The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has become a liability for America. Its transformation from an economic and medical provider to a social engineer has made it an instrument of U.S. cultural imperialism. Unless USAID’s educational mission is dissolved, the agency’s zeal for advancing a radical social agenda, particularly progressive beliefs about sexuality in traditional and religious societies, will corrode and confound U.S. relations with the developing world.
President Joe Biden is waging an ideological crusade on Africa, the Middle East, South America, and parts of Asia. His administration works to subjugate, transform, and assimilate conservative societies into a progressive world order. The administration’s imperialist endeavors in the developing world seek to create countries that celebrate and empower individual and group expressions of identity (i.e., sexual, gender, ethnic, and racial) at the expense of the family, faith group, and the nation.
USAID is a key contributor to Biden’s ideological crusade. The agency conducts the crusade at the grassroots level, shaping and influencing the general population and institutions. Created during the Kennedy administration to combat communism through the provisioning of clean drinking water and electricity, USAID now foments an ideological insurgency through its programming by championing the doctrine of DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusion. For the agency, celebrating LGBTQ lifestyles and identities are core values of developed societies.
An explicit example of USAID’s doctrinal insurgency occurs in its education mission. In 2023, USAID decided to complement its educational aims and objectives with DEI. No longer is it sufficient to improve access to, and the quality of, education while facilitating better learning outcomes and the acquisition of skills. Assisting educational growth must now also require promoting non-heterosexual behaviors and identities in the classroom.
To realize its crusade, the agency published “Integrating LGBTQI+ Considerations into Education Programming.” The 30-page document provides assistance and guidance to international educators on how to extol LGBTQ lifestyles and identities in the classroom. Some of the methods it advocates include usage of language that negates gender binaries and marginalizes terminology like “mother” and “father” in the classroom. Educators are also directed to “protect students’ privacy,” which entails not revealing student’s gender identity or sexual orientation to parents.
USAID’s attempt to integrate LGBTQ ideas and issues into the classroom has not gone unnoticed. In Lebanon earlier this year, the leader of the Lebanese militia-political party Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, alerted Lebanese Muslims and Christians about it:
Another dangerous thing [the U.S. government is] working on now is the curricula. I mentioned this on several occasions. It is not a secret. The U.S. State Department is asking all its embassies around the world to work with the governments of the countries they are in to promote the culture of homosexuality in schools and universities. They want to turn it into a culture.
Nasrallah’s concerns are not exaggerated. Through the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, USAID partners with the Lebanese Ministry of Education in rehabilitating the country’s public school system.
It is only a matter of time before similar diatribes occur elsewhere in the developing world and confound relations. USAID engages in educational assistance in more than two dozen countries who oppose the celebration of LGBTQ lifestyles and identities. In the predominantly Muslim Middle East alone, the agency provides learning programs in Jordan, teacher professional development in Egypt, and assisting with students transitioning from primary to middle school in Morocco.
The willingness of USAID to strike at the heart of traditional and religious societies by interfering stealthily in parent–child relations will elicit distrust in, if not anger and rejection of, the agency and any of its programming. If children are vulnerable to USAID’s LGBTQ indoctrination in the classroom, parents and individuals in general will perceive other USAID assistance as threatening. USAID’s work in health care is emphatic about serving non-heterosexual individuals. Going forward, will parents feel comfortable leaving their child unattended in a USAID-administered or USAID-supported health care program, let alone seek it out? At what point does USAID as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy in the developing world do more harm than good?
Even if USAID recognized the harm or potential harm of its ways, there is no reason for confidence that the agency would suspend action. To undermine the one source of strength and stability in the developing world — the family — demonstrates the recklessness of the agency, its disregard for boundaries, and its insatiable sanctimoniousness. New leadership at USAID under a new president would elicit only superficial change. Pursuit of the radical social agenda would continue in a more informal way because the U.S. government officials disseminating these programs arrive ready for duty from the campus echo chambers where misguided ideas fester.
The baby needs to be thrown out with the bathwater. USAID’s educational programming must be dismantled. As lawmakers discuss the budget in Congress, they should make future USAID funding contingent on the dissolution of the USAID’s educational mission because the agency cannot stop its radical social agenda. The termination of the mission would further U.S. interests and endeavors in the developing world.
Eric Bordenkircher, Ph.D., is a research fellow at UCLA’s Center for Middle East Development. His twitter handle is @UCLA_Eagle. The views represented in this piece are his own and do not necessarily represent the position of UCLA or the Center for Middle East Development.