Over the last several years, some major American corporations have quietly backed away from their “woke” commitments, realizing that their bottom lines were hurting. But if you were expecting our colleges and universities to do so as well, think again. As non-profits, they don’t have a bottom line and their leaders are happy to continue their costly virtue signaling.

That’s the message from NAS president Peter Wood in today’s Martin Center article.

He writes:

For the most part, American universities remain committed to their strategies for fighting global warming by reducing their ‘carbon footprints,’ and they remain as enthusiastic as ever about the Paris Climate Agreement, the international treaty that spins an amusing tale replacing physics with politics.

Many of our college leaders are fully invested in the whole array of leftist beliefs about social justice and sustainability. Never mind that their programs have a negligible effect and squander lots of money that could be spent on actual education.

One reason why is that colleges are pushed to continue wokeness by the Carnegie Foundation. Wood continues, “The Carnegie Foundation will pay good money for a college that combines its commitments to radical environmentalism and DEI. If you don’t quite catch the DEI program in those sentences, it appears more explicitly later on, when the document emphasizes the ‘voices of the underrepresented,’ ‘indigenous knowledge,’ ‘inclusivity,’ and ‘diversity’.”

Nevertheless, Wood is optimistic that in time the sheer unreality of these woke programs will cause their abandonment. Reality, after all, is not optional.