These days, we look back on McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s and wonder: Why did so many good people just stand by as Sen. Joseph McCarthy wrecked so many innocent people’s careers and lives to score political points?
The best answer to that question is another question: Why are we allowing it in Kansas, in 2023?
Kansas Rep. Steven Howe, R-Salina, tore a page out of Tail-Gunner Joe’s playbook in the latest attack on racial equality in the Sunflower State.
Howe, chairman of the House Higher Education Budget Committee, sent a letter via the Legislative Research Department on Jan. 27, demanding that all state-supported colleges and universities name names in a misguided and appalling crusade against equality in higher education.
The demand included:
• A comprehensive list of all staff, programs, and campus activities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and critical race theory.
• Brief description of the program or activity.
• Staff positions, including FTE counts.
• Total funding spent to support the initiative, including total state funding spent to support the initiative.
It’s hard to read that as anything other than a threat to quit talking about racism, or else.
It echoes a similar request from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that led directly to his Feb. 1 announcement of a plan to defund and eventually abolish DEI programs in that state’s college system.
Howe, after getting some pushback from universities about naming names, has backed off that part of his request.
But it’s a distinction without much difference.
First off, most of the names are listed in course catalogs or on the university websites, a throwback to when D, E and I were seen as essential goals of any public institution, and CRT was an obscure graduate-level study on how lingering racism affects governmental systems, not a dog whistle to be blown by political opportunists.
Second, if you defund the programs, you get rid of the people in them — and the people that they attract to the state’s schools.
