Indigenous author cancels Weber State appearance due to list of banned DEI words

The form that Darcie Little Badger was supposed to fill out before speaking at Weber State University seemed fairly standard at first.

It requested a photo of her and a short bio and asked if she needed any special equipment, like a microphone or projector. She’d filled out maybe hundreds of these before as an author and editor who has traveled the country to talk about her young adult novels.

But she’d never seen anything like the last section.

“I was taken aback,” Little Badger recalled. “At first, I thought ‘This couldn’t apply, could it?’”

Under the heading “additional information about Weber State University,” the Ogden school provided a list of “prohibited words and concepts” for visiting speakers. Included among them: equity, diversity and inclusion, anti-racism, bias, oppre