Dr. Tabia Lee once believed in the promise of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). A Black woman, a lifelong educator, and an advocate for justice, she began her job at De Anza College with a collaborative spirit and a desire to build bridges. But her new role—hired in 2021 to lead the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education—quickly became a cautionary tale of what can happen when ideological orthodoxy replaces academic inquiry.
Dr. Lee’s experience, detailed on the Goldwater Institute’s latest Dismantling DEI podcast episode, reveals a system that punishes questions and sanctifies abstractions. Watch the episode on YouTube and listen on Spotify or Apple podcasts.
Dr. Lee logged 60 hours of conversations and hosted workshops on defining equity and inclusion to better understand student needs. She found dogma, deflection, and hostility to debating ideas. “Equality was a thing of the past,” she was told. For using the word “equality,” she was rebuked. When she pressed colleagues for a working definition of “equity,” the answers turned metaphorical: apples falling from trees, stick figures standing on boxes at a baseball game. There was no policy framework, no pedagogical clarity—only slogans and allegories.
The more she probed, the more alarmed she became. “Equity,” she concluded, was a euphemism for indoctrination, an ideological project stripped of intellectual rigor. Her tenure review committee called her questions “dangerous.” One colleague...
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