#diversicrats

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jennifer Kabbany

Published: Jan 30, 2025

New research has found the number of University of Michigan employees who work either full-time or part-time on diversity, equity, and inclusion-related efforts now tops 1,100.

The findings come as the U.S. Department of Education under President Donald Trump has eliminated all its DEI initiatives, including placing DEI staff on paid administrative leave and removing DEI language, trainings, directives, and advisory boards throughout the agency.

The University of Michigan in December announced it will no longer require diversity statements in faculty hiring and tenure decisions — but its Board of Regents stopped short of cutting any DEI spending despite at least one regent voicing concerns about the millions of dollars the public institution is spending to embed DEI into every corner of campus under its DEI 2.0 plan.

One reported internal estimate placed the cost of DEI spending at UMich at $250 million over the last eight or so years, yet annual student surveys show many of the institution’s students report feeling like they do not belong on campus.

Economist Mark Perry, a University of Michigan-Flint emeritus professor who tallied up the latest number of DEI jobs at UMich, told The College Fix its DEI bureaucracy is extraordinary in its size and scope.

The report identifies 248 full-time UM staff members whose main duties are to provide DEI programming services and advance DEI 2.0 at an annual payroll cost of $24 million.

When fringe benefits are added at a rate of 32 percent of base salaries it brings the total annual compensation of UM’s DEI staff to nearly $31.7 million — or enough to pay in-state tuition and fees for approximately 1,800 students.

[ Pictured, the top 30 paid DEI employees; for entire list, click here ]

“The rest of the country in higher education, government, and the corporate world are really turning back on DEI, but the University of Michigan is doubling down on DEI,” Perry said. “It shows an obsessive commitment to efforts that have questionable outcomes and are extremely expensive.”

Every year Perry tallies the amount of money and resources UMich devotes to DEI, but this year he took it a step further, delving into the bowels of all the DEI 2.0 Unit Strategic Plans posted online across the institution’s 51 units to determine the scope of the efforts.

“Every year they [UMich administrators] criticize the DEI headcount I come up with, but they never come up with a number of their own — maybe this is the year they will,” he said, adding it remains to be seen whether regents will address the topic at their February meeting, but he believes they should.

The College Fix provided on Monday a copy of Perry’s report and spreadsheet to the University of Michigan’s media affairs division and the office of Tabbye Chavous, chief diversity officer. Chavous did not respond. Colleen Mastony, assistant vice president for public affairs, told The Fix in response: “We don’t have anything more to share. The agenda for the regents meeting will be posted here on Feb. 17.”

Bean counting

Michigan maintains an Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, or ODEI, that includes a chief diversity officer, Chavous, who earns $417,000 annually plus benefits.

“In contrast, Michigan’s governor Gretchen Whitmer’s salary is $159,300, and the average salaries for assistant, associate, and full professors at UM (all campuses) are $130,037, $145,360, and $207,827 respectively,” according to the research study compiled by Perry and provided exclusively to The College Fix.

The University of Michigan’s central ODEI office oversees the National Center for Institutional Diversity, Center for Educational Outreach, Wolverine Pathways, and Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives — all told requiring 90 full-time staffers, including eight open positions, the report states.

ODEI also oversees an additional 123 diversity-related positions that do not currently have names assigned such as interns, ambassadors, and coordinators filled by a variety of students and staff, according to Perry’s report, compiled in January using public data on ODEI’s Leadership & Staff website.

On top of those efforts, the university employs 167 staffers across UM’s schools, colleges, centers, programs, offices, and libraries to advance DEI, such as the College of Engineering’s Office of Culture Community and Equity (21 staffers) and Michigan Medicine’s Office for Health, Equity, and Inclusion (20 staffers).

But wait — there’s more. To enact its massive “DEI 2.0 Plan,” the university has tapped 118 “Unit Leads” — a mix of deans, scholars and staffers — 46 who are full-time diversity employees and 72 who work part-time alongside their normal jobs to oversee the implementation of the various DEI goals within each of the university’s 51 units, from 17 academic schools and colleges to the IT division to Athletics to the Department of Public Safety to three libraries to the Museum of Art and even the Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum.

To support those “Unit Leads,” a total of 679 additional staffers across the 51 units have been tasked with helping roll out the DEI 2.0 plan, according to Perry, who reviewed each of the 51 Unit Strategic Plans to count the number of employees tasked with DEI advancement.

All told, that’s roughly 1,122 jobs dedicated to advancing DEI at the University of Michigan, according to Perry’s findings. The University of Michigan-Flint emeritus professor also notes in his report he didn’t even include 51 jobs in the Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX Office in his round-up.

“Ten DEI staff members earn more than $200,000 and 79 earn $100,000 or more. The average DEI salary at UM is $97,843 which brings total average annual compensation per DEI employee to more than $129,000 with fringe benefits added at a rate of 32%. Including fringe benefits, 155 DEI employees at UM receive total annual compensation of more than $100,000,” the report states.

A demographic analysis of the 248 DEI employees, who Perry dubs “diversicrats,” also reveals that women are significantly overrepresented by a factor of more than 3-to-1 at 76.4 percent female compared to 23.6 percent male, respectively; employees of color are also significantly overrepresented among DEI staff compared to whites, 57 percent to 43 percent, respectively.

Perry told The College Fix the data raises the possibility of systemic gender and racial biases for hiring diversity staff at UM.

Asked to weigh in on the research, longtime University of Michigan physics Professor Keith Riles said he is shocked by them.

“These numbers are jaw-dropping, even worse than I had realized,” Riles told The College Fix via email Monday. Riles made headlines in December when he appeared before the regents and urged them to cut DEI spending, arguing some of their apparent preferential minority hiring practices appear to be illegal

“The money wasted on DEI salaries should go into scholarships for talented Michigan students from low-income families, regardless of race or gender,” Riles told The Fix.

==

Absolutely insane.

$31 million to employ more than a thousand people for an imaginary job, which produced an unnecessary workforce more homogeneous than the entire rest of the university.

This is fraud, plain and simple.

[therainbowwillow]

Resisting Project 2025's Attacks Queer and Trans Students

What is Project 2025? Project 2025 is a document produced by The Heritage Foundation, an American right-wing think tank, outlining a conservative political plan they hope to see implemented by the next Republican president (now President-Elect Donald Trump).

What does Project 2025 say about education broadly? Project 2025 suggests a wide variety of extreme measures to be taken against progressive values in public schools from promoting "school choice" (policies that, in reality, do not improve student outcomes and make education into a competitive market rather than a public good) to rolling back nondiscrimination regulations to dissolving the Department of Education entirely. Many of Project 2025's proposed policies would leave minoritized students more vulnerable to discrimination in schools and some policies support discrimination against them outright (see below).

What does Project 2025 say about queer and trans rights in school? Project 2025 makes a few proposals and claims regarding gender and sexuality:

Schools should "[reject] gender ideology" in the name of "safeguarding civil rights" (page 322)

Title IX protections (which are in place to prevent discrimination on the basis of sex in educational environments) should be rolled back (page 331)

The attempt to add a "non-binary" option when collecting school data should be rescinded (page 322)

"Sex" under Title IX should be defined to mean "only biological sex recognized at birth" (page 333)

There is "no scientific basis" for the idea that sex should be "redefin[ed]" as "sexual orientation and gender identity," a claim which they don't even attempt to cite a source for (page 333)

Being trans is a "social contagion" that causes young AFAB people to want to mutilate their bodies (pages 345-346)

Schools should forbid public education employees from using their students' preferred names and pronouns without parental consent (page 346)

We might expect to see some sources cited for these bold claims and proposals, but for all forty-five pages of the "Department of Education" section of this document, there are only 19 footnotes.

Project 2025 is an under-researched, ultra-conservative playbook that lays out the groundwork for how we can best discriminate against the most vulnerable members of our communities.

Now that Trump has been elected, what can we do to prepare for and resist Project 2025's proposals for education?

Understand what we're up against: Reading through the document itself is a disheartening process, but if you're in a place to do so, it's worth a try. The authors of Project 2025 tend to be pretty mask-off---they'll tell you all about the harm they intend to do. If you'd prefer not to waste hours of your life reading a document that periodically drops phrases so cringy they might make your soul leave your body (see: "woke diversicrats"), you can just read a summary. The ACLU has a good one that can be accessed here.

Teachers, get active in your union: Project 2025 is explicitly anti-union. It even accuses two of the US's biggest teachers' unions of "promot[ing] radical racial and gender ideologies in schools" (page 342). Working class solidarity is how we achieve the collective power we'll need to fight these policies in our schools. (Here is how the Chicago Teacher's Union is practicing resistance---a case study!)

Build community and support networks: This could mean making a point to talk to a few new people while you're attending a protest, attending school meetings with a group of fellow progressives, breaking up capitalist markets by planning/attending a mutual aid fair, or just chatting and laughing with some friends. The goal of fascism is to make us feel isolated. Don't let them succeed.

Take care of yourself: Project 2025's proposals are scary, especially for people whose very identities are being targeted. Don't let anyone tell you that you're "failing at activism" if you need to take a step back.

Teachers (and parents of minoritized students), assure your students and kids that you are on their side: If you're able, hang up a pride flag in your classroom/house, include an optional question about students' preferred pronouns on your introduction survey, and/or include minoritized authors and history in your classes. Have your students learn about Stonewall, read some short stories by James Baldwin, analyze Audre Lorde's poems, and/or introduce them to your favorite queer/BIPOC/disabled/immigrant authors and thinkers. Representation matters!

Sign the ACLU's petition to stop Project 2025: It's important to show lawmakers that Project 2025's radical and dangerous ideas do not represent what we want for our country.

Donate: The Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLU, and lots of other civil rights organizations are fighting hard against Project 2025 and the Trump Administration's policy proposals. Consider sending a donation to an organization that aligns with your values.

No matter how hard Trump and his cronies fight, LGBTQ+ people will always exist in our schools. They will never get rid of us and they will never drown out our voices. We will always demand to be safe, accepted, and included and we will win.

[stephanpolitical]

Conservative groups write 'game plan' for U.S. government takeover

Mark Richardson

If a Republican wins the White House in the future, the Heritage Foundation has a plan to overhaul such federal agencies as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to operate under conservative regulation. (Tada Images/Adobe Stock)

By Carrie Baker for Ms. Magazine.

Broadcast version by Mark Richardson reporting for the Ms. Magazine-Public News Service Collaboration

Wealthy right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation has published a detailed plan for the next Republican president to use the executive branch of the federal government to attack the rights of women, LGBTQ people and the BIPOC community, by eliminating the agencies and offices responsible for enforcing civil rights laws and placing trained right-wing ideologues in staff positions throughout the federal government.

Called the 2025 Presidential Transition Project—or “Project 2025,” for short—the plan has “four pillars”:

an 887-page policy agenda,

a presidential personnel database of vetted conservatives,

a Presidential Administration Academy to train these people to achieve the Project 2025 policy agenda, and

a 180-day playbook, which is what they hope to achieve in the first 180 days if Trump takes office in January 2025.

To develop this plan, the Heritage Foundation organized a broad coalition of over 90 conservative organizations—a who’s-who of groups that have led attacks on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, gender studies, the Equal Rights Amendment and #MeToo initiatives.

The coalition includes Concerned Women for America, the Independent Women’s Forum, the Eagle Forum, the Susan B. Anthony Foundation, Moms for Liberty, AAPLOG (the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists), Students for Life of America, Alliance Defending Freedom, First Liberty and Turning Point USA.

The Heritage Foundation claimed over 400 “scholars and policy experts” participated in writing the policy agenda, titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.”

Their main target: what they call “the totalitarian cult known today as ‘The Great Awokening.’”

Throughout “The Conservative Promise,” they rail against “woke progressivism,” “woke culture warriors,” “woke bureaucrats at the Pentagon,” “woke extremism,” “woke propaganda,” the “woke agenda,” “wokeism,” the “woke-dominated system of public schools and universities,” “woke revolutionaries,” the “radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction,” the “woke policies in corporate America” and the “woke gender ideology.” They describe the Department of Education as a “convenient one-stop shop for the woke education cartel.”

They have particular vitriol for colleges and universities, which they describe as an “establishment captured by woke ‘diversicrats’ and a de facto monopoly enforced by the federal accreditation cartel.”

The authors invoke their first Mandate for Leadership book series, written in 1979, which guided the Reagan presidency: “In 1979, the threats we faced were the Soviet Union, the socialism of 1970s liberals, and the predatory deviancy of cultural elites. Reagan defeated these beasts by ignoring their tentacles and striking instead at their hearts.”

Like their current leader, Donald Trump, they dehumanize Democrats by likening them to animals.

The plan has four goals:

Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.

Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.

Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.

Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”

The contradictions are glaring:

The authors of “The Conservative Promise” claim to support equality, while advocating for dismantling the government agencies that enforce laws ensuring equality, such as Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act.

They claim to support freedom and liberty, while advocating for a total ban on abortion, rolling back the rights of LGBTQ people and closing the border.

They claim to support free speech, while advocating for banning any mention of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” from schools and other societal institutions.

They claim to support the working class, while calling for tax cuts for the rich, elimination of labor protections and deregulation of big business and the oil industry.

Throughout “The Conservative Promise,” the authors condemn “ruling elites,” which they refer to as “Washington elites,” “establishment elites,” “Marxist elites,” “socialist elites,” “Hollywood elites,” “entrenched elites,” “globalist elites,” “pro-open border elites” and” cultural elites.”

They explain:

“Today, nearly every top-tier U.S. university president or Wall Street hedge fund manager has more in common with a socialist European head of state, than with the parents at a high school football game in Waco, Texas. Many elites’ entire identity, it seems, is wrapped up in their sense of superiority over those people. But under our Constitution, they are the mere equals of the workers who shower after work instead of before.” — p. 10

They assume the worst of intentions of people they brand elites, whom they charge with “making decisions for us” and working to “serve themselves first and everyone else a distant second.” They describe the “elites” as power-hungry socialists: “For socialists, who are almost always well-to-do, socialism is not a means of equalizing outcomes, but a means of accumulating power. They never get around to helping anyone else” (p. 15).

The irony is that the Heritage Foundation and many of the organizations in their coalition are led and funded by billionaire capitalists, most of whom don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes or be limited by labor laws or environmental regulations designed to protect the public from economic abuse, pollution and climate change. The conservatives criticizing the elites are themselves elites.

They argue that “the Left” opposes equality and liberty established in the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: “It’s this radical equality—liberty for all—not just of rights but of authority—that the rich and powerful have hated about democracy in America since 1776. They resent Americans’ audacity in insisting that we don’t need them to tell us how to live. It’s this inalienable right of self-direction—of each person’s opportunity to direct himself or herself, and his or her community, to the good—that the ruling class disdains” (p. 14).

Yet this “inalienable right to self-direction” does not appear to extend to pregnant women or LGBTQ people.

They even invoke women’s rights to call for the destruction of women’s rights: “Left to our own devices the American people rejected European monarchy and colonialism just as we rejected slavery, second-class citizenship for women,mercantilism, socialism, Wilsonian globalism, Fascism, Communism, and (today) wokeism” (p. 14).

Yet banning abortion makes women second-class citizens.

They charge the left with trying to control other people’s lives, while they themselves are the ones who propose and champion state-level and federal bans on abortion and gender-affirming care: “The Left does not believe that all men are created equal—they think they are special. They certainly don’t think all people have an unalienable right to pursue the good life. They think only they themselves have such a right along with a moral responsibility to make decisions for everyone else. They don’t think any citizen, state, business, church, or charity should be allowed any freedom until they first bend the knee” (p. 16).

Yet they want to use the force of law to impose their religious beliefs on others by determining intimate bodily decisions for pregnant women and LGBTQ people. Lawmakers that identify with the political left supports laws to empower individuals to make their own decisions about their bodies and lives, whereas the political right is passing laws limiting people’s ability to make these choices.

They explain what they believe freedom means in the Constitution: “An individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained—to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family—marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like” (p. 14). Thanksgiving dinners? What we ought? His Creator?

On immigration reform, they say, “The only direct impact of open borders on pro-open borders elites is that the constant flow of illegal immigration suppresses the wages of their housekeepers, landscapers, and busboys” (p. 11).

On “billionaire climate activists,” they say their concern for the environment “is not a political cause, but a pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue” (p. 11).

Climate-changing oil and gas is not the problem; it’s the solution, they say: “America’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas are not an environmental problem; they are the lifeblood of economic growth” (p. 13).

They condemn socialism and push free market capitalism, private property and deregulation in the name of liberty:

“In socialist nation after socialist nation, the only way the government could keep its disgruntled people in line was to surveil and terrorize them. By contrast, in countries with a high degree of economic freedom, elites are not in charge because everyone is in charge. People work, build, invest, save, and create according to their own interests and in service to the common good of their fellow citizens.” — p. 15

In reality, free market policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations have generated tremendous wealth inequality and environmental pollution that targets the most vulnerable communities.

Despite a longstanding American tradition that career employees of the federal government are not political appointees, “The Conservative Promise” calls for removing any federal government employee who disagrees with their beliefs and replacing them with conservative ideologues. They boast about “how to fire supposedly ‘un-fireable’ federal bureaucrats; how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of Government” (p. 9).

They promise the total destruction of the federal government: “The solution to all of the above problems is not to tinker with this or that government program, to replace this or that bureaucrat. These are problems not of technocratic efficiency but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves but by ripping out the trees—root and branch” (p. 12).

Some of the specific action items include:

Department of Education:

Eliminate the Department of Education, which enforces civil rights law, including Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education;

Revert to the Trump administration’s Title IX sexual harassment and assault standards, which placed burdensome restrictions on the ability of survivors to report assault and obtain justice;

Reverse the Biden administration’s definition of sex under Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity, and redefine sex to mean biological sex assigned at birth

Increase public funding of religious education through expansion of “school choice” policies and give federal funds to states as block grants with no strings attached.

Department of Health and Human Services:

On abortion—

Under threat of funding loss, require “liberal states” to report to the CDC, “accurate and reliable statistical data about abortion, abortion survivors, and abortion-related maternal deaths”;

Require treatment of “fetuses born alive” after abortion;

Withdraw Medicaid funds for states that require abortion insurance or that discriminate in violation of the Weldon Amendment, which declares that no HHS funding may go to a state or local government that discriminates against pro-life health entities or insurers;

Audit states for Hyde amendment compliance;

Require the CDC to track “abortion across various demographic indicators to assess whether certain populations are targeted by abortion providers” (based on false allegations of eugenic motivations);

Reverse Biden administration support for travel to get abortion health care;

Prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds and allow states to defund Planned Parenthood in their state Medicaid plans;

Reverse FDA approval of mifepristone or at least go back to the pre-2016 limitation and prohibit the mailing of abortion pills;

Prohibit stem cell research and stop “the development and testing of the COVID-19 vaccines with aborted fetal cell lines”;

Affirm “rights of conscience” to deny medical care;

Declare that abortion and euthanasia are not health care;

Reverse Biden interpretation of The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) that requires treatment of women miscarrying.

On gender-affirming care—

Block gender-affirming health care

End Centers for Disease Controls’s collection of data on gender identity;

Block National Institute of Health research on gender identity and transgender health care and instead fund studies into the “short-term and long-term negative effects of cross-sex interventions”;

Reverse Biden administration’s redefinition of “sex” to include gender identity, sexual orientation and pregnancy status.

Other—

Add work requirements to receive Medicaid;

Condemn single-motherhood and same-sex marriage;

“HHS should prioritize married father engagement in its messaging, health, and welfare policies.”

Administration for Children and Families:

Use TANF (welfare) money to promote “Marriage, healthy family formation, and delaying sex to prevent pregnancy”;

Child support in the United States should strengthen marriage as the norm, restore broken homes, and encourage unmarried couples to commit to marriage.

Led and funded by multi-billionaires, such as oil moguls Charles and David Koch, conservatives have fought for years to cut taxes, deregulate business, ban abortion, eliminate civil rights protections as well as public health and environmental regulations, privatize government institutions such as public schools and prisons and eliminate welfare programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food assistance.

In 2017, Donald Trump enacted many of these policies, which were later reversed by the Biden administration.

With careful planning, conservatives today are working to make their policy priorities permanent, no matter what happens in future elections.

Carrie Baker wrote this article for Ms. Magazine.

[isaacsapphire]

it's very much Not To Be Discussed, but at high levels all the 'black' people are Nigerian Igbo and all the 'hispanics' are high caste Brazilians directly descended from conquistadors. familial roots of the current soon-to-be Madame President are the rule, not the exception. ADOS who can perform at that level are literally rarer than diamonds, and when they are to be found they usually occupy no-work tailormade diversicrat jobs. this is all because of institutional racism ofc.

That sounds like a citation needed but the stats are hard to compile kind of thing.

[earthpages]

You can have quotas or you can have excellence. You can’t have both

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Related Issue: While I’m happy, pro bono, to do some of UM’s work advancing diversity, equity and inclusion by helping them uncover and expose civil rights violations on the Flint and Ann Arbor campuses (read about some of civil rights victories here), wouldn’t you think that the university could conduct some type of periodic audit/review of all of its programs, scholarships, fellowships, etc. to ensure continuous compliance with Title IX, the Michigan State Constitution, and UM’s own Nondiscrimination Policy? It’s not as if UM is short-staffed in the diversity, equity, and inclusion area. To the contrary, a preliminary investigation of UM’s salary database and various university websites reveals a small army of diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats, see a summary table below. Here are some summary statistics and comments:

1. The University of Michigan currently employs a diversity staff of nearly 100 (93) full-time diversity administrators, officers, directors, vice-provosts, deans, consultants, specialists, investigators, managers, executive assistants, administrative assistants, analysts, and coordinators.

2. More than one-quarter (26) of these “diversicrats” earn annual salaries of more than $100,000, and the total payroll for this small army is $8.4 million. When you add to cash salaries an estimated 32.45% for UM’s very generous fringe benefit package for the average employee in this group (retirement, health care, dental insurance, life insurance, long-term disability, paid leave, paid vacation, social security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, etc.) the total employee compensation for this group tops $11 million per year. And of course that doesn’t count the cost of office space, telephones, computers and printers, printing, postage, programs, training, or travel expenses.

3. Undergraduate tuition for an in-state student in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts (LSA) last year was $14,500. Therefore, the $11 million payrolls for the 93 UM “diversicrats” could support 765 in-state students per year with full tuition scholarships!

4. Michigan’s Student Housing Office has a diversity team of at least six full-time employees, and according to an email from a former UM employee:

UM Housing has its own additional diversity army and trains students in paid positions to be “Diversity Peer Educators” in every dorm and apartment area. These students mandate compliance with the ever-changing progressive views on gender and diversity in all campus housing facilities.

5. Another email from a current UM employee alerted me to the “Office of Health Equity and Inclusion” at the Michigan Medical School, which “develops mechanisms for inclusion, diversity and cultural sensitivity among faculty, students, and staff at Michigan Medicine.” That group has a diversity team of at least 19 full-time staff with an annual payroll of nearly $1.6 million ($2.1 million with fringe benefits).

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Citing security issues, the Somalian-born activist calls off her scheduled Australian tour...

Let's just expand that "Somali-born activist" précis a little. She's not a dead white male like me or Charles Murray. As someone once said, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is everything the identity-group fetishists profess to dig: female, atheist, black, immigrant. But, because she does not toe the party line on Islam, her blackness washes off her like a bad dye job on a telly anchorman - and so do her femaleness and godlessness and immigrant status. And in the end she is Charles Murray, or Geert Wilders - or even David Duke. A black Somali woman is, it turns out, a "white supremacist".

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is someone who fled genital mutilation and arranged marriage in a backward, barbarous society to come to the west and live in freedom. Her first stop was the Netherlands. But the director of the film she wrote, Theo van Gogh, was murdered in the street, and the man who shot him then drove two knives through what was left of his chest pinning to it a five-page death-threat promising to do the same to Ayaan. So she was forced to leave the Netherlands, and has lived with round-the-clock security ever since. Now she has to cross Australia off the list, too. Where's next? Can she speak in Sweden? Or Canada? Ireland or Germany? She left Somalia to live as a western woman, only to watch the west turn itself into Somalia, incrementally but remorselessly, at least as far as free speech is concerned.

It began, as it always does, respectably enough. Four hundred Muslim women in Australia - academics, social workers, diversicrats, supposed "human-rights activists" - signed a petition objecting to her tour Down Under but all artfully crafted in the usual weaselly more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger shtick, concluding with:

Australia deserves better than this.

Aww, that's so cute! Did you all tilt your heads in unison and group-furrow your brows into concerned expressions? The petition title's a doozy too:

Ayaan Hirsi-Ali [sic] Does Not Speak For Us

Well, she never claimed to, did she? You're all Muslim women, and she's a non-Muslim woman. She's left Islam. Which makes her an apostate, which is one more reason why she lives with round-the-clock death threats. Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks for herself. Why don't you try that? Why don't you try engaging in debate, in argument, in the free exchange of ideas? Or is it easier to insist that supposed freeborn citizens can only "speak for" the collective monolithic position of identity groups?