Will Bunch writes:

The true meaning of Claudine Gay’s ouster can be seen in a story that’s gotten zero coverage in the New York Times or the rest of the mainstream media. At Louisiana State University, whose undergraduate enrollment of just under 29,000 is exactly four times that of Harvard, the looming arrival of a new right-wing GOP governor across town in Baton Rouge has sparked a quiet but significant effort to dismantle diversity efforts and kill anti-racism education in a state that was a cornerstone of first slavery and then Jim Crow segregation.

LSU scrubs diversity statement from website, renames inclusion office. @ByPiperHutch reports videos from speaker series on racism have also been pulled. https://t.co/JJ9QH38ECx #LSU #lalege #lagov

— Louisiana Illuminator (@IlluminatorLA) January 5, 2024

The Louisiana Illuminator reports that ahead of governor-elect Jeff Landry’s inauguration, LSU has already scrubbed a diversity statement from the university website, renamed its office dedicated to bolstering racial equity on campus to remove the word “Inclusion” and replace it with “Engagement,” and — in the most Orwellian move — deleted all links to a campus lecture series that was called “Racism: Dismantling the System,” tossing all of it down the memory hole.

Trust me, Harvard is going to be just fine, but the true goal of a bomb-throwers like Chris Rufo or the amorally ambitious Rep. Elise Stefanik is preventing what right wingers see as the rot of diversity, and real learning about American democracy on campuses like LSU or West Virginia University or Youngstown State. These schools educate far more students than the Ivy League (just 0.4% of all collegians) and are the potential growth engines for a thriving, multiracial middle class. [Continue reading…]