Is DEI about to die?

A month after my book Lawless came out, we've seen a lot of changes.

Apologies for the absence of posting since I concluded my five-post serialized summary of my new book, Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites. In addition to an insane travel and media schedule, I’ve been laid low by two weird illnesses, one a weird fever-cough bug that had me skipping dinners to go to bed and wake up without a voice, the other a gastrointestinal thing that thankfully hit mostly while I was home between long trips (but on the plus side allowed me to hit this month’s weight-loss goals). It was all I could do not to cancel any speaking engagements.

But anyway, Lawless came out just over a month ago, at which point I posted an essay here on “what it’s like to publish a book.” Since then, I’ve been traveling cross-country to promote the book and discuss the crisis in higher education. And of course that blended into media about President Trump’s executive orders rescinding DEI and other identitarian structures and programs throughout federal agencies, contractors, and grantees—including colleges and universities that get research funding, federal backed student loans, and other federal revenues that come with federal strings attached. Other executive orders have addressed free speech, antisemitism, and other aspects of rolling back the illiberalism that swept through higher education most acutely since the “racial reckoning” of 2020.

All of this is a good start, but will take sustained effort to overcome the massive resistance in the educational and corporate-HR establishment. (I use that term advisedly to refer back to the Jim Crow South’s reaction to desegregation orders in the 1950s and ’60s.) Anyhow, here are some highlights from what I’ve been up to since book release: