City Journal (the former Manhattan Institute) tells about the retort that slices through the nonsense.

"Didn't Earn It" doesn't just puncture the DEI balloon.

Together with thorough legislative watchdog work, clear talk like this could actually put DEI (both term and practice) out of business.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/didnt-earn-it

Didn’t Earn It

For more and more Americans, these words spell out the real meaning of DEI.

John Tierney   |   Jun 04 2024

George Orwell despaired at the linguistic atrocities of propagandists, but he did offer one bit of hope in his famous essay, “Politics and the English Language.” While lamenting that “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible,” he noted that some abuses of the language were vulnerable to “jeers” from a few critics. “Silly words and expressions have often disappeared,” he wrote, “not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority.”

So perhaps a jeering minority will rid us of today’s most egregiously indefensible phrase: “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” It’s a textbook example of doublespeak, the term inspired by Orwell’s 1984 dystopia in which the Newspeak language enables citizens to engage in “doublethink”—simultaneously holding two contradictory beliefs. The words in DEI sound like admirable goals, but the officials mouthing them are working to do just the opposite, as Florida governor Ron DeSantis observed when he banned DEI initiatives at public universities. What DEI really stands for, DeSantis said, is “Discrimination, Exclusion and Indoctrination.”

That formulation hasn’t caught on, but another one has: “Didn’t Earn It.” It went viral this spring after Ian Miles Cheong, a conservative journalist, and Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, tweeted it to their 2 million followers on X. Adams, who had fearlessly predicted in 2015—six months before the first Republican primary—that Donald Trump would be elected president because of his skill as a “master persuader,” tweeted another forecast: “Whoever came up with ‘Didn’t Earn It’ as the description of DEI might have saved the world. Normally, the clever alternative names people use to mock the other side’s policy are nothing but grin-worthy. This one could collapse the whole racist system. It’s that strong.”

Sure enough, “Didn’t Earn It” has become an Internet meme, a buzz phrase on social media, and a conservative talking point on cable television, radio, and podcasts. It appears in posts linking to Kamala Harris, the plagiarism accusations against DEI officers at Harvard and MIT, the 50 percent failure rate on tests of medical students at UCLA, and the sentencing of a DEI executive for stealing $5 million during her work at Facebook and Nike. In the surest sign of its success, “Didn’t Earn It” has been solemnly denounced by DEI executives, progressive pundits, and the left-wing watchdogs at Media Matters, which was so alarmed that it published a report documenting the phrase’s popularity and—inevitably—labeling it “racist.”

There’s nothing racist about expecting people to earn what they get, which is why the phrase is so powerful. It appeals to Americans’ basic sense of fairness. The civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s succeeded because they demanded equal treatment for everyone. The idea of reverse discrimination was widely unpopular even among those who had just endured decades of Jim Crow: in a 1969 poll, most blacks were opposed to preferential treatment in hiring or college admissions. They realized it would unfairly stigmatize all blacks, including those who would have been hired or admitted purely on their merits. But activists needed a new cause, and they justified reverse discrimination by calling it “affirmative action” and claiming it was a “temporary measure.” As the programs became permanent and grew into bloated bureaucracies, they were renamed DEI in a further effort to make them sound fair.

This pretense inspired ludicrous doublespeak, as when Harvard and the University of Texas at Austin  told the Supreme Court that their consideration of race would improve the chances of some applicants but never negatively affect other applicants—a claim that “defies the law of mathematics,” as Justice Samuel Alito observed.  DEI executives like to say that they’re defending women against  “systemic sexism,” but hundreds of studies in the past two decades have shown that female applicants for jobs in academia and other industries are now favored over similarly qualified males. However widespread racism and sexism were in the past, Americans have now experienced a half century of programs and policies promoting reverse discrimination. They’re sick of pretending that it’s not happening.

Hence the power of Didn’t Earn It, which applies not only to beneficiaries of reverse discrimination but also to the bureaucrats enforcing these policies. It’s perfect for posts linking to recent revelations by OpenTheBooks that the University of Virginia paid two DEI executives annual salaries of more than $500,000 apiece, spent $20 million annually on over 200 DEI employees, and has committed almost $1 billion over the long term to race-based scholarships, faculty chairs, and other “equity projects.” Companies typically pay DEI directors in the U.S. at least $200,000 annually, much more at large firms, and globally spend an estimated $9 billion on DEI.

What did that all money buy? DEI policies gave college presidents and corporate executives a chance to brag about their commitment to diversity and to appoint more minorities to jobs with impressive titles and salaries, but at great cost to everyone else. The students admitted because of racial preferences were more likely to languish academically or drop out because they weren’t as well-prepared as their classmates.

The money and time spent on DEI workshops and other programs was not only wasted—researchers have repeatedly concluded that the training is ineffective—but often counterproductive.  DEI executives deepened racial tensions in the workplace and on campus by creating segregated “affinity groups” and inventing grievances. Yale University never had a problem with racist Halloween costumes until its administrators’ issued a warning against this nonexistent problem. The warning prompted a needless furor that divided the campus and stained the university’s reputation—but it was a boon to the bureaucrats, who were rewarded by Yale’s cowering president with an additional $50 million to promote “diversity” and “inclusivity.”

The success of Didn’t Earn It owes also to its timing, just as DEI is being banned at public universities in red states and threatened everywhere by the Supreme Court decision outlawing racial preferences. The new scrutiny has forced colleges to reveal—and try to justify—their DEI budgets. Corporations have cut back on DEI hiring and started quietly omitting the D-acronym or any mention of “diversity goals” in their annual reports.

There’s even been a backlash at that devoutly progressive institution, The Daily Show. It came during a recent monologue by a guest host, the popular black comedian and talk show host who calls himself Charlemagne tha God. He began by showing clips of DEI critics, including Greg Gutfeld, uttering “Didn’t Earn It” on his Fox News program. “These right-wingers are crazy, right?” Charlemagne said to the audience. “But here’s the part where you all stop applauding everything I say. The truth about DEI is that although it’s well-intentioned, it’s mostly garbage.” He then went on to sound like a Fox News host himself as he cited the 900 studies showing that DEI didn’t work, that it made things worse, and that it was “just corporate PR.”

When you’ve lost The Daily Show, can the end be near? A quick death is too much to hope for because the DEI industrial complex will not surrender without a fight. Its profiteers know that companies and colleges are still loath to fire DEI officers, fearing bad publicity, protests by activists, and costly lawsuits.

But perhaps Didn’t Earn It will at least achieve a linguistic triumph. Some companies and universities have been jettisoning the DEI acronym for departments and job titles, replacing it with terms like “Wellbeing and Inclusion,” “Employee Engagement,” “Student Development,” or “Access and Opportunity.” Not much to celebrate here, true—this is the sort of political language, as Orwell wrote, that is designed “to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” But at least it’s not the pure doublespeak of DEI. If that trend continues, Didn’t Earn It will confirm the note of optimism that ends Orwell’s essay: “From time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase . . . into the dustbin where it belongs.”

Drilling down to DEI sources is just one unexpected tidbit in this left-leaning MedPage Today opinion piece about Project 2025.

High points listed here, and emphasized with bold within the article below:

• DEI in healthcare academia was driven by accrediting organizations
• federal policy currently mandates med student abortion training
• Dept of Ed transfers control of local healthcare to elite centrists

And so on. 

Alert: unusually high quantities of double-speak.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/111869

Project 2025: Assessing the Impact on the Healthcare Workforce

— Effective and equitable training does not appear to be a priority of this agenda

September 9, 2024

Prepared by a think tank with ties to former President Donald Trump, Project 2025 has been in the news lately as Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has attempted to distance himself from the report. Despite Trump's efforts to separate himself from this ambitious conservative agenda for the next president, Project 2025 appears to be the clearest articulation of the plans for a possible future right-wing administration and Congress. While the agenda is broad, it would have significant ramifications for the health workforce and for health professions education.

The ominous agenda has become more familiar to the public, with about a quarter of American adults polled stating they are aware of the policy package. As awareness of its policies have grown in recent months, concern and opposition have risen dramatically. Yet, there has been limited discussion of the potentially disastrous impact it could have on the health of the American public and its healthcare workforce if the recommendations were implemented.

It is our belief that Project 2025 is only part of a broader national trend towards eliminating policies and programs that increase equity in health and medical training program admissions, retention, and graduate outcomes.

An Impediment to Health Professional Training

One can reasonably predict some effects that the U.S. would likely see as a result of Project 2025 being adopted in part or parcel. The plan outlines strict limits on the independence of accreditation agencies, stating that, "accreditors have forced colleges and universities...to adopt diversity, equity and inclusion policies [DEI] that conflict with federal civil rights laws, state laws, and the institutional mission and culture of the schools," and that accreditors should subsequently be prohibited from imposing "non-educational requirements and ideological preferences" on educational institutions. However, all accreditation agencies have done is rightly recognize that health workforce diversity improves healthcare access and patient outcomes. Conservative attempts to couple health equity and DEI as political statements mean that common-sense attempts to address wholly preventable health outcomes may be at risk.

There are concerns beyond the direct impact of Project 2025's policies on the schools that train our health workforce; it would also significantly limit how providers train once they are in the field and how those providers are accessed by patients and communities. For instance, the plan requires that the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) make comprehensive reproductive health training optional (opt-in rather than opt-out) for doctors. With growing gaps in reproductive care access, an incoming administration should find ways to expand access to care, not intentionally limit it.

The proposed elimination of the Department of Education would weaken coordination between the federal government, accreditors, and graduate and professional programs including dental, medical, and public health schools. Opportunities for prospective health profession students could be compromised by such federal changes, minimizing resources for community colleges and other educational pathways for trainees to learn, grow, and practice in their own communities. Proposed changes to accreditation standards could further dilute the autonomy that healthcare workers have to set professional and ethical standards over their own work -- which, of all people, they understand the best.

Even financial aid -- which by definition bridges an access barrier for students from rural and underserved communities -- would be under significant threat through the elimination of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, limiting income thresholds for income-driven student loan repayment plans, eliminating interest rate subsidies on student loans, and transferring significant portions of the federal student loan program to the private sector. It even goes so far as to recommend the complete elimination of the Grad PLUS loan program, which imposes a significantly lower financial burden compared to other graduate student loans.

Project 2025 also calls for unprecedented elimination of policies intended to improve access of prospective students of color to advanced health professions, such as prohibiting mandates to adopt DEI policies. The core of this elimination is being touted as "colorblindness" that clearly neglects our nation's not-so-distant history of excluding specific groups of Americans based solely on race. Compelling health profession schools to explicitly disregard social identity and its tangible implications for access ignores a legacy that Americans should be eager to distance themselves from, not further justify.

A Disservice to Public Health

An effective American health workforce does not appear to be a priority of this agenda. Even if one were to interpret the plan's lack of explicit focus on the health workforce as a neutral stance -- a dubious interpretation given the ideological framing of the agenda -- any policy platform that fails to affirm its commitment to providing the public with an accessible and accountable health workforce is at the very least missing the mark of responding to public health needs.

Moreover, this plan comes at a time when the state and judicial policy environment has become increasingly hostile towards the health workforce and health professions education. Placed in the context of the recent Supreme Court decision overturning affirmative action in higher education, coupled with state anti-DEI legislation, the Project 2025 agenda poses a real threat to the policies and practices essential to a workforce that serves and represents under-resourced communities, including those in rural areas, as well as broader primary care and public health deserts.

At a time when colleges and universities are shuttering the doors of offices tasked with redressing historically harmful missteps to equity in our education system, we should be thinking about ways to undo the lingering effects of harmful policies. Among these missteps with lingering impacts is the Flexner Report, which led to the closing of five out of only seven historically Black medical schools and has limited education and health access for a century. At a pivotal moment for equity, Project 2025 is doubling down on eradicating the progress that has been made to correct for harmful past policies.

The health of the American public is our first line of national defense, and it would be a demonstrable challenge to thrive as a nation without a diverse, well-trained, and well-distributed health workforce. Gutting the resources and strategies needed to uphold this national responsibility would not only be counter to a socially accountable government, but would also create a massive vulnerability to public health threats.

Our health workforce and training pathways are certainly overdue for transformation. However, they should be transformed thoughtfully and with the intention of closing gaps, not closing doors. When access to providers and health resources are improved, our communities change positively. When access to educational opportunities are promoted, social outcomes are equalized. This outcome benefits all Americans by reflecting health justice and the ideals of our national responsibilities to the public. Everyone is better off.

Avoiding setbacks to public health requires progressive and innovative policies tethered to public good, not personal or political ideology.

Toyese Oyeyemi, MPH, MCHES, is executive director of the Social Mission Alliance. Maria Portela, MD, MPH, is chief of Family Medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine at GW Medical Faculty Associates, and medical director at George Washington Immediate Primary Care Clinics. Ed Salsberg, MPA, is the lead research scientist at the Social Mission Alliance and Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity.