December 7, 2024 - 5:00pm
The University of Michigan, according to a report this week in the New York Times, is expected to “seek limits on so-called diversity statements in hiring and promotion decisions”. The university’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion budget may also be shifted “into recruitment programs and tuition guarantees for lower-income students”.
These decisions would roll back nearly a decade of structural focus on DEI at yet another major US university. Michigan’s move gives momentum to a pattern emerging at high-profile schools around the country, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina. Now, though, this trend is extending beyond academia into corporate America, and Donald Trump’s election victory already seems to be turbocharging DEI’s institutional and cultural decline.
To give another example, as of last month Walmart is no longer participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Cameron shows that the pivot is sharp: the retailer actually highlighted its score on the index in a 2024 report and even sponsored HRC’s national dinner this year.
For years, the index has served as a useful proxy for a company’s commitment to the progressive DEI agenda. Now, however, as Cameron notes, “Walmart joins Tractor Supply, John Deere and others that have withdrawn from the controversial scorecard.” In addition to this, “many more, such as Lowe’s, Ford, Caterpillar and Boeing, have publicly committed to scaling back diversity, equity and inclusion objectives in favor of neutral policies that don’t alienate most of their workforce, customers and vendors.”
As a post-election move, Walmart’s decision is somewhat interesting. The momentum, at least publicly, appears to be swinging against DEI. In a new “Counterrevolution Blueprint” published this week, the influential conservative thinker Christopher Rufo explained how the incoming Trump administration could use an executive order to finally end the era of DEI in both the public and private sectors. “By banning ‘diversity and inclusion’ contractors and extending ‘divisive concepts’ restrictions to all federal grants and contractors — including major corporations and research universities — the order would curb the spread and influence of critical race and gender theories across the largest public and private bureaucracies,” Rufo wrote.
Indeed, Vivek Ramaswamy, co-head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Elon Musk, is explicitly pledging to use the advisory body as a bulldozer against DEI. “The government should not be foisting DEI requirements onto the private sector via grants & contracts,” he posted on X last month. “It’s anti-meritocratic, inefficient, and arguably illegal.”
As Rufo and Ramaswamy demonstrate, the next administration is not merely poised to end DEI in Government offices. The plan is to finally crack down on Government coercion of the private sector, ending the conditional grants and dubious regulatory interpretations that ushered in an era of awkward corporate progressivism.
“Go woke, go broke” sometimes proved true, as in the memorable case of Bud Light. Nike, on the other hand, had a different experience. Either way, companies should be able to do what’s best for their business and their customers without federal pressure to promulgate a specific political agenda. Some companies and schools will likely keep their DEI agendas intact.
The big question going forward is whether enough dyed-in-the-wool DEI ideologues populate America’s boardrooms and classrooms to ensure their priorities survive, even if that means going underground. A New York Times headline earlier this year reported: “Facing backlash, some corporate leaders go ‘under the radar’ with D.E.I.” In June, Inc. reported that “business leaders aren’t abandoning DEI (even if they’re staying quiet).”
Some corporate and academic leaders may feel free to finally nix silly ideas they never liked anyway. Others may realise that even without media pressure and federal coercion, a generation of young employees very much expects DEI to continue, and is unwilling to accept the alternative — no matter what DOGE says or Trump does.
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SubscribeTotally agree. If privately-funded companies and schools want to pursue DEI, that’s their business. All govt funding for such initiatives should be abolished. It should also be banned in publicly-funded institutions.
If private institutions want to pursue DEI policies then they should have to be made to at the very least be transparent about their policies. It’s racial discrimination so it’s still probably constitutionally illegal.
Probably a grey area and best left to wither away naturally.
OK, but they won’t last very long.
Others may realise that even without media pressure and federal coercion, a generation of young employees very much expects DEI to continue, and is unwilling to accept the alternative
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The flock loves the shepherd
The assertion that there should be no “federal pressure to promulgate a specific political agenda” is moral relativistic nonsense. Yes there should actually. DEI is a “specifically” stupid, ignorant, manipulative, Orwellian agenda that should never have been accorded any credibility in the first place. It is the sick brainchild of our corrupt Western academia….a madness of intelligentsias. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias A sane kind of democratic governance would be entitled (in fact morally obligated) to seek to shut it down wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head.
I asked a female born in England with Bangladeshi parents (who have British citizenship) how she would feel if she went to a town in Bangladesh and it was almost entirely white. There was a look of genuine horror on her face at the thought.
The University of Michigan is a constitutional corporation. It is established by the constitution of the State of Michigan and is therefore a fourth branch of its government. Nonetheless it engaged in DEI shenanigans and was, until very recently, quite happy to boast of it. When a governmental entity treats people unequally on the ground of immutable characteristics, it violates the citzens’ guarantee of equal protection. This was apparently never a concern for the University.
As recently as October 15 of this year the University of Michigan announced its “progress” in implementing DEI:
“U-M has made progress in several key areas related to diversity, equity and inclusion during the past year, according to the Year One DEI 2.0 Progress Report released today. To highlight this, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion will host a virtual event Oct. 24 to provide an overview of the plan’s implementation.”
This quotation is from The University of Michigan Record, its official newsletter. It was published on 24 October 2024.
Furthermore, the University recently earmarked $250 Million for DEI initiatives, and it has many DEI compliance officers (I don’t recall the official title of these enforcers). This sudden reversal of policy is not only quite unexpected but, in my opinion, suspect in view of its earlier enthusiasm for DEI doctrine.
DEI is racial prejudice. All this protected characteristics garbage needs erasing. Allowing some to use words as a form of reclamation too is discrimination. And ever since the Macpherson report, feelings of offence have given rise to hate crimes and NHCIs, both of which, divide and outlaw free speech. Sadness is that these are core tenets of Starsimer and his Nazi cabinet.
“The big question going forward is whether enough dyed-in-the-wool DEI ideologues populate America’s boardrooms and classrooms to ensure their priorities survive, even if that means going underground.”
Good Lord, yes. The Progressive Left has always known it is out of step with the majority of citizens – they’re proud of it. They’ve been operating secretly for decades and will submerge immediately.
“… extending ‘divisive concepts’ restrictions”; such as progressivism perhaps? Do we have something analogous to this in E&W?
Interesting argument. Depending on how it’s implemented, DEI may be legal in some cases. But where is it illegal, it needs to go, whether public or private.