DeepAudit, a non-profit tech startup using artificial intelligence tools to root out Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and ideologically-charged language, published a report on Monday identifying 14 statutes in Maine education law that appear to use DEI-related language.
[RELATED: Federal Department of Education Sends Maine DOE Final Warning on Transgender Athlete Policy…]
“We looked at 1000+ Maine education statutes to demonstrate that ideologically driven policies can be implemented across a vast system by being embedded in a few statutes. The few sections containing DEI are concealed from public scrutiny by the 1,000+ statutes that obscure their existence.,” said DeepAudit on X.
The tech non-profit provided AI tools to analyze every statute in Maine’s body of state law on education, searching for any language resembling DEI that promotes racial or sex-based discrimination in the name of equity and claims that racial groups are inherently either victims or oppressors.
The founders, Jonah Davids and Leif Rasmussen, then manually reviewed the top 100 results, eliminating any results that used similar language to DEI statutes, such as laws against discrimination based on disabilities, but did not actually constitute DEI programs.
That process left DeepAudit with 14 statutes the founders believe genuinely constitute instances of DEI embedded in laws governing education.
Those instances include:
- School Resource Officers: School Resource Officers are required by law to attend DEI or “implicit bias” training during the first year of their employment.
- Awareness Programming: Institutes of higher education must provide sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and stalking training that says “marginalized groups” are disproportionately impacted.
- Training for Title IX Coordinators: Title IX coordinators must take “cultural competency training” to learn how race could affect reactions to sexual violence.
- Requirements for History Curriculum: Maine Studies courses are required for graduation and must include Wabanaki Studies. African American Studies must be included in the required American History curriculum.
- Maine Health Education: Focuses the Maine Area Health Education Centers system on “underserved cultural groups.”
- Education Commissioner: The Education Commissioner must report on the number of requests from schools for “affirmative action workshops” and the department’s ability to meet the demand for affirmative action and gender equity training.
- Tutoring Grant Program: Grant awards prioritize programs that address “educational disparities due to race or income.”
- Dangerous Behavior Prevention: Schools can develop “individualized” responses to dangerous behavior from students that includes minimizing suspensions or expulsions, and emphasize “restorative” rather than punitive action.
- Maine School Safety Center: The Center must provide “climate assessments” of schools and provide “restorative justice assistance.”
- Higher Education Interpersonal Violence Advisory Commission: The Commission must include a member from an organization promoting “racial equity”, a group promoting LGBTQ rights, and an immigrant advocacy group.
- Intent of Education Laws: One purpose of the education system is to “encourage equity.”
- Confidential Resource Advisors: They must undergo training on “unconscious biases related to race, gender and sexuality.”
- School Accountability System: The accountability system must ensure that schools provide “equity in educational opportunity.”
- School Approval Requirements: All school administrative units must have an “affirmative action plan” that must include plans for training programs on “gender equity for teachers.”
The Maine Wire independently verified that each of the laws did include the far-left and DEI-related language cited by DeepAudit.
“These statutes reflect Maine’s legally-enshrined commitment to embedding DEI concepts in taxpayer-funded education,” said the tech startup.
They claimed that the success of this effort proves that DeepAudit’s AI tools could help parse through large volumes of statutes to identify those that have been infused with the semantics of left-wing ideology.
“These statutes reflect Maine’s legally-enshrined commitment to embedding DEI concepts in taxpayer-funded education,” they said.
The exposé on Maine’s education law is only the third report published by the company and comes as Maine’s education system faces a potential federal funding loss for its far-left policies surrounding gender and its refusal to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump mandating that transgender-identifying males not be allowed to compete in women’s sports.
