Nobody's reading this at this point, but I feel like it's a fair cop to acknowledge that I was flippant in that last post. My most succinct response to all of this is:
If you're an incoming DEI dean at a community college where leadership at the school has told you there's a problem with overwrought wokeism and performative displays displacing actual inclusion, then it's absolutely part of your job to undo all that woke stuff. But your role as the "DEI dean" is, principally, to persuade faculty and registered student organizations to adopt a more productive "DEI" frame. You can't be persuasive introducing propaganda from FAIR, because: regardless of what De Anza's status is in the ranking of US higher learning institutions, everybody there can Google and find out what FAIR is about, and the moment you cite them you've nailed yourself to a pole in the culture war.
This isn't the only disqualifying action Tabia Lee took at De Anza (I sheepishly admit: I burned an hour or two looking random stuff up here, for no valid reason I can retrospectively discern), but it's the easiest illustration to give of how not to productively push back on wokeism. Don't do things that are trivially caricatured, and especially don't do those things when there's real substance to the accusation.
A hard-won lesson: being right is worth nothing if you can't persuade people. Congratulations, you can tell people you told them so, and they'll just be even more irritated with you.
Looking forward to seeing where Lee ends up on the conservative speaking circuit. Nobody's going to make the mistake of hiring her in an institutional role again.
If you're an incoming DEI dean at a community college where leadership at the school has told you there's a problem with overwrought wokeism and performative displays displacing actual inclusion, then it's absolutely part of your job to undo all that woke stuff. But your role as the "DEI dean" is, principally, to persuade faculty and registered student organizations to adopt a more productive "DEI" frame. You can't be persuasive introducing propaganda from FAIR, because: regardless of what De Anza's status is in the ranking of US higher learning institutions, everybody there can Google and find out what FAIR is about, and the moment you cite them you've nailed yourself to a pole in the culture war.
This isn't the only disqualifying action Tabia Lee took at De Anza (I sheepishly admit: I burned an hour or two looking random stuff up here, for no valid reason I can retrospectively discern), but it's the easiest illustration to give of how not to productively push back on wokeism. Don't do things that are trivially caricatured, and especially don't do those things when there's real substance to the accusation.
A hard-won lesson: being right is worth nothing if you can't persuade people. Congratulations, you can tell people you told them so, and they'll just be even more irritated with you.
Looking forward to seeing where Lee ends up on the conservative speaking circuit. Nobody's going to make the mistake of hiring her in an institutional role again.