State Department cuts DEI reading list that praised looting, reparations

The State Department has scrapped a DEI program that trained foreign service officers to use invented pronouns and assigned readings defending looting and reparations, the Trump administration announced Thursday.

A review found DEI had become embedded in the department’s culture during the Biden years, with instructors trained to swap “he” and “she” for terms like “Ze” and “Zirs,” and to teach “systemic racism” in Urdu and Black Lives Matter terminology in Hebrew.

Instructors were assigned readings including “White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement,” “In Defense of Looting,” “How White Women Tears Oppress People of Color” and “The Case for Reparations.” Staffers were also told that phrases such as “illegal alien” were “problematic.”

The standard five-week training for foreign service officers had grown to include a day and a half of DEI instruction, while a separate public diplomacy course devoted a full day to the material, the department said.

In a statement, the department said it had ended the “ideologically extreme and discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda,” adding that the DEI focus had distracted from the department’s role as “the nation’s first line of defense against hostile powers, terrorists, deadly narcotics smuggling, illegal immigration and other threats to the safety, security and prosperity of the American people.”

The overhaul is part of a broader push across the federal government to eliminate DEI programs put in place under President Biden.

Read more:

• State Department cancels DEI diplomacy; ’White Fragility,’ BLM lessons expunged from training