Let’s Deprogram Texas Universities

Woke is on life support, but it’s still alive. The last stronghold of DEI in Texas is located in the place that matters most: The university classroom.

When I say “matters most,” here’s what comes to mind:

In a recent survey, a stunning 61 percent of 18- to 44-year old white American women who identify as “liberal”—a classic university-influenced demographic—believe that political violence is justified in response to federal immigration enforcement efforts. As ominous, only 30 percent say violence is never justified.

America has not seen such a statistic before, and the overall population in the same survey don’t come close to espousing this dangerous belief in political violence.

But why should we be surprised?

For the last generation, neo-Marxist professors in universities have taught naïve students that the world is divided into “oppressed” and “oppressors.” It’s not a leap for a student to infer that almost any measure, including violence, is justified if it helps the oppressed and takes from the oppressor.

We are, with taxpayer funds, creating a generation of Marxist thinkers in our public university classrooms. What that does is undermine an American culture of liberty and security that we have spent 250 years cultivating.

Think of the BLM riots of 2020 with almost no pushback by university-indoctrinated governors and mayors as cities burned, people died, and civilization retreated in shame for being “oppressive.”

Think of the Minneapolis anti-ICE invasion of an evangelical church on January 18 by leftist radicals. Evangelicals are usually conservative and thus seen as “oppressors.” Our churches then become fair game for disruption.

Think of the sniper attacks on ICE in Dallas last year.

Then, think of the news media! The media downplayed an historic invasion caused by illegal immigration that has led to the harm of innocent Americans like Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray. The men and women in the newsrooms diverting attention from these crimes are graduates of our universities who have been catechized by wokeness.

THE CLASSROOM WAS CAPTURED

In a DEI-shaped classroom, students are taught that the oppressors are always bad, the oppressed always good.

The oppressors are generally anyone promulgating Washingtonian patriotism and fidelity to America as a country; anyone seeing American government in Jeffersonian terms of individualism and natural rights; anyone favoring traditional Judeo-Christian values and spirituality. The oppressed are generally framed in terms of group identity; especially race, sex, sexual orientation, and “outsiders” standing against the core American concept of republican constitutionalism or Judeo-Christian values.

The DEI goal of government and policy is to achieve “social justice” and “equity” by punishing members of oppressor groups and benefiting members of oppressed groups.

It’s a form of Marxism invented in the early 1900s and imported into American higher education by intellectuals migrating from Europe during and after World War II. They began primarily in the Ivy League, where I got my undergraduate degree, then spreadliterally everywhere.

Rather than restricting the oppressor/oppressed divide to economic class, as did the original Marxists, this new woke brand extended the division to race, sex, sexual behavior, ethnic origin, and more. Marxist elites can capture a society through creating a bewildering array of “oppressed vs. oppressor” divisions, setting multiple groups against each other, and then swooping down to control the chaos with heavy-handed government power.

Academic subjects springing out of this movement included “Critical Theory” and its progeny: Critical Race Theory, Critical Queer Theory, Critical Legal Theory, and the like. This created new fields of study, new courses, new majors, new bureaucracies, new non-profits, and infiltrated almost every social institution.

YES, TEXAS CLASSROOMS, TOO

When Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a university campus, there were widespread accounts of professors and students at various major universities breaking into celebration.

But not in Texas, right?

Wrong. Texas has some of the most woke universities in the country, and the mocking celebrations of the Kirk assassination were here, too. Texas Tech. Texas State. University of North Texas. I’m sure there were more.

THE CLASSROOM SPILLS INTO YOUR STREET

What is injected into the mind and heart of the student in the classroom flows into the institutions of power in Texas: media, government, corporations, non-profits, and the voting booth. It effects all areas of policy, including taxes, spending, family, law enforcement, criminal justice, and more.

Consider, for instance, that almost half of Texas’ population is under the jurisdiction of prosecutors elected with massive funding from radical Marxist George Soros (and now his son and heir, Alex). Soros backs only woke candidates, and his university-trained wokists won district attorney races in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and elsewhere.

That’s why so many judges are letting so many killers out on bail, costing the lives of innocent Texans who are victims of “out-on-bail” murders. The activists storming the ramparts of this takeover of the courts were indoctrinated in Texas universities by professors who often see criminals as “oppressed.”

Now you know why I said the university classroom is “the place that matters most.” The classroom is where much of the future of Texas and America is being forged.

BUT DIDN’T TEXAS OUTLAW DEI IN HIGHER ED?

Texas Republicans commendably began a campaign against DEI and CRT in higher education during the last three sessions of the state legislature. However, this was always going to be a long effort, with victory coming in chunks.

Legislation targeted DEI offices and programs at taxpayer funded universities. This was SB 17, taking effect in 2024. As a result, many programs closed. This is a victory. Manyof these programs, however, cleverly changed their names and kept advancing the same DEI/CRT goals.

We’ve done hardly enough to solve the massive problem I‘ve described. In fact, one bill during the last session would have struck a blow against DEI/CRT indoctrination in university classrooms (SB16), but it died in committee.

THE CLASSROOM DEI PROTECTION

All we’ve achieved is to strike at the DEI infrastructure—their “offices and programs”—but we haven’t taken down their spread of indoctrination. In essence, there is a classroom protection for DEI in higher education in Texas! That means they can teach it all day long. All forms of critical theory, all forms of critical gender theory, critical race theory, all the European Marxist stuff that gestated in Harvard when I was in college and then made its way here . . . it still has free reign in our universities.

So let’s end it.

We as Republicans control every statewide office in both chambers of legislature. We can decide that as a state we don’t want to pay for DEI indoctrination in our classrooms anymore.

Politically, it’s an easy sell.

First, we can make the case that DEI is anti-American, which it is, and that there is no legal compulsion for American taxpayers to fund anti-American indoctrination in our universities.

Second, we can make the case that DEI is harmful because it is not getting these young people any good jobs. Nobody’s going to Goldman Sachs and saying, “I have a degree in gender studies from Texas A&M. Would you hire me?” Nobody’s going to JP Morgan and saying, “I have a degree in critical gender studies. Would you hire me?”

WE HAVE THE POWER. DO WE HAVE THE WILL?

We have the power to decide that we as a state don’t want this anymore. It’s actually making us weaker and it’s harming our young people. So my suggestion is that we just say, “I’m not paying for that crap anymore. If you want to study it, go to Baylor, go to Harvard, go to Berkeley. We’re not paying for it anymore.”

If you’re a Republican who is going to go to state convention this June in Houston, make this aspect of higher education reform one of the “Legislative Priorities” coming out of that convention as a mandate for the legislature.

We can’t allow DEI to continue to reign in the university classroom, the place where it matters most. The price is too high, and the consequences too unthinkable.