Dr. Tabia Lee once believed in the promise of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). A Black woman, a lifelong educator, and an advocate for justice, she began her job at De Anza College with a collaborative spirit and a desire to build bridges. But her new role—hired in 2021 to lead the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education—quickly became a cautionary tale of what can happen when ideological orthodoxy replaces academic inquiry.
Dr. Lee’s experience, detailed on the Goldwater Institute’s latest Dismantling DEI podcast episode, reveals a system that punishes questions and sanctifies abstractions. Watch the episode on YouTube and listen on Spotify or Apple podcasts.
Dr. Lee logged 60 hours of conversations and hosted workshops on defining equity and inclusion to better understand student needs. She found dogma, deflection, and hostility to debating ideas. “Equality was a thing of the past,” she was told. For using the word “equality,” she was rebuked. When she pressed colleagues for a working definition of “equity,” the answers turned metaphorical: apples falling from trees, stick figures standing on boxes at a baseball game. There was no policy framework, no pedagogical clarity—only slogans and allegories.
The more she probed, the more alarmed she became. “Equity,” she concluded, was a euphemism for indoctrination, an ideological project stripped of intellectual rigor. Her tenure review committee called her questions “dangerous.” One colleague warned she was “leading people to danger.”
Her true offense, Dr. Lee believes, was refusing to adopt the “critical social justice ideology” that had captured her university. She describes it as a fusion of critical race theory and radical gender theory, a terrible mix that created an orthodoxy that elevates identity categories above individual dignity and uses administrative power to demand conformity. “It teaches students as early as kindergarten about cis heteronormativity and other invented concepts,” Dr. Lee warns, “and uses tools like intersectionality” that are not understandable to kids in the classroom. The abstractions allow DEI true believers to defend a sense or a feeling rather than an idea or a concept.
She characterizes this worldview as not only intellectually dishonest but dehumanizing. “It upsets all aspects of natural law” she said, before noting that it goes against “liberal democratic values.” Where traditional justice seeks fairness, this new ideology, Dr. Lee argues, demands “equality of outcomes” through bureaucratic coercion and social reengineering.
It wasn’t just theory. Jewish students who raised concerns about antisemitism on campus were dismissed. “Jewish people are white oppressors, and what we’re doing in the Office of Equity is we’re decentering whiteness,” an administrator told her. At a staff meeting, Dr. Lee suggested creating agendas and taking notes, and she was accused of “white speaking” and “white splaining.” Later, after citing the scientific method or questioning the appropriateness of pronoun rituals in pedagogy, she was labeled a threat.
Dr. Lee says her aim was never to dismantle equity initiatives, but to rescue them. She advocates a “classical social justice” perspective, one rooted in democratic values and individual agency. “America,” she said, “is a place where we center pluralism.” In contrast, the ideology she encountered needs “race to be centered and everything,” not to heal, but to maintain conflict.
Dr. Lee may no longer work at De Anza College, but through Dismantling DEI she shows she hasn’t stopped teaching. If left unchecked, she warns, this movement will push American education—and society—toward totalitarian ends.
Watch the episode on YouTube and listen on Spotify or Apple podcasts.
🎙️ Dismantling DEI is a podcast produced by the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy. Hosted by Kevin Jackson, the series reveals how DEI policies undermine American institutions.
👉 Watch on YouTube | Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts
🔔 Subscribe for all episodes.
