We all need to be “sustained,” right? To stay alive, right? To adopt measures to thrive, right?

Unfortunately, John Leo observes in “The Worst Campus Codeword,” the inevitably attractive, near-incontestable concept of sustainability has been co-opted in comprehensive and effective ways by the campus Left. Dozens of universities now have sustainability programs, institutionalized in both the curriculum and campus residential life by a powerful network of educational organizations. Sustainability ideology brims over with sub rosa indoctrination in everything from one-sided ecological, social and socialist reforms to prescribed viewpoints on affirmative action, abortion, same-sex marriage, and U.S. iniquity.

One of the more egregious sustainability schemes is the once-suspended, now-resurrected residential life program at the University of Delaware, which, as Leo recaps:

discussed mandatory sessions for students as “treatments” and insisted that whites acknowledge their role as racists … It also required students to achieve certain competencies including “students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society.” [It also featured] “the social justice aspects of sustainability education,” referring to “environmental racism,” “domestic partnerships” and “gender equity.”

UD, as of this week, has, without due process, restored its “Res Life” sustainability program. FIRE’s Adam Kissel states it is still:

all about indoctrination into a highly politicized agenda …
The program still tries to change students’ “thoughts, values, beliefs, and actions.”
It is still thoroughly about sustainability [and] maintains highly politicized and highly suspect activities …
this is a legal minefield. It is morally reprehensible. It still wrests away from the faculty its historic prerogative to oversee education … Its vague language merely hides its original intent …
The faculty must reject it in order to restore the university’s good name as a place open to the views of all students in Delaware and beyond—and a place free from indoctrination, coercion, and violations of freedom of conscience … it is stunning that the faculty seems poised to trust [Res Life] oppressors of students to take charge of freshmen from their first day on campus.

Higher-education reformers have to unite to pull the plug on this latest, possibly most insidious of all, utopian blitzkrieg.