Below is my column in The Hill on a new emerging mantra from businesses and universities seeking to roll back on DEI and other programs: Trump Did It. The TDI defense is allowing executives and administrators to do what they lacked the courage to do for years.
Here is the column:
“Trump made me do it.”
Across the country, this is a virtual mantra being mouthed everywhere from businesses to higher education. Corporations are eliminating woke programs. Why? Trump did it. Universities are eliminating DEI offices and cracking down on campus extremism. Trump did it. Democratic politicians are abandoning far-left policies. Trump did it.
For those who lack both courage or conviction, the claim of coercion is often the next best thing. The “TDI defense” is born.
Of course, they did not invent Trump, but they needed him. For years, schools like Harvard and Columbia ignored warnings about the rising antisemitism on campuses. They refused to punish students engaged in criminal conduct, including occupying and trashing buildings. These administrators did not want to risk being tagged by the far-left mob for taking meaningful action.
Then the election occurred, and suddenly they were able to blame Trump for doing what they should have been doing all along.
Administrators are now cracking down on extreme elements on campuses.
At the same time, hundreds of schools are closing DEI offices around the country. Again, most are not challenging the Trump administration’s orders on DEI or seeking to adopt more limited responses. They are all in with the move, while professing that they have little choice.
In other words, schools are increasingly turning to TDI to end DEI.
The legal landscape has changed with an administration committed to opposing many DEI programs as discriminatory and unlawful. However, it is the speed and general lack of resistance that is so notable. In most cases, the Trump administration did not have to ask twice. Trump seemed to “have them at hello,” as if they were longing for a reason to reverse these trends.
Many will continue to fight this fight surreptitiously. For example, shortly before the Trump election, the University of North Carolina System Board of Governors voted to ban DEI and focus on “institutional neutrality.” Yet, even Administrators emboldened by the TDI defense are finding resistance in their ranks. For exsmple, UNC Asheville Dean of Students Megan Pugh was caught on videotape, saying that eliminating these offices means nothing: “I mean we probably still do anyway… but you gotta keep it quiet.” She added, “I love breaking rules.”
The Board, perhaps not feeling the same thrill, reportedly responded by firing her.
The same pattern is playing out in businesses. Over the last few weeks, companies ranging from Amazon to IBM have removed references to DEI programs or policies. Bank of America explained, “We evaluate and adjust our programs in light of new laws, court decisions, and, more recently, executive orders from the new administration.”
Once established, these DEI offices tended to expand as an irresistible force within their institutions and companies. Full-time diversity experts demanded additional hirings and policies on hiring, promotion, and public campaigns. Since these experts were tasked with finding areas for “reform,” their proposals were treated as extensions of that mandate. To oppose the reforms was to oppose the cause.
While some executives and administrators supported such efforts, others simply lacked the courage to oppose them. No one wanted to be accused of being opposed to “equity” or being racist, sexist, or homophobic. The results were continually expanding programs impacting every level of businesses and institutions.
Then Trump showed up. Suddenly, these executives and administrators had an excuse to reverse this trend. They could also rely on court decisions that have undermined long-standing claims of advocates that favoring certain groups at the expense of others was entirely lawful.
This week, the Supreme Court added to these cases with its unanimous ruling in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, to remove impediments to lawsuits by members of majority groups who are discriminated against.
For many years, lower courts have required members of majority groups (white, male, or heterosexual) to shoulder an added burden before they could establish claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. In a decision written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court rejected that additional burden and ordered that everyone must be treated similarly under the law.
Many commentators noted that the ruling further undermined the rationales for disparate treatment based on race or other criteria within DEI.
In other words, more of these programs are likely to be the subject of federal investigations and lawsuits. Of course, if these executives and administrators were truly committed to the programs in principle, they could resolve to fight in the courts. The alternative is just to blame Trump and restore prior policies that enforce federal standards against all discriminatory or preferred treatment given to employees based on race, sex, religion, or other classifications.
Former Vice President Hubert Humphrey once observed that “to err is human. To blame someone else is politics.” That is evident among politicians. For years, many moderate Democrats voted to support far-left agendas during the Biden administration, lacking the courage or principles to oppose the radical wing of the Democratic Party. Now, some are coming forward to say that the party has “lost touch with voters.”
Rather than admit that their years of supporting these policies were wrong, they blame Trump and argue that the party must move toward the center to survive.
The calculus is simple: You never act on principle when you can blame a villain instead. It is not a profile of courage but one of simple convenience. No need for admissions or responsibility — just TDI and done.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Professor Turley,
I am surprised at you, You have always seemed like a principled man, but now that Trump has disappointed many of his non-rabid followers – including myself – you seem to be upping your efforts to support him.
There is nothing unexpected in that institutions have decided not to fight Trump on DEI and other things, taking into account the extremes he goes to to punish people who disagree with him. His threatening Musk’s citizenship was shameful and it is just one of many examples of him being abusive. Corporations/institutions benefit highly from a good relationship with the current regime. There is nothing wrong with them exposing their reasoning.
I supported Trump, despise DEI, and I celebrated his election. But now I think he must be removed through constitutional action and I believe his extreme actions against freedom of speech, citizenship, non-criminal aliens, medicare/medicaid, people in need in general (including his supporters) and disclosing the truth of Epstein make that possible, if only the Democrats would stop being idiots.
It makes me suspect that he and the Democrat Machine are putting on a show and are actually in league, a continuation of the concern that led me to support Trump in the first place. His disingenuous argument that the Epstein papers must contain nothing against him because Biden didn’t use them ignores the obvious and likely explanation that they incriminate Republicans and Democrats alike.
Trump doesn’t seem like a very sexual man, he tends to treat “lovers” more as pieces of jewelry, as more “gold plated toilets”. So I doubt he is a pedophile. But his friends and close supporters may very well be, and probably are.
I believe I live on a different planet than you. Violence is the tool extremists of every party uses to manipulate, as is hubris, exaggerated or postured patriotism, and exclusion. Wake up. Rub the self-satisfied sleep from your eyes and see the worked of living, breathing humans without your stereotypes stamped on their horrified foreheads. Do you really think your sophomoric attempts at humor and above-it-all contributes anything to the world we try to coexist in? It didn’t work in sandboxes when you were toddlers and it doesn’t work now.
You helped create the monster–aren’t you proud?
I need some collective brains. Would others like to join me in applying for a patent to dislocate California from the contiguous U.S.?
If you will, create this image in your mind:
First we must accelerate movement of the San Andreas Fault, then rotate/swing the separated longitudinal terracotta strip formerly known as California-at a counterclockwise-approximately-180-190-degree-southward angle- to then reattach to the western coast of Mexico? Picture it?
From there, we can then steal from our former course instructor Joe Biden (taught Plagiarism 101) a “Build Back” plan that would build the soil back up (land reclamation plan) by stealing from China (as they do from us) technical construction plans that helped them create that beautiful new land in the South China Sea?
Then we can steal embryos, sperm banks, etc. from the massive Trans community in California (unused/wasted because of lack of procreative habits), and genetically manipulate them into heterosexual/cis healthy Breeders, and voila! Custom made California! A Brave New World! We go from 1984 to survive 8647, then on to 2028!
Actionable theft?
All is fair in love and deMOCKracy.
HA, just having a little fun on this rainy stormy day. Electricity out. I tripped over my little springer spaniel puppy, hit and split my lip open on the kitchen counter, -blamed Trump- (I think they misspelled TACO, you’re supposed to blame it on the TANGO-BOSSA NOVA) , and now, effete, can start over with my day. Thanks for indulging me. Apologies to this site for taking up space on this but a dangerous mind is a terrible thing to waste.
@lin
I approve this message. LET them secede, and close their border. At the rate business is fleeing that state, they won’t even have bragging rights in that regard anymore. And I doubt they’ll last long when they have to come up with their own currency, banking systems, stock market, passports, water, energy, agriculture, and work visas to even traverse the rest of this country. Let ’em rot, we will not miss their progressive representatives who would then be barred from participation in our system.
Nothing coming out of CA, barring the agriculture in the Central Valley, or oil, which could be compensated for elsewhere, adds any value to anyone’s life in the rest of the country at this point. NYC isn’t too far behind with its pandering to foreign wealth.
James: I goofed; but after reposting my proposal under the CORRECT topic (“Always Ready”), someone responded with an even better idea: Let Mexico just annex California. Ha!
Now I need your clever help/input in coming up with new names for some of our Formerly-Known-as-California treasures, like Disneyland. Graumann’s CHinese can stay. Yosemite would now be called MYsemite. Ha Ha. thanks for looking at my post today. rain stopped. signing off.
Lin – see my counterproposal under your “Always Ready” posting.
-Uncle Henry
Lin,
Yep! I could see it! HAHAHA! Thank you for the laugh!
Sorry to hear about your incident. Hope you feel better!
Lin,
I’m going to take my dogs out for a walk tonight in LA. I always obey the pooper scooper law.
I regret that your reference went right over my little head.
So I don’t know if you intended to criticize me (that was a pretty serious movie, n’est ce pas?), educate me, or laugh along with me.
Sorry.
Hate is hate. Hate IS Fascism. All of it. There are many excuses for anger, none for hate. This clip exposes your disease.
Diogenes: “What Nuisance is actually saying is that if Trump lets California nullify federal immigration law, Nuisance will send the rioters home (yeah, right; after they’ve run off federal officials). That’s literally a casus bello [belli] in our federal union. Nuisance had his chance. He’s compromised.”Whoa! And you’re spot on. Heavy duty stuff.
No way on earth, ANY American should tolerate the rude and defiant waving of other country’s flags in our midst. The powers [that should not] be are using these interlopers, anchored with their [mostly fake] “dreamers,” to internally destroy this country. Were it not for the treasonous and usefully-idiotic extreme-leftist-democrats, they would never get away with starting their much touted and desired “civil war”—they HAD to throw open the borders to create this upheaval. Biden and Mayorkas should stand before a Tribunal for this CONSPIRACY.
#9. Listen… Yes everyone can see and hear the Democrat Socialists revealing their true selves through violence and anti-American behavior. Old news.
But, I mean listen to what you do not hear. There’s no new news of any Democrat Socialist plan. Any plan at all to deal with any problem. The Nation has problems. Problems that go beyond political partisan rhetoric. Problems that need answers. All anyone hears from the Democrat Socialist party beyond baseless accusations, criticism, sour grapes, and bruised egos is, silence. No plan to deal with the debt (that they created). No plan to deal with an unstable middle East, (that they created), no plan to deal with a Nuclear Iran (that they created), no plan to deal with the much needed manufacturing and industry that left the country under the Democrat Socialist administrations which their failed policies resulted in. No plan to deal with the energy needs of the Nation or upgrade and modernize our 1911 energy technology grid. No plan what-so-ever but to sit down like a bunch of sissies and whine and cry.
Spent 20 million from their rapidly dwindling contributions to figure out how to talk with young men. Which is a rather small figure when compared to the hundreds of millions they spent of the American taxpayers money to teach gendermandering in equatorial countries who lack food, water, medicine, electricity, schooling, doctors, roads, etc., in the great hope that the wasted dollars of our money they threw to third world young men would result in their learning to cross dress and perhaps following the party model, sit down and whine and cry like a bunch of sissies, albeit somewhere in the Serengeti.