To the Editor:

I completely agree that the celebration of cultural diversity on display at Guilderland High School’s April 11 cultural fair is the kind of “DEI” we all love [“Editorial: Who will carry Liberty’s torch?” The Altamont enterprise, April 16, 2024]. It is America at its best.

What confuses me about your April 17 editorial is the fear it expresses that the federal government might take federal funding away from the school if it continues to “stay the course” and “that the threat of losing federal funds” might “change the district’s approach to serving all students.”

I sincerely doubt that their cultural fair would put their funding in jeopardy. What exactly are they worried about? What are they doing or teaching that makes them so nervous?

The same editorial also states, “In its DEI purge, the federal government has removed historic accomplishments of people who are not white men from websites ranging from the Pentagon to the Park Service.”

That is a shocking claim. If it’s true, I would be right up front in any protest of such an outrage. Because it is true that, “None of us should accept the purging of our history.” Can you give me an example of a person whose historic accomplishments have been removed from a Pentagon or Park Service website?

I do not ask these questions to be confrontational; I ask because I truly wish to be completely and accurately informed so that I can form reasonable opinions of my own. Would you please address these questions in informative articles in the future?

Cindy Adams-Kornmeyer

Westerlo

Editor’s note: The DEI efforts in the Guilderland schools include far more than an annual cultural fair. In 2022, the district created a new post for a director of diversity, equity, and inclusion and also has a DEI committee addressing issues revolving around race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and more. The Enterprise has written dozens of stories on these initiatives, ranging from curricula to clubs — the very sort of support that, for example, the Trump administration has eliminated at West Point. The 2022 school board elections were hotly contested in Guilderland, partly because of the district’s DEI initiatives with the slate opposing those initiatives defeated at the polls.

An example of a Park Service removal is content on its webpage about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad; public outcry led to Tubman’s photo being reposted along with a quotation but, according to an analysis by the Washington Post, references to slavery, racial division, the civil rights struggle, and the Jim Crow era, have been softened or removed.

The Pentagon deleted, among others, pages related to the Navajo Code Talkers’ contributions in World War II, baseball legend Jackie Robinson’s military service, the Tuskegee airmen, Medal of Honor recipient Charles Calvin Rogers, and webpages about women and LGBTQ+ service members. Many of these, again because of public outcry, have been restored.

While The Enterprise focuses on coverage of Albany County, sometimes, especially in editorials, we use a local lens to look at national issues. Since we try to report on news not covered elsewhere, we would be unlikely to write on an issue like the purging of government websites since that has been well covered by reputable national media.