UVA President James Ryan Caved to MAGA—and They Forced Him Out Anyway

How do the Department of Justice, or the Department of Education, or Stephen Miller, or Donald Trump define DEI? They don’t. This allows them to ignore the true, subtle, essential nature of the actual efforts and lets a specter of anti-white, anti-male discrimination take over the public mind. DEI is whatever bigots fear it could be. DEI is never something solid about which informed citizens of a republic might deliberate or debate.

The specter of DEI is an updated a broader version of the demon of “critical race theory” that drove the dismantling of the once-great Florida public university system. Right-wing activists and Governor Ron DeSantis never defined or explained critical race theory for the public. They never showed actual examples of it in a public school or even undergraduate classroom. Those of us who have read it, cited it, and even taught about it to graduate students of history and culture were drowned out as we tried to educate a busy and frightened public.

Jefferson and James Madison understood that such demagoguery could quickly undermine a democratic republic. That’s why they put so much effort into both educating the polis (at least white, male members of the polis) and cultivating a rich, American public sphere through free and open deliberation and research.

I doubt Jefferson ever imagined the university he dreamed up and built in the last years of his life would be the site of a demagogic assault committed to crushing scientific inquiry. As a Machiavellian politician (who probably had read The Prince in Latin), however, Jefferson might have been impressed by the audacity of the power moves the Trump officials have executed in their Cultural Revolution.