Campus Reform reports the legislation is House Bill 4289. The bill states college campuses cannot “promote differential treatment” to potential students or employers based on their "personal support for or disagreement with any political ideology or movement.”
Those views would include a person's personal views on DEI, which has rooted itself on many college campuses, including in red-state South Carolina. In one example, Campus Reform found the “Office of Democracy, Education, and Inclusivity” at the University of South Carolina. That department, which operates with three full-time employees in the College of Education, states its goal is the “pursuit of equity and justice.”
The bill's sponsor is Rep. Tim McGinnis, who has told the news media DEI "does the opposite of creating diverse, equitable, and inclusive places."
The state lawmaker’s opinion of DEI mirrors the opinion of many who compare its beliefs about "equity" and "fairness" to China’s struggle sessions under Mao, when an angry mob humiliated their own neighbors and family members for espousing views that ran counter to Communism.
Nicholas Giordano, a higher education fellow at Campus Reform, tells AFN the state representative deserves credit for introducing the bill.
“They say it's about creating an inclusive environment,” Giordano says of DEI. “Yet it's based on division and a toxic ideology that tries to label people, put them into groups as either oppressor or oppressed, victim or victimizer."
Giordano himself is a political science professor at Suffolk Community College, located in New York state.
