Arizona State University Requires Faculty and Staff to Undergo ‘Diversity’ Training — In Violation of State Law

The Arizona legislature barred the government from using taxpayers’ money for so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or any divisive training based on race, ethnicity or sex. But it seems that Arizona State University (ASU), which receives taxpayers’ money, didn’t get the memo.

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative and libertarian public policy institute, has sent two letters to the Arizona Board of Regents demanding that ASU stop violating state law. The school requires faculty and staff to take “ASU Inclusive Communities” training, which includes DEI concepts. From the Goldwater Institute:

These include references to “how…white supremacy [is] normalized in society” and how “systems of superiority” were “written into the foundational documents of our nation,” as well as references to “critique[ing] whiteness”; “white privilege”; “white fragility”; “the history of white supremacy and the social conditions for it to exist as a structural phenomenon”; “the ways that dominant identities are rarely interrogated”; and the need for “transformative justice.”

That is exactly what state law prohibits.

The Goldwater Institute submitted three public records requests. From one of the letters (PDF):

“Although the records exist and are readily available, they have still not been produced. As a result, we believe ASU, under the governance of the Arizona Board of Regents (‘ABOR’), has not ‘promptly’ produced public information as required by Arizona law. A.R.S. § 39-121.01(D).”

Groups like America First Legal have been warning colleges, universities, and corporations that a racial reckoning of a different sort is at hand. After the U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down racial preferences in admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, these organizations have been put on notice.

As if DEI training for employees weren’t enough, students of journalism must submit to Marxist re-education. Freedom of the press is enshrined in the nation’s founding document, but students in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication must take DEI course — anti-free speech — to graduate.

“The Cronkite School is supposed to be one of the country’s preeminent training grounds for journalists; instead it’s forcing cultural and political indoctrination down students’ throats,” the Goldwater Institute stated. “Making matters worse, the school has delayed in providing full answers to what’s being taught in the DEI course, even though it’s public information under Arizona’s public records law.”

Photo credit: By davidpinter, CC BY 3.0, link

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