Let’s call the anti-DEI crusade what it is:

• A mechanism for forcibly removing women of color from leadership positions
• An attack on non-government power structures — the academy and the corporation — during a moment of consolidating government power within the hands of anti-democracy forces
• Racist butt hurt

The concerted attack on former Harvard president Claudine Gay did not merely arise in a congressional hearing, and unfurl from there. Rather, her enemies (and enemies of DEI) had been waiting patiently for a flashpoint in order to demonstrate control over the academy.

DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is a series of efforts that organizations may make in order to increase diversity, advance equity, and promote inclusive atmospheres for everyone. DEI is not, as radical reactionaries would have you believe, a zero-sum game where white people are victimized. In fact, embracing and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion is not just the right thing to do (yes, I subscribe to the theory of the late Senator Paul Wellstone that “we all do better when we all do better”), it is also a strategic advantage. In The Journal of Infectious Diseases article “The Science and Value of Diversity: Closing the Gaps in Our Understanding of Inclusion and Diversity” on scientific research, for example:

The benefits of engaging individuals with a wide swath of perspectives have great potential to improve our capacity to innovate. Why? Overwhelming evidence suggests that teams that include different kinds of thinkers outperform homogeneous groups on complex tasks, including improved problem solving, increased innovation, and more-accurate predictions—all of which lead to better performance and results when a diverse team is tasked to approach a given problem.

This isn’t rocket science, though. Kids are better equipped for the real world if they were part of a diverse student body in school. Workplaces are better equipped to meet the demands of the market if they reflect the diverse communities within the market. And our civic institutions are most responsive and make their best decisions when there are a diversity of identities and perspectives represented.

I noticed over the past week both an op-ed in Washington Post calling for the resignation of Vice President Kamala Harris (because, supposedly, she is unpopular, though … isn’t it Biden whose unpopularity is the issue most of interest to the upcoming election), and another urging Justice Sonia Sotomayor to go. For the good of the country, supposedly. Naw. This is the same crap as all the other anti-DEI crap swirling around. There are organized conservatives who want to see all the women of color in leadership resign or be forced out.

Another piece of this anti-DEI crusade involves steps being taken to minimize, delegitimize, and take control over corporations and academic institutions, which in aggregate overwhelmingly do take steps toward DEI (because it is good for their bottom lines, and for the education they provide). Right-wing actors like Christopher Rufo. In his op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, “How We Squeezed Harvard to Push Claudine Gay Out,” Rufo writes:

While her resignation is a victory, it is only the beginning. If America is to reform its academic institutions, the symbolic fight over Harvard’s presidency must evolve into a deeper institutional fight. The Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci called this approach the “war of position,” a grueling form of trench warfare in which each concept, structure and institution must be challenged to change the culture.

Let’s back up. The world is experiencing a shift toward authoritarian models, and the United States is no exception. There is currently a man leading in the polls for the presidency who has promised to be a dictator on day one, who has promised a “bloodbath” if he loses, and recently claimed immigrants are not human. In other words our own home-grown fascist leader. Democracy and the individual freedoms that imperfect model helps advance have never been in this level of peril in the history of the United States.

We cannot consider the anti-DEI crusade in a vacuum, as somehow divorced from the threat to authoritarianism in the United States. Rather, Trump-friendly forces are seeking to simultaneously gut higher learning and take control of the private workings of businesses. Seen in this light, the efforts become scarier still. This is about consolidation of right-wing authoritarian power.

The anti-DEI crusade taps into racist butt hurt as a pretext for kicking non-white men, and especially women of color, out of leadership positions and gutting our institutions at a perilous moment for our democracy. It’s terrifying.