University of Virginia Wastes $20 Million Per Year on DEI Staff, Including for One Real Nut

The purpose of higher education is simple, or at least, it should be: To produce young adults with marketable skills. But at the University of Virginia, they are spending a lot of money on crap that doesn't further that goal, and they aren't stinting on the spending either. A spending watchdog group, Open the Books, has found that the university is spending $20 million a year on the DEI staff, and at least one of those DEI staffers is, to put it bluntly, a nut.

The University of Virginia spends $20 million a year on its 235 DEI staffers, including a woman who says the spike in premature deaths in Appalachia is due to the 'toxicity of whiteness,' a damning report says.
Open the Books, a spending watchdog, says the flagship public college in Charlottesville drops $15 million on salaries and $5 million more in benefits to its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team.
They include Rachel Spraker, an 'equity and inclusive' officer, who calls Appalachia's wave of premature deaths a sign of 'white toxicity,' and the school's diversity chief Martin Davidson, who pockets nearly $600,000 a year.
The university disputed parts of the report and says it only spends $5.8 million out of its annual $2.3 billion academic budget on DEI.

Note that last line; they claim they "only spent" $5.8 million on DEI, which is still $5,799,999 too much to spend on this horse squeeze.

Ron DeSantis Nukes DEI at University of Florida, Staffers Fired and Department Shuttered

Here are a few specific outrages:

Adam Andrzejewski, author of the damning study, said UVA has 'embraced the divisive quotas of the neo-Marxist DEI crowd.'
'Tens of millions of dollars in student tuition and taxpayer monies are flowing into promoting anti-American notions and radical philosophies that judge the color of one's skin instead of the content — and competence — of their character.'

And:

Andrzejewski's report on UVA aims at a bloated DEI infrastructure — about four times the cost of Florida's shuttered programs, he says.
He highlights Davidson, senior associate dean of the Darden School of Business and global chief diversity officer, UVA's top DEI earner with an annual salary-and-benefits package of $587,340.

But the real howler in all this is one Rachel Spraker, an "Equity and Inclusion Expert," who has been raking in a solid $242,840 a year to spread gratuitous insults about white people in Appalachia.

Spraker has spoken about how her community embraced white supremacy, and suggests that is linked to its social problems, which include rising rates of gun suicides and opioid overdose deaths.
'I grew up in rural Appalachia,' she says in a video for the college's AntiRacist Table group.
'White people are dying of whiteness too. The toxicity of whiteness … many of them were dying prematurely also, in their twenties.'

For some years now I've been wandering like old Diogenes with his lantern, looking for someone who can explain the reason for all this, so that it makes any sense to employ these people. So far, all I've heard is some vague talk about "building a complete person," or "teaching inclusion," but nothing that indicates that any of this corral litter does anything to further the goal of producing young adults with marketable skills.

This entire DEI pile of gorgonzola speaks very eloquently as to how higher education needs a damn good enema, and the various schools' DEI programs are where the syringe should do in, for obvious reasons. Such reform is already underway in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis has tossed a spike strip under the tires of that state's DEI programs. That's an effort that should go on the road.

Better still would be to take the government out of education altogether. The massive infusions of taxpayer cash flowing into these schools through grants and loans are causing a lot of this bloat.

Meanwhile, at least we have watchdog groups like Open the Books publicizing the worst outrages. Sunlight is, as they say, the best disinfectant.