On Friday, my uni, like many others, received a “Dear Colleague” letter from DoE acting assistant secretary Trainor. The letter threatens to withhold funding unless we demonstrate compliance with the administration’s anti-DEI program. It uses words like “depraved” and “shameful” and promises that the days of “overt and covert discrimination” are over. It also says that higher ed has engaged in “toxically indoctrinat[ing] students with the false premise of structural and systemic racism.”
There’s a lot to say about the letter. How it weaponizes the law. How it falsifies history. How it pretends to care about principles of justice, fairness, and anti-discrimination.
But, most of all, I’m struck by the language of internal enemies and poisoned minds.
There’s a drive toward ideological unity and purity here that is both repugnant and extremely dangerous.
@xankarn
> It also says that higher ed has engaged in “toxically indoctrinat[ing] students with the false premise of structural and systemic racism.”
This would be funny, if the letter wasn't actually doing that.
@xankarn this isn’t just language policing but also a dictation of what one may value and may not value.
I teach two courses on ethics (one on ethics and ed tech, another on ethics and autonomous and intelligent systems). There’s no way to cover that without discussing racial and gender bias, discrimination, equity, etc. And every set of professional standards and ethics includes these “shameful” ideas.
We made a t-shirt that says “Immoral. Shameful. Wasteful.” in scarlet letters.
"Uh, Oh..."
“toxically indoctrinat[ing] students with the false premise of structural and systemic racism.”
Edited 4d ago
In his Language of the Third Reich, Victor Klemperer described Nazism as a linguistic barrage. A way of warping minds and subverting democratic values through rhetorical excess.
Klemperer knew what this language harbored:
“What happens if the cultivated language is made up of poisonous elements or has been made the bearer of poisons? Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic; they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time, the toxic reaction sets in.”
Edited 4d ago
Something from last October on MAGA language:
https://progressive.org/op-eds/trumps-rhetoric-is-frightening-and-toxic-karn-20241029/
@xankarn Apropos of nothing, I really need to read this book:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTI_%E2%80%93_Lingua_Tertii_Imperii
More on the letter, including a link to the full text:
@xankarn at the law school, our accreditation depends on teaching DEI - it’s required that we teach cross-cultural competency, among other skills. For example, in my interviewing and counseling class, one lesson focuses on how different cultures view eye contact, handshakes and other touching, and preferences in written vs oral follow-up. If students don’t learn how to be considerate when they set up initial interactions, they can’t build trust and risk ethical ineffectiveness.
@xankarn this link is to a subscribers only article; I believe this is the text of the letter? https://www.ed.gov/media/document/dear-colleague-letter-sffa-v-harvard-109506.pdf
The main thing I take from it is how the language prepares the soil for violence.
"How the language prepares the soil for acceptable violence."