Hiding behind the smokescreen of “fairness,” leftists have for decades been shoving their collectivist notions down the throats of American students. It took quite a long time for the counterattack to get started, but it seems that DEI is in full retreat.

In today’s Martin Center article, Jonathan Butcher presents a favorable account of the battle to get rid of the diversity madness and get back to actual education.

He begins with the University of Michigan, long one of the most active major schools in pushing DEI. U of M officials have announced that they will no longer require “diversity” statements. Butcher writes:

This announcement was significant because the school had a longstanding commitment to DEI, having spent some $250 million on DEI operations over the last eight years. Indeed, reporter Nicholas Confessore described Michigan’s original DEI program as part of the vanguard in the higher-education DEI revolution. Similarly, Heritage Foundation researcher Jay Greene found that the Wolverines had more DEI employees than any other university in a Power 5 athletic conference. Even today, according to just-released research, the school’s DEI payroll contains more than 1,100 names.

This isn’t quite like the Battle of Yorktown, but the tide has definitely turned against DEI. Colleges can save the money they wasted on their DEI bureaucracies. They can also shut down their censorship regimes, meant to silence anyone who questioned the orthodoxy.

Butcher continues: “Policymakers’ heightened attention to DEI has exposed the movement as little more than a ‘School of Resentment,’ as literary critic Harold Bloom dubbed ‘multicultural’ movements 30 years ago. In the December announcement from UMichigan officials about their policy change, school officials may have admitted as much, noting that DEI is a threat to the pursuit of truth.”

There is a long way to go before the DEI zealots have all been replaced with true educators, but the momentum is clearly with those of us who don’t want our schools and colleges used for indoctrination.