D’Angelo: Syracuse University’s DEI Agenda is “Same” as Always
Syracuse University's Newhouse School has a PR problem, and it begins with its PR program chair.
I have questions for Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, tied to an interview I stumbled upon, from about nine months ago, conducted by PR industry leader Ken Jacobs of Syracuse’s Anthony D’Angelo, the Newhouse School’s PR academic program chair.
But… first things first…
For context, I have a long history in the PR industry of dealing with Anthony D’Angelo, or, as he prefers to be called on campus, “Professor D’Angelo.” (He does not have a Ph.D., so all pretense aside, I’ll just call him what I always called him: Tony).
My beef with Tony since 2018 is that — despite his positions of power and authority in such trade and academic associations as the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and the PRSA-controlled Commission for Public Relations Education (CPRE) (which hands out “certifications” to PR academic programs like at Syracuse) — Tony has become increasingly challenged in managing truth and ethical communication.
No small thing, to be sure.
Speaking from my own experience, there’s nothing quite like being on the receiving end of a Tony D’Angelo mea culpa, like this one from September 2017:
Tony’s true gift — if you can call it that — is his ability to come across as above-board, squeaky-clean, sincere, and even contrite, if the situation requires it.
He has hoodwinked a lot of people for a lot of years with his “straight shooter” act, like in this additional mea culpa e-mail that he sent to me on behalf of PRSA in September 2017 via the Syracuse server, literally promising me he’s a “straight shooter,” while also apologizing profusely for his unhinged PRSA National Chair colleague after a defamation incident in which she targeted me in PRSA:
Meanwhile, as I’ve observed it, Tony’s Achilles heel is his remarkable penchant for also blurting out factual information sometimes, not realizing he is totally incriminating either himself, his employer, or another group he represents (again, Exhibit A, above).
Later, when he’s caught red-handed in either a lie to cover up a past truth that he himself revealed, or as a culprit in the originating misconduct itself, Tony wheels out his other “gift”: playing the victim card.
Tony defaults to blaming others and expecting those who are up-rank and down-rank from him to clean up his mess, so that he can get away scot-free, with no accountability. (I explained in a recent blog post how all that sausage is actually made, involving Syracuse specifically. Newhouse School has leveraged Tony’s power and position to its own selfish marketing benefit, so they’ve repeatedly looked the other way from his goings-on.)
All of this stuff is Tony’s M.O. He’s just one of those guys.
I’ve personally dealt with Tony D’Angelo’s gaslighting and blame-games for years, which initially started small, but later became epic.
I’ve paid a huge price both personally and professionally for his choices, in multiple ways. And no, I’m not happy about it, because I’ve never deserved such horrific treatment from Tony.
Consequently, in the score-keeping department, I always find it more than a smidge amusing when Tony paints himself into yet another corner, with his own rhetoric and grandstanding.
The latest episode of “Tony D’Angelo’s Greatest Hits” is this:
A Diversity / Equity / Inclusion (DEI) moment of truth, which I believe Syracuse University will come to regret.
In this PR industry interview with Ken Jacobs (excerpt below), Tony pretty much confirms that Syracuse and its Newhouse School have changed only the naming conventions and monikers of its prior DEI offices, programs, and mandates (which were steeped in legally noncompliant racial / gender preferences).
Tony states for the record here that everything about how Syracuse’s current, real-time DEI initiatives actually operate remains unchanged from before.
If true, then Syracuse is potentially breaking federal law and in violation of executive orders (which requires proper investigation).
Take a listen, especially where Tony spills the beans that Syracuse’s DEI adjustments are a “change of name” and “relabeling” ONLY (Tony’s words):
It appears a certain someone forgot his PRSA Code of Ethics:
I believe the U.S. DOJ / Civil Rights Division and the EEOC will find Tony’s revelations more than a bit interesting.
If I’m understanding Tony’s assertions accurately, then just as countless universities also have done (example below), Syracuse apparently tap-dances for the federal regulators when they’re in town, claiming the university has brought DEI programs into “compliance” to be nondiscriminatory based on race, sex, religion, etc.
But later, when the feds aren’t looking, administrators and faculty (like Tony and his colleagues) are apparently told — on the quiet, of course — to keep doing what they’ve always done.
Or, so it appears from Tony’s talk with Ken Jacobs.
Only Tony forgot the “Keep it quiet!” part. He blurted it out, on a publicly posted YouTube video.
A Google quick-search reveals that Syracuse was among many universities that openly has used racial and gender preferences in admissions and scholarship provision only a very short time ago, which the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division has since called out as a big no-no, due to that stuff being illegally discriminatory.
Syracuse’s online record claims that subsequent “compliance” efforts have been made, regarding DEI. But it seems Professor Tony has — yet again — opened mouth, inserted foot, and claimed it’s all still business-as-usual:
Among his other limitations, Tony simply cannot seem to get his mind around the fact that what counted as “DEI” 10 years ago — seemingly a clear-cut and innocuous anti-discrimination movement — has now morphed full-on into an operationalized partisan-politics scheme + “code of silence.”
Tony’s reference in the above Ken Jacobs interview clip to “the political environment” is easily decoded to mean what it now always means: “Trump Bad.”
Alongside the customary DEI Say/Do Disconnect in academia: Tony’s apparent brand of DEI is a heaping helping of lip-service posturing, punctuated by potential violations of existing U.S. civil rights law on the very basis of race, sex, religion, and other protected classes.
And yes, the religion piece is also relevant here, given Syracuse University’s verified recent-history of antisemitic campus hate-crime problems. (Syracuse only earned a “C” grade in 2026 by the Anti-Defamation League for the university’s policies / enforcement in combatting antisemitism):
Tony may wish to start caring about these things and stop brushing them aside, if he and his colleagues in the Syracuse University administration want to hang on to their federal government research grants, scholarships, and contracts.
Because if Syracuse is indeed pandering in the same-old DEI discrimination game — which, in academia, often includes not just discrimination but also outright demonization of certain people based on protected characteristics — then those federal contracts could be in jeopardy:
We need only look at Tony’s heavy involvement in PRSA’s “doubling down on DEI” agenda (launched in February 2025 immediately after President Trump’s executive orders on DEI).
For its part, Tony’s PRSA — which platforms and promotes Tony’s career, constantly — has not only advocated for PR practitioners to tinker with “reframing” DEI via distraction terms (which is patently unethical), but PRSA also has hosted actual seminars instructing the PR industry on precisely HOW TO DO IT.
Also, there’s Tony’s own recent controls / influence over the PRSA-affiliated Commission for Public Relations Education and the PRSA Foundation, to see examples of DEI-gone-rabid.
For example, in this below PRSA DEI webinar some years ago (“From Statements to Action to Anti-Racism: The Communicator’s Role“), a PRSA session leader stereotyped that “all white people” have deplorable built-in racism, “white privilege,” and should be judged / dealt with accordingly, as it relates to PR and communication strategies:
The Department of Justice issued a memo last year calling out this very type of rhetoric / dogma.
The DOJ rightfully cites that it is racially discriminatory and therefore illegal to be forced upon taxpayer-funded or federal grantee institutions’ employees or students, creating a hostile environment and promoting discrimination based on race:
Is it any wonder that this secret PRSA Board memo was circulated in 2021, documenting PRSA, Inc.’s “hostile work place“?
I think not.
This toxic culture has PRSA’s “DEI” agenda stamped all over it:
When Tony was PRSA National Chair in 2018, he wrote a blog post that since has been deleted off PRSA National’s website, I’m sure at Tony’s own recent behest, in order to cover his tracks.
I was able to re-locate it on the wayback machine:
The fact Tony’s blog post here was deleted from PRSA’s website tells you a lot.
In this above article, Tony wrote sheepishly, “At our National Assembly in October, there was one black person in a room of perhaps 250 delegates — Andrew McCaskill — and far too few others representing racial and ethnic minorities.”
Of course, that revelation of PRSA’s exclusionary culture was and is appalling.
But never has it occurred to Tony that maybe — just MAYBE! — part of PRSA’s “representation” problem has always been PRSA’s lack of integrity and how Tony and his PRSA peeps treat ALL people who ask honest questions not to PRSA’s liking. (The answer: like dirt.)
Another example: A recent PRSA “Chapter DEI Program of the Year” award was given to a PRSA chapter (Minnesota PRSA) that boasted of its having instituted DEI “training” known as IDI (“Intercultural Development Inventory”) for all of its board members.
IDI training is, by definition, highly problematic and, as seen in the online descriptor below, “heavily controversial.”
The PRSA chapter’s video did not reveal or disclose these realities about IDI training, at all. Instead, they positioned it as an innovation for the chapter’s DEI agenda.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, IDI “assessment tools” often are leveraged to pressure participants to “out” themselves for their perceived racist, homophobic, or other “biases” (as defined in left-wing IDI ideological rubrics), through an online quiz or other quantitative assessment.
On the back end, IDI digital data-collection is procured and retained alongside the named identity of each participant.
Hence, IDI “psychometric” tools and data-gathering can be used to compile a dossier of individuals — by name — who potentially can be labeled as DEI “problems” and then “reported” internally within the association, including to the national level or even to outside organizations (if data is misused), without individuals’ knowledge or an ability to defend themselves.
(Can you say, “Gestapo“?)
While PRSA chapters may not intend to misuse IDI data, the potential is still there.
As such, IDI assessments can easily violate not only participating PRSA members’ privacy but also their own civil rights, especially if their DEI “test” / “performance” scores get into retaliatory hands:
Other examples: In PRSA’s Commission for Public Relations Education (CPRE) website “resource” link on how to teach DEI in the PR classroom, recommended / endorsed college PR classroom syllabi are uploaded.
(As a reminder, Tony D’Angelo is featured on this website as a past co-chair of the CPRE from 2020-21.)
Some current CPRE syllabi violate DOJ Civil Rights Division guidance, by promoting “DEI”-monikered tactics that push negative consequences on students, simply because of whatever race / ethnicity, gender / gender-identity, or faith community they are in (example: straight white Christian men), and/or because they might reject DEI’s inherent partisan political arguments.
Above / below is an example of a specific syllabus, showcasing that an ENTIRE SEMESTER of this class is devoted to “White Supremacy” as specifically tied to the 2016 U.S. Election outcome in which Donald Trump was duly voted U.S. President.
Nowhere in this syllabus is there any place made for discussion about surges of black-on-black crime that occurred after Biden was elected in 2020. Nowhere is there a discussion of faith-based hate, such as that targeting Jewish communities. The entire “DEI” theme is one-dimensional — clearly with an agenda.
Rhetoric in the syllabus makes it quite clear that if any student disagrees with any aspect of this baked-in premise, they will receive a failing grade.
This same CPRE-endorsed DEI PR class syllabus requires students to write an “essay” that must be “introspective.”
It demands that students divulge private information such as their physical / mental health and their political “outlook” (which clearly means they must reveal their partisan affiliation or where they are on the ideological spectrum), and how it factors into their “privilege.”
This is the type of content that’s been pushed into PR classrooms, for years.
The DOJ points out that “retaliation” on DEI grounds is unlawful.
It can occur when students disagree with a required PR DEI course’s premise and then receive a failing or diminished grade from their activist “professor” that harms their GPA and thus the student’s potential ability to compete for scholarships, jobs, and other critical opportunities.
As many people in the U.S. PR industry know, Tony D’Angelo also served as 2018 PRSA National Board Chair.
Around 2017-18, his relationship with me went downhill, concurrent to my discovering major ethics failures in PRSA’s National leadership structure, which later devolved to my discovery of millions in financial discrepancies (some occurring on Tony’s own Board watch), punctuated by millions in financial losses that escalated from 2019 forward, while Tony was still on the PRSA Board.
When I began reporting ethics problems to PRSA HQ while Tony was National Chair-Elect, he gave me the “Good Cop” treatment of privately agreeing with everything I said (“Straight shooter!”), while secretly — unbeknownst to me — undermining me and the valid issues I was raising, in order to help PRSA save face with unethical cover-ups.
During Tony’s interview this past year with Ken Jacobs, I was struck by how Tony D’Angelo opted to describe himself… literally as a — his words — “buttoned-down type” “Boy Scout” and “Dudley Do-Right” “nerd” with his own “embodied” typeface called “INDUSTRIOUS,” and a straight-laced rule-follower.
I believe Tony is being highly questionable in his self-described character sketch, here.
In fact, I find it more than a little creepy, particularly in the context of Tony seeking to appear honest amid his presumption that his school’s DEI agenda is bulletproof:
What many PR industry people don’t know is that in the last 20 years of my own PR career – and pre-2018 – Tony and I used to have a very cordial relationship.
We served on a few task forces / committees together in the early 2000s, and it always was (past-tense) my understanding that Tony respected me as a colleague and as a human being. This much is certain: he certainly did not hesitate to ask favors of me.
For example, in 2016 — and before Tony found out I’m a Republican — Tony asked me to write a letter of recommendation for him, in his bid to run for PRSA National Chair-Elect:
Several months later, Tony asked me to be part of a research effort he was implementing at Newhouse:
Earlier that same year, Tony asked me to speak to his Newhouse public relations campaigns class:
But also in 2016, while Tony D’Angelo served on the PRSA National Board (with Mark McClennan serving as Chair and Jane Dvorak serving as Chair-Elect), PRSA HQ posted this bizarre graphic (below) across PRSA’s social media handles, about what they apparently thought being “good at PR” was all about (replete with “liquid lunches“):
A year or so later, Tony’s PRSA Board colleague Jane Dvorak posted online about getting “soppy” with “jello shots” DURING a PRSA Board meeting attended by Tony and others (since openly promoting alcohol-abuse imagery — on company time and on the company dime — was, by then, PRSA’s new-normal):
At the time of “Be Like Sam,” in 2016, Tony appeared to show solidarity with me, when I wrote to HQ to let them know I was appalled by the liquid-lunch meme and the discredit it reflected on the PR industry’s ethics and legitimacy:
This anecdote is one of nearly countless episodes, in which Tony appeared to take my side (and the side of sanity!), when in fact, I later learned he either could not have cared less, or, he simply was running interference, to help PRSA’s duck-and-cover routine and keep PRSA out of PR trouble. (Granted, that latter part is a full-time job.)
At the end of the day, however, when it comes to how many in academia have chosen to ramrod DEI ideology down the throats of students and of society, the Tonys of the world need to realize that double-speak doesn’t work well with today’s U.S. federal government.
Either you’re in compliance, or you’re not:
Just last year, the PRSA Foundation rolled out its new scholarship awardees.
And what’s this?!… Not even one solitary male in PRSA’s hand-selected 13-count student recipients for all these national scholarships and internships. (PRSA’s sexism is not these students’ fault, of course.)
Many PRSA Foundation scholarships and internships explicitly state, “BIPOC” only, which the DOJ has stated quite clearly is a violation of law. (Tony is a past PRSA Foundation board member who helped craft and shape its DEI-only agenda, years ago.)
As we consider how Tony is positioned to the larger PR industry, I had to eye-roll a bit, when I saw this LinkedIn post below, by O’Dwyer’s PR News trade publication — presumably pay-for-play, since that’s how O’Dwyer’s apparently rolls nowadays — lauding the Jacobs / D’Angelo interview:
If the O’Dwyer’s PR News namesake — the late Jack O’Dwyer — could see this above posting today alongside Tony’s interview, he would likely turn over in his grave.
(Mr. O’Dwyer died at age 85 in 2018, the year Tony was PRSA National Chair, ironically. The publication is now run by Mr. O’Dwyer’s son, as I understand it.)
The elder Mr. O’Dwyer had plenty of things to say about Tony D’Angelo and Tony’s PRSA dealings when the elder Mr. O’Dwyer served as the journalistic firebrand that he was, of seeking to hold the PRSA trade association accountable for its misconduct. None of those things were especially positive.
I’ll never forget this e-mail exchange I had with Mr. O’Dwyer in October 2017, back when I was on much friendlier terms with Tony (clearly, I was even defending Tony!… if only I had known…!), although my disillusionment with PRSA was quickly growing.
Mr. O’Dwyer had sent an article to me that mentioned me prominently, which he kindly asked that I review, as a fact-check. And ironically, 10 years later and PRSA’s stated “revenues” as cited 20 years prior in 2006 haven’t budged… as the association is now financially failing.
For these and many other reasons, I find Tony’s own words to me just as haunting (below).
Four years after this legally recorded conversation that I had with Tony, in which he promised never to gaslight or defame me in the PRSA association, Tony joined with others in 2021 to do precisely that.
Tony engaged in a secretive, illegal retaliation maneuver in Q1 2021 (in violation of New York State Not-for-Profit Corporation Law whistleblower statutes), as pay-back to me, for my having reported countless ethics, bylaw, policy, and financial + legal violations occurring on Tony’s (and others’) PRSA watch.
Years later, I found in a government open records tranche that Tony D’Angelo then tried to pressure PRSA Board officials (via his e-mails on the Syracuse server), to pay Tony’s own personal legal bills with PRSA member dollars (during a deep deficit year), that he himself instigated outside the so-called PRSA “process,” in targeting and retaliating against me.
When I asked Tony’s Syracuse attorney to cough up some evidence to back up Tony’s misleading claims, I never heard again from the attorney… as it appears Tony had no real “case.”
I hope the federal government takes notice of Tony and his Syracuse DEI programs.
It’s overdue.
While they’re at it, they may want to ask Tony about his entanglements in China while he served as PRSA’s Chair in 2018, including with a Chinese PR association that even the most basic keyword search reveals is a state-sponsored arm of the communist Chinese regime.
They may also want to ask Tony why he appointed Ketchum’s Ray Kotcher as his “senior counsel” to the PRSA Board in 2018 and whether it had anything to do with leveraging PRSA member resources to promote Ketchum’s / Omnicom’s BRIC strategy of for-profit business in places like Russia and China.
As I understand it, the DOJ is keenly interested these days about foreign-adversary influence in U.S. universities:
Awkward!
Based on my own personal experience with Tony D’Angelo, this is not someone who concerns himself too much with actually following the rules that everyone else must follow.
A past member of PRSA’s National Board (2002-03), Mary Beth West, APR, FPRCA has exposed corruption in PRSA for 10 years. Her recent blog posts exposing PRSA’s cartel activity prominently discuss Syracuse University’s roles and personnel in episodes violating antitrust regulations and PRSA’s own so-called “antitrust policy.”
