Sociology professor says ‘attacks’ on DEI in higher ed ‘threaten democracy,’ blames Campus Reform, others

A professor at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs recently wrote that “attacks” on diversity in colleges and universities “threaten democracy,” blaming Campus Reform–among others–for encouraging such “harassment.”

“The harassment usually begins with an article in one of a handful of student ‘news’ websites like Campus Reform, a program of The Leadership Institute,” Abby Ferber, a sociology and women’s and ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado Springs, wrote in a March 26 article for Scientific American.

Campus Reform describes its mission as exposing “liberal bias and abuse on the nation’s college campuses.” Ferber claims that the idea that “liberal indoctrination [exists] on campus” is a “myth.”

Ferber appears to blame opponents of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives of racism: “Eliminating the ‘DEI bureaucracy’ is about silencing the voices of those only recently allowed to enter the dialogue and censoring any discussion of inequality. The reality that racism and other forms of inequality even exist is being challenged.”

Ferber, who claims in the article that she “has studied white supremacy for decades,” states that the “racial reckoning” following the death of George Floyd in 2020 “threatened the billionaires, politicians and activists intent on protecting extreme free market capitalism and their own economic and political dominance.”

She continues, appearing to defend the three Ivy League university presidents who, in a Congressional hearing last year, seemed to indicate that “calling for the genocide of Jews” did not go against their respective institutions’ rules. Ferber writes: “Three university presidents, all women including Harvard University’s Claudine Gay, a woman of color, were viciously grilled by Republican lawmakers about antisemitism on campus in response to the current war in Gaza.”