Editor’s note: We invited readers to share their thoughts about issues raised in WSURA President Barbara Bullock’s message in the Winter 2025 Extension. Here is Professor Martin Arbagi’s response.

You requested comments on a number of issues, including such matters as “[f]ederal and state efforts to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives on campuses”.

First and foremost, I’d like to protest the nomenclature. Of course, the local office’s name on most campi is usually “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”(DEI), but it should properly be “Uniformity, Injustice, and Exclusion” (UIE) because that is precisely what such bureaucracies enforce. Their staffs range from faceless administrators who may not themselves be violent but will tolerate violence in others provided it is in support of a politically correct cause, to outright thugs — types you’d find 90 years ago in the KKK in Alabama or the SS in Bavaria. Think for a moment: would a typical UIE Office at an American college or university tolerate an encampment manned by masked militants obstructing pedestrian and vehicular traffic on campus and occasionally disrupting classes if that protest were led by a pro-life group? You may be sure that if such a protest occurred, the Campus Cops would be out en masse, doubtless supported by UIE staffers in their white sheets, wielding torches and electric cattle prods.

The recent law passed here in Ohio (SB1) was the result of diligent research by Professor George W. Dent of Case-Western Reserve University’s School of Law and State Senator Jerry Cirino (18 th District). They and their staffs deserve our congratulations on their hard work.

Martin Arbagi
Professor Emeritus, History