About 50 #Texas DPS State Troopers were sent out in response to a peaceful attempt to march and occupy a Plaza at UT #Austin today. Reportedly three arrests according to those on scene.
UT #Austin faculty are reportedly planning to walk out tomorrow in response to the brutal #police violence on campus today against activists who support #Palestine.
This is an expansion of an already planned rally in solidarity with faculty who lost their jobs in an anti-#DEI backlash.
In a year that will be remembered for its relentless assault on intellectual freedom, 2023 saw an unprecedented wave of book bans sweeping across the United States.
The numbers are staggering and the targets are clear. In the first half of the 2022-23 school year alone, 30% of banned books focused on racial topics or featured characters of color, while over half of the bans in 2023 took aim at LGBTQ+ content. —via takeitback.org #Censorship#BookBans#Education#Diversity#DEI#Racism#LGBTQ
Organizations within his network have reportedly funded at least 40 groups advising Project 2025, per NBC News.
Leo is also linked to Project 2025 co-author #Roger#Severino
—VP of Domestic Policy at Heritage
—who served as the Director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Trump.
Severino began his career at the “Becket Fund for Religious Liberty” where Leo sits on the board of directors.
Severino is one half of a “Catholic Right” power couple.
The other half is Leonard Leo protégé Carrie Severino, who previously clerked for Becket and Clarence Thomas.
It was Roger Severino who wrote the section of Project 2025 outlining a plan to withdraw the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill (mifepristone),
which is also under attack in a case pending before the Supreme Court.
If the religious right fails to convince the Supreme Court, Project 2025 is their “Plan B” (pun intended).
Leo and his network are also linked to #Kevin#Roberts,
a rabidly partisan fundamentalist Catholic activist,
who has served as president of Heritage since 2021.
In 2020, Roberts had been featured on the Resources page of “WhereYouAre,” which calls itself a “collaboration of people in touch with … centers of Opus Dei in Texas.”
#Opus#Dei is a “small but powerful” group “within the Catholic Church” whose members “abide by strict conservative teachings''
and “believe they are called to serve God” not only in their personal lives, but also in their professions, per the Australian Broadcasing Center.
Many of Opus Deis’ members keep their membership a secret.
Leo reportedly belongs to Opus Dei.
Leo also sits on the Napa Legal Institute’s board of directors,
a faith based organization whose chairman of the board is #Timothy#Busch,
one of Leo’s closest allies.
Bush co-founded Napa Legal’s sister organization, the Napa Institute, whose annual conference in July 2022 included Kevin Roberts as a speaker. Leo is a Napa Institute donor.
In December that year, Busch announced that the Napa Institute would open an office near the U.S. Capitol within the headquarters of the Eternal World Television Network (EWTN),
a global Catholic-themed television and radio network.
The month before, Kevin Roberts had been interviewed during an EWTN broadcast where he called himself an abortion “purist”
and said that he wanted “not a single abortion happening in this country.”
Roberts reconnected with Leo’s network in 2023 when he spoke during “A Duty to God and Country,”
an event organized by the Catholic Information Center (CIC) and Napa Institute.
As noted, Leo sits on CIC’s board of directors.
Meanwhile, Project 2025 (Heritage) Director #Paul#Dans belongs to the New York chapter of the Federalist Society, which is co-chaired by Leo at the national level,
while #Steve#Bannon, Project 2025’s unofficial media partner, has served with Leo on the board of directors of Reclaim New York (founded by #Rebekah#Mercer).
Bannon, you may recall, has closely aligned himself with proponents of the so-called “rad trad” (radical traditional) Catholicism movement
and specifically said that he wants to destroy the administrative state,
an express goal of Project 2025.
As observed by Media Matters, Bannon has repeatedly used his War Room perch to normalize Project 2025’s radical agenda.
How the only tenure-track Black faculty member at Texas A&M University’s School of Nursing was targeted for harassment by white anti-DEI conservatives which led to her decision to leave.
"Agile" is an adjective. It's not a noun, or a mindset, or a methodology, or a framework. It's just a word that was coined in 2001 by the 17 people who published this website: https://agilemanifesto.org.
@davidsabine …by 17 white men, who all look very similar. I have wondered how #agile manifesto might look like, if #diversityofthoughts had been higher.
In less than a month, I'll be on a panel at #KubeHuddle with the fabulous @hazelweakly, @ataner, Denise Yu, and Diana Pham to get super 🌶️ on #DEI. Cuz guess what? That shit still matters. So strap on your seatbelts, cuz it's gonna be a wild ride! Hope to see you there!
"Dems eye 2025 comeback for Congress' DEI office."
In its 4 ears in existence, the diversity office assisted nearly 2,700 applicants & conducted >1,500 consultations with congressional offices. It helped roughly 730 jobseekers obtain roles on Capitol Hill.
"Republican lawmakers are so eager to score pol points by eliminating all DEI programs that they undercut a non-partisan office that dozens of their own Members have used to ID highly qualified candidates-.
Having a hard time taking #DEI initiatives by companies seriously when they also take money from governments that still execute minorities, but what do I know
Honest question for white people that don't consider themselves racist:
White nationalists have been vocal about their attacks on DEI. These are literally the same people that talk about Charlottesville, Jan 6th, and ethnic cleansing.
They've laid out exactly how they plan to destroy DEI.
Make false claims that DEI is about giving unqualified Black people an unfair advantage
Work with racist politicians to use this as a pretext to make all DEI programs illegal.
@mekkaokereke even though I live on the other side of the Atlantic, we also have lots of men on the (extreme) right crying about diversity, equity and inclusion. Because that’s kind of #woke to them.
Luckily it seems more embedded in our society but things can go wrong quite easily. We try to raise our daughter with the #DEI in mind, so she’s not going to accept crap from men. And we try to contradict/ argue with those in our bubble, that rail against #DEI.
Horrific for #DEI, professors, students... at the U of Texas, Austin:
The university has laid off an undetermined number of employees who used to work in DEI programs, acc to Pres Hartzell.
The U also disbanded the Division of Campus & Community Engagement, which provided support & resources for “those who may face the most significant challenges in accessing” education. The changes aim to bring the university into fuller compliance with TX Senate Bill 17.
🧠 #Neurodiversity brings different perspectives and ways of thinking, as well as nonconformity. All so important to drive change and #innovation. However, it needs an inclusive culture to make people thrive.
🚀 People with autism spectrum can have a significant impact on the world. Like Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein or Michelangelo.