What are "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)-related topics" or content? The report says that DEI courses are anything that includes the following language:
For the purposes of this report, DEI courses are courses that contain explicit DEI language in their titles, learning outcomes, and/or course descriptions. We also counted any campus that had a gen ed category that was listed as or similar to “Diversity Requirement.”
The DEI language we screened for in the above categories are:
- “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” “Diversity and Inclusion;” and “Equity;”
- Social justice, activism, liberation;
- Power, power structures, intersectionality;
- Race, racism, and antiracism, systemic racism, institutional racism, white supremacy, white guilt, white fragility, white responsibility, critical race theory, black power, black liberation;
- Marxism, privilege, class, socioeconomic status, inequality;
- Sex, sexuality, sexual orientation LGBTQ+, queer, gender, critical gender theory;
- Feminism, toxic masculinity, male privilege, misogyny, gender roles;
- Minority, marginalized, disenfranchised studies;
- Ableism;
- Bias, implicit bias.
What an absolutely
boneheaded list.
I have degrees in economics and history (and I dropped out of a psychology degree). I learned a lot about Marxism (because Marxism is pretty fundamental to the history of economic theory and it's covered in a LOT of economics courses). My history degree also included a lot of learning about issues like race, bias, minorities, feminism, class
, social justice and socioeconomic status. Was my university mandating DEI topics? No. They were just teaching me economics and history.
I just went onto the website for my old university, which helpfully lets you search course descriptions.
Marxism is mentioned in 11 courses - four in economics, four government/international relations and three cultural and gender studies courses. Marx is mentioned in a further 9 - mostly legal, philosophy and politics courses.
Bias is mentioned in more than a dozen courses - most of them
statistics related. That includes courses on biostatistics, econometrics, epidemiology and clinical statistics.
Gender is mentioned in 159 courses.
Sex is mentioned in 30.
Sexuality in 51.
I was going to write a long rant about the contents of the report itself. But to do it justice would require words of such intensity that I'd end up banned here.