Virginia's chief diversity officer was blunt. He took the stage Friday at Virginia Military Institute — a college embroiled in a tense debate over racism, sexism and diversity reforms — and slammed the whole concept of diversity, equity and inclusion.
"Let's take a moment right now to kill that cow. DEI is dead," said Martin D. Brown, who was appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) in November.
Brown was "the featured speaker at a mandatory annual 'inclusive excellence' training" at VMI.
The governor's office sent the state's chief diversity flak to a state-run school's premier diversity event to tell them that the whole thing is a garbage sham.
That's so bold it almost burns!
VMI is a historic Virginia college. Its roots stretch back to the 1830s. Abraham Lincoln referred to it as "the West Point of the South." You wouldn't think that it would be the locus of any sort of woke diversity nonsense.
But of course nearly all of higher education is these days. You can't readily find a single institution of higher education free from it. And so there were many people at VMI who were unenthusiastic about the speech, according to one "(anonymous) professor:
"Multiple people I spoke with afterwards were outraged. They were concerned about our students, our minority groups. How is this going to impact them? They're already struggling even with the current diversity push."
Brown's office, meanwhile, said in response to the controversy over the address:
It's proven that institutions achieve more with a more diverse and inclusive workforce. However, equity has become a tradeoff for excellence. Our aim is to expand opportunities but not guarantee equal results.
