Mason Goad understands the power of words, innocent and well-meaning as they can appear.
“Diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) sound wholesome, but this trinity is far more malicious,” Goad said. “The tenet of ‘diversity’ often focuses only on racial diversity, with the assumption being that racial diversity is the best benchmark for all other forms of diversity.
"The idea that by knowing someone’s race, you also know their character, is the fundamentally racist idea,'' he added. "The tenet of ‘inclusion’ is no better. It denies a person their right to free association and to freedom of speech, as people are required to use ‘inclusive language.’”
Goad is a research associate at the National Association of Scholars and co-author, with Bruce Chartwell, of “Ideological Intensification.”
In a recent op-ed published by the Austin Journal, Goad argues that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI or DIE) initiatives are becoming more prominent among medical education as well as higher education in general.
“DIE is embedded in every layer of the administration,” he wrote, referring to Texas' public universities.
According to a quantitative study report by Goad and Bruce Chartwell on DEI in STEM subjects at American universities, “DEI ideology has spread aggressively,” including influencing the STEM departments. The study found that DEI “indicators linked with STEM” rose 2,600% in the last 10 years, primarily due to government spending.
The study analyzed the top 100 research universities, including websites, Twitter accounts, programs of academic association, grants that are funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation and scientific publications. All five of these categories saw an increase in DEI-related language, according to the study’s findings.
According to previous reporting by the Austin Journal, the University of Texas at Austin has institutional goals for its Strategic Plan for Faculty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity which was established in 2021. The university’s goals include attracting, hiring and retaining a diverse faculty, promoting an “equitable climate” and supporting inclusive teaching, scholarship and service.
Public records requests obtained by the Austin Journal show the university had a budget of more than $8 million for DEI-related initiatives.
Goad said the problems caused by diversity and Inclusion, however, pale in comparison to the problems caused by “equity.”
“Most Americans mistake equity for either meaning ‘fairness’ or ‘equality of opportunity,’ but that is because most Americans know what that similar sounding word equality means,” he told Austin Journal. “Equity, which they confuse it for, is neither of these things. Equity is best defined as ‘equality of outcomes,’ and those who advocate for it assume that the only measure of equality is outcome."
Goad said faulty logic is to blame for this confused process.
“There are many problems with equity, but two major ones," he said. "First the doctrine is too simplistic. The DIE advocates assume that a few causes, such as prejudice, are both responsible for, and a sufficient explanation of, incredibly complex socioeconomic phenomena. Second, and this is by far the greater problem, equity is technically impossible to achieve. There are too many individuals and too many positions in society to be equally redistributed across demographic lines."
He said an “ideological virus” usually follows a pattern, a “study” is released that identifies a “problem” that no one was aware of.
“For example, and this is a real example, a talk was given earlier this year on how undergraduate mathematics education is a ‘white, cisheteropatriarchal space,’” Goad said. “Some mathematics professor, somewhere, takes the bait and advocates for a DIE consultant or officer to adjust their curriculum, hiring, and promotions.
"With administrative approval we see the death of free inquiry and a newly infected department directed to advance ideology rather than the pursuit of truth," he added. "The ideological virus then incubates as more ‘studies’ are done, grants for DIE-related projects are received, and so on. Before long, the entire department, if not the field, has gone to DIE.”
Why this “infection,” as he calls it, occurs is a complex question, and there are many answers.
“First, people working in the STEM fields often excel at non-verbal reasoning," he said. "In contrast lawyers often excel at verbal reasoning, and would promptly tear apart any accusations of racism, or sexism, or whatever else, but that skill does not come naturally to most engineers or mathematicians, leaving them somewhat vulnerable to charges laid against them and their field by DIE advocates,” Goad said.
“Second, to make matters worse, DIE advocates seem rather adept at creating psychological traps," he added. "As I explained in an essay last year, lessons from the Milgram experiments on social conformity are strikingly similar to the policies and practices of DIE bureaucracies. “Third, the DIE advocates target the sciences in particular, because the STEM fields are simply better funded."
The sad irony is, DIE offices have not been successful in achieving their publicly known aims such as decreasing racial bias and racial animus and increasing inclusivity, according to Goad. Evidence seems to say that DIE increases racial bias, polarizes faculty and students, and decreases the inclusivity of individuals.
“DIE offices have been immensely successfully in ensuring conformity to a radical leftist ideology, and I think they have been immensely effective in reaching that goal,” he said. “DIE advocates will tell you that their purpose and goals are to foster greater diversity, inclusivity, equity, and advance anti-racism as most people understand these terms, but this is demonstrably false.”
Goad said to fully understand what a group of people is up to, you must read the literature they write, read and recommend.
“You look at their actions and the most likely outcome of those actions, to infer their real motivations,” he said. “Anyone with a modicum of analytical ability will quickly see that DIE advocates promote literature that is poorly reasoned, racist, and incredibly authoritarian."
DIE in STEM does not only do damage to academic integrity, but threatens STEM existentially, in Goad’s view.
“What few people understand is that DIE ideology is highly ‘postmodern.’ The postmodernists view society as ‘systems of power,’ and one of those systems is science itself,” he said. “Whereas most Americans view science as nothing more than an investigatory process, the DIE advocates believe it to be a cultural institution, and specifically an institution built for the benefit of only white cisgendered heterosexual able-bodied men whose ancestral origins are in the global north. A good example of this is MIT’s feminist, queer and indigenous methodologies course.”
Such classes are common in major U.S. universities, Goad noted, adding it has even influenced how the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation decide what projects to fund, Goad said.
“As we showed in our recent quantitive study, both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have diverted much more funding to DIE-related projects over the last few years alone,” he said. “NSF funding to projects with ‘anti-racist’ themes approximately tripled from 2020 to 2021. NIH funding grew significantly over the last decade, increasing roughly 5 to 1,000 times depending on the specific DIE-related term."
This has “definitely” occurred on Texas college campuses as well, Goad said.
“My colleague John Sailer has just finished a study on DIE at the University of Texas at Austin,” he said. “The DIE initiatives at UT Austin espouse a clear ideological agenda, especially the advancement of critical race theory, under the guise of ‘anti-racism,’ of course. UT Austin’s DIE initiatives call for overhauling the curriculum and instruction, and the Dell Medical School now requires ‘health equity’ competencies for its students, the future healthcare providers of Texas and surrounding states. The growth of DIE is not exclusive to UT Austin, unfortunately. Practically every Texas university has adopted DIE ideology to some degree.”
Goad said action can and must be taken to reverse this.
“The first thing that the Texas Legislature can do to stop DIE from growing within higher education (and K-12 by extension) is to properly understand the threat they are facing,” he said. “I highly recommend the book ‘Cynical Theories’ as an excellent in-depth introduction to these topics."