The Donald Trump administration is starting with a bang as it issued an executive order ending diversity, equity, and inclusion in government and severely curtailing it in the private sector. I expect that opposition to this effort will crumble quickly and most organizations will rapidly abandon the racial preferences that had oddly become accepted as normal.
Others are not so sanguine, especially when it comes to DEI at universities. As one sympathetic, but pessimistic observer put it: “I’m sorry but DEI bans aren’t going to work. Tomorrow, they change the nomenclature (’belonging and community!’), and this fight all starts again.”
But it is wrong to think of university leaders as so committed to DEI ideology that they will resist efforts to eliminate those programs. The typical university administrator is not like the Japanese fighters toward the end of World War II who fought over every inch of the islands they held. It’s more accurate to think of university leaders as being like East German bureaucrats in the 1980s. They may talk about communism, but no one means it and they quickly adapt to Western capitalism as soon as it takes over.
In my more than two decades in academia, with 16 years as the chair of a department, I came across very few university administrators who were committed ideologues and many who were driven largely by petty ambition and status. They favored expanding DEI when they thought doing so would embellish their resume and stave off troublesome pockets of radical faculty and students.
But the moment their professional incentives shift, they’ll change their mind on DEI. When having championed a DEI initiative no longer earns them a promotion to a higher administrative post at a better university, they’ll stop caring about it. And when they have more to fear from the Trump administration than from a handful of campus radicals, they’ll actively assist in dismantling DEI.
The truth is that most people working in universities find DEI to be an annoyance at best. As liberal as they may be, no one likes having to live in fear that they may be reported for a real or imaginary offense against DEI ideology. Many university administrators and faculty will breathe a sigh of relief as DEI is dismantled.
Given how malleable university administrators are, and given how little commitment there is to DEI ideology, the Trump administrators should be unafraid to double-down on their impressive initial steps to eliminate racial preferences. The waste and extremism that plagues higher education, especially in selective universities, offers a target-rich environment for the Trump administration.
Universities are awash with too much money, which allows them to indulge dangerous nonsense. The Trump administration should pursue every avenue of eliminating excess money in higher education.
Universities are hoarding giant endowments. Tax them.
Universities charge the federal government a much higher overhead rate on research grants than they charge private foundations. Forbid universities from offering Bill Gates a lower rate than taxpayers.
Universities have opened their doors to foreign students who advocate for terrorism. Deport them.
Because foreign students tend to pay full tuition and often come with large donations from foreign governments and families, selective universities now draw about a third of their total enrollment from overseas. Cap the number of foreign student visas.
The number of policy gains the Trump administration could make in higher education is almost limitless. Universities have behaved very badly, displaying open hostility to the majority of America. And they have done this while becoming incredibly dependent on subsidies from those same American voters that they have alienated.
The people who run universities may be very smart on tests, but they are very dumb on politics. They are left with few allies. Most people still do not receive college degrees and far fewer receive degrees from selective universities. Why should the vast majority of people pay for subsidies to institutions they do not attend and that are openly hostile to them? Even the alums who have attended bad-acting elite universities are horrified at what they’ve been seeing recently and are cutting back on donations as well as political support.
Ending racial preferences and curtailing radical nonsense at elite universities will not only encounter little resistance within universities, it will also be enormously popular with the broader public. The Trump administration has the clear advantage and should seize the moment as rapidly and aggressively as possible.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
