Reports on Wokeness in Education - The American Way of Life

Dr. Scott Yenor is a Washington Fellow at The Claremont Institute and a professor of political science at Boise State University. In the reports below, Dr. Yenor exposes the extent to which DEI and Leftism have corrupted and deformed American schools. Many of these reports are co-authored with Anna K Miller, who is the Director of the Center for American Education at the Idaho Freedom foundation. Simply click on an image to view or download a PDF file of that report.

Executive Summary: The University of Notre Dame is among America’s finest. It is a trusted name. Hiring Catholic faculty has long been important. Catholic students flock there. The mission of Notre Dame, however, is threatened by DEI practices that compromise Catholic doctrine and replace superb instruction with social engineering. According to its Board of Trustees Task Force, the school is undergoing, according to its Board of Trustees Task Force, “a profound shift from diversity, equity, and inclusion being ‘good to have’ to becoming a moral imperative.”

Executive Summary: Conservatives have been frustrated with the direction of higher education for decades. Yet conservative responses like protecting free speech and ending racial preferences have not kept the higher education machine from veering ever leftward. Nor will ending tenure or greater transparency change higher education’s direction. Reformers must start with reforms that will change the direction of higher education from within the system; then, they must change the system itself.

Executive Summary: Florida has led the nation in eliminating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices and policies in higher education. The next stage of DEI regulation should involve K-12 teacher preparation programs, which are among the most politicized, ideologically captured departments in modern universities. States have the authority to regulate teacher certification requirements, and in turn shape the curriculum taught in higher ed K-12 training programs. The need is great.

Executive Summary: The Texas legislature passed SB 17 in Spring 2023. The bill aimed to ensure that colleges and universities in Texas did not “establish or maintain a diversity, equity, and inclusion office” or promote “differential treatment of or providing special benefits to individuals on the basis of race, color, or ethnicity.” The bill went into effect January 1, 2024.

Executive Summary: California’s legislators, state department of education, colleges of education, teacher unions, and school boards have built a seemingly impenetrable bureaucratic machine to govern the public school system. It resembles an unaccountable monopoly, with poor academic results and being governed by a self-regarding ideology that promotes the cutting edge of leading radical gender and anti-racism theories.

Executive Summary: Florida’s K–12 public education system is among the best in the country, and it has become better over the past four years. Elsewhere in the country, the education system emphasizes concepts of diversity and equity while compromising on excellence and even competence.

Executive Summary: All across the country, administrators are transforming universities into institutions dedicated to political activism and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This report concerns how this DEI transformation is coming to Alabama’s two main campuses, University of Alabama and Auburn University. The report has several sections.

Executive Summary: Universities across America are dedicating themselves to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). To ordinary Americans, DEI sound like a promise to provide welcome and opportunity to all on campus.

Executive Summary: All over the country, administrators are transforming universities into institutions dedicated to political activism and to indoctrinating students into a hateful and destructive ideology. The transformation is happening in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). This report concerns how this DEI transformation has come to Texas A&M. The report has several sections.

Executive Summary: Critical Social Justice (CSJ) is written into the DNA of Idaho’s public education system. At the most fundamental level, Idaho’s education system is designed to replace the influence of parents on the opinions and sentiments of children with the influence of public institutions. Our public education system emphasizes the principles of CSJ, a false and harmful anti-American, anti-Christian ideology that sows racial hatred, gender confusion, and resentment. There is no making peace with this imperial ideology. It must either be rooted out of our system (a tall task) or parents must be assisted in walking away from the system.

Executive Summary: Universities in the University of Maine System (UMS) have been rapidly adopting Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) goals and policies since Leaders in the UMS system itself are pushing universities toward an “anti-racist” stance. Dannel P. Malloy, Chancellor of the System, wants Maine’s universities to teach “genuine anti-racist views” and to “rebuild systems that are fair and just” according to those views. These sweet-sounding phrases may seem unobjectionable, but they represent a revolutionary redefining of words. DEI verbiage promises justice, but it promotes hatred and injustice. It promises fairness, but it undermines due process and professional standards. It promises a better country, but it yields social strife and racial hatred. DEI policies promote an ideology that undermines meritocracy, sows racial division, falsely stigmatizes Maine as a bastion of privilege and intolerance, and threatens the genuine inquiry that universities must perform if they are to serve the public good.

Executive Summary: Critical Social Justice (CSJ), the ideological bent condemning the country as oppressive, is now in the DNA of Maine’s K–12 system. As the Maine Department of Education (MDOE) commits to dismantling the inherited education system of decades ago, traditional measures of success like mastery in reading and math are showing marked signs of decline.

Executive Summary: A particularly narrow ideological view—Critical Social Justice (CSJ), as we call it—has come to dominate many American colleges and universities. This pernicious ideology divides the world into aggrieved minorities and oppressive majorities. It reduces people to a group identity grounded in immutable characteristics such as race and sex.

Executive Summary: Critical Social Justice (CSJ) poses a threat to higher education and to the American way of life. This pernicious ideology divides the world into aggrieved minorities and oppressive majorities and reduces people to a group identity grounded in immutable characteristics like race and sex. It’s based on a distorted view of what a human being is, compromising the pursuit of truth and corrupting institutions that adopt it. It cultivates resentment and anger among the supposedly aggrieved while undermining the stability, equal treatment, and mutual toleration that contributes to individual happiness and good citizenship. It undermines the integrity of institutions that adopt it, in that employees worry that factors other than merit lead to advancement.

Executive Summary: Critical Social Justice (CSJ) poses a threat to higher education and to the American way of life. This school of thought goes by many names, including Critical Race Theory, Critical Theory, Multiculturalism, and Identity Politics. All these ideologies divide the world into aggrieved minorities and oppressive majorities, reducing people to a group identity grounded in immutable characteristics such as race and sex. They are based on a distorted view of what a human being is, compromising the pursuit of truth and diverting institutions that adopt it away from excellence and merit and toward factionalism. They cultivate resentment and anger among the supposedly aggrieved while undermining the stability, equal treatment, and mutual toleration that contributes to individual happiness and good citizenship. Universities promote CSJ policies under the seemingly innocuous rubric of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

Executive Summary: The woke movement at University of San Diego (USD) is well underway. This report details how woke ideology has taken hold at USD and what it means to students, parents, alumni, and donors.

Executive Summary: Social justice education poses a threat to education in America and to the American way of life. Social justice education divides the world into aggrieved minorities and oppressive majorities. Wherever it is practiced, it compromises the pursuit of truth, the free exchange of ideas, and the aspiration of seeing people assimilate into the great American melting pot. It cultivates anger and resentment among the supposedly aggrieved, while undermining the stability and mutual toleration that contributes to individual happiness and good citizenship.

Executive Summary: Social justice education poses a threat to education in America and to the American way of life. Social justice education divides the world into aggrieved minorities and oppressive majorities. Wherever it is practiced, it compromises the achievement of truth, the free exchange of ideas, and the aspiration for assimilating people into the great American melting pot. It cultivates anger and resentment among the supposedly aggrieved, while undermining the stability and mutual toleration that contributes to individual happiness and good citizenship.

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