“美国正受到攻击”：反DEI运动在反对些什么
‘America Is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade

In late 2022, a group of conservative activists and academics set out to abolish the diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Texas’ public universities.
2022年底，一群保守派活动人士和学者开始着手废除得克萨斯州公立大学的多元、公平与共融项目(DEI)。

They linked up with a former aide to the state’s powerful lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who made banning DEI initiatives one of his top priorities. Setting their sights on well-known schools like Texas A&M, they researched which offices and employees should be expunged. A well-connected alumnus conveyed their findings to the A&M chancellor; the former Patrick aide cited them before a state Senate committee.
他们与手握重权的副州长丹·帕特里克的一名前助手建立了合作，后者将禁止DEI倡议作为他的首要任务之一。他们把目光投向了得克萨斯农工大学这样的知名学校，研究了哪些办公室和员工应该被抹去。一位人脉很广的校友向农工大学校长转达了他们的发现；帕特里克的前助手在州参议院委员会面前引用了这些证据。

The campaign quickly yielded results: In May, Texas approved legislation banishing all such programs from public institutions of higher learning.
这项运动很快取得了成效：5月，得克萨斯州通过了一项立法，禁止公立高等院校开设所有此类项目。

Gathering strength from a backlash against Black Lives Matter and fueled by criticism that doctrines such as critical race theory had made colleges engines of progressive indoctrination, the eradication of DEI programs has become both a cause and a message suffusing the American right. In 2023, more than 20 states considered or approved new laws taking aim at DEI, even as polling has shown that diversity initiatives remain popular.
由于对“黑人的命也是命”的反弹，加上有人批评称批判种族理论等学说已使大学成为灌输进步主义的引擎，取消DEI项目已成为美国右翼的一项事业和姿态。2023年，20多个州考虑或批准了针对DEI的新法律，尽管民意调查显示多元化举措仍然很受欢迎。

Thousands of documents obtained by The New York Times cast light on the playbook and the thinking underpinning one nexus of the anti-DEI movement: the activists and intellectuals who helped shape Texas’ new law, along with measures in at least three other states. The material, which includes casual correspondence with like-minded allies around the country, also reveals unvarnished views on race, sexuality and gender roles. And despite the movement’s marked success in some Republican-dominated states, the documents chart the activists’ struggle to gain traction with broader swaths of voters and officials.
《纽约时报》获得的数千份文件揭示了反DEI运动的策略和思维：这些活动人士和知识分子帮助制定了得克萨斯州的新法律，以及至少其他三个州的措施。这些材料包括与全国各地志同道合的盟友的非正式通信也揭示了他们对种族、性和性别角色的毫不掩饰的看法。尽管该运动在一些共和党主导的州取得了显著的成功，但这些文件显示，活动人士很难获得更广泛的选民和官员的支持。

Centered at the Claremont Institute, a California-based think tank with close ties to the Donald Trump movement and to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the group coalesced roughly three years ago around a sweeping ambition: to strike a killing blow against “the leftist social justice revolution” by eliminating “social justice education” from American schools.
该组织以克莱蒙特研究所为中心，这是一家总部位于加利福尼亚州的智库，与特朗普的运动和佛罗里达州州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯关系密切。大约三年前，该组织围绕着一个宏大的目标凝聚在一起：通过消除美国学校中的“社会正义教育”，对“左翼社会正义革命”进行致命一击。

The documents — grant proposals, budgets, draft reports and correspondence, obtained through public records requests — show how the activists formed a loose network of think tanks, political groups and Republican operatives in at least a dozen states.
这些文件包括拨款提案、预算、报告草案和通信，是通过公开记录请求获得的。它们显示了活动人士如何在至少十几个州组建了一个由智库、政治团体和共和党操盘手组成的松散网络。

They sought funding from a range of right-leaning philanthropies and family foundations and from one of the largest individual donors to Republican campaigns in the country. They exchanged model legislation, published a slew of public reports and coordinated with other conservative advocacy groups.
他们寻求资助的对象包括一系列有右翼倾向的慈善机构和家族基金会，以及全国最大的共和党竞选活动个人捐助者之一。他们交换了立法范本，发表了一系列公开报告，并与其他保守派倡导团体开展了协调行动。

In public, some individuals and groups involved in the effort joined calls to protect diversity of thought and intellectual freedom, embracing the argument that DEI efforts had made universities intolerant and narrow. They claimed to stand for meritocratic ideals and against ideologies that divided Americans. They argued that DEI programs made Black and Hispanic students feel less welcome instead of more.
在公开场合，一些参与其中的个人和团体加入了保护思想多元和知识自由的呼声，并接受了DEI使大学变得不宽容和狭隘的论点。他们声称支持任人唯贤的理念，反对分裂美国人的意识形态。他们认为，DEI项目反而让黑人和西班牙裔学生感到不受欢迎。

Yet even as they or their allies publicly advocated more academic freedom, some of those involved privately expressed their hope of purging liberal ideas, professors and programming wherever they could. In candid private conversations, some wrote favorably of laws criminalizing homosexuality.
然而，即使他们或他们的盟友在公开场合倡导更多学术自由，其中一些人私下里也表示希望尽可能地清除自由主义思想、教授和课程。在坦率的私人谈话中，一些人赞赏将同性恋定为犯罪的法律。

In a statement for this article, Claremont said it was “proud to be a leader in the fight against DEI, since the ideology from which it flows conflicts with America’s Founding principles, constitutional government and equality under the law. Those are the things we believe in. Without them there is no America. You cannot have those things with DEI.”
克莱蒙特研究所在为本文撰写的一份声明中表示，“我们很自豪能够成为反对DEI的领导者，因为催生DEI的意识形态与美国的建国原则、宪政和法律面前人人平等的原则相冲突。这是我们的信仰。没有这些，就没有美国。它们和DEI互不相容”。

The institute added, “Repeatedly, and in public, we make these arguments to preserve justice, competence and the progress of science.”
研究所还表示，“我们反复而公开地进行这些论证，以求保守公正、胜任力和科学的进步。”

In recent decades, amid concerns about the underrepresentation of racial minorities on campus, American universities have presided over a vast expansion of diversity programs. These have come to play a powerful — and increasingly controversial — role in academic and student life. Critics have come to view them as tools for advancing left-wing ideas about gender and race, or for stifling the free discussion of ideas.
有鉴于少数族裔在校园中的代表不足，近几十年里，美国大学的多元化项目进行了大幅扩展。这对学术和学生生活产生了巨大的——且越来越有争议的——影响。在批评者看来，这些项目已经成了推行左派性别和种族理念的工具，或者是要扼杀对理念的自由讨论。

In response, officials in some states have banned DEI offices altogether. Others have limited classroom discussion of concepts like identity politics or systemic racism. A growing number of states and schools have also begun eliminating requirements that job applicants furnish “diversity statements” — written commitments to particular ideas about diversity and how to achieve it that, at some institutions, have functionally served as litmus tests in hiring.
为此，一些州的官员开始彻底禁止设立DEI办公室。还有的限制了对身份政治或系统性种族主义等概念的课堂讨论。越来越多的州和学校不再要求求职者做出“多元化声明”——即就多元理念以及如何实现多元做出书面的承诺，在有些机构的录用程序中，这种声明起到了试金石的作用。

But in early 2021, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and Trump’s reelection defeat, the Claremont organizers were on the defensive. The documents show them debating how to frame their attacks: They needed not only to persuade the political middle but to energize conservative politicians and thinkers, many of whom they regarded as too timid, or even complicit with a liberal regime infecting U.S. government and business.
然而到了2021年初，乔治·弗洛伊德事件引起的抗议活动以及特朗普的连任失败之后，克莱蒙特的组织者们转入守势。文件显示他们在讨论攻击的大致思路：他们不仅要劝说政治中间派，还要把保守派政治和思想人物鼓动起来，他们认为这些人过于腼腆，甚至在和感染了美国政府与商业的自由派政权同流合污。

Thomas Klingenstein, a New York investor who is both Claremont’s chair and a top Republican donor, offered a glum perspective in March that year.
克莱蒙特的主席、纽约投资人托马斯·科林恩斯蒂恩是共和党中数一数二的捐款人，他在当年3月表达了一个相当悲观的看法。

“Rhetorically, our side is getting absolutely murdered,” Klingenstein wrote to Scott Yenor, a conservative Idaho professor who would come to lead the anti-DEI project for Claremont, and another Claremont official. “We have not even come up with an agreed-on name for the enemy.”
“我方在话语上完全任人宰割，”科林恩斯蒂恩在给斯科特·耶诺尔的信中说，后者是爱达荷州的一位保守派教授，也是克莱蒙特的官员，日后将负责克莱蒙特的一个反DEI项目。“我们连管敌人叫什么都没有达成一致。”

One problem, Yenor reported to his colleagues, was that many lawmakers were reluctant to take on anything called “diversity and inclusion.” Terms like “diversity,” he argued, needed to be saddled with more negative connotations.
耶诺尔向同僚们报告了一个问题，那就是许多立法者不愿意跟任何名叫“多元和共融”的东西作对。他认为，需要给“多元”这样的词捆绑更多的贬义。

“I obviously think social justice is what we should call it,” he wrote. “We should use the term that is most likely to stigmatize the movement that is accurate and arises from common life.” While nobody wanted to seem in favor of discrimination, he argued, “social justice” could be “stigmatized so that when people hear it they can act on their suspicions.”
“我当然认为我们应该称之为社会正义，”他写道。“我们应该用这个词，这样一个准确的、来自日常生活的词，最有机会把这场运动污名化。”他认为，没人愿意显得在为歧视者说话，但“社会正义”可以在“经过污名化后，让人一听到这个词就会在疑虑的驱使下行事。”

At the time, a like-minded activist, Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, was popularizing an alternative catchall with his attacks on “critical race theory” — a once-obscure academic framework that examines how racism can be structurally embedded in seemingly neutral laws or institutions.
在当时，曼哈顿研究所的克里斯托弗·鲁佛，一位与他志同道合的活动人士，正在通过对“批判性种族理论”（简称CRT）的攻击，让又一个总括性的词流行起来，这种理论本是鲜为人知的学术框架，意在考察种族主义如何严丝合缝地嵌入到看似中立的法律或体制之中。

In short order, Republican officials and activists around the country set out to ban critical race theory — or anything that could be successfully labeled “CRT” — from schools. But Yenor believed such bans were not far-reaching enough. To combat leftism in America, conservatives would need to wage a much broader war. The Claremont group kept tinkering.
很快，全国各地的共和党官员和活动人士开始在学校禁止批判性种族理论——或一切可以成功打上“CRT”标签的东西。然而耶诺尔认为这样的禁令打击面还不够广。要想对抗美国的左翼主义，保守派需要在远为广阔的领域里发起战争。克莱蒙特人不断做出改进。

By 2022, as Claremont and allies like the Maine Policy Institute and a Tennessee group called Velocity Convergence rolled out early research, the approach had changed. Their public reports began to borrow from Rufo’s rhetoric, attacking “critical social justice” or “critical social justice education.”
到了2022年，克莱蒙特以及包括缅因政策研究所、田纳西组织“速度交汇”在内的盟友拿出了初步研究成果，行动策略已经变了。它们的公开报告开始借用鲁佛的措辞，攻击“批判性社会正义”或“批判性社会正义教育”。

When Claremont and the Texas Public Policy Foundation turned to the state’s public universities in early 2023, they circled back to “diversity,” but with a twist.
2023年初克莱蒙特和得克萨斯公共政策基金会转向州公立大学的时候，回到了“多元”这个词上，但稍有改动。

“Academics and administrators are no longer merely pushing progressive politics but are transforming universities into institutions dedicated to political activism and indoctrinating students with a hateful ideology,” warned a report on Texas A&M. “That ideology is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).”
“学校的学术与行政人士已经不只是在推广进步派政治，他们要把大学转变为政治行动主义的专门机构，用来向学生灌输仇恨意识形态，”一份关于得州农工大学的报告警告道。“这种意识形态就是多元、公平与共融（DEI）。”

Liberals dominated the world of higher education, the Claremont proposals said. What was needed was a frontal attack on public university systems in states where conservatives dominated the legislatures.
自由派主宰了高等教育世界，克莱蒙特的计划书上说。现在需要做的是在保守派主导立法机构的州对公立大学系统发起正面攻击。

Claremont officials would partner with state think tanks and with the hundreds of former fellows scattered through conservative institutions and on Capitol Hill. They would catalog the DEI programs and personnel honeycombed through public universities. Then they would lobby sympathetic public officials to gut them.
克莱蒙特官员会与州智库以及散布于各保守派机构、国会的数百名前研究员合作。他们会对渗透到公立大学中的DEI项目和人员进行编目整理。而后游说偏向本方的公职官员对其进行裁撤。

The Claremont effort seemed to diverge from others on the right who had long urged academic institutions to renew their commitment to ideological diversity. In one exchange, some of those involved discussed how to marshal political power to replace left-wing orthodoxies with more “patriotic,” traditionalist curricula.
克莱蒙特的这些行动似乎与其他右翼人士背道而驰，后者长期以来一直敦促学术机构重申对意识形态多元的承诺。在一次交流中，一些参与者讨论了如何调动政治力量，用更“爱国”的传统主义课程取代左翼正统。

“In support of ridding schools of CRT, the Right argues that we want nonpolitical education,” Klingenstein wrote in August 2021. “No we don’t. We want our politics. All education is political.”
“为了支持废除学校的CRT，右翼人士认为我们需要非政治教育，”科林恩斯蒂恩在2021年8月写道。“不，我们不想。我们想要我们的政治。所有的教育都是政治性的。”

Yenor appeared to agree, responding with some ideas for reshaping K-12 education. “An alternative vision of education must replace the current vision of education,” he wrote back, adding, “In the short-term, state legislatures could get out of the business of banning and get into the business of demanding — demanding the certain conclusions about American history be delivered.”
耶诺尔似乎同意，并提出了一些重塑K-12教育的想法。“必须用另一种教育愿景取代当前的教育愿景，”他回信说，并补充说，“在短期内，州立法机构可以从封禁转向提要求——要求教育中传达关于美国历史的某些结论。”

State legislatures, he proposed, could strip “educational professionals” of the power to decide what to teach and even shorten the school day so that young people would spend less time in class. They might pass laws letting private citizens sue school board members with financial ties to the “education industry.”
他建议，州立法机构可以剥夺“教育专业人士”决定教什么的权力，甚至缩短上课时间，这样年轻人在课堂上的时间就会减少。他们可以通过法案，允许公民个人起诉与“教育产业”有经济关系的学校董事会成员。

Since 2021, the network’s anti-DEI campaign has spread to at least a dozen states, according to the documents.
文件显示，自2021年以来，该网络的反DEI运动已蔓延到至少十几个州。

In Tennessee, where Claremont partnered with Velocity Convergence, one of the anti-DEI reports they produced reportedly circulated among Republican state lawmakers as they worked to pass a bill limiting how universities could teach or train students about “divisive concepts.” A spokesperson for the University of Tennessee said in a statement that the report’s conclusions “seem to be based on subjective criteria, made-up definitions and the opinions of the authors” who obtained information from online searches and public records but “made no attempt to understand the information through questions or interviews.” Tennessee’s governor signed the new law in April 2022.
在田纳西州，共和党州议员努力通过一项限制大学向学生教授或培训“分裂概念”的法案时，据说他们当中流传着克莱蒙特研究所与速度交汇组织合作编写的反DEI报告。田纳西大学发言人在一份声明中说，该报告的结论“似乎是基于主观标准、杜撰的定义和作者的观点”，作者从网上搜索和公共记录中获取信息，但“没有试图通过提问或访谈来了解信息”。田纳西州州长于2022年4月签署了这项新法案。

Susan Kaestner, Velocity’s founder and a veteran Republican operative in the state, said that “the obsessive focus on diversity, equity and inclusion is effectively reducing viewpoint diversity on Tennessee campuses.”
速度交汇组织创始人苏珊·凯斯特纳是共和党在该州的资深活动人士，她说“对多样性、公平性和包容性的执迷实际上正在减少田纳西州校园中观点的多样性”。

Last year, Claremont organizers forged connections with the Arkansas Senate’s Republican leader. In Alabama, they partnered with a group called Alabamians for Academic Excellence and Integrity. Jeff Sessions, a former U.S. attorney general and a supporter of the Alabama group, was among those who provided funds for a Claremont report, “Going Woke in Dixie?,” that focused on Auburn University and the University of Alabama.
去年，克莱蒙特研究所的组织者与阿肯色州参议院的共和党领袖建立了联系。在阿拉巴马州，他们与一个名为“阿拉巴马学术卓越与诚信”的组织合作。前美国司法部部长杰夫·塞申斯是该组织的支持者，他也是为克莱蒙特研究所的报告《在迪克西觉醒？》提供资金的人之一，该报告重点关注奥本大学和阿拉巴马大学。

After it was released last summer, according to another email, Samuel Ginn, a wealthy Auburn alumnus and donor to both the school and Claremont, confronted the university’s president, Christopher Roberts, and pressed him to address the report’s findings.
一封电子邮件显示，该报告去年夏天发布后，奥本大学的富裕校友、该校和克莱蒙特研究所的捐赠人塞缪尔·吉恩与该校校长克里斯托弗·罗伯茨对峙，要求他回应报告的调查结果。

“The president then told him, ‘Things will change,’” a Claremont fundraiser wrote to Yenor and other officials there.
“校长当时告诉他，‘会有改变的’，”一位克莱蒙特研究所的筹款人写信给耶诺尔和那里的其他官员。

An Auburn spokesperson said in an email that Roberts “has no recollection of the comment that was attributed to him.” Efforts to contact Ginn were unsuccessful.
奥本大学发言人在一封电子邮件中表示，罗伯茨“不记得他说过的那番话”。记者未能与吉恩取得联系。

The anti-DEI campaign has gained ground in more Republican-leaning states. Claremont has claimed credit for helping pass the most wide-ranging bans, in Florida as well as Texas. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas issued an executive order banning “indoctrination and critical race theory in schools.” In North Carolina, Republicans passed a law banning public universities and other agencies from requiring employees to state their opinions on social issues, a move Democratic lawmakers said was aimed at DEI programs more broadly. Oklahoma’s Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, issued a similar executive order in December.
在更倾向于共和党的州中，反DEI运动的声势越来越大。克莱蒙特研究所声称自己帮助佛罗里达州和得克萨斯州通过了范围最广的禁令。阿肯色州州长萨拉·赫卡比·桑德斯发布行政命令，禁止“在学校灌输和教授批判性种族理论”。在北卡罗来纳州，共和党人通过了一项法律，禁止公立大学和其他机构要求员工就公共问题发表意见，民主党立法者称此举是为了更广泛地针对DEI项目。俄克拉荷马州共和党州长凯文·斯蒂特也在12月发布了类似的行政命令。

Last year, Claremont officials also courted DeSantis, then a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination and the governor most closely associated with anti-DEI policies. The institute dispatched Yenor to Florida to run a new office in Tallahassee, appointing him as its “senior director of state coalitions.” (On Sunday, DeSantis suspended his presidential bid.)
去年，克莱蒙特研究所的官员还向当时共和党总统候选人提名的主要竞争者、与反DEI政策关系最密切的州长德桑蒂斯示好。研究所派遣耶诺尔前往佛罗里达州塔拉哈西市管理一个新的办事处，任命他为州联盟高级主管。（德桑蒂斯中止了总统竞选）。

But as DeSantis’ presidential bid sputtered and conservative campaigns against left-wing education began to lose traction in some parts of the country, people involved in the anti-DEI effort began to retool once again. In June, the American Principles Project circulated a memo detailing the results of several focus groups held to test different culture war messages.
然而，随着德桑蒂斯的总统竞选陷入停滞，以及保守派反对左翼教育的运动在美国一些地区开始失去影响力，参与反DEI努力的人们开始再次重新调整。6月，美国原则项目分发了一份备忘录，详细说明了为测试不同文化战争信息而建立的几个焦点小组的调查结果。

For all the conservative attacks on diversity programs, the group found, “the idea of woke or DEI received generally positive scores.” Most voters didn’t know the difference between equality and the more voguish term “equity,” oft-mocked on the right, which signifies policies intended to achieve equal outcomes for different people, not simply equal opportunities.
它们发现，尽管保守派大肆攻击多元化计划，但“觉醒或DEI的理念总体上得到了积极的评价”。大多数参与调查的人不知道“平等”与右派经常嘲讽的、一度流行的“公平”之间的区别，后者所指的政策旨在为不同人群实现平等的结果，而不仅仅是机会平等。

“DEI was thought to consist more of comfort with diverse workplaces than affirmative action or anti-white hiring practices. When we got into the details of specific DEI initiatives (race-based quotas, affirmative action, diversity for diversity’s sake), they were mostly opposed.”
“人们认为，DEI更多在于多元化工作场所的舒适感，而不是平权行动或反白人的招聘做法。当我们谈到具体的DEI举措（基于种族的配额、平权行动、为多元化而多元化）的细节时，他们大多表示反对。”

The memo was sent by an associate to Klingenstein and Claremont’s president, Ryan Williams, along with an undated draft speech apparently written for Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., who founded the House Anti-Woke Caucus last January. (Banks’ spokesperson did not reply to an email seeking comment.)
该备忘录由一名助理发送给科林恩斯蒂恩和克莱蒙特研究所的主席瑞安·威廉姆斯，同时发送的还有一份未注明日期的演讲稿，显然是为去年1月成立众议院反觉醒核心小组的印第安纳州众议员吉姆·班克斯所写。（班克斯的发言人没有回复要求置评的电子邮件）。

For Banks and other Republicans, the controversies over antisemitism on campus this fall provided a fresh opportunity to make their case. With some student protesters defending or even valorizing the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas, criticisms of campus DEI programs began to gain more of an audience among liberals.
对于班克斯和其他共和党人来说，今年秋天校园里的反犹太主义争议为他们提供了一个新的机会来阐述自己的观点。随着一些学生抗议者为哈马斯10月7日对以色列的恐怖袭击辩护，甚至为之喝彩，对校园DEI项目的批评开始在自由派中获得更多的听众。

As the presidential election looms, Republicans are embarking on a renewed campaign against the higher education institutions they have long criticized, now under the banner of eradicating anti-Jewish hate. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is investigating Harvard University and other schools, and the scope of the inquiry is expected to expand.
随着总统大选临近，共和党人打着消除反犹太仇恨的旗号，对他们长期批评的高等教育机构再次发起攻击。众议院教育和劳动力委员会正在调查哈佛大学和其他学校，预计调查范围还将扩大。