STARRS Podcast
STARRS Podcasts includes the series STARRS & Stripes which interviews military veterans, talks about their careers and military service, and their concerns about what is happening in today's military. See our website, starrs.us, for more information.
STARRS Podcast
Exposing DEI: Understanding the Strategy Behind Institutional Indoctrination
STARRS Town Hall meeting unveils the dangerous reality behind DEI ideology as resource extraction through "virtuous victimhood" that divides society into oppressors and victims based solely on race.
• Dr. Stanley Ridgley explains how DEI bureaucracies in universities operate as indoctrination mechanisms using cultic teaching methods
• DEI bureaucrats employ psychological techniques to induce guilt and compliance, particularly targeting white students
• The ideology stems from Paulo Freire's educational theory, which Dr. Ridgley reveals was heavily influenced by Maoist principles
• Maurice Washington shares his direct conversation with BLM leaders who admitted to being "trained Marxists" focused on capturing school boards
• DEI administrators at major universities earn $400,000-$500,000 annually from tuition dollars and taxpayer funds
• Parents describe heartbreaking family divisions caused by college indoctrination, with students returning home accusing parents of racism
• The "white supremacy culture list" labels traits like individualism, perfectionism and empiricism as manifestations of white supremacy
• Despite executive orders to remove DEI from military institutions, implementation remains inconsistent with many cosmetic rather than substantive changes
• Current efforts focus on codifying anti-DEI measures through public law and strengthening constitutional education
Join STARRS in our mission to protect American institutions from ideological capture through education, advocacy, and support of merit-based systems that unite rather than divide. Visit STARRS.US to learn more and become part of the solution.
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For more information about STARRS, go to our website: https://starrs.us which works to eliminate the divisive Marxist-based CRT/DEI/Woke agenda in the Department of Defense and to promote the return to a warfighter ethos of meritocracy, lethality, readiness, accountability, standards and excellence in the military.
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Good morning everyone. Welcome to another STARS Town Hall meeting. On behalf of Lieutenant General Rod Bishop, our Board Chair, and Major General Joe Arbuckle, our Board Vice Chair, and other members of our leadership team, I have Ron Scott, president, ceo and today's host for this Town Hall meeting, and today's host for this town hall meeting. Today's lineup we'll have some introductory remarks by our board chair, general Bishop, a presentation by Professor Stanley Ridgely, a short follow-up by Mr Maurice Washington, introduced by our Executive Vice President, general Counsel, mike Rose, and then we'll have a Q&A session. So with that, over to you, general Bishop.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks very much, Ron. Welcome everybody to this town hall. I hope everyone's enjoying a wonderful summer. Special welcome to John Bugert. John, you want to raise your hand and just wave at everybody so we know who you are. For those of you who don't know, john's the editor-in-chief for our Colorado Springs Gazette and we just want to thank the Gazette publicly here for the great support that they provide to all the military in the Colorado area. So, john, thanks for coming on board with us.
Speaker 2:One of the things that the STARS Board of Directors and Board of Advisors has been wrestling with ever since late fall has been what do we look like in the future? We have had I think most would agree, due to the efforts of many on this Zoom I like to call it the collective. We had successes that exceed our wildest imaginations, from the vaccine mandate to all the executive orders and SECDEF memos that have come out regarding DEI. So we're struggling with that and I just want to extend an invitation. We're an open book, as I think everybody knows. So if anybody wants to attend our Board of Advisors, part of our Board of Directors Board of Advisor meetings on Friday, feel most welcome. Just shoot us a note and we will send you the link to that.
Speaker 2:Today we're very blessed to have two people who have stood strong in the breach, so to speak, against this Marxist invasion of our military, and it's my honor and pleasure to introduce our first speaker, dr Stanley Ridgely, former intelligence officer, now professor doctor at Drexel University. He's written two books, stan. I've only read your first one, the Brutal Minds book, but I haven't read DEI Exposed. But looking forward to wrapping my brain cells around that and we give you a warm welcome in the floor. Thanks for joining us, sir.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you. Thank you, General, for that great introduction, and it's a pleasure to be here talking with my military comrades and a whole host of other folks who have DEI at the top of mind, otherwise you wouldn't be here. My talk is going to be very short, direct punchy. I've always been someone who didn't mince words. When we talk about DEI, which is the topic of my book, dei Exposed, it's important to understand that people have different conceptions of what DEI actually is, and this is why the discourse public discourse about DEI has been so vitriolic at times and it's why we don't seem to have any kind of common ground. And I think it's because the concept has been misrepresented by its proponents, misunderstood by its opponents, opponents misunderstood by its opponents. And I wrote the book DEI Exposed, designed to disabuse both its proponents and misguided opponents of what they think it is and then reveal information about what it actually is from the primary sources.
Speaker 3:Now let me begin by simply saying that DEI as an ideology is a resource extraction strategy. It has a name in political psychology it's called virtuous victimhood. I'll say it again virtuous victimhood. And the point of it is, in general, to extract resources out of a target who falls prey to a con story or a confidence game, and in this case, the universities. I'm referring to the universities primarily, but of course the con has been played in corporate America as well A con story put out by what I call big grifters, big con artists, and they have managed to convince, in 2020, 2021, universities writ large around the nation that universities are guilty of this universal guilt as part and parcel of what they call a racial reckoning. And this all stemmed from the murder. I'll use the term murder because that was the finding of the court of George Floyd in the streets of Minneapolis in 2020, march of 2020. And we found this was a wonderful wedge issue for the proponents of DEI and a host of other social justice warriors to say we're going to penetrate the universities and the bureaucracies by leveraging this Floyd death in terms of creating a victim and villain dichotomy here, of course, the victims here, of course, are underprivileged or underrepresented minorities and they're barbarians who are propounding an ideology that is really pseudoscientific in its foundation, based on critical race theory, based on DEI ideology, which separates people into two categories and two categories only, and that is, villains or victims, oppressors of the fundament of DEI.
Speaker 3:Now let me back up a moment and say that what most people think of when they hear the words DEI, proponents think of this. Well, it's just common sense. It's just giving underrepresented minorities and marginalized voices a place at the table. It's just creating a level playing field. It's just noble, right, proper, isn't it Really? It's none of those things. It's not about just teaching about race or teaching about slavery. It's none of those things. And if it were those things, it would be illegal by virtue of the 2023 Supreme Court decisions Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard, in which this uber-affirmative action in admissions was rendered unconstitutional.
Speaker 3:What it actually is, this DEI is an ideology that I just explained. It's dichotomous, it's Manichaean, it's good versus evil, and it's expressed best by the DEI guru, ibram Kendi, in his book how to Be an Anti-Racist. He divides society into two categories, and you fall within those categories Excuse me, racist, anti-racist. Now, this is very akin to early Manichaean doctrine, which divided the societies into the children of the light and the children of the dark, and there's no in-between You're either for us or you're against us. This is a very pernicious doctrine and we have to understand that. The trainings that these DEI functionaries and the bureaucracies on the college campuses are engaged in have nothing to do with teaching about race, teaching about slavery. Ensuring a level playing field has nothing to do with that. And the book DEI Exposed is sourced with their own words, with over 600 footnotes and 450 pages of what they actually say about what they're doing.
Speaker 3:And what they're doing is convincing, in a very coercive, cult-like manner, our college students and faculty and staff, as available in this doctrine, this belief that there are villains and that there are victims. And this is determined not by your upbringing, not by where you grew up, who your parents were, not by your income, none of these things. It's determined by one thing and one thing only, and that is race. That is the bottom line. Moreover, this accusation is made within the context that, well, America is a racist country. It's irredeemably racist, it's irremediably racist and it is riven with what they call white supremacy culture. And that is the background of all of this, and this is the received wisdom.
Speaker 3:This is the worldview that these DEI proponents are propounding on our college campuses, with no contradiction allowed. As a matter of fact, for a long time, amongst many college faculty diversity statements, affirmations, loyalty oaths, were required for it to be hired, to be promoted, to teach classes, you had to have some sort of diversity, affirmative statement that you were supporting the goals of this particular ideology. But you'll never hear this term, this ideology or what I've just described to you, described in quite this way. They use a lot of. They, being the proponents of DEI, use a lot of euphemisms and terminology that are designed to mask their actual agenda. Now, why would they be propounding this?
Speaker 3:Well, the whole idea is to utilize the university as an instrument of indoctrination. And I'm not referring to my good colleagues in the faculty who, basically, are pursuing their research and are teaching and are doing this just trying to climb the academic ladder. I refer primarily to the bureaucracies. With assurance I can say this was the topic of my first book, brutal Minds, because it is a pipeline of mediocrities into the university, that kind of skirt around the rigorous hiring practice for faculty, and these folks mainly come out of schools of education. They are indoctrinated with Paulo Freirean ideology. Who is Paulo Freire? Frerian ideology, who is Paulo Freire? He's a revered educationist from Brazil who was basically a Maoist, who cribbed most of his education theory from Mao Zedong. But they don't say the M word, they say Frerian, which is basically an unknown, basically a cipher for most people. But he is revered by education people and these are the folks who are training the people who go into the pipeline and populate the bureaucracy. Why is that important? Well, the bureaucracy has its own co-curriculum, a fake curriculum, whereby they train faculty students and staff in the precepts of this CRT DEI, this whole ideology of racialism that I've just described to you, and they use coercive methods, they use cultic teaching methods.
Speaker 3:What do I mean by that? Where's my source for that? You can find this is basically comes out of Kurt Lewin's re-education programs, the social psychologist of the 1940s at MIT. Re-education programs, the social psychologist of the 1940s at MIT. And he developed a three-stage program called Unfreezing the Belief System, changing the Belief System, refreezing the Belief System. And you're saying, well, I've never heard of this. Where are they doing this? Well, you can look in the book Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, which is in its fourth edition, which is a very thick tome. I own all four editions to monitor the changes in the language published in 1997. The latest edition, published in 2024.
Speaker 3:And they very clearly lay out this is what we are doing in classes. This is what we're doing in our intergroup dialogues. We are trying to unfreeze an unfriendly belief system which has been propounded by, say, a student's parents, which is traditional. Perhaps there's some religion involved in that. Perhaps there's traditional moral wars that we hear Two. We're going to change that to what. We're going to change that to a critical consciousness. We're going to change the false consciousness to a critical consciousness. Someone who is aware of the social justice issues that plague our racist society, and that you're going to be willing to work to improve this. And then we're going to rephrase the new belief system by virtue of activities designed to keep students busy doing the work Maybe you've heard this phrase doing the work of social justice. And so this is the model that these people are following. It's not in dispute.
Speaker 3:What I'm saying is not some speculation. I'm not connecting the dots of some obscure puzzle. I'm simply reporting what they say they are doing, and they are counting on the fact that no one's going to read their stuff in these fake academic journals in which they publish, and we are indeed paying these people. When I say these people, I'm referring to the newly minted DEI bureaucracies in colleges and universities around the country that suddenly flooded in. These mediocrities flooded into the campuses, were lavishly paid, lavishly compensated how lavishly.
Speaker 3:Well, you look at the head of the DEI programs at University of Michigan. Her name is Tavu Sellers I'm sorry, tavia, tavu Sellers and she's pulling in $431,000 a year. Her predecessor was her husband, robert Sellers, and he was pulling in a little over $430,000 a year. You go to the University of Michigan I'm sorry, the University of Virginia and we find the top DEI, the two top DEI people pulling in over $500,000 in salary and benefits. The third ranking DEI person is receiving over $400,000 in salary and benefits, and this is why DEI on the campuses is such a rooted, pervasive presence.
Speaker 3:No one wants to leave a job like that in which you don't have to have any skills, you have no discernible skill set, you're a mediocrity, you can't do anything else in the private sector and it's unlikely you could do anything else of worth in the university. Now, are these people uniformly, you know, against what we consider the American creed or the American values, the American university that's based on logic, reason, scientific method, progress and humane values? Yes, they're, by and large, against that, and the research that shows this comes from Samuel Abrams, one of my colleagues, this one at Sarah Lawrence University, whose latest research in the last two years shows that in the faculty the difference between the two, say two rough groups of liberal to conservative is six to one. Well, that's always been the case in academia and we can deal with that. I can deal with that. I can deal with that.
Speaker 3:But you look at the bureaucracies, which have been progressively becoming more and more radical, radical, radical progressive, not just liberal. The dichotomy is 12 to 1, liberal to conservative, radical progressive, left wing to conservative. That is what we're dealing with on the campuses and this is why reform of DEI programs is so tough. They are so deeply rooted and they have such a tenacious grip on the financial incentives that keep them in place that what we're seeing right now, as welcome as it is, in declaring that these DEI programs violate the Constitution, which they do, is not going to be enough to root out these scalawags on the campuses. They are engaged in a campaign or a crusade to capture America's youth.
Speaker 3:It's the emblematic expression of Herbert Marcuse's long march through the institutions. You know, herbert Marcuse was the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School theorist a brilliant guy. But it can be misused, as it was in his writings In 1972, he repeated Rudi Dusky's dictum that we're engaged. We, being the Marxists, are engaged in a long march through the institutions, and he said this in his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 1972. And this, what we're seeing today, is the expression, the seizure and occupation of the colonization to use a popular word of our institutions of higher education, and it's going on under everyone's nose.
Speaker 3:What we're seeing right now, with the current Department of Education and the current spate of executive orders from the current administration, is a reversal of this, a return and restoration of the university principles of logic, reason, scientific method, progress, humane values. As Matthew Arnold said, the best that has been thought and said, passed on to subsequent generations with, as they add, their own bits of knowledge, hard-won knowledge. Because what we have now in the university, the Enlightenment University, has been hard-won over 300 years. And this opening up the gates to the barbarous ideas of DEI and other ideas into bureaucracy and then imposing this bureaucracy and this bureaucratic ideology on the campus writ large, is an atrocious violation of classroom neutrality, a violation of the university as this marketplace of ideas that we've always conceived it to be. Instead, it's becoming a crucible of indoctrination, which was predicted by the Marxist, famous Marxist theorist, frederick Jameson, who was at Duke when I was there who said quite clearly in one of his talks he said that the purpose of the university is for training of the cadres Marxist cadres for the struggles of the future. And that's what we're talking about right now. Now, when I say Marx, I say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What does this have to do with DEI? Where's he in all of this?
Speaker 3:Well, you have to understand that what's driving DEI is a very famous amongst education people fellow by the name of Paulo Freire, who's a Brazilian educator who wrote an important book in 1970 called Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and he was a well, they don't really mention this, the proponents don't really mention this about Freire. He was a great admirer of Lenin, a great admirer of Stalin, and he basically swooned over Mao Zedong's cultural revolution. He thought that Mao had it right. He said in writing. Freire said in writing in 1974, at the height of Mao's revolution, when we knew the atrocities being perpetuated there, he said Mao presents the most genial solution of the century with regard to educating the populace. In that case, he's talking about re-education of the populace. Now you know that Mao's Cultural Revolution was an abomination that killed over two million people. Now, this is on top of the millions that he killed in his great leap forward and his other cockeyed plans that he perpetrated on his own country from the period of 1949 to 1976, at his blessed death. And so this is the guru of the DEI program, the Paolo Freire.
Speaker 3:I think it was Bell Hooks. I've watched an interview of her. She says she refers to Paolo Freire and Bell Hooks, of course, is a radical BLM type. She says she calls him my beloved Paolo Freire, my beloved Paolo. So their admiration of Paolo Freire's theories, which come from Mao, is more than simply kind of an intellectual exercise.
Speaker 3:There's a kind of an emotional attachment to this Maoist who has informed education schools and who, in turn, are informing what's going on on the college campuses with regard to student affairs and their co curriculum. And so we have a bunch of mediocrities on the college campuses right now, receiving, you know, lots of money, scarce tuition dollars that parents have scraped to scrape together to pay for this education and are only being betrayed by our college administrations and presidents, who are supine in fear of having someone show up at the gates of the university and say, oh, you're racist. Now this is what really happened. This is what happened back in 2020. Whenever George Floyd's death occasioned all of the riots that caused over $2 billion in small business damages around the country. And to keep these riots from coming to the university campuses, university presidents knew they had to do some PR, and that PR was to become the fall guy suckers, if you will in this virtuous victimhood game where the grifters of DEI would come onto the campuses, extract resources in this resource extraction strategy and, in turn, set up these social justice bureaucracies that would basically train people like me, false consciousness types, to adhere to this new ideology. And so this is the framework of DEI, what's been going on for quite some time now, and I thank the new administration for basically returning the university, at least the conception of it, the idea that we're going to return to the university by expunging pseudoscience and nonsense from the campus. We did that with alchemy, the philosopher's stone, we did that with astrology, we've done that with pseudosciences of all kinds, and what we have to do is to beat back this challenge of pseudoscience as embodied with DEI, the executive arm of critical race theory, and turn this thing back and get them off the campuses and away from student-facing positions where they can do their damage.
Speaker 3:That, generally, is what DEI Exposed is all about. It articulates the arguments. It articulates, in their own words, what they are trying to do on the college campuses. It articulates the bizarre nature of this, this idea, this paranoia, this idea that it's us against the world, it's us against the pale-skinned folks, and this is really a mentality that has consumed the DEI bureaucracy and they're trying to purvey that mentality to a whole new generation of college students. I think that if you were to put up I know that, ron, you have the capability of putting up something a visual, I've got several visual one the table of contents of DEI Exposed, which really is instructive in itself to show you the pseudoscience that is involved.
Speaker 3:To show you the basic things like hate, hoaxes that are perpetrated on campuses, the structure that is set up to ensure that racialist types of incidents occur, fake instances. It even has a lot of anecdotes for what happened in the summer of 2020 at Princeton University. Let me share this with you. It pretty much illustrates everything that we've been talking about. There was a letter signed on by 300 people faculty staff, concerned people furrowed brow, people who were concerned about racism at Princeton. It was a general letter and it claimed that Princeton University was plagued with quote rampant racism.
Speaker 3:Well, the only really legitimate journalist at the Atlantic, conor Friedersdorf, asked the most obvious question that a journalist is supposed to ask. He went to the 300 signatories and he asked them this question Can you give me a single example of rampant racism overt rampant racism on your campus in the last 15 years? He asked 300 people and gave them the space of 15 years and he got not a single response. Gave them the space of 15 years and he got not a single response, which is emblematic of the fakery which is the virtuous victimhood scam that's being perpetrated. And if you can get enough people to believe the scam, there's no limit to the amount of money that you can extract from them.
Speaker 3:It's like a fortune teller. You go see a fortune teller and you both agree that the fortune teller is going to lie to you to tell you what you want to hear, and you're going to give the fortune teller some money. And this is basically the scam writ large. It's a fraud, it's a scam, it's pseudoscientific. There's absolutely no academic justification for it. Let me give you an example of what's going on. Say, at the Arizona State University. There's a psychologist there who's climbed the bureaucracy, is now a dean of psychology. I'll tell you her name. Her name is Lisa Spanierman and she is advocating and I've got her article. I've published her article in critique of it.
Speaker 3:We can use the classroom and use psychological techniques to get our students here to do the work in social justice vineyard. Now I'll give you an example. She says it's possible to convince anyone, anyone that you're guilty of something, even of an event that you have no nothing to do with. This is a wonderful insight of how you can induce guilt in people. We can target white male students and we do white male students. Convince them with particular stimuli that you are guilty of particular events in history, and this will make them you white students more susceptible to be persuaded to do the work of social justice to remedy these ills that you had nothing to do with, assuming they're even ills to begin with.
Speaker 3:Now this is something that is in the literature. I know that in Arizona there was a newspaper article based on my revelation of this, but little has been done. This woman still has a position in the university, utilizing psychological techniques to indoctrinate folks in the classroom, generating fake guilt. I think this is an abomination and the woman should be fired. But we'll see how that one plays out. This type of thing goes on and on and on. In university campuses you have what's the infamous white supremacy culture list, which is a list of 15 behaviors that supposedly indicate white supremacy. If you've got a I think Ron can put that graphic up I'll just read it to you right here.
Speaker 1:Some of the, some of the white supremacy yeah, if you could put it up, that would be good.
Speaker 3:I don't have that capability right now with me at my fingertips and there'd be an unpleasant pause, so I'm going to do is read a couple of them off. Perfectionism, either, or thinking power hoarding individualism. The end of it, the rock bottom basis for our capitalist society, individualism is considered white supremacy behavior. Well, there's only one right way to do something, in other words, empiricism, the idea that we're going to explore and find out what the right way, the best way to do something. In other words, empiricism, the idea that we're going to explore and find out what the right way, the best way to do something which is right out of Frederick W Taylor's notion of scientific managerialism, is somehow white supremacist behavior. So what we have is basically a list of behaviors that are available to anyone that can yield success, but because certain people don't like that idea, they're going to call oh well, we're going to call these behaviors white supremacist.
Speaker 3:Now, where did that list come from? This is the most interesting part of it. I have a whole chapter devoted to that. It was fabricated in 1999 by a diversity worker by the name of Tema Okun, and she was a diversity worker who was unhappy. She came home to her hotel room after a particularly unpleasant session. And so, in a fit of fury and petulance, she wrote down the 15 behaviors she didn't like and that became her list and she published the list online. And she later took that same list and described the origin of that list, its provenance, and put it in a dissertation that she wrote. And she got her PhD in social justice something I think social justice and she published it in a book called the Emperor has no New Clothes. And now that list that she completely fabricated not through research but just wrote it down because she was angry that list is now being used, right now as we speak, at the University of Michigan, at the University of Wisconsin, at Boston University, at Duke University's medical school training doctors, and is also being used by the NEA National Education Association, randy Weingarten's teachers union.
Speaker 3:You can find them on their websites. This is all open source stuff. It's right there, but not many people know how to search for this stuff or what to search for. I can look at a website of a university in 30 minutes, tell you exactly where the nodes of pressure are, where the critical nodes are, who the people are, who are propounding this nonsense. There's a code that comes with it, a way they talk. There's a way of hiding what they're actually doing, and in my book, dei Exposed, I provide a glossary of this terminology so that you too, can become expert in picking out what they really mean. When they say X, y and Z, they really mean A, b and C, and this is something that I think is essential, certainly for parents with college students can find it very useful too, and what I provide is a means for college students to reverse this thing.
Speaker 3:We don't have to wait for long-term reform. We don't have to wait for the slow wheels of justice to turn. We can do something right now and combat these mediocre ideologues on the college campuses right now. And with that I draw to a close, I've touched the basic core of DEI. What's wrong with it, why it's misunderstood, why it's even its defenders have no idea what they're defending and why many of its opponents tend to think of DEI?
Speaker 3:Well, that means hiring, you know, unqualified people for positions they shouldn't have. Well, there's probably some of that going on. I think that the submarine, the tourist submarine that imploded at the bottom, that's an example of how unqualified people doing important things in the world of, you know, submarines and aircraft, that kind of thing can make terrible mistakes. I think the CEO of OceanGate, who created the submarine, said he did not want 50-year-old and above ex-submariners that have experience with this sort of thing. I want to hire inspiring young people, and so he hired a bunch of inspiring young engineers, mainly female, who designed this thing, which promptly imploded at the bottom of the Atlantic, killing the CEO of the company One of those rare examples of karma at work. And so it can have that kind of impact. But I think the larger, worse impact is its long-term pedagogical presence on our college campuses. Those people need to be fired, they need to be expunged from the university, and it has nothing to do with academic freedom. So I will finish with that and turn it over to you, ron.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, dr Ridgely. I have to tell you we got started on this 7 July 2020. And it was fortuitous, disturbed by a three-minute video put out by the Air Force Academy football coaches. But since then our five-year journey in this little radical jungle you are by far the most prominent thinker in terms of understanding what DEI is and why it's so dangerous. So we appreciate the work that you've done in educating us on DEI and critical race theory that fuels it and, again, why it's so dangerous. I was intrigued by your comment about reaching out to 300 individuals and asking them for one example in the last 15 years.
Speaker 1:Stars has filed to date 61 Freedom of Information Act requests. One of our earlier ones dealt with an assessment directed by the Air Force Academy superintendent, trying to find out the extent of systemic racism at that institution. That was due September of 2020. We filed a FOIA asking for a copy of that assessment. It took a lawsuit by Judicial Watch on our behalf to get a federal judge to mandate the release of that 167-page report. Every single page had been marked for official use only in an attempt to shield it from the general public. When we received it, 52 entire pages were redacted, completely redacted, and, as General Counsel, mike Rose, one of the prominent figures in getting the Supreme Court to rule on Freedom of Information Act, statutory language. The only thing you eliminate in a redaction is a name, social security numbers and that sort of thing. You don't eliminate details like they did in this release report. So of the unredacted pages we discovered absolutely no evidence of racism, let alone systemic racism.
Speaker 1:But what they did, by shielding that report for two years, is identify and train 90 cadets, college students, 90 cadets to be diversity and inclusion officers and NCOs throughout the entire cadet wing structure, two per squadron, 40 squadrons, two for each of the four groups and two at the wing level, wearing a purple rope over the left shoulder, signifying that they are the equivalent of the Soviet commissars in these units.
Speaker 1:I hate to use that term, but that's exactly what they were doing. So we appreciate the work that you've done in this area and it's inspired us to right now deliver a presentation that we've named the American creed threatened by radical indoctrination, and so it's getting a good response. Mike Rose and I will be making a presentation tonight here in the Charleston South Carolina area, so while we wait for Mr Maurice Washington to log in, he's tied up at an important meeting right now, and if he's not able to log in, mike will cover for him. He's logging in right now, Hang on, so let me bring him in. And then, after Maurice talks, then we want to open up to a question and answer session. I'm going to ask our Executive Vice President and General Counsel, mike Rose, to introduce you to this group.
Speaker 4:Sure Thanks.
Speaker 5:Okay, well, good afternoon everybody. An organization called the Low Country Conservatives is sponsoring Ron Scott's and this evening called the American Cree Threatened by Radical Indoctrination, and Maurice Washington is the president of this group. I met with him and his board of directors over lunch a few days ago and Maurice told me some things that I thought this group would be very interested in hearing. It surprised me, but it didn't surprise me. So what I want to do is introduce this gentleman you see on your screen here so you can see how prominent, what a prominent leader he is in South Carolina Now.
Speaker 5:Reese is a graduate of South Carolina State University. He received a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a minor in Business Administration. He has his own firm, a financial services business consulting group called Trust Management. But he has astonishing public service and private community service during his career, and I'll just tell you some. He was elected to and served nine years in Charleston County Council, which was a big deal around here. He was chair of the Ways and Means Committee and the Community Development Committee. He was appointed mayor pro tempore of Charleston 1992. He was appointed by the South Carolina General Assembly to be on the board of trustees of South Carolina State University where he became the chairman for six years. He is a Republican. He was chairman of the Charleston County Republican Party for a number of years. He was on Governor Mark Sanford's transition team when Mark Sanford became a Republican governor. I might add as an aside that 1994, mark Sanford beat me in running for Congress in the Republican primary. Beat me in running for Congress in the Republican primary, but I've always supported Mark since then.
Speaker 5:Maurice is a big advocate for educational improvement. He's founder of what's called a Charleston Shared Future. It's a partnership he initiated between the Charleston County Council and the Charleston County School District, and his Low Country Conservative Group has a guest speaker, like our Stardust Town Hall does once a month, and last month they had a forum about how to improve Charleston County schools. So even when I had lunch with Maurice and his board of trustees, they were talking about the K-12 education issues, and then it migrated into Maurice telling me how, during the riots I think in 2020 in Charleston, he was called by the organizers of that to try to enlist his support, and they told him some things that I found to be shocking, but then, upon thinking about it more, not surprising. So finally, I've got a list of about 15 other organizations that he's appointed to the leader of, but I'm going to turn this over now to Maurice and invite him to tell our group what he told me.
Speaker 4:Maurice, senator Rose, good evening everyone. Rose, good evening everyone. Let me first apologize, but before apologizing for arriving late, senator Rose, thank you for a very flattering introduction. I deeply appreciate it, sir, and I consider it to be a great honor to have a few minutes to communicate with you. Wonderful folks. I want to apologize for being late.
Speaker 4:My church we've been working on a real estate project, a mega real estate project, for some time now five years to be exact, and I have chaired this effort and finally we brought it to a closing just at 1130 this morning, and so it's a big deal for the East Side community of Charleston as well as for our church. Out to lunch with my pastor and members of our board of trustees celebrating, out to lunch with my pastor and members of our board of trustees celebrating, but still wanted to take a moment to connect and get to know some other wonderful people. So I apologize, one for being late and two for joining you from my cell phone. Normally I would be at the desk with the laptop so I could see everyone and then be seen by everyone. So again, thank you very much. I won't take much of your time. I want to commend Senator Rose for the great work that he's doing on behalf of STARS. You have a real trooper in this gentleman and we're looking forward to hearing him address our group, the Lowcountry Conservative Club, a little later this evening. But, as the senator said, back in maybe 2020, we had some riots actually taking place across the country and Charleston did not escape some of the activities of that time and it got a little messy, a little ugly here, as it did in other places across the country, across America.
Speaker 4:I love the love country and, interestingly, during that time and I told the story to the East Cooper Republican Women Club, maybe a few days after, I met with at least three members of Black Lives Matter they invited me out to lunch. I agreed. I was chairman of the Charleston Republican Party at the time, so I was very much intrigued by the invitation. I took advantage of it, learned a lot, very happy I did so. But it was interesting to hear direct from a prominent leader of the movement the fact that they were and I quote trained Marxists and that their training actually take place outside of US territories and I was just absolutely fascinated by the candor, the fact that they boast about being well funded Lots of funds coming from US-based corporations and that the Republican Party, the conservatives of this country, were really behind the eight ball and that we would never catch up because while we were focused on electing presidents and governors and US senators and congresspeople, they were focused on electing school board members and taking over school boards all across America, controlling superintendents and everything else associated with the education of our children. Their model was basically simple If you know we can control their children, we actually can then control the country, the country, and so their interest in school board elections were an integral part of their vision. And as a result of that meeting, I just went into reflection and, true to what they told me, the local party just never saw school board elections as something to be concerned about or invest in that. And for the first time we got involved with school board elections. Vetted candidates had them come and sit before a very conservative group of people complete a hard-hitting form questionnaire that actually landed me on the front page of the Post and Courier with my photo based on the questions that were posed in the questionnaire. We didn't run from it. We took it as a badge of honor.
Speaker 4:You know, reflecting on that conversation, with these folks basically saying that white males in this country were afraid of being labeled as racist, they could basically have their way labeling conservative as racist, black conservative as Uncle Tom, black conservatives as Uncle Tom, and basically we run away and we hide and we offer no resistance, no pushback, which allowed them to basically, at that time, make major steps in transforming our country. And so they knew us literally better than we knew ourselves. They knew the buzzword to use. They were indoctrinating not just our children but the parents and the grandparents of the children as well, and so they were having their way. As you know, they were riding high. They were proud of all the good things they were doing. They were well-funded. These were funding. I refer to them as guilt funding. We were guilty and we allowed guilt to drive our giving. We didn't necessarily believe in what they believed in, but they made us feel guilty. So we contributed at least corporate America did in abundance, and conservatives basically went undercover to say look, job, family, reputation, I just can't take being called a racist. They knew that and as a result of that, they had their way. So that two and a half hours spent.
Speaker 4:I learned so much and it helped frame my personal position in terms of how we combat the nonsense. And, reb and I, we were willing to take some public hits, standing our grounds and fighting back. As Rush Limbaugh used to say, fighting back does work. It does, and it doesn't take a whole lot of courage, you know. It just requires that you believe in what you're doing and the way you were raised in this wonderful country and the opportunities that this wonderful country presents for all. And so it was a. I shared that experience when Senator Rose appeared before the group the other day, primarily because of the talk that he gave. And the talk that he gave us that day reminded me of that moment. I didn't think much of it, I just shared it again, maybe a fifth time, with a group of folks and did not at all believe for a minute or a second that I would be invited to basically share that story with this incredible group. So you know, again it was sad to hear, while at the same time admitting that you know what they're right. They're boasting about it, but they're absolutely correct.
Speaker 4:A couple of weeks later, russ Leach, who's also on this call he was vice chair of the Republican Party, charleston County Republican Party. At the time we took to lunch a couple of other officers from, I think, dorchester or Berkeley County, a neighboring county to Charleston County. We met those leaders for lunch and this white gentleman uh, brought us all the tears when he said that, um, uh, he and his wife had not, uh, communicated with their daughter in like three, three and a half years or so. And you know curious as to why. I asked. Well, well, she went off to college somewhere in California and a short time later basically called or wrote and told us that we were racist and she never wanted to see us again.
Speaker 4:Indoctrination I later went to. I was invited to speak before a group of women about 40 or so women at a downtown resident in Charleston, south Carolina, and I didn't know what they wanted to talk about. But I agreed to visit with them. All women, white women, and there was a single seat in the room and it was for this black guy. And I'm still curious why am I here? What am I going to talk about? They asked for specific information on me and I gave them little because I didn't know what it was all about. But I later found out that these were conservative white women and moderate white women and they were concerned about public schools, indoctrination of their children, indoctrination of their children. And I heard from them, one by one. They were telling me about the indoctrination process and how it's impacting their relationship with their children.
Speaker 4:And this one woman stood in the deep back of the room, her back against the wall. Everyone else's head, the back of their head, faced her and with the most incredible sad look in her eyes, on her face and in her voice, she asked me. In a voice she asked me can you speak to our children? I was talking about the John Calhoun statue that was inappropriately brought down from Marion Square in Charleston and the wiping out of meaningful history to our country, as well as to our city statutes and everything else, and I just shared a Black man's perspective. And so she asked a question can you talk to our children? I thought I didn't understood the question, so I kind of leaned in and I said, excuse me, would you repeat that? And so she repeated it and all of the faces facing me. All of a sudden those faces were facing her and the back of their heads faced me. But after she asked the question a second time and the other heads turned and everyone in the room were facing me. They all had the same look on their faces and in their eyes and it was heartbreaking to me. She went on to say our children and grandchildren are being taught to hate us, that we're racist, that we're former slave owners, and the likes and the lights.
Speaker 4:Within seconds after I got out of that meeting I jumped on the phone. I called a friend of mine that worked for the Charleston County School District and I asked him about this term, crt, and whether or not it was being taught in our school district, charleston County School District. And I text him actually, and I still have the text communication between the two of us. I text him and he texted me back almost immediately and he said well, it's not critical race theory, it's CRT, but they didn't call it critical race theory. I'm drawing a blank, but I'm going to try to remember. I do have it in writing in a text message to me where he said it's critical race training or something. It was a form of CRT. Well, when you visited the site said well, send me the site where I can learn more about it. At the end of the day, it was critical race theory teaching. At the end of the day, it was critical race theory teaching and the folks that were providing the training materials. You visit the website.
Speaker 4:It was slaughter city to then President Trump and all Republicans and conservatives, and that's when I knew we really have to get involved with local education and try to make an impact, try to make a difference. I'm so proud of the Lowcountry Conservative Club. We're engaged, we're doing so and and I think we're making a difference and I'm confident that we're going to make a bigger difference. So that's a little longer than what the senator asked for. My apologies for having done so, but if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer those. Otherwise, I would excuse myself from your important meeting, get back to my pastor and the guests waiting for me for lunch, but at the same time, again would love to answer any questions if you have any.
Speaker 1:Wow, mr Washington, I can't thank you enough for that personal testimony. It's powerful. You know, it's one thing when you read about things, it's another thing when you personally experience it. And we've got some key members of our board on this call right now, and I just want to plant a seed that will probably reach out to you and invite you to be a member of our board of advisors and also to recommend, if you don't know him already, to link you up with Kendall and Sheila Qualls, who formed Take Charge in Minneapolis, minnesota, after the George Floyd incident. It's very powerful. Kendall is just he's running for governor right now, minnesota. He's just like yourself, he's just very impactful, and so I just want to plant that seed that we'd like to bring on to our board of advisors. Yeah, so with that, we've got about 20 minutes left for Q and a. Eric, you've got your hand up, go ahead, sir.
Speaker 7:Yes, so my name is Eric Vogel. This question is for professor Ridgely. I live in Connecticut. I want to thank you very much for writing brutal minds. When I read it I was taken back to the fall of 2001, when I was enrolling my daughter at Southern Connecticut State University. It reminded me of the briefings by the dean of the students, it reminded me of the various campus representatives of the clubs and finally, it reminded me of an incident in the fall of that year, a sexual harassment incident with my daughter, and how it was handled, or, shall I say, was not handled by the administration. But my question concerns the service academies and the civilian professors at the service academies, in particular the Air Force Academy, of which I'm a graduate professor originally. Do you have any comment or have you done any research? What are your thoughts on how those professors, keeping in mind the six to one ratio, how those professors may have been an influence on the scourge of DEI and CRT at the academies among the cadets?
Speaker 3:Thank you, I have no personal firsthand information about that. I know pretty much what. I try to keep abreast of what's going on in the service academies, for obvious reasons to propagate a social justice message throughout the military. Because of the hierarchical nature, because of the discipline of the troops, because of the nature of seriously obeying orders, and if the right person is giving you an order to do something, we're going to do DEI now. It's yes, sir, we're going to do DEI now. So that's one reason why it's so easy to get this kind of thing started, the kind of thing that Ron Scott was talking about, you know, with the purple bandoliers. And what can we do about it?
Speaker 3:Well, I think that, again, I can't speak of personal knowledge of these people teaching, but I do know the type and I do know what motivates professors and I do know what motivates left-wing professors, and if they can get away with propagating this type of ideology in a classroom, then they will do it. They are not. They don't have that healthy circumspection and that healthy restraint that we on the right, at least in academia, have with respect to using the classroom as a bully pulpit. We don't like to do that. We believe in the Max Weberian view of the classroom as being neutral and the idea that let a thousand opinions bloom, let students argue these issues, whereas radical progressives, professors, view this type of thing. This is well. You can't be objective and therefore you have to move your politics front and center and let them inform what you say in the classroom. I think that's what's going on in the service academies, as well as what's going on with respect to the colleges, writ large.
Speaker 3:But I would say that the key to doing this is to rid yourself of the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is where this stuff happens. Professors have a minor, circumscribed influence in their classroom. The bureaucracies and the bureaucrats and apparatchiks, the political commissars, as Ron has called them, the ZOM police. They have free reign around the campus and they are charged with messaging this left-wing DEI message 24-7. They call this they have a name for it they call this milieu management. We're going to manage the milieu so that students cannot escape this message, and it is a message that is grounded in social justice, it's grounded in CRT, it's grounded in DEI, and this message is that America is irredeemably racist and you're playing a part in it, either as a villain or a victim. That's my answer.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thanks, Dr Ridgely. Okay, next up, Dr Bray.
Speaker 8:Hi everyone. I'm a professor of finance here in Atlanta, georgia. I have met with Stan.
Speaker 3:You're a troublemaker, You're a troublemaker.
Speaker 8:Bray, hey, stan. So my question for Stanley and the group really is you know, I've been speaking out loudly for five years giving Georgia hell on LinkedIn. That's my main platform. I'm at the point where we have mostly conservative, mostly white, mostly Republicans on this thing called the Board of Regents in the state of Georgia and they're the ones who get the money from the legislature and pass it on to the universities. And so if they're not willing to show the necessary fortitude and backbone, how do we get the public spotlight? How do we get the Georgia taxpayers to really pay attention to who's in charge and why are they funding what I see in a two? I got a 200 page document from the state on DEI funding. How do we get all of that information you know blown up, so to speak, because I do like to talk publicly and let all that stuff out there, but it's just not. It's just not working. The people with the money are not willing to step up to the plate.
Speaker 1:Okay, Professor Ridgely and others on the call. You want to jump in there?
Speaker 3:Well, if I had the answer to get people to step up to the plate and I could spell that out and motivate people to do something, I'd be something, wouldn't I? But I don't. Getting people to understand the nature of a problem is part of the problem. I mean halfway there. Understand the nature of a problem is part of the problem, I mean halfway there. If you can get people to understand the nature of the problem, its extent, its depth and breadth, in the college campuses and there's basically there is a propaganda machine that is operating 24-7 against the views that I have stated here, that there is a public view that is articulated by bureaucrats. There is a public view that is articulated by bureaucrats, and God knows I hate bureaucrats who use bureaucrat speak and who try to basically masking, covering up what is actually happening on the campuses. There are several layers that you have to fight. Your's important to them. And what's going to happen, taking that long review, what's going to happen in higher education if these people have their way, and I'm doing what I can.
Speaker 3:I think that writing books and publicizing and doing town halls like this to say this is not my opinion, this is not up for discussion. This is what they say they are doing. And I've always told people if you can find any mistakes of fact in my books, you know, I'll give you a hundred bucks for every mistake of fact, not accounting typos, okay. But there's never any taker for that because it's all true and so. Well, you're not providing enough context. Well, here's some more context, and so that if you finally get someone to you know, move away from denial. And I will tell you this I never really understood denial until I actually have faced it. I've actually had people denying to me that such and such doesn't exist. It's a figment, it's exaggerated, and I'm saying well, what I'm telling you is what they're saying, they're doing, and so you're disagreeing with them and what they're saying, and so it's an intractable problem, but one I think we have to continue pushing against.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Well, and we're dealing with ideology and in my opinion and I think I speak for starters the best way to defeat ideology is through education, where we advance the truth and how that fits within the context of our constitutional republic. In America, We've been so blessed with the greatest experiment in the history of humankind, and it's on thin ice right now if we let the ideologues continue to win on thin ice right now, if we let the ideologues continue to win. So it's an educational battle and I'm convinced we're going to win it with good people here that understand the nature of the problem, are writing about it and are doing something about it. So with that, we've got a couple more hands up Lester Gabriel and then Chris Rauer on deck.
Speaker 9:Yes, then Chris Raul on deck. Yes, One of the fronts of this battle that we're in are our public libraries and school libraries. I would urge all of you to go to your local libraries and see what's there and what's not there, and if you see some gaps books like we're talking about today most libraries have a way of recommending books and if they get enough recommendations, sometimes they will actually add it to their collection so that our friends and neighbors can have access to it without going and buying it.
Speaker 1:Great, yeah, thanks for that idea. Lesser Chris, you're up.
Speaker 10:Thank you, ron. I appreciate the opportunity to ask this question Regarding the service academies and probably a general question mainly to STARS. Perhaps Stan can comment as well. But we have a presidential executive order removing DEI from the services. We have a secretary of defense who has been very vocal publicly saying DEI is dead in the services. So the question is what iset populations to remove it altogether? Have the armbands gone away? But maybe only symbolically. But maybe only symbolically. Are the civilian instructors that don't have to obey military orders? Are they still propagating the DEI within the cadet ranks? How successful, in other words, has the top-down EO SECDEF direction? How successful has that been at the Service Academy? Does anybody have any idea?
Speaker 1:We've got some and then I'll defer to our board chair and vice chair for their insights here. A lot of the change we see is cosmetic. The same individuals that had diversity and inclusion titles now have different titles, but the people are still there. Individuals that had diversity inclusion titles now have different titles, but the people are still there. And so this is going to require an effort from outside the Department of Defense to continue to educate people, to educate the voters, to implement the changes that we think are needed. For instance, even with all the executive orders that have been issued, we're still working with Congress to say they need to codify these changes in public law. So we still have a lot of work to do in that regard. So with that, I'd invite General Bishop or General Arbuckle or both, if you want to add to that for Chris.
Speaker 2:If you want to add to that for Chris, okay, joe, I'll jump in here as the Zumi grad Joe tries to distance himself from us academy grads. Chris, your question is spot on the target and that's what we've been wrestling with. So I'll give you some real quick feedback that I get. I mean I have a lot of interaction with cadets. What you see in my background is our Breckenridge ski cabin. We've got a room upstairs called the cadet bunk room. So I see cadets a lot, especially on weekends in the winter. Every single cadet I've asked since president that I've seen. I've asked since President Trump took over and issued the executive order what do you see about DEI? And they basically say we don't see anything more about it at all. I had suggested to General Barrifying that he removed the purple ropes before he was directed to do so. He didn't right away, but the next week he was directed to do so, but the next week he was directed to do so. So he's a listener. I think he's certainly refocused the academy on the warrior ethos, another area that we're trying to break into and I think we've had huge success here.
Speaker 2:Besides the Congress that Ron just mentioned is the Board of Visitors. I mean we've briefed probably half of the Board of Visitors. I mean we've briefed probably half of the Board of Visitors. And just before attending this town hall we got an email from one of the Board of Visitors. I don't know if Stoli's on here or not, but he got permission now for it not to be just Zoom. We can attend in person. So it should be an interesting session.
Speaker 2:I think I plan on driving down from Breckenridge to Colorado Springs on the 6th, 7th of August and seeing that. So what I think is happening within DOD for political expediency, they have declared DEI is dead, but I think, as Dr Ridgely and Maurice, if he's still on here, would all tell us, that this Marxist march, you don't end it in a couple of months. So in my mind anyway, it goes from the education piece that we've talked about to the elimination piece, which both the president and the secretary of defense have done a pretty good job of eliminating it. But now how do we eradicate it? And that's the question that we've been struggling with since the last fall.
Speaker 11:Joe, anything to jump in there and add? I think you're right on the mark there, rod, and the bottom line is it's one thing, as we know, to issue orders from the president to get rid of DEI and the Secretary of Defense with his memos. It's another thing to have them properly executed, and that's where we're at right now it's the execution of these orders to get rid of, eradicate DEI, and there's a lot of institutional resistance, as we've heard, that exists in various places, and I think it's going to be a generational battle.
Speaker 10:Frankly, Can I do a quick follow-up? Thanks for those answers. Number one is there's a reference to codifying the EO, et cetera. Is there a way for the Uniform Code of Military Justice as an alternative to public law, as a means to, for example and this would be extreme but removing cadets that have been embraced and are committed to this philosophy, so that they don't continue to infect the military services? Number one. Number two General Flynn is an example and Maurice Bannon are on the Board of Visitors at the West Point. Can the Board of Visitors at the Air Force Academy and I have no idea who they are could they be as influential as perhaps people like General Flynn in making change at the Academy? Thank you for those, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'll jump in there real quick. We've met several of the presidential appointees to the USAPA Board of Visitors. We've had a Zoom call with Charlie Kirk. He's very fired up about weighing in with his connections. He's got a direct line to the president and the secretary of defense. We've met with Dan Clark, probably one of the top 10 international speakers, motivational speakers in the world. He's fired up, even made the comment that you know, as he's reviewed our website and got up to speed on what STARS has been doing, flattered us by telling us that right now STARS is probably the most impactful organization in Washington DC right now, given our very small stature and whatever. But what we've been able to do and what we want to do is part of that solution.
Speaker 1:Stoli, doug, stoli Nicolai. He's an Academy grad F-16 fighter pilot, colonel retired In fact. Stoli was here last night as a guest with Mike and Vivian Rose, delivering a speech to a group last night. Stoli's been elected as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Visitors. He's getting up to speed on the FOIAs that we have filed and wants to go into that position, fully aware of the issues right now pending at the Academy.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, congressman August Pfluger, who now chairs the Republican Study Committee in the House probably the next powerful position under the Speaker of the House, because I mean they're the ones that do all the research, they've got the knowledge about what needs to go into bills that are being advanced in Congress has been elected chairman of the Board of Visitors. So we have a Board of Visitors, at least at the presidential appointed level. That is going in not to be a rubber stamp for the superintendent of the academy, but an oversight committee on behalf of the American taxpayer. So we're very optimistic about what they bring to play. And so with that, brock had a hand up and we got two others.
Speaker 12:Yeah, just a quickie for Professor Ridgely and Professor Gray, if you choose to answer. My daughter-in-law is, or was, a professor at Drexel and she's an academy grad, married to my son, academy grad from early 2000s, and she has not spoken to us for about four or five years now because we voted for President Trump and that was not until she started teaching there at Drexel. So my question, I guess, has to do with the influence of the bureaucracy actually on the professors, and how many are the professors able get over that fear of loneliness? What I'm getting by that is fear of being ostracized or canceled or silenced or ignored, for example, un-stunned or ignored, for example. So are the professors getting some of this fortitude to fight back or are they just cowing to that and just curious?
Speaker 3:Well I should say, your daughter doesn't talk to me either. So here at Drexel I can say that you know, my colleagues by and large are nice people. I mean, it's one of those things where it's two distinct groups of people. You've got professors over here, I've got one of my colleagues is on this Zoom call, as a matter of fact. He doesn't agree with me on anything. Well, he disagreed with me on certain things with regard to administration. But we can disagree and we chat.
Speaker 3:But what I will say is this is that many persons who would agree with what this board stands for, what this group stands for, are not going to be public about it. They don't want the trouble. I think it's particularly with our previous administration here at this particular university, with one of the worst college presidents in America who has now thankfully departed, and we have a wonderful new president who's come in and has really focused on the right things. Maybe we're going to see something, and maybe you will see something, john, in this relationship. I wish it the best on that. It's very tough to have kids who behave that way, particularly for reasons that aren't really valid, and the fact is that people who live and die by their ideology are really unpleasant people and are people who are really cheating themselves out of a rich, full life. I think. I think that a lot of people come by my office and on the sly, will say we support you, love what you do, love all of that stuff which is really not of much value in the public realm. But what I found is that, because of the changing winds, both nationally and both here in Philadelphia, we're finding more and more people are standing up and are not afraid to express themselves.
Speaker 3:With regard to this, I'm going to use the term woke agenda. Basically, it's the social justice agenda, the socialist agenda, the DEI expression of that agenda. So there is hope. I think that I'm going to continue with doing what I'm doing, which is I don't put, get in anyone's face, but I also do not shrink from the confrontation if there happens to be one, and I think that that's a basic measure of your integrity. Whether you're a gadfly and you want to be a gadfly, well, good luck on that, but if you're also someone who doesn't want to shrink back and say, I'm not going to step back and allow you to have your say in all of this, we all have to have a certain amount of integrity and self-respect to step out and be counted when it counts to be counted. I hope that some sort of answer to your question.
Speaker 12:Well, I just I was just curious about the feeling there, I guess of a lot of professors you know and, like I say, they come into your office covertly. I guess of a lot of professors you know, like I say, they come into your office covertly, I guess, and express their admiration on what you're doing, but they're not being very public about it.
Speaker 3:Well, one guy, an Indian colleague, who saw me in the hallway and he started talking. Then he dramatically looked both ways up. Oh I'm talking to Stan, I better not be seen Something like that. You know, that's kind of the first overt thing I'd heard about that, that it was a bad thing to be seen talking with me in the hallway. So that's another barometer, I guess, of measurement of what's going on.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you. Three more questions, and then I'll ask General Bishop to close it out.
Speaker 13:Let's see Jim Wyman, mike Rose on deck. Yes, sir, Dr Ridgeland, I'd like to thank you for your book. I have the yellow one. Now it seems I got to get the red one. I think they complement each other.
Speaker 13:I also dropped some things I thought might be helpful to some people in the chat. One is a reference and a link to the book by Dr Gilliam. I don't know how you feel about that, but it's Confessions of a Professor where he revisits the institutions where he got his undergrad degree to get a more advanced degree and found that they had changed over 20 or 30 years. You may want to comment on your opinion about his work. I did want to mention something that I note. I was trained as an engineer in process control and systems and I one time sat down and drew a flow chart.
Speaker 13:It would seem to me that the universities and colleges are at the center of this whole thing, because they crank out what the Wizard of Oz told us was so important, which is a diploma, and then people with diplomas some of them would feed back into the teachers' unions and teach the K-12. People join the teachers' unions and prepare the kids by the time they got through grade 12 and entered the colleges, they were softened up. The college professors over time since 1968 would seem to since that time, have hired people that we professors and department heads who were even farther to the left than them. So there's been a constant left drift in my lifetime anyway since then. But the STEM people that the colleges turn out seem to be a little bit insulated because the protons and the steel don't submit to literature.
Speaker 13:But the soft people, the humanities, were people who can write and they went into the news media to write the stories. And the pretty ones went into the news media to read the stories on camera and then some of the academics circled back, stayed in academia and wrote these papers which Helen Pluckrose can tell you, just drifted farther and farther to the left, and that would seem to be the center of it. So my hope is that with new education systems, with kids turning to AI and getting AI tutors, the brick and mortar system won't have as much strength. The brick and mortar system won't have as much strength, but it's still the effect of that diploma seems to be something that we're going to have to fight. Your comments, if you have any I know it's a lot I'd like to write to you at Drexel and send you my diagram.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I think there's a dichotomy, that's certainly between the STEM side business, economics, stem and what I call the soft side or the dark side of campus, which is where most of the nefarious types dwell and lie to each other and substantiate each other's prejudices. The STEM field has a nice smorgasbord of a range of political opinion and mainly people who are in the military, people who are athletes, people who work in the STEM fields. They can't afford to lie, they can't afford to put up a front. They can't argue their way out of the laws of Newton's laws. They can't argue that out of the laws of you know, newton's laws. They can't argue that. But in the soft side they can put up really, really good arguments. You know the STEM fields are a mixed bag.
Speaker 3:I've got a STEM colleague who's on here right now from Drexel University, who's a I'm sure he's probably we consider himself a left winger, but he is intellectually honest and someone I respect greatly and we have good conversations about the things we've been talking about here today and remain friends.
Speaker 3:But I think that it's good to remember that reality doesn't care about your feelings. You know and that's a hard lesson that a lot of young people in this generation coming through has to find out, and they have to realize they want reality to conform to their feelings. And then we see a lot of people out on the streets right now protesting about what's happening in various cities, various things and are a bad. I hate to think if we had to rely upon this generation to storm the beaches at Normandy or fly bomber missions over Germany in 1943. How aghast, a terrible thing that would be. And I should say, by the way, mr Lyman, that you and I are graduates of 77. I was a student at UNC, chapel Hill as an undergraduate when you were a student at the Military Academy, and I think we played you guys in football when you had a great, a really great quarterback. I can't remember his name right now but, uh, in any case, I had to reach out when I saw that 77 there.
Speaker 1:So great, all right, a couple more uh questions and then uh, and then we'll wrap it up with general bishop. Uh, senator rose, you're up, sir.
Speaker 5:All right, ron, I actually have two comments. One is in answer to the question previously can't the military get rid of people that have basically the wrong viewpoints? Let me point out that the commander-in-chief has an absolute right, without court interference, to determine who's going to be commissioned. There's never been a court decision ever requiring the commissioning of anybody. Furthermore, even during the COVID vaccine crisis, the Supreme Court itself ruled that the military had a right to decide where to assign people, that even if they were being reassigned because they weren't taking a COVID vaccine, when the court said they had a right not to take a COVID vaccine, the court was not going to interfere with their assignment. And during the Vietnam War, a doctor, a medical doctor, was assigned to do stuff that had nothing to do with medicine, and the Supreme Court upheld that. So here's the bottom line If the president, the commander chief, chose to do so, they could not commission a West Point senior who's a communist and everybody knows it and he's wearing it on his t-shirt. You could just say I'm not going to commission you because of your viewpoint. There's no such thing as viewpoint discrimination, banning the president from assigning military members wherever he wants them to go or to keep them from being commissioned.
Speaker 5:Now, my second point is two of the top four leaders of the Air Force Academy Association of Graduates chapter here in South Carolina refused to attend the presentation Ron Scott and I are going to give tonight and refused to attend the presentation that was given at Charleston Southern University by Stoli Nikolai, southern University, by Stoli Nikolai. And what struck me is number one. Their refusal by email was very curt and angry. One of them said this is just right-wing extremism. And I replied very courteously could you explain that? What do you mean? Why do you think that? And there is no response. And the other angrily said I'm not going to waste my time and what I'm struck with is you ask these people well, look, I'm open, explain to me what's your concern. And they won't do it or they can't do it.
Speaker 5:And I even told the first person look, I'm so open-minded and I'll tell you this for the first time. I think Ron and Rod know this, joe knows this, but I actually attended a communist party rally for a day in Minneapolis because I wanted to know what this is all about and it was very enlightening and shocking that they could be that screwed up. But I'm saying the people on the left accuse us of being extreme and then they don't justify it, they won't talk about it. People I deal with anyway, but I don't even perceive us as being extreme. I perceive they've gone so far left that what is really just being a patriot, just being moderate American, they see as extreme. So anyway, this division is all around us, even among academy graduates that I deal with here in Charleston, south Carolina.
Speaker 1:Over. Great Thanks for those observations, Senator. Last up, Dr Bray, and then we'll close it.
Speaker 8:Real quick. I just wanted to touch on John Brockman's question about how colleagues perceive you the same thing that Stan was saying. Over the last five years I've noticed that some people stop talking to me and that's fine, but that's just. They're cowards and I don't think the environment will get better. Now I teach finance, so I'm in a capitalist department For the most part. We have some crazies, as any academic department does, but for the most part my home base is comfortable. But I don't think you'll ever see history or philosophy or anybody over there in the humanities who still has a rational mindset. I don't think they'll ever speak up until the climate on campus changes and that's the administration's doing. I've offered to meet with the president of our university. I have met with her, but she refuses to do anything and she hires her gal pals who are into DEI and just changes their titles. Until we get a new president and we fire college administrators who went along and supported DEI, nothing will change Nothing.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's all I got, but I would love to talk to anybody on the call about working with the military.
Speaker 8:I love the military and I do love to say this stuff out loud.
Speaker 1:Well, great points, Dr Bray, Having been a professor myself, having been a professor myself, you're right, Leadership sets the tone and the climate, the culture. So, with that General Bishop, we've had a hearty discussion here this morning and I personally want to thank everybody for joining the call our speakers, Professor Stan Ridgely and Maurice Washington for his testimonial. Our speakers, Professor Stan Ridgely and Maurice Washington for his testimonial. So with that General Bishop, would you do the honor of closing it out for us?
Speaker 2:Thanks, ron, I sure will. And, as you said, wow, what a great discussion. Thanks everybody for attending and showing up and just a huge thanks to Dr Ridgely and Maurice. Dr Ridgely, I mean that 30 minutes plus with you was just great. As Ron mentioned earlier, we've been at this for five years. I thought I knew just about everything but found your presentation enlightening. I really like the thought of virtuous victimhood. That really kind of nails it.
Speaker 2:You mentioned you have a number of colleagues that don't agree with you. We have had a number of military colleagues that don't agree with us as well. A former superintendent of the Air Force Academy, for example, told us well, I just want to push DEI into every nook and cranny of the Air Force Academy. One of the comebacks I have when people say that is would you just listen to your people? Now, in a public university is probably a higher percentage. But again, the interaction I have with cadets, in fact at this very table I'm coming to you from, is when I first was alerted to this. I was flipping pancakes before four cadets and I were going skiing and one of them just offered the culture is changing underneath my feet and the other cadet chimed in with and it's not for the better. They're dividing us into identity groups and that was my first, you know, wakeup call before the Black Lives Matter video that really got us started. So listen to your people. And then something that I've come across lately that I push back with, like my son, you know. He said, well, dad, what's wrong with DEI? And I said, you know, nobody really is against diversity and inclusion. However, the way the community is using it, those that are pushing it, it's a soapy language and they don't really mean they're about diversity, they don't really mean they're about inclusion. But the big one is the equity part, because the way that, at least in DOD, equity has been implemented, it's discriminatory. It's discrimination, as you said earlier, dr Ridgely, it's breaking a number of the laws of our land and just reinforced by the UNC Harvard case recently in college admissions.
Speaker 2:So I do think, as you started your speech, dr Ridgely, we do speak past one another on this issue. I think everybody's for giving a handout, everybody's for leveling the playing field. But what I like to say well, why don't we focus on that K through 12? So we're leveling the playing field before we're discriminating at a time in life when it affects someone else's hopes, dreams and aspirations. So big time thanks to everybody else that's pitching in and doing that. This gives you a taste of where I think STARS is. I think Dr Ridgely said he's going to continue what he's doing. I think STARS is probably going to continue to do.
Speaker 2:As Ron said, the way to hopefully solve this is education. But we'd like to take it to the next level and that's getting more into that eradication piece and that's what we'll talk about on Friday with our board of advisors and board of directors again. So if you'd like to participate in that, we welcome you to. And what we're talking about is, you know, just to put a finer point on it, let's say there's great executive orders there now on merit. There's follow-up from the Secretary of Defense on merit in service Academy admissions with some memorandums. Okay, but how do you define merit? And you know you have to get down into the inches and you have to follow things up. How about you know the Constitution and the oath of office? Yeah, we can look at and see. Okay, nobody's really teaching critical race theory or DEI anymore. But why don't we focus particularly our military officers to be at our service academies and the other DOD programs and ROTC et cetera, on more education on the Constitution, and the oath Cadets tell us they basically have zero. So that's kind of where we think we can help out in the eradication piece.
Speaker 2:But I certainly agree with my vice chair, our vice chair, joe General Arbuckle, when he says this is probably a generational thing. It's not just going to go away. So thanks to everybody for pitching in and helping us. We started STARS five-plus years ago with a little somewhat of a slogan. It was wake up, stand up, speak up and don't give up, and I think that kind of paints our picture for the years ahead. So that's all I have, ron. Thanks everybody for participating Great.
Speaker 1:Thanks General. Thanks everyone. You know where our website is starsus, with two R's, starsus and our team continues to grow and we welcome anybody that's new to STARS to join our team.
Speaker 6:Thank you, and I'd like to just add a quick prayer. Father in heaven, thank you for this group of men and women who stand strong behind the country that you gave us. We ask protection, we ask light, we ask an open area for those people who are blinded, that they may see the light and join us in protecting our military and protecting our country In Jesus's name, amen.
Speaker 1:Amen. Thank you, lori, thank you very much. You're welcome.