Wisconsin Republican Claims Victory In Fight Against DEI Ideology
So-called “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs have become a hot-button political issue in recent years, with leftist supporters insisting that they give marginalized communities a leg up and many conservatives arguing that DEI amounts to a license to discriminate.
While the controversial ideology has taken root on a number of college campuses nationwide, some Republican-led states — notably Florida and Texas — have passed legislation preventing public universities from employing DEI personnel.
Now, a GOP lawmaker in the swing state of Wisconsin is taking credit for advancing a similar effort despite the opposition of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and others.
After spending months pursuing a path to at least reduce the number of DEI-related positions and programs within the University of Wisconsin network of schools, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos achieved a major breakthrough last month. He had successfully tied further spending for the state university system to cutting its DEI programs, and, in response, UW officials confirmed that they would eliminate roughly one-third of existing positions and curtail any future hiring for such positions for the next three years.
Furthermore, the university agreed to remove a DEI loyalty pledge that had been given to all newly hired personnel and vowed to replace identity with merit as the chief focus of its future recruitment efforts.
As an added bonus, UW will now fund an endowed chair with the stated purpose of advancing conservative values.
Vos touted his own persistence as a key factor in achieving these concessions, indicating that if he had not been willing to hold firm on withholding raises and other funding until DEI programs were cut, the university system would not have had an incentive to approve the changes.
“The one thing that I have learned the more I’ve done this is that I have total respect for people who fight for the conservative cause,” he said. “But I have a lot more respect for people who win.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies senior legal fellow GianCarlo Canaparo agreed that Vos deserves credit for his achievement, concluding:
“He just played the levels of power in that state like a fiddle.”
