Exposing DEI: Understanding the Strategy Behind Institutional Indoctrination

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good morning everyone .
Welcome to another STARS TownHall meeting.
On behalf of Lieutenant GeneralRod 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 TownHall meeting, and today's host

(00:26):
for this town hall meeting.
Today's lineup we'll have someintroductory remarks by our
board chair, general Bishop, apresentation by Professor
Stanley Ridgely, a shortfollow-up by Mr Maurice
Washington, introduced by ourExecutive Vice President,
general Counsel, mike Rose, andthen we'll have a Q&A session.
So with that, over to you,general Bishop.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hey, thanks very much , Ron.
Welcome everybody to this townhall.
I hope everyone's enjoying awonderful summer.
Special welcome to John Bugert.
John, you want to raise yourhand 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 Gazetteand we just want to thank the

(01:07):
Gazette publicly here for thegreat support that they provide
to all the military in theColorado area.
So, john, thanks for coming onboard with us.
One of the things that the STARSBoard of Directors and Board of
Advisors has been wrestlingwith ever since late fall has

(01:28):
been what do we look like in thefuture?
We have had I think most wouldagree, due to the efforts of
many on this Zoom I like to callit the collective.
We had successes that exceedour wildest imaginations, from
the vaccine mandate to all theexecutive orders and SECDEF

(01:50):
memos that have come outregarding DEI.
So we're struggling with thatand I just want to extend an
invitation.
We're an open book, as I thinkeverybody knows.
So if anybody wants to attendour Board of Advisors, part of
our Board of Directors Board ofAdvisor meetings on Friday, feel
most welcome.

(02:10):
Just shoot us a note and wewill send you the link to that.
Today we're very blessed to havetwo people who have stood
strong in the breach, so tospeak, against this Marxist
invasion of our military, andit's my honor and pleasure to
introduce our first speaker, drStanley Ridgely, former

(02:34):
intelligence officer, nowprofessor 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 wrappingmy brain cells around that and
we give you a warm welcome inthe floor.
Thanks for joining us, sir.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Well, thank you.
Thank you, General, for thatgreat introduction, and it's a
pleasure to be here talking withmy military comrades and a
whole host of other folks whohave DEI at the top of mind,
otherwise you wouldn't be here.
My talk is going to be veryshort, direct punchy.
I've always been someone whodidn't mince words.
When we talk about DEI, whichis the topic of my book, dei

(03:20):
Exposed, it's important tounderstand that people have
different conceptions of whatDEI actually is, and this is why
the discourse public discourseabout DEI has been so vitriolic
at times and it's why we don'tseem to have any kind of common
ground.
And I think it's because theconcept has been misrepresented
by its proponents, misunderstoodby its opponents, opponents

(03:46):
misunderstood by its opponents.
And I wrote the book DEIExposed, designed to disabuse
both its proponents andmisguided opponents of what they
think it is and then revealinformation about what it
actually is from the primarysources.
Now let me begin by simplysaying that DEI as an ideology
is a resource extractionstrategy.

(04:07):
It has a name in politicalpsychology it's called virtuous
victimhood.
I'll say it again virtuousvictimhood.
And the point of it is, ingeneral, to extract resources
out of a target who falls preyto a con story or a confidence
game, and in this case, theuniversities.

(04:27):
I'm referring to theuniversities primarily, but of
course the con has been playedin corporate America as well A
con story put out by what I callbig grifters, big con artists,
and they have managed toconvince, in 2020, 2021,
universities writ large aroundthe nation that universities are

(04:48):
guilty of this universal guiltas part and parcel of what they
call a racial reckoning.
And this all stemmed from themurder.
I'll use the term murderbecause that was the finding of
the court of George Floyd in thestreets of Minneapolis in 2020,
march of 2020.
And we found this was awonderful wedge issue for the

(05:10):
proponents of DEI and a host ofother social justice warriors to
say we're going to penetratethe universities and the
bureaucracies by leveraging thisFloyd death in terms of
creating a victim and villaindichotomy here, of course, the

(05:32):
victims here, of course, areunderprivileged or
underrepresented minorities andthey're barbarians who are
propounding an ideology that isreally pseudoscientific in its
foundation, based on criticalrace theory, based on DEI
ideology, which separates peopleinto two categories and two
categories only, and that is,villains or victims, oppressors

(05:58):
of the fundament of DEI.
Now let me back up a moment andsay 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 givingunderrepresented minorities and
marginalized voices a place atthe table.
It's just creating a levelplaying field.
It's just noble, right, proper,isn't it Really?

(06:21):
It's none of those things.
It's not about just teachingabout race or teaching about
slavery.
It's none of those things.
And if it were those things, itwould be illegal by virtue of
the 2023 Supreme Court decisionsStudents for Fair Admissions
versus Harvard, in which thisuber-affirmative action in
admissions was renderedunconstitutional.
What it actually is, this DEI isan ideology that I just

(06:45):
explained.
It's dichotomous, it'sManichaean, it's good versus
evil, and it's expressed best bythe DEI guru, ibram Kendi, in
his book how to Be anAnti-Racist.
He divides society into twocategories, and you fall within
those categories Excuse me,racist, anti-racist.

(07:06):
Now, this is very akin to earlyManichaean doctrine, which
divided the societies into thechildren of the light and the
children of the dark, andthere's no in-between You're
either for us or you're againstus.
This is a very perniciousdoctrine and we have to
understand that.
The trainings that these DEIfunctionaries and the

(07:27):
bureaucracies on the collegecampuses are engaged in have
nothing to do with teachingabout race, teaching about
slavery.
Ensuring a level playing fieldhas nothing to do with that.
And the book DEI Exposed issourced with their own words,
with over 600 footnotes and 450pages of what they actually say

(07:49):
about what they're doing.
And what they're doing isconvincing, in a very coercive,
cult-like manner, our collegestudents and faculty and staff,
as available in this doctrine,this belief that there are
villains and that there arevictims.
And this is determined not byyour upbringing, not by where
you grew up, who your parentswere, not by your income, none

(08:14):
of these things.
It's determined by one thingand one thing only, and that is
race.
That is the bottom line.
Moreover, this accusation ismade within the context that,
well, America is a racistcountry.
It's irredeemably racist, it'sirremediably racist and it is

(08:34):
riven with what they call whitesupremacy culture.
And that is the background ofall of this, and this is the
received wisdom.
This is the worldview that theseDEI proponents are propounding
on our college campuses, with nocontradiction allowed.
As a matter of fact, for a longtime, amongst many college

(08:55):
faculty diversity statements,affirmations, loyalty oaths,
were required for it to be hired, to be promoted, to teach
classes, you had to have somesort of diversity, affirmative
statement that you weresupporting the goals of this
particular ideology.
But you'll never hear this term, this ideology or what I've

(09:19):
just described to you, describedin quite this way.
They use a lot of.
They, being the proponents ofDEI, use a lot of euphemisms and
terminology that are designedto mask their actual agenda.
Now, why would they bepropounding this?
Well, the whole idea is toutilize the university as an
instrument of indoctrination.

(09:40):
And I'm not referring to mygood colleagues in the faculty
who, basically, are pursuingtheir research and are teaching
and are doing this just tryingto climb the academic ladder.
I refer primarily to thebureaucracies.
With assurance I can say thiswas the topic of my first book,

(10:03):
brutal Minds, because it is apipeline of mediocrities into
the university, that kind ofskirt around the rigorous hiring
practice for faculty, and thesefolks mainly come out of
schools of education.
They are indoctrinated withPaulo Freirean ideology.
Who is Paulo Freire?
Frerian ideology, who is PauloFreire?

(10:27):
He's a revered educationistfrom Brazil who was basically a
Maoist, who cribbed most of hiseducation theory from Mao Zedong
.
But they don't say the M word,they say Frerian, which is
basically an unknown, basicallya cipher for most people.
But he is revered by educationpeople and these are the folks
who are training the people whogo into the pipeline and
populate the bureaucracy.
Why is that important?
Well, the bureaucracy has itsown co-curriculum, a fake

(10:50):
curriculum, whereby they trainfaculty 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 teachingmethods.

(11:12):
What do I mean by that?
Where's my source for that?
You can find this is basicallycomes out of Kurt Lewin's
re-education programs, thesocial psychologist of the 1940s
at MIT.
Re-education programs, thesocial psychologist of the 1940s
at MIT.
And he developed a three-stageprogram called Unfreezing the
Belief System, changing theBelief System, refreezing the
Belief System.
And you're saying, well, I'venever heard of this.

(11:33):
Where are they doing this?
Well, you can look in the bookTeaching for Diversity and
Social Justice, which is in itsfourth edition, which is a very
thick tome.
I own all four editions tomonitor the changes in the
language published in 1997.
The latest edition, publishedin 2024.
And they very clearly lay outthis is what we are doing in

(11:54):
classes.
This is what we're doing in ourintergroup dialogues.
We are trying to unfreeze anunfriendly belief system which
has been propounded by, say, astudent's parents, which is
traditional.
Perhaps there's some religioninvolved in that.
Perhaps there's traditionalmoral wars that we hear Two.
We're going to change that towhat.

(12:15):
We're going to change that to acritical consciousness.
We're going to change the falseconsciousness to a critical
consciousness.
Someone who is aware of thesocial justice issues that
plague our racist society, andthat you're going to be willing
to work to improve this.
And then we're going torephrase the new belief system
by virtue of activities designedto keep students busy doing the

(12:37):
work Maybe you've heard thisphrase doing the work of social
justice.
And so this is the model thatthese people are following.
It's not in dispute.
What I'm saying is not somespeculation.
I'm not connecting the dots ofsome obscure puzzle.
I'm simply reporting what theysay they are doing, and they are
counting on the fact that noone's going to read their stuff

(13:00):
in these fake academic journalsin which they publish, and we
are indeed paying these people.
When I say these people, I'mreferring to the newly minted
DEI bureaucracies in collegesand universities around the
country that suddenly flooded in.
These mediocrities flooded intothe campuses, were lavishly
paid, lavishly compensated howlavishly.

(13:21):
Well, you look at the head ofthe DEI programs at University
of Michigan.
Her name is Tavu Sellers I'msorry, 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.

(13:43):
You go to the University ofMichigan I'm sorry, the
University of Virginia and wefind the top DEI, the two top
DEI people pulling in over$500,000 in salary and benefits.
The third ranking DEI person isreceiving over $400,000 in
salary and benefits, and this iswhy DEI on the campuses is such

(14:05):
a rooted, pervasive presence.
No one wants to leave a job likethat in which you don't have to
have any skills, you have nodiscernible skill set, you're a
mediocrity, you can't doanything else in the private
sector and it's unlikely youcould do anything else of worth
in the university.
Now, are these people uniformly, you know, against what we

(14:27):
consider the American creed orthe American values, the
American university that's basedon logic, reason, scientific
method, progress and humanevalues?
Yes, they're, by and large,against that, and the research
that shows this comes fromSamuel Abrams, one of my
colleagues, this one at SarahLawrence University, whose

(14:48):
latest research in the last twoyears 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 thecase in academia and we can deal
with that.
I can deal with that.
I can deal with that.
But you look at thebureaucracies, which have been
progressively becoming more andmore radical, radical, radical

(15:11):
progressive, not just liberal.
The dichotomy is 12 to 1,liberal to conservative, radical
progressive, left wing toconservative.
That is what we're dealing withon the campuses and this is why
reform of DEI programs is sotough.
They are so deeply rooted andthey have such a tenacious grip

(15:34):
on the financial incentives thatkeep them in place that what
we're seeing right now, aswelcome as it is, in declaring
that these DEI programs violatethe Constitution, which they do,
is not going to be enough toroot out these scalawags on the
campuses.
They are engaged in a campaignor a crusade to capture

(15:58):
America's youth.
It's the emblematic expressionof Herbert Marcuse's long march
through the institutions.
You know, herbert Marcuse wasthe neo-Marxist Frankfurt School
theorist a brilliant guy.
But it can be misused, as itwas in his writings In 1972, he
repeated Rudi Dusky's dictumthat we're engaged.

(16:21):
We, being the Marxists, areengaged in a long march through
the institutions, and he saidthis in his book Revolution and
Counter-Revolution, 1972.
And this, what we're seeingtoday, is the expression, the
seizure and occupation of thecolonization to use a popular
word of our institutions ofhigher education, and it's going
on under everyone's nose.

(16:41):
What we're seeing right now,with the current Department of
Education and the current spateof executive orders from the
current administration, is areversal of this, a return and
restoration of the universityprinciples of logic, reason,
scientific method, progress,humane values.
As Matthew Arnold said, thebest that has been thought and
said, passed on to subsequentgenerations with, as they add,

(17:04):
their own bits of knowledge,hard-won knowledge.
Because what we have now in theuniversity, the Enlightenment
University, has been hard-wonover 300 years.
And this opening up the gatesto the barbarous ideas of DEI
and other ideas into bureaucracyand then imposing this
bureaucracy and thisbureaucratic ideology on the

(17:26):
campus writ large, is anatrocious violation of classroom
neutrality, a violation of theuniversity as this marketplace
of ideas that we've alwaysconceived it to be.
Instead, it's becoming acrucible of indoctrination,
which was predicted by theMarxist, famous Marxist theorist
, frederick Jameson, who was atDuke when I was there who said

(17:49):
quite clearly in one of histalks he said that the purpose
of the university is fortraining of the cadres Marxist
cadres for the struggles of thefuture.
And that's what we're talkingabout right now.
Now, when I say Marx, I saywhoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa.
What does this have to do withDEI?

(18:11):
Where's he in all of this?
Well, you have to understandthat what's driving DEI is a
very famous amongst educationpeople fellow by the name of
Paulo Freire, who's a Brazilianeducator who wrote an important
book in 1970 called Pedagogy ofthe Oppressed, and he was a well
, they don't really mention this, the proponents don't really
mention this about Freire.

(18:32):
He was a great admirer of Lenin, a great admirer of Stalin, and
he basically swooned over MaoZedong's cultural revolution.
He thought that Mao had itright.
He said in writing.
Freire said in writing in 1974,at the height of Mao's
revolution, when we knew theatrocities being perpetuated
there, he said Mao presents themost genial solution of the
century with regard to educatingthe populace.

(18:53):
In that case, he's talkingabout re-education of the
populace.
Now you know that Mao'sCultural Revolution was an
abomination that killed over twomillion people.
Now, this is on top of themillions that he killed in his
great leap forward and his othercockeyed plans that he
perpetrated on his own countryfrom the period of 1949 to 1976,

(19:14):
at his blessed death.
And so this is the guru of theDEI program, the Paolo Freire.
I think it was Bell Hooks.
I've watched an interview ofher.
She says she refers to PaoloFreire and Bell Hooks, of course
, is a radical BLM type.
She says she calls him mybeloved Paolo Freire, my beloved

(19:35):
Paolo.
So their admiration of PaoloFreire's theories, which come
from Mao, is more than simplykind of an intellectual exercise
.
There's a kind of an emotionalattachment to this Maoist who
has informed education schoolsand who, in turn, are informing
what's going on on the collegecampuses with regard to student

(19:55):
affairs and their co curriculum.
And so we have a bunch ofmediocrities on the college
campuses right now, receiving,you know, lots of money, scarce
tuition dollars that parentshave scraped to scrape together
to pay for this education andare only being betrayed by our
college administrations andpresidents, who are supine in

(20:17):
fear of having someone show upat the gates of the university
and say, oh, you're racist.
Now this is what reallyhappened.
This is what happened back in2020.
Whenever George Floyd's deathoccasioned all of the riots that
caused over $2 billion in smallbusiness damages around the
country.
And to keep these riots fromcoming to the university

(20:39):
campuses, university presidentsknew they had to do some PR, and
that PR was to become the fallguy suckers, if you will in this
virtuous victimhood game wherethe grifters of DEI would come
onto the campuses, extractresources in this resource
extraction strategy and, in turn, set up these social justice

(21:01):
bureaucracies that wouldbasically train people like me,
false consciousness types, toadhere to this new ideology.
And so this is the framework ofDEI, what's been going on for
quite some time now, and I thankthe new administration for
basically returning theuniversity, at least the

(21:23):
conception of it, the idea thatwe're going to return to the
university by expungingpseudoscience and nonsense from
the campus.
We did that with alchemy, thephilosopher's stone, we did that
with astrology, we've done thatwith pseudosciences of all
kinds, and what we have to do isto beat back this challenge of
pseudoscience as embodied withDEI, the executive arm of

(21:46):
critical race theory, and turnthis thing back and get them off
the campuses and away fromstudent-facing positions where
they can do their damage.
That, generally, is what DEIExposed is all about.
It articulates the arguments.
It articulates, in their ownwords, what they are trying to

(22:07):
do on the college campuses.
It articulates the bizarrenature of this, this idea, this
paranoia, this idea that it's usagainst the world, it's us
against the pale-skinned folks,and this is really a mentality
that has consumed the DEIbureaucracy and they're trying
to purvey that mentality to awhole new generation of college

(22:32):
students.
I think that if you were to putup I know that, ron, you have
the capability of putting upsomething a visual, I've got
several visual one the table ofcontents of DEI Exposed, which
really is instructive in itselfto show you the pseudoscience
that is involved.
To show you the basic thingslike hate, hoaxes that are

(22:54):
perpetrated on campuses, thestructure that is set up to
ensure that racialist types ofincidents occur, fake instances.
It even has a lot of anecdotesfor what happened in the summer
of 2020 at Princeton University.
Let me share this with you.
It pretty much illustrateseverything that we've been
talking about.

(23:14):
There was a letter signed on by300 people faculty staff,
concerned people furrowed brow,people who were concerned about
racism at Princeton.
It was a general letter and itclaimed that Princeton
University was plagued withquote rampant racism.
Well, the only really legitimatejournalist at the Atlantic,

(23:39):
conor Friedersdorf, asked themost obvious question that a
journalist is supposed to ask.
He went to the 300 signatoriesand he asked them this question
Can you give me a single exampleof rampant racism overt rampant
racism on your campus in thelast 15 years?
He asked 300 people and gavethem the space of 15 years and

(24:02):
he got not a single response.
Gave them the space of 15 yearsand he got not a single
response, which is emblematic ofthe fakery which is the
virtuous victimhood scam that'sbeing perpetrated.
And if you can get enoughpeople to believe the scam,
there's no limit to the amountof money that you can extract
from them.
It's like a fortune teller.
You go see a fortune teller andyou both agree that the fortune
teller is going to lie to youto tell you what you want to

(24:24):
hear, and you're going to givethe fortune teller some money.
And this is basically the scamwrit large.
It's a fraud, it's a scam, it'spseudoscientific.
There's absolutely no academicjustification for it.
Let me give you an example ofwhat's going on.
Say, at the Arizona StateUniversity.
There's a psychologist therewho's climbed the bureaucracy,

(24:47):
is now a dean of psychology.
I'll tell you her name.
Her name is Lisa Spanierman andshe is advocating and I've got
her article.
I've published her article incritique of it.
We can use the classroom and usepsychological techniques to get
our students here to do thework in social justice vineyard.
Now I'll give you an example.

(25:08):
She says it's possible toconvince anyone, anyone that
you're guilty of something, evenof an event that you have no
nothing to do with.
This is a wonderful insight ofhow you can induce guilt in
people.
We can target white malestudents and we do white male
students.
Convince them with particularstimuli that you are guilty of

(25:30):
particular events in history,and this will make them you
white students more susceptibleto be persuaded to do the work
of social justice to remedythese ills that you had nothing
to do with, assuming they'reeven ills to begin with.
Now this is something that is inthe literature.
I know that in Arizona therewas a newspaper article based on

(25:51):
my revelation of this, butlittle has been done.
This woman still has a positionin the university, utilizing
psychological techniques toindoctrinate folks in the
classroom, generating fake guilt.
I think this is an abominationand the woman should be fired.
But we'll see how that oneplays out.

(26:12):
This type of thing goes on andon and on.
In university campuses you havewhat's the infamous white
supremacy culture list, which isa list of 15 behaviors that
supposedly indicate whitesupremacy.
If you've got a I think Ron canput that graphic up I'll just

(26:32):
read it to you right here.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Some of the, some of the white supremacy yeah, if you
could put it up, that would begood.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
I don't have that capability right now with me at
my fingertips and there'd be anunpleasant pause, so I'm going
to do is read a couple of themoff.
Perfectionism, either, orthinking power hoarding
individualism.
The end of it, the rock bottombasis for our capitalist society
, individualism is consideredwhite supremacy behavior.
Well, there's only one rightway to do something, in other

(27:00):
words, empiricism, the idea thatwe're going to explore and find
out what the right way, thebest way to do something.
In other words, empiricism, theidea that we're going to
explore and find out what theright way, the best way to do
something which is right out ofFrederick W Taylor's notion of
scientific managerialism, issomehow white supremacist
behavior.
So what we have is basically alist of behaviors that are
available to anyone that canyield success, but because

(27:23):
certain people don't like thatidea, they're going to call oh
well, we're going to call thesebehaviors white supremacist.
Now, where did that list comefrom?
This is the most interestingpart of it.
I have a whole chapter devotedto that.
It was fabricated in 1999 by adiversity worker by the name of
Tema Okun, and she was adiversity worker who was unhappy

(27:43):
.
She came home to her hotel roomafter a particularly unpleasant
session.
And so, in a fit of fury andpetulance, she wrote down the 15
behaviors she didn't like andthat became her list and she
published the list online.
And she later took that samelist and described the origin of
that list, its provenance, andput it in a dissertation that

(28:05):
she wrote.
And she got her PhD in socialjustice something I think social
justice and she published it ina book called the Emperor has
no New Clothes.
And now that list that shecompletely fabricated not
through research but just wroteit down because she was angry

(28:26):
that list is now being used,right now as we speak, at the
University of Michigan, at theUniversity of Wisconsin, at
Boston University, at DukeUniversity's medical school
training doctors, and is alsobeing used by the NEA National
Education Association, randyWeingarten's teachers union.
You can find them on theirwebsites.
This is all open source stuff.

(28:47):
It's right there, but not manypeople know how to search for
this stuff or what to search for.
I can look at a website of auniversity in 30 minutes, tell
you exactly where the nodes ofpressure are, where the critical
nodes are, who the people are,who are propounding this
nonsense.
There's a code that comes withit, a way they talk.
There's a way of hiding whatthey're actually doing, and in

(29:10):
my book, dei Exposed, I providea glossary of this terminology
so that you too, can becomeexpert in picking out what they
really mean.
When they say X, y and Z, theyreally mean A, b and C, and this
is something that I think isessential, certainly for parents
with college students can findit very useful too, and what I
provide is a means for collegestudents to reverse this thing.

(29:33):
We don't have to wait forlong-term reform.
We don't have to wait for theslow wheels of justice to turn.
We can do something right nowand combat these mediocre
ideologues on the collegecampuses 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'smisunderstood, why it's even its

(29:55):
defenders have no idea whatthey're defending and why many
of its opponents tend to thinkof DEI?
Well, that means hiring, youknow, unqualified people for
positions they shouldn't have.
Well, there's probably some ofthat going on.
I think that the submarine, thetourist submarine that imploded
at the bottom, that's anexample of how unqualified
people doing important things inthe world of, you know,

(30:21):
submarines and aircraft, thatkind of thing can make terrible
mistakes.
I think the CEO of OceanGate,who created the submarine, said
he did not want 50-year-old andabove ex-submariners that have
experience with this sort ofthing.
I want to hire inspiring youngpeople, and so he hired a bunch
of inspiring young engineers,mainly female, who designed this

(30:44):
thing, which promptly implodedat the bottom of the Atlantic,
killing the CEO of the companyOne of those rare examples of
karma at work.
And so it can have that kind ofimpact.
But I think the larger, worseimpact is its long-term
pedagogical presence on ourcollege campuses.

(31:04):
Those people need to be fired,they need to be expunged from
the university, and it hasnothing to do with academic
freedom.
So I will finish with that andturn it over to you, ron.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, thanks, dr Ridgely.
I have to tell you we gotstarted on this 7 July 2020.
And it was fortuitous,disturbed by a three-minute
video put out by the Air ForceAcademy football coaches.
But since then our five-yearjourney in this little radical

(31:40):
jungle you are by far the mostprominent thinker in terms of
understanding what DEI is andwhy it's so dangerous.
So we appreciate the work thatyou've done in educating us on
DEI and critical race theorythat fuels it and, again, why
it's so dangerous.

(32:00):
I was intrigued by your commentabout reaching out to 300
individuals and asking them forone example in the last 15 years
.
Stars has filed to date 61Freedom of Information Act
requests.
One of our earlier ones dealtwith an assessment directed by
the Air Force Academysuperintendent, trying to find

(32:23):
out the extent of systemicracism at that institution.
That was due September of 2020.
We filed a FOIA asking for acopy of that assessment.
It took a lawsuit by JudicialWatch on our behalf to get a
federal judge to mandate therelease of that 167-page report.

(32:43):
Every single page had beenmarked for official use only in
an attempt to shield it from thegeneral public.
When we received it, 52 entirepages were redacted, completely
redacted, and, as GeneralCounsel, mike Rose, one of the
prominent figures in getting theSupreme Court to rule on
Freedom of Information Act,statutory language.

(33:07):
The only thing you eliminate ina redaction is a name, social
security numbers and that sortof thing.
You don't eliminate detailslike they did in this release
report.
So of the unredacted pages wediscovered absolutely no
evidence of racism, let alonesystemic racism.
But what they did, by shieldingthat report for two years, is

(33:30):
identify and train 90 cadets,college students, 90 cadets to
be diversity and inclusionofficers and NCOs throughout the
entire cadet wing structure,two per squadron, 40 squadrons,
two for each of the four groupsand two at the wing level,
wearing a purple rope over theleft shoulder, signifying that

(33:51):
they are the equivalent of theSoviet commissars in these units
.
I hate to use that term, butthat's exactly what they were
doing.
So we appreciate the work thatyou've done in this area and
it's inspired us to right nowdeliver a presentation that
we've named the American creedthreatened by radical

(34:11):
indoctrination, and so it'sgetting a good response.
Mike Rose and I will be makinga presentation tonight here in
the Charleston South Carolinaarea, so while we wait for Mr
Maurice Washington to log in,he's tied up at an important
meeting right now, and if he'snot able to log in, mike will

(34:33):
cover for him.
He's logging in right now, Hangon, 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 ExecutiveVice President and General
Counsel, mike Rose, to introduceyou to this group.

Speaker 4 (34:54):
Sure Thanks.

Speaker 5 (34:57):
Okay, well, good afternoon everybody.
An organization called the LowCountry Conservatives is
sponsoring Ron Scott's and thisevening called the American Cree
Threatened by RadicalIndoctrination, and Maurice
Washington is the president ofthis group.
I met with him and his board ofdirectors over lunch a few days

(35:21):
ago and Maurice told me somethings that I thought this group
would be very interested inhearing.
It surprised me, but it didn'tsurprise me.
So what I want to do isintroduce this gentleman you see
on your screen here so you cansee how prominent, what a
prominent leader he is in SouthCarolina Now.

(35:44):
Reese is a graduate of SouthCarolina State University.
He received a Bachelor ofScience in Psychology and a
minor in Business Administration.
He has his own firm, afinancial services business
consulting group called TrustManagement.
But he has astonishing publicservice and private community

(36:12):
service during his career, andI'll just tell you some.
He was elected to and servednine years in Charleston County
Council, which was a big dealaround here.
He was chair of the Ways andMeans Committee and the
Community Development Committee.
He was appointed mayor protempore of Charleston 1992.

(36:35):
He was appointed by the SouthCarolina General Assembly to be
on the board of trustees ofSouth Carolina State University
where he became the chairman forsix years.
He is a Republican.
He was chairman of theCharleston County Republican
Party for a number of years.

(36:56):
He was on Governor MarkSanford's transition team when
Mark Sanford became a Republicangovernor.
I might add as an aside that1994, mark Sanford beat me in
running for Congress in theRepublican primary.
Beat me in running for Congressin the Republican primary, but

(37:24):
I've always supported Mark sincethen.
Maurice is a big advocate foreducational improvement.
He's founder of what's called aCharleston Shared Future.
It's a partnership he initiatedbetween the Charleston County
Council and the CharlestonCounty School District, and his
Low Country Conservative Grouphas a guest speaker, like our

(37:44):
Stardust Town Hall does once amonth, and last month they had a
forum about how to improveCharleston County schools.
So even when I had lunch withMaurice and his board of
trustees, they were talkingabout the K-12 education issues,

(38:05):
and then it migrated intoMaurice telling me how, during
the riots I think in 2020 inCharleston, he was called by the
organizers of that to try toenlist his support, and they
told him some things that Ifound to be shocking, but then,
upon thinking about it more, notsurprising.

(38:27):
So finally, I've got a list ofabout 15 other organizations
that he's appointed to theleader of, but I'm going to turn

(38:49):
this over now to Maurice andinvite him to tell our group
what he told me.

Speaker 4 (38:52):
Maurice, senator Rose , good evening everyone.
Rose, good evening everyone.
Let me first apologize, butbefore apologizing for arriving
late, senator Rose, thank youfor a very flattering
introduction.
I deeply appreciate it, sir,and I consider it to be a great
honor to have a few minutes tocommunicate with you.

(39:13):
Wonderful folks.
I want to apologize for beinglate.
My church we've been working ona real estate project, a mega
real estate project, for sometime now five years to be exact,
and I have chaired this effortand finally we brought it to a

(39:35):
closing just at 1130 thismorning, and so it's a big deal
for the East Side community ofCharleston as well as for our
church.
Out to lunch with my pastor andmembers of our board of
trustees celebrating, out tolunch with my pastor and members

(39:55):
of our board of trusteescelebrating, but still wanted to
take a moment to connect andget to know some other wonderful
people.
So I apologize, one for beinglate and two for joining you
from my cell phone.
Normally I would be at the deskwith the laptop so I could see

(40:16):
everyone and then be seen byeveryone.
So again, thank you very much.
I won't take much of your time.
I want to commend Senator Rosefor the great work that he's
doing on behalf of STARS.
You have a real trooper in thisgentleman and we're looking
forward to hearing him addressour group, the Lowcountry

(40:40):
Conservative Club, a littlelater this evening.
But, as the senator said, backin maybe 2020, we had some riots
actually taking place acrossthe country and Charleston did
not escape some of theactivities of that time and it

(41:09):
got a little messy, a littleugly here, as it did in other
places across the country,across America.
I love the love country and,interestingly, during that time
and I told the story to the EastCooper Republican Women Club,

(41:31):
maybe a few days after, I metwith at least three members of
Black Lives Matter they invitedme out to lunch.
I agreed.
I was chairman of theCharleston Republican Party at
the time, so I was very muchintrigued by the invitation.
I took advantage of it, learneda lot, very happy I did so.

(41:54):
But it was interesting to heardirect from a prominent leader
of the movement the fact thatthey were and I quote trained
Marxists and that their trainingactually take place outside of

(42:21):
US territories and I was justabsolutely fascinated by the
candor, the fact that they boastabout being well funded Lots of
funds coming from US-basedcorporations and that the
Republican Party, theconservatives of this country,

(42:45):
were really behind the eightball and that we would never
catch up because while we werefocused on electing presidents
and governors and US senatorsand congresspeople, they were
focused on electing school boardmembers and taking over school

(43:08):
boards all across America,controlling superintendents and
everything else associated withthe education of our children.
Their model was basicallysimple If you know we can
control their children, weactually can then control the

(43:30):
country, the country, and sotheir interest in school board
elections were an integral partof their vision.
And as a result of that meeting, I just went into reflection

(43:51):
and, true to what they told me,the local party just never saw
school board elections assomething to be concerned about
or invest in that.
And for the first time we gotinvolved with school board

(44:13):
elections.
Vetted candidates had them comeand sit before a very
conservative group of peoplecomplete a hard-hitting form
questionnaire that actuallylanded me on the front page of

(44:36):
the Post and Courier with myphoto based on the questions
that were posed in thequestionnaire.
We didn't run from it.
We took it as a badge of honor.
You know, reflecting on thatconversation, with these folks
basically saying that whitemales in this country were

(45:01):
afraid of being labeled asracist, they could basically
have their way labelingconservative as racist, black
conservative as Uncle Tom, blackconservatives as Uncle Tom, and
basically we run away and wehide and we offer no resistance,
no pushback, which allowed themto basically, at that time,

(45:25):
make major steps in transformingour country.
And so they knew us literallybetter than we knew ourselves.
They knew the buzzword to use.
They were indoctrinating notjust our children but the
parents and the grandparents ofthe children as well, and so

(45:49):
they were having their way.
As you know, they were ridinghigh.
They were proud of all the goodthings they were doing.
They were well-funded.
These were funding.
I refer to them as guiltfunding.
We were guilty and we allowedguilt to drive our giving.

(46:11):
We didn't necessarily believein what they believed in, but
they made us feel guilty.
So we contributed at leastcorporate America did in
abundance, and conservativesbasically went undercover to say
look, job, family, reputation,I just can't take being called a

(46:34):
racist.
They knew that and as a resultof that, they had their way.
So that two and a half hoursspent.
I learned so much and it helpedframe my personal position in
terms of how we combat thenonsense.

(46:56):
And, reb and I, we were willingto take some public hits,
standing our grounds andfighting back.
As Rush Limbaugh used to say,fighting back does work.
It does, and it doesn't take awhole lot of courage, you know.

(47:16):
It just requires that youbelieve in what you're doing and
the way you were raised in thiswonderful country and the
opportunities that thiswonderful country presents for
all.
And so it was a.
I shared that experience whenSenator Rose appeared before the

(47:38):
group the other day, primarilybecause of the talk that he gave
.
And the talk that he gave usthat day reminded me of that
moment.
I didn't think much of it, Ijust shared it again, maybe a
fifth time, with a group offolks and did not at all believe
for a minute or a second that Iwould be invited to basically

(48:03):
share that story with thisincredible group.
So you know, again it was sadto hear, while at the same time
admitting that you know whatthey're right.

(48:24):
They're boasting about it, butthey're absolutely correct.
A couple of weeks later, russLeach, who's also on this call
he was vice chair of theRepublican Party, charleston
County Republican Party.
At the time we took to lunch acouple of other officers from, I
think, dorchester or BerkeleyCounty, a neighboring county to

(48:46):
Charleston County.
We met those leaders for lunchand this white gentleman uh,
brought us all the tears when hesaid that, um, uh, he and his
wife had not, uh, communicatedwith their daughter in like

(49:06):
three, three and a half years orso.
And you know curious as to why.
I asked.
Well, well, she went off tocollege somewhere in California
and a short time later basicallycalled or wrote and told us
that we were racist and shenever wanted to see us again.

(49:29):
Indoctrination I later went to.
I was invited to speak before agroup of women about 40 or so
women at a downtown resident inCharleston, south Carolina, and

(49:50):
I didn't know what they wantedto talk about.
But I agreed to visit with them.
All women, white women, andthere was a single seat in the
room and it was for this blackguy.
And I'm still curious why am Ihere?
What am I going to talk about?
They asked for specificinformation on me and I gave

(50:13):
them little because I didn'tknow what it was all about.
But I later found out thatthese were conservative white
women and moderate white womenand they were concerned about
public schools, indoctrinationof their children,
indoctrination of their children.

(50:36):
And I heard from them, one byone.
They were telling me about theindoctrination process and how
it's impacting theirrelationship with their children
.
And this one woman stood in thedeep back of the room, her back
against the wall.

(50:57):
Everyone else's head, the backof their head, faced her and
with the most incredible sadlook in her eyes, on her face
and in her voice, she asked me.
In a voice she asked me can youspeak to our children?

(51:21):
I was talking about the JohnCalhoun statue that was
inappropriately brought downfrom Marion Square in Charleston
and the wiping out ofmeaningful history to our
country, as well as to our citystatutes and everything else,

(51:46):
and I just shared a Black man'sperspective.
And so she asked a question canyou talk to our children?
I thought I didn't understoodthe question, so I kind of
leaned in and I said, excuse me,would you repeat that?
And so she repeated it and allof the faces facing me.

(52:09):
All of a sudden those faceswere facing her and the back of
their heads faced me.
But after she asked thequestion a second time and the
other heads turned and everyonein the room were facing me.
They all had the same look ontheir faces and in their eyes

(52:34):
and it was heartbreaking to me.
She went on to say our childrenand grandchildren are being
taught to hate us, that we'reracist, that we're former slave
owners, and the likes and thelights.

(52:58):
Within seconds after I got outof that meeting I jumped on the
phone.
I called a friend of mine thatworked for the Charleston County
School District and I asked himabout this term, crt, and
whether or not it was beingtaught in our school district,
charleston County SchoolDistrict.
And I text him actually, and Istill have the text

(53:18):
communication between the two ofus.
I text him and he texted meback almost immediately and he
said well, it's not criticalrace theory, it's CRT, but they
didn't call it critical racetheory.

(53:39):
I'm drawing a blank, but I'mgoing to try to remember.
I do have it in writing in atext message to me where he said
it's critical race training orsomething.

(54:00):
It was a form of CRT.
Well, when you visited the sitesaid well, send me the site
where I can learn more about it.
At the end of the day, it wascritical race theory teaching.
At the end of the day, it wascritical race theory teaching
and the folks that wereproviding the training materials
.
You visit the website.

(54:21):
It was slaughter city to thenPresident Trump and all
Republicans and conservatives,and that's when I knew we really
have to get involved with localeducation and try to make an
impact, try to make a difference.
I'm so proud of the LowcountryConservative Club.

(54:41):
We're engaged, we're doing soand and I think we're making a
difference and I'm confidentthat we're going to make a
bigger difference.
So that's a little longer thanwhat the senator asked for.
My apologies for having done so, but if you have any questions,
I'd be more than happy toanswer those.

(55:02):
Otherwise, I would excusemyself from your important
meeting, get back to my pastorand 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 (55:18):
Wow, mr Washington, I can't thank you enough for that
personal testimony.
It's powerful.
You know, it's one thing whenyou read about things, it's
another thing when youpersonally experience it.
And we've got some key membersof our board on this call right
now, and I just want to plant aseed that will probably reach

(55:39):
out to you and invite you to bea member of our board of
advisors and also to recommend,if you don't know him already,
to link you up with Kendall andSheila Qualls, who formed Take
Charge in Minneapolis, minnesota, after the George Floyd
incident.
It's very powerful.
Kendall is just he's runningfor governor right now,

(56:01):
minnesota.
He's just like yourself, he'sjust very impactful, and so I
just want to plant that seedthat we'd like to bring on to
our board of advisors.
Yeah, so with that, we've gotabout 20 minutes left for Q and
a.
Eric, you've got your hand up,go ahead, sir.

Speaker 7 (56:23):
Yes, so my name is Eric Vogel.
This question is for professorRidgely.
I live in Connecticut.
I want to thank you very muchfor writing brutal minds.
When I read it I was taken backto the fall of 2001, when I was
enrolling my daughter atSouthern Connecticut State
University.
It reminded me of the briefingsby the dean of the students, it

(56:44):
reminded me of the variouscampus representatives of the
clubs and finally, it remindedme of an incident in the fall of
that year, a sexual harassmentincident with my daughter, and
how it was handled, or, shall Isay, was not handled by the
administration.
But my question concerns theservice academies and the
civilian professors at theservice academies, in particular

(57:07):
the Air Force Academy, of whichI'm a graduate professor
originally.
Do you have any comment or haveyou done any research?
What are your thoughts on howthose professors, keeping in
mind the six to one ratio, howthose professors may have been
an influence on the scourge ofDEI and CRT at the academies

(57:27):
among the cadets?

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Thank you, I have no personal firsthand information
about that.
I know pretty much what.
I try to keep abreast of what'sgoing on in the service
academies, for obvious reasonsto propagate a social justice

(57:59):
message throughout the military.
Because of the hierarchicalnature, because of the
discipline of the troops,because of the nature of
seriously obeying orders, and ifthe right person is giving you
an order to do something, we'regoing to do DEI now.
It's yes, sir, we're going todo DEI now.
So that's one reason why it'sso easy to get this kind of
thing started, the kind of thingthat Ron Scott was talking

(58:20):
about, you know, with the purplebandoliers.
And what can we do about it?
Well, I think that, again, Ican't speak of personal
knowledge of these peopleteaching, but I do know the type
and I do know what motivatesprofessors and I do know what
motivates left-wing professors,and if they can get away with

(58:41):
propagating this type ofideology in a classroom, then
they will do it.
They are not.
They don't have that healthycircumspection and that healthy
restraint that we on the right,at least in academia, have with
respect to using the classroomas a bully pulpit.
We don't like to do that.
We believe in the Max Weberianview of the classroom as being

(59:04):
neutral and the idea that let athousand opinions bloom, let
students argue these issues,whereas radical progressives,
professors, view this type ofthing.
This is well.
You can't be objective andtherefore you have to move your
politics front and center andlet them inform what you say in
the classroom.
I think that's what's going onin the service academies, as

(59:26):
well as what's going on withrespect to the colleges, writ
large.
But I would say that the key todoing this is to rid yourself of
the bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy is where thisstuff happens.
Professors have a minor,circumscribed influence in their
classroom.
The bureaucracies and thebureaucrats and apparatchiks,

(59:49):
the political commissars, as Ronhas called them, the ZOM police
.
They have free reign around thecampus and they are charged
with messaging this left-wingDEI message 24-7.
They call this they have a namefor it they call this milieu
management.
We're going to manage themilieu so that students cannot
escape this message, and it is amessage that is grounded in

(01:00:12):
social justice, it's grounded inCRT, it's grounded in DEI, and
this message is that America isirredeemably racist and you're
playing a part in it, either asa villain or a victim.
That's my answer.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
Thank you.
Thanks, Dr Ridgely.
Okay, next up, Dr Bray.

Speaker 8 (01:00:31):
Hi everyone.
I'm a professor of finance herein Atlanta, georgia.
I have met with Stan.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
You're a troublemaker , You're a troublemaker.

Speaker 8 (01:00:39):
Bray, hey, stan.
So my question for Stanley andthe group really is you know,
I've been speaking out loudlyfor five years giving Georgia
hell on LinkedIn.
That's my main platform.
I'm at the point where we havemostly conservative, mostly

(01:01:01):
white, mostly Republicans onthis thing called the Board of
Regents in the state of Georgiaand they're the ones who get the
money from the legislature andpass it on to the universities.
And so if they're not willingto show the necessary fortitude
and backbone, how do we get thepublic spotlight?
How do we get the Georgiataxpayers to really pay

(01:01:23):
attention to who's in charge andwhy are they funding what I see
in a two?
I got a 200 page document fromthe state on DEI funding.
How do we get all of thatinformation you know blown up,
so to speak, because I do liketo talk publicly and let all
that stuff out there, but it'sjust not.
It's just not working.

(01:01:44):
The people with the money arenot willing to step up to the
plate.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Okay, Professor Ridgely and others on the call.
You want to jump in there?

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Well, if I had the answer to get people to step up
to the plate and I could spellthat out and motivate people to
do something, I'd be something,wouldn't I?
But I don't.
Getting people to understandthe nature of a problem is part
of the problem.
I mean halfway there.
Understand the nature of aproblem is part of the problem,
I mean halfway there.
If you can get people tounderstand the nature of the

(01:02:18):
problem, its extent, its depthand breadth, in the college
campuses and there's basicallythere is a propaganda machine
that is operating 24-7 againstthe views that I have stated
here, that there is a publicview that is articulated by
bureaucrats.
There is a public view that isarticulated by bureaucrats, and
God knows I hate bureaucrats whouse bureaucrat speak and who

(01:02:38):
try to basically masking,covering up what is actually
happening on the campuses.
There are several layers thatyou have to fight.
Your's important to them.
And what's going to happen,taking that long review, what's

(01:02:59):
going to happen in highereducation if these people have
their way, and I'm doing what Ican.
I think that writing books andpublicizing and doing town halls
like this to say this is not myopinion, this is not up for
discussion.
This is what they say they aredoing.
And I've always told people ifyou can find any mistakes of

(01:03:20):
fact in my books, you know, I'llgive you a hundred bucks for
every mistake of fact, notaccounting typos, okay.
But there's never any taker forthat because it's all true and
so.
Well, you're not providingenough context.
Well, here's some more context,and so that if you finally get
someone to you know, move awayfrom denial.
And I will tell you this Inever really understood denial

(01:03:42):
until I actually have faced it.
I've actually had peopledenying to me that such and such
doesn't exist.
It's a figment, it'sexaggerated, and I'm saying well
, what I'm telling you is whatthey're saying, they're doing,
and so you're disagreeing withthem and what they're saying,
and so it's an intractableproblem, but one I think we have
to continue pushing against.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
Thank you.
Well, and we're dealing withideology and in my opinion and I
think I speak for starters thebest way to defeat ideology is
through education, where weadvance the truth and how that
fits within the context of ourconstitutional republic.
In America, We've been soblessed with the greatest

(01:04:26):
experiment in the history ofhumankind, and it's on thin ice
right now if we let theideologues continue to win on
thin ice right now, if we letthe ideologues continue to win.
So it's an educational battleand I'm convinced we're going to
win it with good people herethat understand the nature of
the problem, are writing aboutit and are doing something about
it.
So with that, we've got acouple more hands up Lester

(01:04:48):
Gabriel and then Chris Rauer ondeck.

Speaker 9 (01:04:51):
Yes, then Chris Raul on deck.
Yes, One of the fronts of thisbattle that we're in are our
public libraries and schoollibraries.
I would urge all of you to goto your local libraries and see

(01:05:15):
what's there and what's notthere, and if you see some gaps
books like we're talking abouttoday most libraries have a way
of recommending books and ifthey get enough recommendations,
sometimes they will actuallyadd it to their collection so

(01:05:36):
that our friends and neighborscan have access to it without
going and buying it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
Great, yeah, thanks for that idea.
Lesser Chris, you're up.

Speaker 10 (01:05:56):
Thank you, ron.
I appreciate the opportunity toask this question Regarding the
service academies and probablya general question mainly to
STARS.
Perhaps Stan can comment aswell.
But we have a presidentialexecutive order removing DEI

(01:06:16):
from the services.
We have a secretary of defensewho has been very vocal publicly
saying DEI is dead in theservices.
So the question is what isetpopulations to remove it

(01:06:45):
altogether?
Have the armbands gone away?
But maybe only symbolically.
But maybe only symbolically.
Are the civilian instructorsthat don't have to obey military
orders?
Are they still propagating theDEI within the cadet ranks?

(01:07:06):
How successful, in other words,has the top-down EO SECDEF
direction?
How successful has that been atthe Service Academy?
Does anybody have any idea?

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
We've got some and then I'll defer to our board
chair and vice chair for theirinsights here.
A lot of the change we see iscosmetic.
The same individuals that haddiversity and inclusion titles
now have different titles, butthe people are still there.
Individuals that had diversityinclusion titles now have
different titles, but the peopleare still there.
And so this is going to requirean effort from outside the

(01:07:40):
Department of Defense tocontinue to educate people, to
educate the voters, to implementthe changes that we think are
needed.
For instance, even with all theexecutive orders that have been
issued, we're still workingwith Congress to say they need
to codify these changes inpublic law.

(01:08:01):
So we still have a lot of workto do in that regard.
So with that, I'd inviteGeneral Bishop or General
Arbuckle or both, if you want toadd to that for Chris.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
If you want to add to that for Chris, okay, joe, I'll
jump in here as the Zumi gradJoe tries to distance himself
from us academy grads.
Chris, your question is spot onthe target and that's what
we've been wrestling with.
So I'll give you some realquick feedback that I get.

(01:08:34):
I mean I have a lot ofinteraction with cadets.
What you see in my backgroundis our Breckenridge ski cabin.
We've got a room upstairscalled the cadet bunk room.
So I see cadets a lot,especially on weekends in the
winter.
Every single cadet I've askedsince president that I've seen.
I've asked since PresidentTrump took over and issued the

(01:08:54):
executive order what do you seeabout DEI?
And they basically say we don'tsee anything more about it at
all.
I had suggested to GeneralBarrifying that he removed the
purple ropes before he wasdirected to do so.
He didn't right away, but thenext week he was directed to do
so, but the next week he wasdirected to do so.
So he's a listener.

(01:09:14):
I think he's certainlyrefocused the academy on the
warrior ethos, another area thatwe're trying to break into and
I think we've had huge successhere.
Besides the Congress that Ronjust mentioned is the Board of
Visitors.
I mean we've briefed probablyhalf of the Board of Visitors.
I mean we've briefed probablyhalf of the Board of Visitors.

(01:09:35):
And just before attending thistown hall we got an email from
one of the Board of Visitors.
I don't know if Stoli's on hereor not, but he got permission
now for it not to be just Zoom.
We can attend in person.
So it should be an interestingsession.
I think I plan on driving downfrom Breckenridge to Colorado

(01:10:05):
Springs on the 6th, 7th ofAugust and seeing that.
So what I think is happeningwithin DOD for political
expediency, they have declaredDEI is dead, but I think, as Dr
Ridgely and Maurice, if he'sstill on here, would all tell us
, that this Marxist march, youdon't end it in a couple of
months.
So in my mind anyway, it goesfrom the education piece that

(01:10:25):
we've talked about to theelimination piece, which both
the president and the secretaryof defense have done a pretty
good job of eliminating it.
But now how do we eradicate it?
And that's the question thatwe've been struggling with since
the last fall.

Speaker 11 (01:10:46):
Joe, anything to jump in there and add?
I think you're right on themark there, rod, and the bottom
line is it's one thing, as weknow, to issue orders from the
president to get rid of DEI andthe Secretary of Defense with
his memos.
It's another thing to have themproperly executed, and that's
where we're at right now it'sthe execution of these orders to
get rid of, eradicate DEI, andthere's a lot of institutional

(01:11:08):
resistance, as we've heard, thatexists in various places, and I
think it's going to be agenerational battle.

Speaker 10 (01:11:16):
Frankly, Can I do a quick follow-up?
Thanks for those answers.
Number one is there's areference to codifying the EO,
et cetera.
Is there a way for the UniformCode of Military Justice as an
alternative to public law, as ameans to, for example and this

(01:11:40):
would be extreme but removingcadets that have been embraced
and are committed to thisphilosophy, so that they don't
continue to infect the militaryservices?
Number one.
Number two General Flynn is anexample and Maurice Bannon are
on the Board of Visitors at theWest Point.

(01:12:00):
Can the Board of Visitors atthe Air Force Academy and I have
no idea who they are could theybe as influential as perhaps
people like General Flynn inmaking change at the Academy?
Thank you for those, yeahabsolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
I'll jump in there real quick.
We've met several of thepresidential appointees to the
USAPA Board of Visitors.
We've had a Zoom call withCharlie Kirk.
He's very fired up aboutweighing in with his connections
.
He's got a direct line to thepresident and the secretary of

(01:12:37):
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 thecomment that you know, as he's
reviewed our website and got upto speed on what STARS has been
doing, flattered us by tellingus that right now STARS is
probably the most impactfulorganization in Washington DC

(01:13:00):
right now, given our very smallstature and whatever.
But what we've been able to doand what we want to do is part
of that solution.
Stoli, doug, stoli Nicolai.
He's an Academy grad F-16fighter pilot, colonel retired
In fact.
Stoli was here last night as aguest with Mike and Vivian Rose,

(01:13:23):
delivering a speech to a grouplast night.
Stoli's been elected as theVice Chairman of the Board of
Visitors.
He's getting up to speed on theFOIAs that we have filed and
wants to go into that position,fully aware of the issues right
now pending at the Academy.
And then, of course, congressmanAugust Pfluger, who now chairs

(01:13:47):
the Republican Study Committeein the House probably the next
powerful position under theSpeaker of the House, because I
mean they're the ones that doall the research, they've got
the knowledge about what needsto go into bills that are being
advanced in Congress has beenelected chairman of the Board of
Visitors.
So we have a Board of Visitors,at least at the presidential

(01:14:07):
appointed level.
That is going in not to be arubber stamp for the
superintendent of the academy,but an oversight committee on
behalf of the American taxpayer.
So we're very optimistic aboutwhat they bring to play.
And so with that, brock had ahand up and we got two others.

Speaker 12 (01:14:24):
Yeah, just a quickie for Professor Ridgely and
Professor Gray, if you choose toanswer.
My daughter-in-law is, or was,a professor at Drexel and she's
an academy grad, married to myson, academy grad from early
2000s, and she has not spoken tous for about four or five years

(01:14:47):
now because we voted forPresident Trump and that was not
until she started teachingthere at Drexel.
So my question, I guess, has todo with the influence of the
bureaucracy actually on theprofessors, and how many are the

(01:15:19):
professors able get over thatfear of loneliness?
What I'm getting by that isfear of being ostracized or
canceled or silenced or ignored,for example, un-stunned or
ignored, for example.
So are the professors gettingsome of this fortitude to fight

(01:15:39):
back or are they just cowing tothat and just curious?

Speaker 3 (01:15:42):
Well I should say, your daughter doesn't talk to me
either.
So here at Drexel I can saythat you know, my colleagues by
and large are nice people.
I mean, it's one of thosethings 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 amatter of fact.
He doesn't agree with me onanything.
Well, he disagreed with me oncertain things with regard to

(01:16:03):
administration.
But we can disagree and we chat.
But what I will say is this isthat many persons who would
agree with what this boardstands for, what this group
stands for, are not going to bepublic about it.
They don't want the trouble.
I think it's particularly withour previous administration here
at this particular university,with one of the worst college
presidents in America who hasnow thankfully departed, and we

(01:16:27):
have a wonderful new presidentwho's come in and has really
focused on the right things.
Maybe we're going to seesomething, and maybe you will
see something, john, in thisrelationship.
I wish it the best on that.
It's very tough to have kidswho behave that way,
particularly for reasons thataren't really valid, and the

(01:16:47):
fact is that people who live anddie by their ideology are
really unpleasant people and arepeople who are really cheating
themselves out of a rich, fulllife.
I think.
I think that a lot of peoplecome by my office and on the sly
, will say we support you, lovewhat you do, love all of that
stuff which is really not ofmuch value in the public realm.

(01:17:08):
But what I found is that,because of the changing winds,
both nationally and both here inPhiladelphia, we're finding
more and more people arestanding up and are not afraid
to express themselves.
With regard to this, I'm goingto use the term woke agenda.
Basically, it's the socialjustice agenda, the socialist
agenda, the DEI expression ofthat agenda.

(01:17:30):
So there is hope.
I think that I'm going tocontinue with doing what I'm
doing, which is I don't put, getin anyone's face, but I also do
not shrink from theconfrontation if there happens
to be one, and I think thatthat's a basic measure of your
integrity.
Whether you're a gadfly and youwant to be a gadfly, well, good
luck on that, but if you'realso someone who doesn't want to

(01:17:52):
shrink back and say, I'm notgoing to step back and allow you
to have your say in all of this, we all have to have a certain
amount of integrity andself-respect to step out and be
counted when it counts to becounted.
I hope that some sort of answerto your question.

Speaker 12 (01:18:15):
Well, I just I was just curious about the feeling
there, I guess of a lot ofprofessors you know and, like I
say, they come into your officecovertly.
I guess of a lot of professorsyou know, like I say, they come
into your office covertly, Iguess, and express their
admiration on what you're doing,but they're not being very
public about it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
Well, one guy, an Indian colleague, who saw me in
the hallway and he startedtalking.
Then he dramatically lookedboth ways up.
Oh I'm talking to Stan, Ibetter not be seen Something
like that.
You know, that's kind of thefirst overt thing I'd heard
about that, that it was a badthing to be seen talking with me
in the hallway.
So that's another barometer, Iguess, of measurement of what's

(01:18:48):
going on.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
All right, thank you.
Three more questions, and thenI'll ask General Bishop to close
it out.

Speaker 13 (01:19:00):
Let's see Jim Wyman, mike Rose on deck.
Yes, sir, Dr Ridgeland, I'dlike to thank you for your book.
I have the yellow one.
Now it seems I got to get thered one.
I think they complement eachother.
I also dropped some things Ithought might be helpful to some
people in the chat.
One is a reference and a linkto the book by Dr Gilliam.
I don't know how you feel aboutthat, but it's Confessions of a

(01:19:21):
Professor where he revisits theinstitutions where he got his
undergrad degree to get a moreadvanced degree and found that
they had changed over 20 or 30years.
You may want to comment on youropinion about his work.
I did want to mention somethingthat I note.
I was trained as an engineer inprocess control and systems and

(01:19:44):
I one time sat down and drew aflow chart.
It would seem to me that theuniversities and colleges are at
the center of this whole thing,because they crank out what the
Wizard of Oz told us was soimportant, which is a diploma,
and then people with diplomassome of them would feed back
into the teachers' unions andteach the K-12.

(01:20:05):
People join the teachers'unions and prepare the kids by
the time they got through grade12 and entered the colleges,
they were softened up.
The college professors overtime since 1968 would seem to
since that time, have hiredpeople that we professors and
department heads who were evenfarther to the left than them.
So there's been a constant leftdrift in my lifetime anyway

(01:20:28):
since then.
But the STEM people that thecolleges turn out seem to be a
little bit insulated because theprotons and the steel don't
submit to literature.
But the soft people, thehumanities, were people who can
write and they went into thenews media to write the stories.
And the pretty ones went intothe news media to read the
stories on camera and then someof the academics circled back,

(01:20:51):
stayed in academia and wrotethese papers which Helen
Pluckrose can tell you, justdrifted farther and farther to
the left, and that would seem tobe the center of it.
So my hope is that with neweducation systems, with kids
turning to AI and getting AItutors, the brick and mortar
system won't have as muchstrength.

(01:21:13):
The brick and mortar systemwon't have as much strength, but
it's still the effect of thatdiploma seems to be something
that we're going to have tofight.
Your comments, if you have anyI know it's a lot I'd like to
write to you at Drexel and sendyou my diagram.

Speaker 3 (01:21:33):
Well, you know, I think there's a dichotomy,
that's certainly between theSTEM side business, economics,
stem and what I call the softside or the dark side of campus,
which is where most of thenefarious types dwell and lie to
each other and substantiateeach other's prejudices.
The STEM field has a nicesmorgasbord of a range of

(01:21:57):
political opinion and mainlypeople who are in the military,
people who are athletes, peoplewho work in the STEM fields.
They can't afford to lie, theycan't afford to put up a front.
They can't argue their way outof the laws of Newton's laws.
They can't argue that out ofthe laws of you know, newton's
laws.
They can't argue that.
But in the soft side they canput up really, really good

(01:22:20):
arguments.
You know the STEM fields are amixed bag.
I've got a STEM colleague who'son here right now from Drexel
University, who's a I'm surehe's probably we consider
himself a left winger, but he isintellectually honest and
someone I respect greatly and wehave good conversations about
the things we've been talkingabout here today and remain

(01:22:41):
friends.
But I think that it's good toremember that reality doesn't
care about your feelings.
You know and that's a hardlesson that a lot of young
people in this generation comingthrough has to find out, and
they have to realize they wantreality to conform to their
feelings.
And then we see a lot of peopleout on the streets right now

(01:23:02):
protesting about what'shappening in various cities,
various things and are a bad.
I hate to think if we had torely upon this generation to
storm the beaches at Normandy orfly bomber missions over
Germany in 1943.
How aghast, a terrible thingthat would be.
And I should say, by the way,mr Lyman, that you and I are

(01:23:24):
graduates of 77.
I was a student at UNC, chapelHill as an undergraduate when
you were a student at theMilitary Academy, and I think we
played you guys in footballwhen you had a great, a really
great quarterback.
I can't remember his name rightnow but, uh, in any case, I had
to reach out when I saw that 77there.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
So great, all right, a couple more uh questions and
then uh, and then we'll wrap itup with general bishop.
Uh, senator rose, you're up,sir.

Speaker 5 (01:23:53):
All right, ron, I actually have two comments.
One is in answer to thequestion previously can't the
military get rid of people thathave basically the wrong
viewpoints?
Let me point out that thecommander-in-chief has an
absolute right, without courtinterference, to determine who's

(01:24:16):
going to be commissioned.
There's never been a courtdecision ever requiring the
commissioning of anybody.
Furthermore, even during theCOVID vaccine crisis, the
Supreme Court itself ruled thatthe military had a right to
decide where to assign people,that even if they were being

(01:24:41):
reassigned because they weren'ttaking a COVID vaccine, when the
court said they had a right notto take a COVID vaccine, the
court was not going to interferewith their assignment.
And during the Vietnam War, adoctor, a medical doctor, was
assigned to do stuff that hadnothing to do with medicine, and
the Supreme Court upheld that.
So here's the bottom line Ifthe president, the commander

(01:25:01):
chief, chose to do so, theycould not commission a West
Point senior who's a communistand everybody knows it and he's
wearing it on his t-shirt.
You could just say I'm notgoing to commission you because
of your viewpoint.
There's no such thing asviewpoint discrimination,
banning the president fromassigning military members
wherever he wants them to go orto keep them from being
commissioned.

(01:25:22):
Now, my second point is two ofthe top four leaders of the Air
Force Academy Association ofGraduates chapter here in South
Carolina refused to attend thepresentation Ron Scott and I are
going to give tonight andrefused to attend the

(01:25:48):
presentation that was given atCharleston Southern University
by Stoli Nikolai, southernUniversity, by Stoli Nikolai.
And what struck me is numberone.
Their refusal by email was verycurt and angry.
One of them said this is justright-wing extremism.
And I replied very courteouslycould you explain that?

(01:26:11):
What do you mean?
Why do you think that?
And there is no response.
And the other angrily said I'mnot going to waste my time and
what I'm struck with is you askthese people well, look, I'm
open, explain to me what's yourconcern.
And they won't do it or theycan't do it.

(01:26:32):
And I even told the first personlook, I'm so open-minded and
I'll tell you this for the firsttime.
I think Ron and Rod know this,joe knows this, but I actually
attended a communist party rallyfor a day in Minneapolis

(01:26:53):
because I wanted to know whatthis is all about and it was
very enlightening and shockingthat they could be that screwed
up.
But I'm saying the people onthe left accuse us of being
extreme and then they don'tjustify it, they won't talk
about it.
People I deal with anyway, butI don't even perceive us as

(01:27:16):
being extreme.
I perceive they've gone so farleft that what is really just
being a patriot, just beingmoderate American, they see as
extreme.
So anyway, this division is allaround us, even among academy
graduates that I deal with herein Charleston, south Carolina.

Speaker 1 (01:27:40):
Over.
Great Thanks for thoseobservations, Senator.
Last up, Dr Bray, and thenwe'll close it.

Speaker 8 (01:27:50):
Real quick.
I just wanted to touch on JohnBrockman's question about how
colleagues perceive you the samething that Stan was saying.
Over the last five years I'venoticed that some people stop
talking to me and that's fine,but that's just.
They're cowards and I don'tthink the environment will get
better.
Now I teach finance, so I'm ina capitalist department For the

(01:28:11):
most part.
We have some crazies, as anyacademic department does, but
for the most part my home baseis comfortable.
But I don't think you'll eversee history or philosophy or
anybody over there in thehumanities who still has a
rational mindset.
I don't think they'll everspeak up until the climate on

(01:28:32):
campus changes and that's theadministration's doing.
I've offered to meet with thepresident of our university.
I have met with her, but sherefuses to do anything and she
hires her gal pals who are intoDEI and just changes their
titles.
Until we get a new presidentand we fire college
administrators who went alongand supported DEI, nothing will

(01:28:54):
change Nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:28:57):
Yep, that's all I got , but I would love to talk to
anybody on the call aboutworking with the military.

Speaker 8 (01:29:02):
I love the military and I do love to say this stuff
out loud.

Speaker 1 (01:29:07):
Well, great points, Dr Bray, Having been a professor
myself, having been a professormyself, you're right,
Leadership sets the tone and theclimate, the culture.
So, with that General Bishop,we've had a hearty discussion
here this morning and Ipersonally want to thank

(01:29:27):
everybody for joining the callour speakers, Professor Stan
Ridgely and Maurice Washingtonfor his testimonial.
Our speakers, Professor StanRidgely and Maurice Washington
for his testimonial.
So with that General Bishop,would you do the honor of
closing it out for us?

Speaker 2 (01:29:41):
Thanks, ron, I sure will.
And, as you said, wow, what agreat discussion.
Thanks everybody for attendingand showing up and just a huge
thanks to Dr Ridgely and Maurice.
Dr Ridgely, I mean that 30minutes plus with you was just
great.
As Ron mentioned earlier, we'vebeen at this for five years.

(01:30:05):
I thought I knew just abouteverything but found your
presentation enlightening.
I really like the thought ofvirtuous victimhood.
That really kind of nails it.
You mentioned you have a numberof colleagues that don't agree
with you.
We have had a number ofmilitary colleagues that don't
agree with us as well.
A former superintendent of theAir Force Academy, for example,

(01:30:27):
told us well, I just want topush DEI into every nook and
cranny of the Air Force Academy.
One of the comebacks I havewhen people say that is would
you just listen to your people?
Now, in a public university isprobably a higher percentage.
But again, the interaction Ihave with cadets, in fact at

(01:30:48):
this very table I'm coming toyou from, is when I first was
alerted to this.
I was flipping pancakes beforefour cadets and I were going
skiing and one of them justoffered the culture is changing
underneath my feet and the othercadet chimed in with and it's
not for the better.
They're dividing us intoidentity groups and that was my

(01:31:09):
first, you know, wakeup callbefore the Black Lives Matter
video that really got us started.
So listen to your people.
And then something that I'vecome across lately that I push
back with, like my son, you know.
He said, well, dad, what'swrong with DEI?
And I said, you know, nobodyreally is against diversity and
inclusion.
However, the way the communityis using it, those that are

(01:31:32):
pushing it, it's a soapylanguage 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 equitypart, because the way that, at
least in DOD, equity has beenimplemented, it's discriminatory
.
It's discrimination, as yousaid earlier, dr Ridgely, it's
breaking a number of the laws ofour land and just reinforced by

(01:31:55):
the UNC Harvard case recentlyin college admissions.
So I do think, as you startedyour speech, dr Ridgely, we do
speak past one another on thisissue.
I think everybody's for givinga handout, everybody's for

(01:32:15):
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 playingfield before we're
discriminating at a time in lifewhen it affects someone else's
hopes, dreams and aspirations.
So big time thanks to everybodyelse that's pitching in and

(01:32:37):
doing that.
This gives you a taste of whereI think STARS is.
I think Dr Ridgely said he'sgoing to continue what he's
doing.
I think STARS is probably goingto continue to do.
As Ron said, the way tohopefully solve this is
education.
But we'd like to take it to thenext level and that's getting

(01:32:57):
more into that eradication pieceand that's what we'll talk
about on Friday with our boardof advisors and board of
directors again.
So if you'd like to participatein 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'sgreat executive orders there now
on merit.
There's follow-up from theSecretary of Defense on merit in

(01:33:23):
service Academy admissions withsome memorandums.
Okay, but how do you definemerit?
And you know you have to getdown into the inches and you
have to follow things up.
How about you know theConstitution and the oath of
office?
Yeah, we can look at and see.
Okay, nobody's really teachingcritical race theory or DEI

(01:33:43):
anymore.
But why don't we focusparticularly our military
officers to be at our serviceacademies and the other DOD
programs and ROTC et cetera, onmore education on the
Constitution, and the oathCadets tell us they basically
have zero.
So that's kind of where wethink we can help out in the

(01:34:03):
eradication piece.
But I certainly agree with myvice chair, our vice chair, joe
General Arbuckle, when he saysthis is probably a generational
thing.
It's not just going to go away.
So thanks to everybody forpitching in and helping us.
We started STARS five-plusyears ago with a little somewhat

(01:34:24):
of a slogan.
It was wake up, stand up, speakup and don't give up, and I
think that kind of paints ourpicture for the years ahead.
So that's all I have, ron.
Thanks everybody forparticipating Great.

Speaker 1 (01:34:39):
Thanks General.
Thanks everyone.
You know where our website isstarsus, with two R's, starsus
and our team continues to growand we welcome anybody that's
new to STARS to join our team.

Speaker 6 (01:34:56):
Thank you, and I'd like to just add a quick prayer.
Father in heaven, thank you forthis group of men and women who
stand strong behind the countrythat you gave us.
We ask protection, we ask light, we ask an open area for those
people who are blinded, thatthey may see the light and join
us in protecting our militaryand protecting our country In

(01:35:18):
Jesus's name, amen.

Speaker 1 (01:35:19):
Amen.
Thank you, lori, thank you verymuch.
You're welcome.

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