Date: June 29th, 2024 1:05 AM
Author: Harsh Burgundy Deer Antler
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Agenda. USAID installed advisers on
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committees “in all its Bureaus, Offices, and
[overseas] Missions” and created “an agency-wide dashboard and DEI scorecard
for all bureaus, offices, and missions” to track staff compliance with the Administration’s DEI directives. A Chief DEI Officer oversees this DEI infrastructure and
sits in the Administrator’s office. DEI directives are now part of all agency policies
and are incorporated as standard clauses in all contract and grant awards. Those
seeking to do business with the agency must “describe the approaches they will
use to diversify their partner base.”8
USAID often ties DEI to “gender and climate
equity,” corrupting every aspect of the agency’s overseas work.
The upshot has been to racialize the agency and create a hostile work environment for anyone who disagrees with the Biden Administration’s identity politics.
This pursuit of ideological purity threatens merit-based professional advancement
for staff who do not overtly conform, hyperpoliticizes what should be a nonpartisan
federal workplace environment, creates an institutionalized cadre of progressive
political commissars, corrupts the award process, and discourages potential contractors and grantees that disagree with this radical agenda from applying for
USAID funding.
The next conservative Administration should dismantle USAID’s DEI apparatus
by eliminating the Chief Diversity Officer position along with the DEI advisers and
committees; cancel the DEI scorecard and dashboard; remove DEI requirements
from contract and grant tenders and awards; issue a directive to cease promotion
of the DEI agenda, including the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda; and provide staff a
confidential medium through which to adjudicate cases of political retaliation
that agency or implementing staff suffered during the Biden Administration. It
should eliminate funding for partners that promote discriminatory DEI practices
and consider debarment in egregious cases.
As federal departments and agencies cannot play partisan politics, staff—irrespective of hiring mechanism—as well as implementers and grantees that engage
in ideological agitation on behalf of the DEI agenda should be dismissed, and entities should be debarred. The next conservative Administration should return the
authority over all civil rights issues at USAID to the agency’s Office of Civil Rights,
which is the appropriate locus for ensuring that all Americans have guaranteed
equality of career opportunity at USAID.
Sounds like a great plan for Trump. Which part of this do you disagree with?
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5547531&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310864#47791358)