Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, condemned race-centered diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at a Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy event Wednesday. He instead advocated for conservative voices to be uplifted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Vos said he wants to implement “intellectual diversity,” which would ensure at least one conservative faculty member in every school at UW-Madison. He said intellectual diversity is equal to racial and gender DEI.
“How is it different rejecting somebody based because they're African American or because they're an immigrant? It is no different,” Vos said at Wednesday’s event.
Intellectual diversity could help manage the social and political rejection conservatives face at UW-Madison, Vos said. He added that having a different viewpoint, particularly a conservative stance, is the only “allowable discrimination” on campus due to partisanship.
“It’s all about ideology at the university,” Vos said. UW-Madison, he claimed, does not find any value in having conservatives in positions of prominence on campus.
Vos said the liberal majority in the student body perpetuates conservative rejection at UW-Madison. While Wisconsin has been a consistent swing state for most recent presidential elections, Vos said Madison has a 80% liberal student body that is “totally unrepresentative” of the rest of the state.
In previous years, Vos has said that DEI is a “religion for the left,” making the initiative a partisan issue. He has consistently opposed DEI efforts, formerly withholding funding from the UW System in 2023 until cuts were made.
“I do not believe in racial affirmative action,” Vos said. This aligns with the new Trump administration’s DEI roll backs, with the White House deeming DEI programs “radical and wasteful.”
Vos claimed UW-Madison released information on how to avoid Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following the Trump administration’s recent immigrant policy. While the university was committed, Vos said, to federal law pertaining to DEI, its stance opposing the federal ICE raids was hypocritical.
“The university picks and chooses which laws it wants to follow based on its own ideology,” Vos said. He claimed UW-Madison only followed federal enforcements under the Biden administration and defied them under Trump due to partisanship.
