Wisconsin Republicans are pushing forward with defunding the diversity, equity, and inclusion departments of universities. This should be a fight Republicans take up across the country.
Wisconsin Republicans voted to cut $32 million from the University of Wisconsin’s budget, which is what they say is equal to what the university system spends on DEI officers. GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos correctly noted that DEI programs are a waste of taxpayer money and are designed to divide people based on their identities, especially along racial lines.
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GOP state Rep. Alex Dallman said the university shouldn’t be “forcing these students to view the world through a lens of race, gender or economic class just to obtain one of these degrees.” That is precisely correct. DEI bureaucrats on college campuses fan the flames of racial grievances and identitarian divides, even encouraging students to violate the free speech rights of others to get their way.
Democrats, meanwhile, are prepared to go to the mat for these divisive, expensive bureaucrats that bring nothing of value to college students’ educations. Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) is threatening to veto the entire state budget over the cuts. University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman lamented the cuts because “Wisconsin’s public universities are already near the bottom nationally, at 42nd, in public funding.”
Perhaps that is because you can’t be trusted with taxpayer money without using it to hire useless bureaucrats who push racial divisions on students. Now you will just have to settle for the $27,000 cost for in-state students and $55,000 for out-of-state students (which are the tuition, room and board, and other costs for students at UW’s flagship campus in Madison).
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This should be a winning fight for Republicans across the country. Universities have allowed themselves to become bloated and have avoided blame for student loan debt despite constantly rising tuition. Let university presidents and Democratic politicians defend the DEI bureaucrats whose only goal is to ensure that every student defines themselves and others based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics. Put the millions of taxpayer dollars that these DEI programs burn through on the ballot for voters. Democrats probably won’t like the results.
This should be the way forward for the GOP. The DEI bureaucracy is antithetical to American values to the tune of millions on each major college campus. Strip universities of that funding and let universities complain about it while they are already draining students' pockets in tuition and fees, and then remind voters that the Democratic Party is the party of university presidents and bureaucrats, not students or families.