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May 15, 2023 Editor, The News-Gazette: A local detractor recently attacked not only Martin Brown, the Youngkin administration’s chief diversity officer’s message but also his Virginia government salary ($160,000).
This attack, employing a good offense is a good defense scheme, was unwise. How so?
According to the Virginia Association of Scholars (VAS) study, “Should Virginia Pay for Diversity Leftism?” January 2023, 14 Virginia public colleges and universities (excluding Virginia Commonwealth and Virginia Military Institute) shows these institutions hired a total of 180 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) administrators and paid them salaries totaling $15.5 million in 2020. These figures, the VAS added, “underestimate DEI spending” as they do not include health insurance benefits, retirement accounts, office space cost, training materials, outside consultants and trainers, and additional staff implementing DEI activity but not officially identified by job title.
One can bet expense to snuff out remaining free speech in public higher education since 2020 has skyrocketed. For example, between 2020 and 2021, James Madison University increased DEI staff from 33 to 65 while UVA increased its staff from 38 administrators to 77. Not to be outdone, VMI’s DOI (formerly DEI) office, formed two years ago, wasted little time trying, although unsuccessfully, to persuade the Virginia General Assembly to increase its staff from three employees to a whopping 25 at a price tag exceeding $9 million dollars.
So, if Mr. Brown is promulgating the message “DEI is dead” and his message spurs efforts to rid Virginia public colleges of DEI expansion, then Mr. Brown’s salary is clearly a Virginia taxpayer’s bargain. MIKE LOWRY Lexington
