For decades, Americans have debated whether we are a force for good on the world stage. But the debate should be settled in the negative based on the fact that we aren’t allied with the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. Shouldn’t we be for democracy? For people? For republics? How could we possibly be a virtuous nation if we don’t love Kim Jong Un?

This is, of course, a farcical argument. But last week, an op-ed by two professors in The Chronicle of Higher Education displayed a comparable and apparently earnest level of analysis: "How Can ‘Inclusion’ Be a Bad Word?"

The professors are proponents of "inclusive" teaching methods. To them, that means writing detailed syllabi, effectively structuring class discussions, knowing students' names, and making eye contact with them. How, they ask in bafflement, could Republican state legislators turn around and demand that they justify their commitment to "inclusion?" It’s a rare piece of writing where you hope, for the authors’ sakes, that they are being intentionally disingenuous. Because no one with a shred of political intelligence could believe that Republicans suddenly decided to collectively take aim at effective pedagogical tips and tricks. They are, rather, objecting to the institutionalization of critical race theory that’s occurring in higher education under the banner of "diversity, equity, and inclusion.” (And also occasionally "accessibility," "belonging," and "justice.")

This conservative "backlash," as it’s sometimes described, is a proper political response to the ascendance of an ideology effectively described in an essay in Compact Magazine by former collegiate DEI bureaucrat Tabia Lee.

Lee was allegedly fired from her position as faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education at a California community college for trying to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, as many still naively understand those terms. But her fellow higher education administrators told her that her commitment to equality ran counter to "equity." They asserted that she was guilty of white supremacy for running a meeting with a written agenda. And that her effort to combat antisemitism by bringing Jewish speakers to campus to discuss the Holocaust was unacceptable because it didn’t focus on "decentering whiteness." She claims she was canned because she wouldn’t tow the party line of what she calls "Critical Social Justice."

Whether you call it critical social justice or critical race theory, it’s clear that the underlying Neo-Marxist ideology — when directly exposed to public scrutiny — doesn’t poll very well. But the words "diversity,” "equity," and "inclusion" poll quite nicely. Hence, we’ve seen a campaign to attach hierarchical value to race defended with the line, "How can you oppose diversity?" — as though "diversity" simply meant the presence of and an appreciation for differences. We’ve seen a campaign to dismantle gifted education and lower academic standards defended with the line, "How can you oppose equity?" — as though "equity" simply meant trying to help everyone succeed. And we’ve seen a campaign to impose a novel and divisive set of social values defended with the line, "How can you oppose inclusion?" — as though "inclusion" simply meant trying to make students feel welcome.

For a decade, this actually worked. As recently as last year, when Claremont Institute’s Scott Yenor and I published an AEI report titled "Prohibit Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statements," it still felt transgressive to argue directly against DEI. Fortunately, the doublespeak dam has broken. Nine states have introduced legislation to ban these ideological litmus tests for faculty hiring. Six have introduced legislation to defund DEI altogether.

This project is important not only because the "critical" ideology behind DEI should not be permitted to hold hegemonic sway over American higher education. But also because it’s important not to permit the institutional organization of moral and political questions around doublespeak. It might be trite these days to invoke George Orwell, but thousands of public schools across America decided to assign 1984 for a reason.

Namely, that war is not peace, North Korea is not democratic, and DEI is not about trying to more effectively serve students from different backgrounds. The sooner these Newspeak-justified ideological power centers are defunded, the better.

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Max Eden is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.