Utah Gov. Cox’s DEI Awakening

Utah Gov. Cox’s DEI Awakening

– By Howard Sierer –

Swept along by progressive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) concepts that were all the rage when he took office in 2021, Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox embraced those ideas wholeheartedly. After all, don’t we all want to accept all members of our diverse society, be equitable in our actions, and make everyone feel included?

Putting campaign promises into action, Gov. Cox signed the Utah Compact on Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. He likewise required every Senior Advisor and Cabinet Leader to read and sign onto the Compact, putting them all through a “21-Day Equity Challenge” that included training on microaggressions and antiracism.

He named a Senior Advisor of Equity and Opportunity who also served as Director of the Utah Division of Multicultural Affairs. The division documented all the administration’s first-year actions in a splashy, 30-page brochure “Equity & Opportunity: Progress & Accomplishments” released in October 2021.

Like motherhood and apple pie, very few of us take exception to the ideals expressed in the compact and the documented accomplishments. But as I’ve discussed here and here, the problem lies not with the idealistic concepts but with their discriminatory and authoritarian implementation.

A DEI bureaucracy’s first step is to allocate all people in its area of responsibility into identity groups. Then DEI policies are developed that are tailored for each group but unavoidably exclude other identity groups. So much for “inclusion.”

For example, a Utah State University diversity symposium was titled “Decentering Whiteness.” Attendees were required to review “marginalized and underrepresented scholars” based not on the quality of their scholarship but on their identities. The concept of being “colorblind” was discredited and replaced with favoring those from preferred identity groups.

USU also began requiring DEI statements from faculty applicants that explained how they planned to infuse diversity and equity—that is, focus on race, gender, sexual orientation, and other categories of “marginalization”—into their teaching and research. DEI credentials were needed even for USU faculty positions in insect ecology and solid earth geohazards!

The University of Utah likewise introduced explicit DEI statements, making clear that they were interested only in “the recruitment of faculty from diverse backgrounds” and those who were “LGBTQIA+.” The message was clear: straight white males need not apply regardless of their qualifications.

Cox’s idealism had unwittingly empowered DEI bureaucrats at USU, the University of Utah, and other government entities around the state who were telling Utahns in various identity groups that they were victims who needed government help to combat the discrimination they faced.

Seeing the unfolding damage, Cox reversed course.

He expressed his concerns in a December 2021 press conference and repeated them in his televised December 2023 PBS press conference, saying, “I think it’s bordering on evil that we’re forcing people into a political framework before they can even apply for a job in the state.” He called DEI statements “very political,” and indicated his support for the legislature’s plans to permanently ban DEI hiring statements.

As reported in the Salt Lake Tribune, in late January Gov. Cox signed the Equal Opportunity Initiatives act to overhaul diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public institutions in the state. The bill aims to outlaw DEI requirements and programs at public universities, schools “or any other institution of the state” that engage in what the legislation calls “prohibited discriminatory practices.” In other words, treat all citizens equally, a radical concept in this day and age.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Katy Hall, explains to her critics that “It doesn’t close cultural centers, it does not defund programs or scholarships, it does not exclude students who need extra services for their academic successes, including those who are already receiving services.”

With the handwriting on the wall, the University of Utah announced in early January that “all hiring units at the university should discontinue the use of any type of diversity statements or similar practices as part of their unit-level applicant or employee hiring processes.”

It’s about time that Utah recognized DEI as the political bludgeon it’s become. I’ve called DEI as it’s put into practice “unanimity, inequality and exclusion.” DEI advocates insist on unanimity of thought, equality of results instead of equality of opportunity, and shout down – exclude – those with ideas they don’t want to hear. The uniformity of thought known as intersectionality, fostered by DEI, requires that all so-called oppressed people must support all others who are oppressed.

DEI is an integral part of progressives’ plans for remaking society, governed by the elite intelligentsia who know what’s best for us. History shows this never works because power corrupts. Big Brother in Orwell’s novel “1984” comes to mind.

I’m with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts: “The best way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”