Georgetown School of Foreign Service Pledges to 'Embed' DEI Throughout Campus

Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service (SFS) recently renewed its pledge to “embed” Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology as a core principle of the school, according to an email sent to students on January 10.

Georgetown SFS communicated the effort through its DEI Office and promoted its Strategic Plan for “boosting” the ideology throughout the school.

While DEI advocates say the ideology is about promoting diversity in schools and workplaces, public figures across the political spectrum have criticized DEI for its ties to antisemitism on college campuses.

In the weeks following Hamas’ October 7 invasion of Israel, antisemitic incidents surged across the college campuses nationwide. Observers soon connected the incidents to DEI ideology on campuses.

Tabia Lee, a former DEI director for De Anza College, torched the ideology in a New York Post op-ed, stating “This outpouring of antisemitic hatred is the direct result of DEI’s insistence that Jews are oppressors.”

Lee, a senior fellow at Do No Harm, writes “At its worst, DEI is built on the unshakable belief that the world is divided into two groups of people: the oppressors and the oppressed. Jews are categorically placed in the oppressor category, while Israel is branded a “genocidal, settler, colonialist state.”

Bill Ackman, an American billionaire and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, offered similar criticism. Ackman slammed DEI as “the root cause of antisemitism at Harvard” and “a political advocacy movement on behalf of certain groups that are deemed oppressed under DEI’s own methodology.”

Despite the apparent connection between DEI and campus antisemitism, however, Georgetown doubled down on DEI.

The Strategic Plan, which Georgetown SFS began implementing last fall, features numerous objectives, including:

“Embed attention to DEI in hiring, promotion, and performance review efforts,” throughout the school.

“Cross-fertilize and connect DEI-related efforts across SFS programs.”

“Ensure anti-racism and DEI are regularly and consistently part of leaders’ messaging.”

“Affirm and reward attention to DEI and antiracism in course content and classroom operations.”

The school’s DEI office also highlighted multiple DEI classes for students to take in the spring, including a mandatory undergraduate course titled “Race, Power, and Justice.” The course focuses on Georgetown’s historical connections to slavery, and “how that history intersects with national and global experiences of slavery and emancipation, settler colonialism, imperialism, and contemporary struggles for justice.”

The course aims to “develop a common vocabulary for all Georgetown students to continue to engage in conversations about racial equity and justice,” according to the original course proposal. Georgetown has not published a syllabus for the class, but its DEI office promotes an “Antiracism Resources” page featuring Critical Race Theorists Ibram X. Kendi and Peggy McIntosh.

The school’s renewed commitment to DEI is particularly noteworthy given Georgetown’s own struggles with campus antisemitism.

One week after Hamas invaded Israel, raping and killing its citizens, Georgetown students held a pro-Hamas vigil, chanting “Glory to our Martyrs” and reading a list of dead Palestinians. Similarly, Georgetown Students for Justice in Palestine released a public statement declaring “We fight for a Palestine in which all people are free and have dignity, and the only way for that to happen is for the zionist occupation of Palestine to cease.”

Weeks later, Georgetown SFS placed Aneesa Johnson, its Assistant Director of Academic and Faculty Affairs, on leave after students highlighted her antisemitic behavior online.

Johnson, who was hired by Georgetown SFS to be the "primary point of contact" for master's students regarding "everything academic," referred to Jews as “dogs” and “thieves” in posts online.

Johnson’s current employment status is unclear.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/john-hasson/2024/01/23/georgetown-school-of-foreign-service-pledges-to-embed-dei-throughout-campus-n2634054

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Harvard watch: DEI Machine Grows Stronger

“After Claudine Gay’s dismissal as Harvard president, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) complex is already regrouping,” argues Eric Kaufmann at UnHerd: The school created “an anti-Islamophobia committee alongside the antisemitism committee” and “nominated an anti-Zionist” to help lead the antisemitism group.

“Faced with pushback from outside its walls, the university has circled the wagons.”

Indeed, “the DEI complex on campus is shape-shifting, hiding affirmative action under misleading euphemisms here, bolting on some anti-antisemitism there.”

And donors aren’t “anti-woke heroes”: “They have punished elite universities for alleged antisemitism rather than their poor record on freedom.”

“So long as our highest moral ideals and sacred taboos revolve around racism, sexism and LGBT-phobia, elite institutions will be incentivized to push the identity politics

https://nypost.com/2024/01/24/opinion/dei-machine-grows-stronger-critics-target-homeschooling-parents-and-other-commentary/

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Mandatory University of Wisconsin Law School seminar tells students ‘there are no exceptional White people’

A mandatory "re-orientation" seminar for first-year students at the University of Wisconsin Law School allegedly instructed them to share racial slurs and claimed "there are no exceptional White people," according to reports.

Students were asked before the Friday presentation to review pamphlets, one of which claimed"colorblindness" can negate the life experiences, norms and cultural values of people of color.

"By saying we are not different, that you don't see the color, you are also saying you don't see your whiteness. This denies the people of colors' experience of racism and your experience of privilege," the pamphlet read.

The two-hour lecture was held by self-described "social justice educator" Joey Oteng, who used it as a "follow-up to the DEI session" that students attended at the beginning of the fall semester, according to Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Lauren L. Devine.

"Re-orientation is intended to do just that – reorient you now that you have your first semester of law school behind you and a new semester ahead," Devine wrote in an email to students. She also told students to review an article on "28 Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors" and finish a "Race Timeline Worksheet" prior to the seminar.

Part of "The 28 Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors" article suggests people of color cannot be racist.

"Let's first define racism with this formula: Racism =racial prejudice + systemic, institutional power. To say people of color can be racist, denies the power imbalance inherent in racism," the handout said.

Another section of the pre-activity materials claimed White people benefit from racial oppression regardless of their actions, noting that "there are no exceptional White people."

Sources who spoke with The Federalist under the condition of anonymity said Oteng used a real-time interactive survey where students were asked to respond to the phrase "I understand institutional and systemic racism" on a scale from "unsure" to "confidently."

The law school's spokesman, John Lucas, told the outlet the seminar "was held in partial fulfillment of ABA (American Bar Association) Standard 303's requirement that law schools provide education to their students on "bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism."

One attendee said many of the activities felt like a "confessional" for White law students in the audience.

Students in attendance were also allegedly asked to share "words, phrases, stereotypes, slurs, words of bias, etc." that could be associated with minority groups.

When Oteng asked the audience for a slur to describe White people, someone in attendance allegedly described them as "boring as f—k."

"When it came to slurs about Black people, Native Americans, Asians and Middle Eastern people, it was a very serious moment. When it got to White people and the derogatory terms used for White people, [Oteng] was implying that it was okay to laugh at White slurs because White people don't have any problems," one participant said.

The seminar was later criticized by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty President and General Counsel Rick Eisenberg.

"The student body is being subject to nonsense that ignores the rule of law and true equality in favor of a racialized way of seeing the world," he said in a statement.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/mandatory-university-wisconsin-law-school-seminar-students-no-exceptional-white-people

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