DEI Programs Must be Eliminated to Reverse Declining Numbers of College Men

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Hain: 513-479-3335

DEI Programs Must be Eliminated to Reverse Declining Numbers of College Men

WASHINGTON / March 11, 2024 – A shocking new report was issued last week that documents 12 areas in which globally, men and boys are lagging behind women (1). These areas include education, health, homelessness, unfair treatment by the legal system, and more. In American colleges, for example, men now comprise only 42% of all undergraduate students (2).

Observers implicate a climate of anti-male hostility at college campuses (3), which can be traced to several developments in recent decades:

In 1979, the Department of Education issued a new Title IX policy on women’s sports that served to eliminate many male sports teams (4).
In 2011, the Obama Administration’s Dear Colleague Letter served to stereotype men as sexual predators (5). (Ironically, the Centers for Disease Control reports that men are victims of sexual assault by females nearly as often as women who are victims of rape (6)).
A growing number of women’s studies programs that promote Marxist-inspired theories of “patriarchal oppression” (7).
Hundreds of universities sponsor female-only scholarships and leadership programs (8).

Adding to the onslaught, colleges began to develop “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) programs in the latter part of the 2010s that granted preferences to Blacks and women. Among the 10 most highly paid DEI administrators at Ohio State University, for example, nine were female (9).

Viewing DEI programs as a “mortal threat to the American way of life” (10), nine states already have enacted laws to rein in DEI programs: Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah (11). These laws seek to prohibit colleges from having DEI offices or staff, ban mandatory diversity training, forbid the use of diversity statements in hiring and promotions, and bar colleges from considering race, sex, or national origin in admissions or employment (12).

These efforts were given a boost last June by the Supreme Court decision against Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, in which the SCOTUS ruled that considering a student’s race violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (13).

In theory, DEI programs and Title IX have opposite goals. While DEI seeks to afford preferences to women, Title IX seeks to end sex discrimination against men.

But in practice, the DEI mindset has infiltrated many Title IX offices. For example, the Association of Title IX Administrators, known as ATIXA, sponsored a conference on “True Equity at the Intersection of Title IX and DEI” (14). In its list of groups affected by “Inequitable Practices,” the program lists Students of Color, LGBTQIA+, and Women. But the fact that beleaguered men are facing an increasingly hostile environment somehow escaped the notice of ATIXA.

As a result, we are seeing cases like the Title IX investigator at the University of Maryland who endorsed a sexist Facebook quote by William Golding that said, “I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been” (15).

If lawmakers want to assure the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is not relegated to the dustbin of history, they need to move swiftly to ban Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at colleges in their state.

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