WELL, YES: DEI Drives Campus Antisemitism.

Related: Defund the Diversity Police.

In recent decades, American universities have erected a multitude of new offices, deploying swarms of bureaucrats to harass undergrads and eat out the substance of campus intellectual life. Under the banner of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), these officers wield administrative power to stamp out behaviors that make students feel “unsafe” or “unwelcome.”

Of course, in DEI Thought, some students’ sensitivities count for more than others’. Faced with pro‐​Hamas protests sweeping college campuses in the wake of the 10/7 massacre, university administrators suddenly lost their zeal for punishing “microaggressions.” When it comes to offenses like pro‐​Trump graffiti or culturally insensitive Halloween costumes, they’re ready to pounce: that stuff’s traumatizing, after all. But pogrom‐​endorsement? Hey, it’s complicated. . . .

DEI’s post‐​10/​7 disgrace should be a teachable moment, but many would‐​be reformers are learning the wrong lesson. Congressional Republicans have offered nostrums like using student loans to force deplatforming of “Anti‐​Semitic events” or ramped‐​up “hostile environment” enforcement from the Biden administration’s Office of Civil Rights. GOP state legislators in New York have drafted a “Dismantling Student Antisemitism Act” that would freeze state funding for SUNY schools unless they implement mandatory antisemitism training and bias reporting procedures.

But trying to make DEI programming “fair and balanced” is a fool’s errand. As Milton Friedman once quipped, “What would you think of someone who said, ‘I would like to have a cat, provided it barked’?”

Elected officials have no business trying to micromanage campus culture using the levers of state power. But neither is there any reason the taxpayer should be expected to fund this destructive nonsense.

Instead, at the state level, reformers should use the power of the purse to break the power of the DEI bureaucracy at public universities. T

Yes. Related:

What makes the Harvard / Penn presidents claiming their schools' deep, unshakable commitment to free expression even more hilariously pathetic: they are literally the bottom 2 in FIRE's campus free speech ratings of 248 universities pic.twitter.com/MPpEQ8g4rn

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 7, 2023

And inevitably, the Republicans Pounce! take: Republicans Try to Put Harvard, M.I.T. and Penn on the Defensive About Antisemitism.