The University of Wisconsin (UW) Law School held mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) sessions for first-year law students on Friday, which included preparatory materials that explored “racist attitudes,” according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
UW Law School Assistant Dean for Student Affairs Lauren Devine reminded students on Tuesday about a re-orientation event that included two sessions, one of which was held Friday and focused on “DEI,” according to an email chain obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Devine provided two documents for students to read to prepare for the session, one of which was titled “28 Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors” and the other a “race timeline worksheet.” (RELATED: Claudine Gay Had A History Of Adding To Harvard’s Diversity Bureaucracy Before Stepping Up To The Presidency)
“The student body is being subject to nonsense that ignores the rule of law and true equality in favor of a racialized way of seeing the world. The United State Supreme Court has stated clearly that justice is colorblind and race-based discrimination is against our human dignity. It is distressing to see our state’s only public law school requiring students to be ‘trained’ in a set of concepts which shreds the rejection of racial discrimination that so many fought so hard to make the law of the land,” Rick Esenberg, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) president and general counsel, said in a press release.
WILL first obtained the preparatory materials for the session and the emails indicating the DEI session would be occurring.
U of Wisconsin Law School is requiring 1L students to attend a DEI training.
The reading is directed only at whites and says colorblindness, individualism, arguments against affirmative action, and distancing oneself from white supremacists are “racist attitudes and behaviors.” pic.twitter.com/oknE3SgRvD
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) January 19, 2024
“A person of color can act on prejudices to insult or hurt a white person. But there is a difference between being hurt and being oppressed,” the first preparatory document reads. “People of color, as a social group, do not have the societal, institutional power to oppress white people as a group.”
The preparatory document also says that if people “don’t see color,” then they are denying minorities’ “experience of racism.”
“Even if an individual white person could ignore a person’s color, society does not. By saying we are not different, that you don’t see the color, you are also saying you don’t see your whiteness. This denies the people of colors’ experience of racism and your experience of privilege,” the document reads.
Another section claims that white people will never be able to rid themselves of “racist conditioning” and that there are “no exceptional white people.”
“You may have attended many anti-racism workshops; you may not be shouting racist epithets or actively discriminating against people of color, but you still experience privilege based on your white skin color. You benefit from this system of oppression and advantage no matter what your intentions are. This distancing serves only to divide you from potential allies and limit your own learning,” it reads.
The second document instructed students to create “a timeline of significant life events around race,” including “things that happened” to them, their experiences and their decisions. It also asked students to list moments that shaped their “social identities,” including media consumption and times they faced discrimination.
UW and Devine did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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