Robby Starbuck, Tennessee political commentator and documentary filmmaker, said the goal behind his work exposing companies that push DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) initiatives in the workplace is to have those companies get back to embracing “corporate neutrality.”
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An anonymous person reported a University of Minnesota (UMinn) professor to the bias team for using the phrase “piñata of shame” in an editorial.
It is one of the 175 bias reports filed in the 2023-24 school year and obtained recently by The College Fix through a records request.
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Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) has drawn the ire of the left-wing media this week, first for calling former U.S. Secret Service (USSS) Director Kimberly Cheatle a “DEI horror story,” and now for calling Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, a “DEI Vice President.”
Wednesday, Burchett responded to the criticism he has faced from the left-wing media, which has labeled him as a “racist” among other typical tropes.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led a coalition of 20 other state attorneys general in sending a letter to the Council of the American Bar Association (ABA) on Monday demanding that it make changes to its accreditation process to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
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AI-powered image generators were back in the news earlier this year, this time for their propensity to create historically inaccurate and ethically questionable imagery. These recent missteps reinforced that, far from being the independent thinking machines of science fiction, AI models merely mimic what they’ve seen on the web, and the heavy hand of their creators artificially steers them toward certain kinds of representations. What can we learn from how OpenAI’s image generator created a series of images about Democratic and Republican causes and voters last December?
OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4 service, with its built-in image generator DALL-E, was asked to create an image representative of the Democratic Party (shown below). Asked to explain the image and its underlying details, ChatGPT explained that the scene is set in a “bustling urban environment [that] symbolizes progress and innovation . . . cities are often seen as hubs of cultural diversity and technological advancement, aligning with the Democratic Party’s focus on forward-thinking policies and modernization.” The image, ChatGPT continued, “features a diverse group of individuals of various ages, ethnicities, and genders. This diversity represents inclusivity and unity, key values of the Democratic Party,” along with the themes of “social justice, civil rights, and addressing climate change.”
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The Federal Aviation Administration under the Biden administration has pledged to continue diversifying its workforce under its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility goals.
At the same time, a lawsuit that has long flown under the radar provides a glimpse into just how far the agency is willing to go to achieve those goals, even at the expense of skills-based tests for air traffic controllers.
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Democratic members of Congress criticized presidential candidate Dean Phillips after he removed the word “diversity” from his campaign website.
Phillips’ website renamed a section titled “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” to “Equity & Restorative Justice” on Tuesday, according to Politico. The move drew criticism from fellow Democrats, with one arguing he had been influenced by a $1 million donation from billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.
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In a new statement, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced that it intends to expand its push for diversity hires by hiring people who suffer from “severe intellectual” disabilities.
As reported by Fox News, the FAA’s website clearly states its intentions on the page for a hiring initiative focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. The site says that “targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring.”
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A precipitous drop in the number of white recruits into the U.S. Army over the past five years sheds a new light on the service’s ongoing recruiting crisis, Military.com reported, citing internal Army data viewed by the outlet.
The Army missed its 2023 recruiting target by 10,000 soldiers, falling short of its 65,000 goal, after hitting only three-quarters of its 2023 goal as the Pentagon doubled down on prioritizing racial and ethnic diversity in the ranks. Much of that decline is attributed to a dramatic decline in the total number of white recruits as the Army brought in roughly 20,000 fewer white soldiers in 2023 compared to 2018 , according to the data seen by Military.com.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led a group of 18 other state attorneys general in filing a public comment letter in opposition to the Department of Commerce’s “Business Diversity Principles” proposal.
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Despite objections from teacher organizations, the NAACP, the ACLU, physicians and social workers, an Ohio House committee passed a bill to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion training at Ohio colleges and universities.
Senate Bill 83, which has passed the Senate and heads to a full House vote after an 8-7 vote Wednesday in the House Workforce and Higher Education Committee, also bans what it calls “controversial beliefs or policies,” including issues like climate change, electoral politics, foreign policy, immigration policy, marriage or abortion.”
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The University of Tennessee (UT) System is reportedly rebranding its Division of Diversity and Engagement in order to “better reflect the division’s mission, as well as move away from some potentially divisive terminology,” according to The Daily Beacon.
The division’s mission, according to its website, is to “actively support, foster and enhance environments of inclusion where the diversity of all faculty, staff, and students are connected to fully engage in fair, respectful, and equitable campus experiences throughout the University of Tennessee community.”
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The iconic National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, NASCAR, has been accused of intentionally discriminating against White men through its efforts to hire more “diverse” drivers and pit crew workers.
As reported by the New York Post, a petition was filed on Thursday by America First Legal (AFL), the conservative legal group run by former Trump Administration advisor Stephen Miller, calling for an investigation into NASCAR by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The petition accuses NASCAR of “illegal discrimination against White, male Americans.”
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By now, everyone should have noticed how ubiquitous the word “diversity” is, often alongside partner terms such as “equity“ and “inclusion,“ making the acronym “DEI.”
Though “diversity” sounds benign and technically only means varied, different or differentiated, its modern usage appears to mean more. How much more may be the difference between something benign and something malignant.
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An Ivy League university will now be requiring doctoral applicants to submit a 300-word diversity statement, according to the Brown Daily Herald.
Brown University administrators announced changes to Brown University’s Ph.D. admissions process Tuesday in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling banning race-based admissions, as well as changes to their Title IX policies, according to the Brown Daily Herald. Brown’s new Ph. D. admissions process will now include a diversity statement that questions ways in which applicants will “advance diversity.”
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Senator JD Vance (R-OH) confronted Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo on diversity mandates in the workforce during a Senate Committee on Commerce on Wednesday.
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Leaders of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are increasingly worried about the lack of diversity among its delegates ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
As Politico reports, the DNC is falling short of its own self-imposed goals for diversity levels, with some senior officials concerned over how many White delegates there will be at the convention next year.
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The Metro Nashville Public School (MNPS) Board this week considered changing eligibility rules for admission to its two highly successful academic magnet schools – Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School and Hume-Fogg Academic High School. If adopted, all prospective students would be subject to a lottery system for admission.
The proposed rule change would not go into effect until the 2024 – 2025 school year, but if adopted, would sever established pathways for entry into MLK and Home-Fogg. Currently, Meigs Middle School and John Early Middle School serve as pathway schools to Hume-Fogg, while Head Middle School and Rose Park Middle School serve as pathways to MLK.
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Tennessee U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) has sent a letter to the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (CMCSS) concerning a recent presentation promoted to staff about using Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to connect with students.
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The Arizona Board of Regents announced Tuesday the state’s public universities have ended the use of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) statements in job hirings in the wake of an exposé by the Goldwater Institute that showed the taxpayer-funded schools were using unconstitutional political litmus tests to screen out conservative-leaning candidates.
A report Tuesday at Arizona Republic said the state’s public universities “have dropped the use of diversity, equity and inclusion statements in job applications, a move that follows demands by the conservative Goldwater Institute.”
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Gilbert Cisneros, a Navy veteran and former Democratic California representative, announced Monday plans to retire as the Department of Defense (DOD) head for personnel policy, leaving a legacy of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies.
The Pentagon touted Cisneros’ record in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation on Monday, fueling the implementation of new policies developed under his watch to address sexual assault and suicide. Cisneros also presided over numerous social policies that became the subject of conservative ire, such as the DOD pandemic response, ensuringacceptance of the once-mandated COVID-19 vaccine and policies making it easier for female servicemembers to accesscontraceptives and abortion.
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A comprehensive report by an organization that seeks to protect health care from discriminatory ideology has published a report that finds Ohio State University (OSU) College of Medicine is steeped in teaching medicine through the lens of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda, and notes the school will need to examine its admissions processes to align with the Supreme Court’s recent affirmative action ruling.
The report, by Do No Harm, is released in the wake of the Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which struck down affirmative action policies in school admissions.
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A nonprofit law center whose mission is to defend the constitutional rights of Americans has sent a letter to more than 150 medical schools throughout the country, calling upon them to end their race-based admissions policies in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down affirmative action.
Liberty Justice Center, which won a major victory for First Amendment rights in June 2018 after the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that non-union government workers cannot be required to pay union fees as a condition of working in public service, has now announced efforts to inform the schools of their “legal obligation to end race-based admissions policies” in response to the Court’s recent ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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Scarlett Johnson says she has never seen anything like it.
The parental rights activist has gotten used to nasty language and overheated rhetoric from the left. But she said the hatred she experienced last week in the City of Brotherly Love was “insane.”
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Many of those who are applauding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Thursday that struck down affirmative action are also warning that universities that have been steeped for decades in “equity” and “diversity” ideology are not likely to go quietly.
“My elation regarding the opinion’s vindication of the rule of law and rejection of racial discrimination is tempered somewhat by the fact that the Left began preparing for this result a couple of years ago by abandoning objective admissions measures such as the SAT, etc., Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said in comments to The Star News Network following the Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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Tech giant Google has reportedly distanced itself from a ‘pride month’ drag performance it had planned to sponsor in San Francisco after several hundred employees signed a petition expressing opposition to the event, arguing it discriminates against the Christian faith.
According to a report Tuesday at CNBC, a drag queen known as “Peaches Christ” was scheduled to perform at Beaux, an LGBTQ bar in San Francisco, at a “pride” event sponsored by Google.
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Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and Vanderbilt University (VU) recently announced the launch of a $17 million program with support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to “accelerate diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the biomedical research community.”
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The Agriculture Department’s new Equity Commission is seeking the public’s comments after its interim report called for more diversity on related county boards as part of “closing the racial wealth gap and addressing longstanding inequities in agriculture.”
Members of USDA’s 15-member Equity Commission, which was established in February 2022, include NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who recently flagged the state’s policies in issuing a travel warning for Florida, where agriculture is a major industry.
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An organization of doctors, healthcare professionals, and policymakers attempting to protect health care from “radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology” is questioning how East Tennessee State University (ETSU) will respond to the state’s new higher education transparency law that rolls back Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) requirements at publicly funded colleges, universities, and medical schools.
“ETSU is just continuing to double down on their DEI efforts,” Do No Harm’s Laura Morgan, MSN, RN, told The Tennessee Star in an interview, explaining that the school’s announced DEI program called “Moon Shot for Equity” is the “kind of program that House Bill 1376 and Senate Bill 817 is going to say you’ve got to get rid of because it’s pretty clear about not having courses or learning” related to DEI.
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CVS Health’s “gender transition guidelines” for employees shows the drugstore chain catering to transgender employees by allowing them to use whichever sex’s restroom they prefer, insisting all others use their preferred pronouns, and providing medical leave for their gender transition, a Fox Business report says.
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It’s no secret that Wisconsin’s taxpayer-funded colleges and universities are dominated by liberal thought and dogma. A University of Wisconsin System survey released earlier this year showed free speech under assault at the Badger State’s institutions of higher education.
The question is, what are lawmakers going to do about it?
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The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute (GI) announced Monday that it, in collaboration with Speech First, is unveiling model legislation called the “Freedom from Indoctrination Act” (FFIA), which could ensure College students are not forced to receive instruction around activism ideology.
“This legislation would strengthen the Arizona Board of Regents’ existing requirements that Arizona public universities provide education in American Institutions by stressing the importance of the nation’s founding documents and principles. It would also build on the Goldwater Campus Free Speech Act, which the Arizona legislature enacted in 2018 to protect free speech on college campuses. Importantly—considering we’ve already seen Northern Arizona University require students to take classwork in Critical Race Theory (CRT)—this legislation would also ensure that no student attending an Arizona public university would ever be forced to take courses in ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) or CRT as a condition of getting a degree,” a GI spokesperson said in an email to The Arizona Sun Times.
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Leaders of the Pennsylvania State Police emphasized their recruitment efforts as they testified in front of the House Appropriations Committee on Monday.
They also supported Gov. Josh Shapiro’s call to create a dedicated fund, rather than relying on money from the Motor License Fund to support operations.
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Nearly one of every six pages of a document detailing the Pentagon’s management strategy are devoted to combating climate change and fulfilling Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.
The Strategic Management Plan for 2022 to 2026, released Tuesday, covers 124 pages and underscores the actions the Department of Defense (DOD) is taking to fulfill the Biden administration’s broader national defense strategy. It lays out high-level, long term goals and steps the department will take to accomplish those objectives and overcome anticipated challenges, as well as performance metrics for so-called Agency Priority Goals (APGs) that include climate and diversity targets.
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Students at the Indiana University School of Medicine are required to take a basic Human Structure class that includes indoctrination in the woke gender ideology agenda, Fox News revealed Sunday.
The first-year students in the Human Structure class have a “sex and gender primer” lesson that states “both sex and gender fall along a continuum, rather than being binary constructs,” and claims “a nuanced understanding of sex and gender and the use of inclusive terminology may positively affect healthcare of all individuals,” according to the documents obtained by Fox News.
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A bill passed by an Iowa House committee and currently making its way through the state House aims to put a stop to the woke agenda in state colleges and universities by prohibiting the schools from spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and personnel working in roles associated with such ideology.
“For too long, the DEI bureaucracies at our institutions of higher education have been used to push a woke agenda on the faculty, staff and students,” Iowa state Rep. Taylor Collins told Fox News. “Under the guise of diversity and inclusion, these programs work to indoctrinate students into their preferred political ideology.”
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In an internal email obtained by The Tennessee Star from two individuals asking for anonymity, the dean of medicine at East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine ridiculed an article published last week highlighting how woke equity policies have infiltrated Tennessee medical schools, claiming it is a “fact” that such diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology has been “repeatedly proven to improve outcomes for our patients and make[s] us better doctors.”
William Block, M.D., dean of medicine at East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine, sent out an email, in which he defined the words “equity” as “the quality of being fair and impartial,” and “woke” as “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”
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A member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has written to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan (R), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, warning that Joe Biden’s sweeping executive order embedding radical woke equity ideology in all agencies of the executive branch is a “Trojan Horse” that represents “a major step toward socialism.”
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More doctors are publicly condemning the Marxist racial and gender ideological agenda into which medical school students are being trained, asserting patents’ health, and even their lives, are being sacrificed for a totalitarian political worldview.
A report published last week, for example, by Do No Harm, an organization of physicians, healthcare professionals, medical students, patients, and policymakers, revealed the pervasive infiltration of woke diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideologies in Tennessee medical school curricula and programs.
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A report obtained by The Tennessee Star, published by an organization of physicians, healthcare professionals, medical students, patients, and policymakers, reveals the pervasive infiltration of woke diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideologies in Tennessee medical school curricula and programs.
The report from Do No Harm, titled The DEI Bureaucracy in Tennessee’s Medical Schools: Woke Ideologies Are Reshaping Medical Education in the Volunteer State,” warns of vast implications for medical students and all who receive medical care in the state of Tennessee.
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
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Yale University’s president promised to prioritize diversity while filling six high-ranking positions in the administration, according to student newspaper Yale Daily News.
President Peter Salovey will make six appointments to high-level positions currently being held by interim or retiring faculty by the end of the spring 2023 semester, the News reported. He said that he will make diversity a priority when filling the positions, which include four cabinet positions as well as director and leadership titles.
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Gary Rose, political science and global affairs chair and professor at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, will retire from the institution this spring after 40 years of teaching following an alleged dispute regarding curriculum change and diversity programming.
The Dean of the Department of Arts & Sciences, Mark Beekey, had asked Rose to implement within his department “new courses and diversity stuff added to the curriculum,” Ryan Silverstein, a Sacred Heart alumni and Rose’s former research assistant, told The College Fix in a telephone interview.
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A Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) consultant explained to an undercover Project Veritas journalist he is an “evil salesman” who plans to undermine a Georgia law banning the teaching of the concepts of Critical Race Theory (CRT).
“If you don’t say the words ‘Critical Race Theory,’ you can technically teach it,” Dr. Quintin Bostic, content manager at The Teaching Lab, is heard telling the Project Veritas (PV) journalist in the video.
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Alex Shilkrut has deep roots in Manhattan, where he has lived for 16 years, works as a physician, and sends his daughter to a public elementary school for gifted students in coveted District 2.
It’s a good life. But Shilkrut regretfully says he may leave the city, as well as a job he likes in a Manhattan hospital, because of sweeping changes in October that ended selective admissions in most New York City middle schools.
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Actor and author Kirk Cameron announced he scored two victories recently when two public libraries that had hosted a “drag queen story hour” for children finally agreed to allow him to hold a children’s faith-based story hour.
The libraries denied him their facilities at first, but then reconsidered once he threatened court action.
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Chattanooga’s Chamber of Commerce is searching for a replacement for its “woke” CEO and has hired a consulting firm to assist it.
“The executive committee of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce board of directors has selected the consulting firm Waverly Partners to help in the search for a new chamber chief executive to succeed Christy Gillenwater, who announced last month she is leaving the Chattanooga chamber after five years to head the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce,” the Times Free Press reported.
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The accrediting council for the American Bar Association (ABA) voted 15-1 to no longer require the administering of the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) for law school applications, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Starting in 2025, the ABA will no longer mandate that law schools require a “valid and reliable admission test” as a part of its application process, after feedback from a public comment period suggested that dropping the testing requirement would increase diversity, according to WSJ. Law schools may still require the test as a part of its admissions process, but the LSAT will no longer be required for accreditation.
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Shelby County’s notoriously soft on crime District Attorney announced several new hires that he says will make his office more diverse.
I’m proud to announce that the [Shelby County District Attorney]’s office has added six new attorneys to the team: Ernest Brooks, II, Denania Galloway, Melanie Headely, Kindle Nance, and Krysa Scully will join the office as Assistant District Attorneys. Jessica Indingaro will serve as Special Assistant for Projects & Government Relations. All will start between now and mid-November,” said District Attorney Steve Mulroy on Twitter.
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A physician assistant at a University of Michigan hospital in west Michigan claims she was told she was evil and was responsible for the suicide of transgender people by the health system’s director of diversity and was later fired because she refused to acknowledge the preferred pronouns of patients.
The First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit legal organization, spelled out Valerie Kloosterman’s grievances against the University of Michigan Health-West hospital system in a Sept. 27 letter that demands Kloosterman be rehired. First Liberty claims that Kloosterman’s religious rights were violated.
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