The Republicans of yesterday wanted limited government. Today’s Republicans want to tell us how to think.
President Trump is banning DEI because it forces “illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’” Based on what evidence?
According to Franklin County Commissioner Kevin Boyce, DEI does not promote hiring on the basis of race or gender. On the podcast JUSTUS with Jack & Gonzo, he explained that DEI promotes removing barriers so that everyone can be judged on character, qualifications and experience.
NYU professor Erica Foldy and former Apple vice president Christie Smith agree. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon sees DEI as a strategy for growing the bank’s customer base and attracting top talent.
Perhaps Trump hates DEI because it is a reminder of our dark past. Reality is uncomfortable.
“We have DEI because you denied us diversity, you denied us equity, you denied us inclusion,” Rev. Al Sharpton explained. “DEI was a remedy to the racial institutional bigotry practiced in academia and in these corporations.”
But Trump isn’t interested in discussion and learning; both require humility. He’s certain he’s right and wants America to think his way.
The same certainty runs through the Ohio Statehouse. State Senator Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, wants to dictate how universities educate their students.
Cirino’s Senate Bill 1 prohibits anything that smacks of DEI, but the bill fails to define DEI, which means that perhaps anything might be prohibited. And professors must not indoctrinate any particular point of view. So, if Jim Crow laws are studied in class, is a professor obligated to give equal time to the KKK’s justification for lynching blacks?
Sen. Terry Johnson, R-McDermott, has introduced Senate Bill 34 which would require schools to post at least one of 10 historical documents, ranging from the Mayflower Compact to the Articles of Confederation. Johnson thinks children have been denied “the vital legal and moral essence” they “need to thrive as good American citizens.”
I’m all for teaching morality, but limiting education to our moments of enlightenment is short sighted and speaks of self-righteousness. Education should remind us of our moral failures as well.
Let’s begin with the U.S. Supreme Court denying freedom to Dred Scott in 1857 because slaves were not citizens and were “regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations.”
In WWII, we interned Japanese immigrants who were U.S. citizens. Why? Because, as our high court concluded, the military found “it was impossible to bring about an immediate segregation of the disloyal from the loyal.” Some German and Italian immigrants were interned but far fewer. Were Japanese immigrants more dangerous?
Let students learn how President Lyndon Johnson used a doubtful claim about an attack on two U.S. warships to persuade Congress to authorize our involvement in Vietnam and then misled the American public about our lack of success. All at the expense of 58,000 dead service members.
After 9/11 and starting in 2002, the federal government incarcerated 780 suspected terrorists—many had first been tortured in oversees black sites—at Guantanamo Bay. Some were confirmed terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Many were not.
Of those 780, only 15 remain in custody as of 2024. Nine have been charged with war crimes; seven have yet to be put on trial and two have been convicted. The rest have been transferred to the custody of their home countries or were resettled elsewhere.
And the cost? A 2013 DoD report puts the cost of building and operating the prison from 2002 to 2014 at $5.2 billion. The number surpassed $7 billion in 2021.
You have to love the irony. The politicians who want to tell the rest of how to think have so much to learn. Maybe they could learn from watching “The Conclave,” and listen to what Cardinal Lawrence said. “Certainty is the great enemy of unity.”
[A version of this post was published in The Columbus Dispatch on March 7, 2025.]
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Jack D’Aurora writes for Considerthisbyjd.com
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