DEI at Oklahoma State University
Part 1: Understanding the language and how OSU is embedding and enforcing a radical and partisan political ideology via its Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Oklahoma State University is embedding and enforcing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) across the university and pushing it into other public domains, including k-12 schools. The proliferation of DEI in k-12 schools forces age-inappropriate content, divisive concepts, ideology, and progressive politics onto children. University, state, and federal officials, educational organizations, and activist educators and administrators are misleading the public about DEI.
While this series was written specifically for Oklahomans, it is also meant to shine a light on how the Woke ideology is infiltrating education institutions all over the country. This series will provide specific examples of how state and federal officials encourage and support pushing DEI into k-12 schools and limiting parental rights. This segment, the first of eight, provides a very brief description of DEI.
The goal of part one is to provide a brief description of the language employed by offices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, highlight how Oklahoma State University officials are increasingly embedding and enforcing DEI at the collegiate level, misleading the public about DEI at OSU, and intentionally pushing DEI into rural areas, including Oklahoma Public and Private k-12 schools.
Understanding the Language
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Divisions of Ideological Enforcement
Offices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), only exists to embed and enforce a partisan political ideology in any institution that houses them. This unified ideology has been granted many different monikers, such as (Critical) Social Justice, Critical Race Theory, Anti-Racism, Queer Theory, Gender Ideology, Wokeness, Cultural Marxism, Identity Marxism, and Marxist Identitarianism, just to name a few. But it is important to remember that all of these monikers refer to the same divisive political ideology. It also important to remember that the only job of DEI officers in any organization is to enforce this divisive political ideology in policy and practice. For the purposes of this series, we will refer to this unified political movement in academia as Critical Social Justice.
Critical Social Justice: Ideology & Praxis (in practice)
The Ideology
Critical Social Justice (CSJ) ideology has existed for decades and gained significant momentum since 2010. Still, CSJ activists’ manipulation of language, including the term social justice, has made it difficult for the average person to make sense of CSJ. CSJ is not social justice. It is not justice. CSJ is in opposition to the actual tenants of justice. It is an authoritarian moral order that emerged from Marxism, anti-liberalism, postmodernism, and Critical Theory.
Within academia, CSJ theorists study and categorize groups of people by outward identity, as it relates to that groups oppression status in a historical context. In this way, CSJ theorists advocate for first judging all individuals based on their identity group, and always in terms of historical power, as either opposed or oppressor. CSJ theorists achieve this by way of a myriad of critical academic theories (race, gender, queer, fat studies, postcolonial, and disability studies) to promote their research as intellectual work. CSJ theorists and activists believe the more categories a person has membership in (intersectionality), the more oppressed the person is. CSJ activists demand social justice for the oppressed groups and the disruption and dismantling of cultures of the oppressor groups.
DEI as Identity/Cultural Marxism: CSJ Praxis (in practice)
DEI officers are CSJ activists that view themselves as cultural revolutionaries. These activists use DEI offices to enforce Cultural Marxism/ Identity Marxism (grouping people by culture instead of class). They believe society is divided into groups of oppressors and oppressed. These groups are determined solely by a person's identity. These identity groups are derived from the critical theories studied by CSJ theorists (race, gender, queer, fat, postcolonial, and disability).
These groups are derived from the same groups studied by CSJ activists and theorists.
– critical race theory is Race Marxism
– gender theory is Gender Marxism
– queer theory is Gender, Sex, and Sexuality Marxism
– fat studies is Fat Marxism
– postcolonial theory is Postcolonial Marxism
– disability studies is Disability Marxism.
Identity Marxists insist they are cultural revolutionaries working to save oppressed people (victims) from oppressors (criminals). They demand that everyone work in solidarity to stop oppressors. By oppressor, they mean anyone who disagrees with CSJ ideas. They believe oppressors must be called out and silenced (canceled). That is what DEI officers mean when they say “there is much work to do” and “we must do the work.”
DEI at OSU is Critical Social Justice in practice:
OSU officials are using DEI initiatives as a ruse to integrate Critical Social Justice, Wokeness, and Identity Marxism across the university. OSU officials use a DEI Task Force, committees, administrators, personnel, a Bias Response Team, Division of Institutional Diversity, Equity Advocates, and DEI activities to pressure students, faculty, and staff, to support DEI initiatives.
University administrators support and promote these initiatives at every level, including the president, provost, deans, associate deans, department and school heads, faculty, and other OSU officials. On the surface, many of these activities and initiatives appear harmless, but in reality, they are divisive and destructive. In a recent article, Jordan Peterson wrote about DEI, referring to it as DIE.
“appalling ideology currently demolishing the universities and, downstream the general culture….And this is everywhere — and if you don’t see it, your head is either in the sand or shoved somewhere far more unmentionable…We are now at the point where race, ethnicity, “gender,” or sexual preference is first, accepted as the fundamental characteristic defining each person (just as the radical leftists were hoping) and second, is now treated as the most important qualification for study, research and employment. Need I point out that this is insane?...And all of you going along with the DIE activists, whatever your reasons: this is on you. Professors. Cowering cravenly in pretence and silence. Teaching your students to dissimulate and lie. To get along. As the walls crumble. For shame."
Since March 2021, OSU has made headlines for several DEI-related issues, including Diversity Bloat, Diversity Training, and using the OSU Writing Center to enforce Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Some headlines reported on a student and faculty member OSU attempted to silence for political views. Other DEI-related headlines were about Gender, Sex, and Sexuality Marxism (queer theory) Pronouns, gender ideology, and teacher education faculty promoting queer theory in children's books. In April 2022, OSU made national news for hosting ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ for children as young as two. A parent group posted online about OSU professors heckling parents at a school board meeting about transgender bathrooms in Stillwater Public Schools.
Each of these headlines deserved public scrutiny and an explanation from OSU officials. Yet, Drag Queen Story Hour was the only headline to gain widespread attention after Fox News picked it up. The attention these headlines garnered faded quickly with little public scrutiny and little to no response from OSU or public dialogue about connections across these headlines.
The response regarding Drag Queen Story Hour provided by OSU and the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, was at best under informed or, worse, intentionally misleading to downplay the dark reality of what OSU has chosen to promote and enforce on its campuses.
Specifically, officials failed to inform the public that the activities and events in these headlines were encouraged and supported by OSU as part of OSU’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) plan to be fully implemented by 2024. OSU officials are increasingly embedding and enforcing Critical Social Justice through DEI initiatives throughout the university.
The next part of this series will briefly describe queer theory (Gender, Sex, and Sexuality Marxism) and show how OSU officials are misleading the public about DEI, specifically Gender, Sex, and Sexuality Marxism.
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