We’ve said it for years.
DEI (DIE) is a destructive, virulent, racism stronghold invading colleges, institutions and businesses around the nation. Spurred on by an increasingly hard left previous presidential administration that never saw a leftist agenda that it didn’t like, DEI infested government contracts and agencies like a cancer over the last four years.
Not to be outdone, many Adventist colleges and universities jumped on the liberal bandwagon, hiring DEI officers in an effort to appear relevant. It wasn’t relevant, it was left-wing extremism smuggling socialism into our institutions under the guise of ‘inclusion’. Andrews University, attempting to reform its downward slide, renamed DEI as Assistant for Mission and Culture, as if renaming DEI makes it less lethal.
Changing DEI to AFMAC, doesn’t fix the problem. Rebranding cultural Marxism will just mean more of the same under a different name. It needs to be scrapped altogether. The problem isn’t with the three letter name and can’t be fixed by moving it around.
Leftism thrives on trying to be invisible. It saunters into institutions with Marxism in its back pocket, claiming to be inclusive, diverse, and fair. But it isn’t.
What does the Left fear? Like Rumpelstiltskin, someone saying its name out loud. Naming the enemy may seem minor, but it is no small thing. Name it and you pull away its mask. Name it and millions of apolitical people have a name to put to their experiences. The people yelling at them, threatening them and scolding them are not just “crazies”. They’re leftists.
Unlike Rumpelstiltskin, naming the Left alone won’t defeat it, but it tears away the disguise under which its activists rule over us and reveals that all of the people wrecking the country are not acting alone, they’re not irrational, incompetent or corrupt: they’re members of an ugly anti-Christian movement.
Expose their ideology, identify them and define them, and for the first time, they are on the ropes. And that’s what the new presidential administration just did.
On Monday, Trump issued an executive order terminating "illegal DEI and 'diversity, equity, inclusion,' (DEI) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear."
ENDING ILLEGAL DISCRIMINATION AND
RESTORING MERIT-BASED OPPORTUNITY
is the headline on the WhiteHouse.gov website on January 21, 2025. It reads:
“Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system. Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.
These illegal DEI and DEIA policies also threaten the safety of American men, women, and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination when selecting people for jobs and services in key sectors of American society, including all levels of government, and the medical, aviation, and law-enforcement communities. Yet in case after tragic case, the American people have witnessed first-hand the disastrous consequences of illegal, pernicious discrimination that has prioritized how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing.”
Merit based hiring. Now there’s an idea. It’s also a biblical principle (1 Timothy 5:18; 1 Cor. 3:8; Acts 10:34-35; Revelation 22:12).
The government’s ruinous racial policies over the past half century were created primarily by executive order, not legislation, and what was done with the mere stroke of a presidential pen can be undone by the same means.
Meanwhile, discriminatory practices have spread throughout academia and the private sector. The architects of this system have used legerdemain and moral bullying — especially the accusation of racism — to preserve and steadily extend it, even when it means defying the law. Now, President Trump wants to smoke them out.
The leftist advocates of DEI have long believed that the arc of the moral universe bends toward ever more racialized discrimination. Critical Race Theory (CRT) racism flourished in America under the previous presidential administration.
To its credit, the Trump administration is pointing to a more just and fair future and one in keeping with our deepest ideals. Yesterday, the President also ordered that all US government staff working on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) schemes be put on immediate paid administrative leave.
As a businessman familiar with the current government contracting process, I can say that shedding the cumbersome, expensive, and deeply unjust DEI “compliance” requirements will be a victory not only for justice but also for the effectiveness of our government and businesses.
Maybe even our left-leaning Adventist institutions (which is a majority of them) will follow suit and jettison their DEI / DIE departments.
Just maybe.
In the meantime, Jesus is still coming back. Let us get ready for That Day by jettisoning sin and selfishness in our lives.
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“And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Rev. 22:12-14).