Curtis Bunn
MSNBC
Excerpt: One by one, diversity, equity and inclusion programs at some of the country’s biggest companies fell apart in 2024, with signs that efforts to reverse DEI initiatives will only ramp up in 2025.
This year saw the rise in prominent figures like Elon Musk and Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, among others, who vocally pushed against DEI initiatives. Major companies, including Walmart, Lowe’s, Ford and Toyota, heeded the calls and dialed back their DEI programs, particularly after social media-driven campaigns by influencers like Robby Starbuck.
Graham Parsons, professor philosophy at the USMA at West Point
New York Times
Excerpt: It turned out to be easy to undermine West Point. All it took was an executive order from President Trump and a memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dictating what could and couldn’t be taught in the military and its educational institutions.
Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: The Department of Education’s demands that University of Pennsylvania “restore” swimming awards and honors that had been “misappropriated” to trans women athletes and apologize to the cisgender women who had lost to them offer a glimpse into how the second Trump administration could use Title IX to force certain changes at colleges, experts and attorneys say.
Lee Jussim and Robert Maranto
Inside Higher Ed
Excerpt: Now, thanks to the Trump administration’s—in our view questionable—policies regarding academia in general and elite institutions like Columbia and Harvard Universities in particular, policies that many plausibly view as political vengeance for leftist activism, higher education is rapidly approaching fear equity: The presidential right has joined the campus left in using intimidation to punish those whose speech they dislike. Now, everybody in academia gets to be afraid of being canceled, or at least having their grants canceled.
Is it possible that the new fear equity, with both left and right afraid to speak their minds, may be a necessary precondition to pave the way for a free speech renaissance?