National Review obtained recordings and documents from Princeton University’s two mandatory DEI sessions this week.

At Princeton University, students who want to help manage the dormitories evidently need to be schooled first on the “Four I’s of Oppression.”

The four varieties are “ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized oppression,” as students were instructed during a recent diversity training, which focused heavily on “lived experiences” and “social identities.”

“Every system of oppression comes from the idea that one group is somehow better than another,” the narrator in one video counseled the group.

National Review obtained recordings and documents from the two mandatory “DEI training” sessions this week. They provide a window into how, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to purge such programming from campus life, DEI is alive and well at some of the most elite universities.

“They might’ve changed the name of their office from DEI to D&I, but the people in charge remain the same, their objectives remain the same, and their trainings remain the same,” a student who attended the sessions told National Review. “Conservative leaders need to know that our battle against university indoctrination is not close to finished.”

Princeton University held the training sessions for residential college advisers (RCAs), which is the university’s term for a dormitory supervisor who provides informal guidance to the freshmen as they adjust to college. On its website, Princeton University states that RCAs “play an integral role in fostering a safe, inclusive, and engaging community.” Two of the sessions this week were devoted to DEI.

Jes Norman, an education and outreach program coordinator at Princeton University, began co-facilitating the Tuesday event titled “DEI training part one” by saying, “My pronouns are they, them, or xe, xir, or you can use my name,” and “I come into the space as a black, queer, non-binary person who is also neurodivergent.” (On Norman’s university website profile, though, it says “No pronouns, instead, please use my name.”)

“I also come into this place as someone who kind of started as a first-gen[eration] low-income student . . . and now I kind of have . . . a class shift, which is definitely a nuanced experience to navigate, now having kind of acquired class. . . . I like to say I’m shifting in terms of my class privilege,” Norman told the audience.

Karin Firoza, the associate dean for diversity and inclusion at Princeton University, co-facilitated the session with Norman and introduced herself as a straight “cis woman” of color from New York. According to an announcement on Princeton University’s website, Firoza previously directed the multicultural center at Northeastern University and “developed institutional bias reporting practices grounded in restorative justice” at Boston University.

“We’ll be thinking about our own lived experiences through our social identities, understanding what [are] the systems that we navigate in terms of the Four I’s of Oppression . . . and then we’ll be getting into a little bit about what we mean by ‘harm reduction’ and ‘accountability’ . . .  and lastly, end with a dialogical tool” for resolving interpersonal conflicts, said Firoza when opening the event.

Firoza continued to tell the RCAs in the audience that their “community agreements” include (1) using the first-person pronoun “I” so that “we’re always speaking from our own experiences” as opposed to “generaliz[ing]” by using “we” or “everyone,” (2) practicing “active listening,” (3) seeking to “understand” rather than “persuade or debate” for the sake of building community, (4) creating a “brave space where people can speak freely and responsibly” while feeling “included” and “a sense of belonging,” and (5) cultivating a “grace space” for conversations where we assume “best intent” so that “we’re not canceling people at the first sight of a mistake they made or something that they said.”

During the event, Firoza played a short video on the “4 I’s of Oppression,” namely ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized oppression. The video explained the first “I” as follows: “Ideological oppression starts when the dominant group associates positive qualities with itself and negative qualities with the marginalized or ‘othered’ group. Ideological oppression describes the deeply ingrained social root of inequality. It’s the larger overarching idea that leads to the ‘isms.’ For example the idea that black people are dangerous is ideological racism. The idea that poor people are lazy is ideological classism.”

“Any thoughts or reflections on why that concept of these four interlocking types of oppression might be important as an RCA?” Firoza asked the audience after the video played.

One slide presented during the training session featured a non-exhaustive list of different identity subcategories. “Gender” identities included “post-gender,” “race” included “Latin@,” “sexual orientation” included “attractionality,” and “social class” included “owning class” and “ruling class.”  While the list was displayed, Firoza instructed the RCAs to turn to one another and discuss which identities were personally significant.

That slide credits the material to the Program on Intergroup Relations at the University of Michigan. On its website and in reports, the Program on Intergroup Relations describes itself as “a social justice education program” that is “blend[ing] theory and experiential learning to facilitate students’ learning about social group identity, social inequality, and intergroup relations.” It also claims on its website to have “completed recent consultations” with Princeton University, as well as Georgetown University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Illinois at Chicago, Calvin College, SUNY at Geneseo, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

According to an annual report, the Program on Intergroup Relations at the University of Michigan had a budget of nearly $1.8 million for the fiscal year 2024. The program does not publicly disclose the price for consultation services, but its 2024 annual report says it generated $16,000 from consultations that year — and it completed only two, both at UT-Austin.

The Program on Intergroup Relations did not respond to National Review’s request for comment about the pricing of consultations.

A Princeton University spokeswoman told National Review in an email that “some of the content comes from external sources.” Spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill also stressed that the sessions in question were two of many. She said they “took place during a full week of training for incoming and returning Residential College Advisors that also covered topics including dining services, emergency preparedness and student discipline — all designed to help the RCAs support the success of all students.”

Another slide shown to the Princeton University students included the following quotation by Bell Hooks: “To build a community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.”

In a mandatory session on Wednesday titled “DEI training part two” about “facilitating inclusive conversations,” students acted out a series of hypothetical scenarios involving undergraduates, and the RCAs were asked to identify red flags and discuss potential ways to address such scenarios. The dialogues had titles such as “microaggressions,” “racism incident,” “elections conversation,” “gender discrimination,” and “bystander intervention.”

In a scenario titled “relationship violence,” the student “Alex” has had “their heart set on getting a certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies” but “their partner Jean told them that they think that’s a waste of time.” Jean is further portrayed as controlling by monitoring Alex’s emails, attempting to prevent Alex from seeing other friends, sometimes giving Alex a “harsh critique” about clothing, and causing Alex to feel “sexual pressure.”

A scenario about “gender discrimination” addresses “a group of males who have formed a bond with each other” that is refusing to let a student who “openly identifies as a trans man” join an off-campus trip to watch soccer; a member of the male group says “our group is only for guys; we do a bunch of guy stuff that wouldn’t be fun unless you’re a guy.”

In a scenario titled “racism incident,” a student wants to share her cultural cuisine and has organized an event with Korean barbecue. She had advertised the event by writing the details on a whiteboard outside her door, but someone else added to the sign “TAKE COVID BACK HOME WITH YOU.”

A scenario about “microaggressions” involves the new students sharing “their names, pronouns, where they call home, and what they plan on majoring in.” One woman says her name and that her home is Los Angeles, and someone responds by saying, “Is that your real name? Where are you really from?”

The scenario titled “elections conversation” presents the following hypothetical student perspective:

“You are getting anxious as election season comes closer. You are not sure how you will be directly impacted by the newly elected President. To make matters worse, you are not getting along with your roommate anymore due to your political affiliations. You feel you are struggling to be in the same room as your roommate. This is causing your mental health to decline.”

After witnessing the scenarios being acted out, the RCAs discussed possible appropriate interventions.

The student who spoke with NR said this kind of training undermines the work that conservative leaders in Washington are doing to combat such campus practices.

“In the past I’ve sat through these sessions without saying a word for fear of retribution from others and potentially losing my job as a residential college adviser,” the student said. “However, I’m tired of conservatives on campus feeling as though they have to just go along with this indoctrination.”