DEI Exposed: The Biggest Con of the Century

The perils and hucksterism of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices on university campuses are laid out clearly, in Stanley Ridgley’s book ‘DEI Exposed.’

"DEI Exposed: How the Biggest Con of the Century Almost Toppled Higher Education," by Stanley K. Ridgley.

The haymaker is the most powerful punch in boxing. When it connects, it often ends a fight. Professor Stanley K. Ridgley’s “DEI Exposed: How the Biggest Con of the Century Almost Toppled Higher Education” is a literary haymaker aimed to knock out public acceptance of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) phenomenon.

Ridgley’s latest book is a powerful denunciation of what he calls a “dystopian social fantasy.” He asserts DEI has severely damaged higher education and cost it millions of dollars. A university insider, the author is clinical full professor of Strategic Management at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business. He holds a Doctorate and Masters’ degree in International Relations, Security, and the Soviet Union from Duke University and an International MBA from Temple University’s Fox School of Business.

Stanley Ridgley, author of "DEI Exposed: How the Biggest Con of the Century Almost Toppled Higher Education." Stanley Ridgley

“DEI Exposed” follows his previous bestseller, “Brutal Minds: The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing in Our Universities.”

DEI’s Sudden Takeover

His newest work is a master class on DEI: how, why and when its growth exploded on university campuses; the personalities of those committed to DEI; how DEI props like privilege walks and snitch hotlines feed student paranoia, and why DEI practitioners are unwilling to criticize the anti-Semitic protests occurring at universities today.

“’Diversity is our strength!’ must be one of the most vapid, laughable slogans ever contrived by man,” writes Ridgley in the Introduction. “This is true in business, in government, and it is certainly true in academia. It captures the disaster of DEI in a microcosm.”

The author contends that DEI is nothing more than a trendy pseudoscience and masterful con job populated by “peanut grifters” and “Big Con Artists.”

The Art of the Con

Ridgley analyzes with laser-like specificity the psychology of con artists, or hustlers, and the elements of a successful con. In his analogy, the author shares how those in the DEI industry (diversity consultants, chief diversity officers, diversity organizations) use virtue signaling and victim signaling as tools to engage and encourage the con game’s universities (marks) in the DEI hustle.

The author says that during the meteoric rise of DEI between 2020 and 2023, “virtue signaling” occurred when universities eagerly approved and promoted DEI bureaucracies on campus. The quick acceptance of DEI illustrated academia’s virtue because of their sensitivity and caring for the plight of those they considered oppressed.

“Virtue victimhood” happened when educational institutions readily accepted the DEI premise that they were guilty villains who needed absolution for their cultural sins. Atonement was available for a fee, but the DEI bureaucracy also demanded that quantified metrics like merit and achievement be scrapped for intangibles like equity and inclusivity.

The Dominant Pathology of DEI

The social unrest erupting after the death of George Floyd was the spark that ignited the DEI flame spreading to campuses nationwide. Ridgley notes that universities, fearful of violence on their campuses, were ripe targets for diversity hustlers peddling novel solutions to the issues of “racial reckoning” and “systemic racism.”

What made universities suckers was that the same DEI hucksters warning and counseling about “rampant racism” on campus were the same entities guaranteed to profit from addressing it. Never mind that there was little proof that campuses were hotbeds of racism. Campus diversity offices used tools like micro-aggressions, snitch lines, and bias response teams to foster hypersensitivity and suspicions among students, or what Ridgley labels “soft totalitarianism.”

When those tools failed to keep the con going, the author shows how the DEI faithful created hate crime hoaxes.

“The hate hoax is a familiar phenomenon at the university, and these usually are revealed to be publicity stunts to draw attention to racial problems—to “raise awareness”—that either don’t exist or that are so infrequent and inconsequential as to require people to fabricate them,” the author writes.

DEI and Anti-Semitism

In Chapter 11, Ridgley illustrates the nakedness of DEI with its impotent response to the worst mass slaying of Jews since the Holocaust. He shows how the industry that oversaw imagined micro-aggressions and pronoun offenses was highly selective about condemning the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre of armless Israelis.

“DEI staffers were adept at running workshops and hectoring innocent students about their implicit biases, but they proved incompetent to deal with the real world of real hate experienced by real people threatened with death because of their ethnicity,” he writes.

He goes on to note that the Jewish victims were not DEI-approved, so bureaucrats felt no obligation to confront the explosion of anti-Semitism.

Ridgley concludes his tour de force critique of DEI on a positive note. He points out how Donald Trump winning the election sent shockwaves through higher education. Harvard settled two anti-Semitism lawsuits one day after Trump took office, and Brown University and the University of California system settled Title VI complaints before the new president was sworn in.

Recent headlines also demonstrate the author’s prescience. He cites the Trump administration’s comments about the billions of tax-free dollars some universities have accumulated, and he notes how that knowledge could be a source of leverage for educational reform. 

Parting Shot

Ridgley has done his homework. His book includes 577 footnotes and a glossary titled “DEI Diversity Speak A-Z.” It’s also significant to note that many of the quotations he employs are direct quotes from who he calls “The Gurus of Grift.” These quotes give readers clear insight into the thought processes and beliefs of DEI’s most prominent spokespeople. The author also offers a parting quote of his own in the final chapter:

“DEI is also in the first twilight shadows of its existence because of its internal contradictions that render it laughable—the doctrine is profoundly unserious and rooted in pseudoscience and prejudice. We welcome this retreat from chaos and a return to sanity; its accelerated to the point that today those who imposed on us this destructive monstrosity are running from accountability.”

’DEI Exposed: How the Biggest Con of the Century Almost Toppled Higher Education’ By Stanley K. Ridgley, PhD Armin Lear Press, March 3, 2025 Paperback: 458 pages

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