the use of DEI statements in hiring. Alabama could undertake similar reforms to protect their universities from a top-down DEI takeover. The sooner, the better, of course, since the longer these bureaucracies linger, the more difficult it is to eliminate them. There is also more than a little evidence that DEI efforts are coinciding with a decline in the quality of Alabama’s top institutions of higher education. The University of Alabama has dropped requirements for SATs or ACTs in its honors college. Its overall ranking has fallen.

The DEI takeover is a gathering danger in Alabama. Its universities are unlikely to reform themselves. Concerted political action, followed by serious oversight, will be necessary to bring them back to their true educational missions. Such actions should start with a comprehensive audit of Alabama’s universities for their DEI activities along the lines conducted in Oklahoma and Missouri. Then a move toward defunding such offices, like Florida and Texas have done, should be made. Other reforms should also be tried. The time to act is now.