DEI is not (just) a race issue

Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash

Christopher Rufo's anti-DEI crusade visits University of South Florida

As someone who lives in Florida and attended public school through and including graduate school in Florida, this rhetoric reshaping the academic integrity of public education in the state is beyond disturbing.

I would like to be measured and calm in my response, but these are not measured times, and the high ground has been obliterated by an increasingly diligent illiberalism that has gained a supermajority in the third most populous state in the country, with a governor who speaks out of both sides of his mouth for the sole purpose of attaining power.

There is a tendency to assume that men like Ron DeSantis and his shiny new dog whistle, Christopher Rufo, are Men of the People, down-home folks whose collars are blue blue blue. That their strategies for waging their culture war are shambolic and doomed to eventual failure. Men like DeSantis and Rufo weaponize this tendency to gain legitimacy through appointments and legislation. They use distraction, deception, and disinformation to seize power that does nothing but work against the interests of the people who support them. They are not Men of the…