> It's hard to parse how they were used any other way.
No, it's pretty easy. They were used to comply with the law.
> Both of the writers seem to believe that DEI statements, as implemented at Harvard, were mildly to wildly partisan.
Do you know what partisan means? It means favoring a particular political party. The attempt to cast perfectly normal rules against discrimination as a partisan project is one of the more evil ideas to come out of this administration, and that's saying something. Believe it or not, some people take actions because they have authentic beliefs. Not everything you don't like is performative, and not everything is calculated for it's political impact.
The current government, like you, sees everything through a partisan lens. They thinks that a lawyer who takes the case of a client who opposes the administration is necessarily partisan (and therefore worthy of punishment). More recently, the American Bar Association was singled out for alleged [1] partisanship for having the gall to support a plaintiff who thinks the government should pay its debts. Or how about the Associated Press [2] is a partisan organization now because of the name they choose to assign to the body of water south of the US.
The expansion of the world "partisan" to mean anyone who has any beliefs at all makes every person and every action a partisan. Which means that everyone is either with the administration or against it. That's exactly how they see the world, but that's not the world that I want to live in.
No, it's pretty easy. They were used to comply with the law.
> Both of the writers seem to believe that DEI statements, as implemented at Harvard, were mildly to wildly partisan.
Do you know what partisan means? It means favoring a particular political party. The attempt to cast perfectly normal rules against discrimination as a partisan project is one of the more evil ideas to come out of this administration, and that's saying something. Believe it or not, some people take actions because they have authentic beliefs. Not everything you don't like is performative, and not everything is calculated for it's political impact.
The current government, like you, sees everything through a partisan lens. They thinks that a lawyer who takes the case of a client who opposes the administration is necessarily partisan (and therefore worthy of punishment). More recently, the American Bar Association was singled out for alleged [1] partisanship for having the gall to support a plaintiff who thinks the government should pay its debts. Or how about the Associated Press [2] is a partisan organization now because of the name they choose to assign to the body of water south of the US.
The expansion of the world "partisan" to mean anyone who has any beliefs at all makes every person and every action a partisan. Which means that everyone is either with the administration or against it. That's exactly how they see the world, but that's not the world that I want to live in.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/judge-temporarily-blocks-cance...
[2]https://www.ap.org/media-center/ap-in-the-news/2025/the-asso...