All members of the Cal State LA community are invited to a talk by Prof. Erec Smith on the topic of "Discourse, Empowerment, and Individuality: Toward a New D.E.I," which will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025, from 1:30 to 3:30 pm in the University Library Community Room. This promises to be an interesting exploration of the timely topic of what "DEI" should or can mean in higher education today. Comments and discussion from all perspectives are welcome. Sponsored by the Cal State LA Heterodox Academy Campus Community. 

About Prof. Smith:

Erec Smith is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania. Although he has eclectic scholarly interests, his primary work focuses on the rhetorics of anti-racist activism, theory, and pedagogy as well as the role of rhetoric in a free, pluralistic, and civil society.

He is a co-founder of Free Black Thought, a nonprofit dedicated to highlighting viewpoint diversity within the black communities. Free Black Thought features a compendium of Black artists, writers, academics, and public intellectuals not typically discussed in mainstream media. The Organization also has a Journal of Free Black Thought, which publishes anything–-from poetry to scholarly work—that discusses or displays a variety of viewpoints within the black diaspora.

Smith is the author of A Critique of Anti-Racism in Rhetoric and Composition: The Semblance of Empowerment (2020), a book in which he scrutinizes contemporary modes of anti-racism in his field. The book was conceived after Smith's observations of his field led him to conclude that anti-racist initiatives did more to disempower students and faculty than empower them.

Smith is an advisor for both the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism and Counterweight, an organization that advocates for classical liberal concepts of social justice.