University Awarding DEI Training Under $35K Federal Grant

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) will be taught on U.S. taxpayers’ dime at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan.

Leland Harper, founder of a DEI consulting firm, has secured a $34,905 federal grant under the Biden administration’s National Endowment for the Humanities to create a college certificate program for “justice, equity, dversity and inclusion.”

The university’s program give a certificate for DEI to go with their undergraduate degree.

A course called “JEDI 101 Introduction to Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” appears in the Siena Heights University course catalog.

“Students will be introduced to topics including but not limited to racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia through readings drawn from classical and contemporary sources in history, philosophy, literature, and business,” it reads. “Course material will emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.”

That course’s three credit hours goes one-quarter of the way to the federally fund certificate program. Also required will be “JEDI 201 Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: Integrated Studies” and the “JEDI 480 Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: Practical Application.”

Harper calls JEDI 480 “most exciting aspect,” according to The College Fix, because it is a 10-week internship at “an external organization in their field to work with an on-site supervisor.”

Harper’s DEI consulting firm also offers continuing education programs for diversity training in the workplace, including “implicit bias” for nurses.

Stanley Ridgley, author of “Brutal Minds: The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing in Our Universities,” published in May by Humanix Books, denounced the “indocrinations” as “noxious” and “ideologically cramped and dogmatic.”

“DEI certificates aren’t needed, because they aren’t about diversity,” Ridgley told The College Fix. “Their purpose is to funnel noxious ideology into the university under a false flag.

“The very vagueness of such program titles suggests that what actually appears in them is ideologically cramped and dogmatic.

“‘Learning about race’ and ‘learning about cultural differences’ and ‘difficult dialogues’ are intentionally vague topics that provide wide latitude for the indoctrinations, whose purpose is to inculcate a doctrinal orthodoxy in students.”

He labeled it “a waste of valuable resources.”