Editorial decisions at The New York Times are leading indicators of the cultural zeitgeist. The Times has already demonstrated a willingness to ask hard questions about another taboo subject, doctors in ‘gender affirming care’, and these DEI articles show in real time how the Overton Window of acceptable speech on this issue has shifted this year.

Some degree of criticism is now permissible, but conservative criticism is still viewed as morally tainted, largely because conservatives are seeking to ban DEI. Progressive critics are granted leeway to expose the toxicity of the DEI industry — as long as they acknowledge the reality of structural racism and seek to reform DEI rather than eliminate it.

The Times article about Robin DiAngelo cites a complaint filed with the University of Washington alleging 20 instances in which DiAngelo plagiarized other scholars in her 2004 dissertation, ‘Whiteness in Racial Dialogue: A Discourse Analysis.’ The Times takes care to include a comment from a plagiarism expert lamenting that the recent spate of plagiarism allegations against powerful and influential DEI administrators — including former Harvard University president Claudine Gay — has been politically motivated, turning plagiarism into an ‘ideological weapon.’

The Times article was published just three days after the story was first reported by the conservative Washington Free Beacon. That article quoted conservative scholar Peter Wood likening DiAngelo’s alleged breaches to ‘forgery.’ It noted that DiAngelo ‘rakes in almost $1 million a year in speaking fees’ from running workshops that ‘insist all white people are racist’

If the Washington Free Beacon’s characterization sounds like hyperbole, it’s surprisingly similar to the language used by the Stanford profs in their New York Times op-ed. ‘Many D.E.I. training programs actually subvert their institutions’ educational missions,’ they wrote, describing ‘ideological workshops that inculcate theories of social justice as if there were no plausible alternatives.’

The professors warned that the bad blood spread by overzealous DEI trainers is not confined to the academic campus or to the corporate campus, but has reached epidemic proportions: ‘It’s certainly not good for society as a whole.’

The Times is just one of many institutions reassessing social justice activism in a slowdown that some are calling ‘peak woke’, suggesting that common sense is reasserting itself against radical activism. Around the country, universities are shutting down DEI bureaucracies and issuing declarations of political neutrality, corporations are scaling back DEI training and cutting ties with queer activist groups, and free speech alliances and ‘civil discourse‘ movements are organizing at leading universities.

With the New York Times slowly changing its tune on once taboo topics, the glasnost could now be well underway.