Training Derailed in Delaware

One week after an education watchdog group blew the whistle on a controversial “diversity training” program at the University of Delaware, school officials have announced that the program has been halted. When FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, published excerpts from the curriculum, outraged parents flooded the campus with calls and emails, demanding an explanation.

As you may remember, more than 7,000 students were asked to participate in sessions designed to “reprogram” young people’s worldviews with shocking generalizations about racism, sexual orientation, and moral philosophy.

President Patrick Harker, who was in China when the story first broke, returned to cancel the activities. “No[thing] further… under the current framework will be conducted,” he stated. “There are questions about [the program’s] practices that must be addressed, and there are reasons for concern that the actual purpose is not being fulfilled.”

Those who complained about the implications of the program were pleased with the decision but still unsatisfied. Like us, they would like to see the “training” entirely abolished. Any program that seeks to impose its views in the name of “diversity” creates more barriers than it eliminates.

Such is the case in Delaware, where the emphasis was not on cultural cohesion but ideological enslavement. Join us in urging the University to make the program’s current hiatus a permanent one.

Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council. This article is excerpted from the Washington Update that he compiles for the FRC.