Upholding Principles Without Defense (of DEI)
I work in diversity, equity, and inclusion, but I won't defend DEI. I will defend the principles I live by and practice DEI with.
DEI is “under attack,” again.
I remember “diversity” being seemingly attacked when I first heard about it as an industry.
In 2006, early in my career transition from public health to what I came to know as corporate diversity and inclusion, I read a paper by Alexandra Kalev and Frank Dobbin entitled Best Practices or Best Guesses? “Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies.”
When I read the paper, I didn’t have as much skin in the game in the diversity and inclusion industry as I do now. However, I believed that the scholarship was rigorous and the conclusions helpful. Nothing in the paper declared that diversity, inclusion, or related training were inherently good or bad.
It did say that certain interventions worked better than others for the dependent variables of gender and racial representation outcomes. That is, if you do certain things, your percentage of racialized or women managers increases more than if you do other things. The research duo continues to publish similar findings, including their 2022 book, Getting to Diversity: What Works? and What Doesn’t.
Interestingly, their work mainly focused on representation outcomes. That is where the abundance of data lies (no pun intended, but maybe I should have), reflecting the problem with DEI as most conceive it. If I articulated it with the emphasis on each letter based on predominant public perception, it would be pronounced "DEE-ee-i," with a scant focus on the final syllable. That is the “I” would be almost like Jamie Foxx in Django, but in the case of the DEI acronym, the final letter fades toward near silence in the public’s ear.
In this Substack and elsewhere, I have written about some of the problems that DEI, as it is now known, has faced since the 1980s and 1990s, before Dobbin and Kalev’s work.
One can go even further back to the origins of “reverse discrimination” claims. Which then, as Professor George Rutherglen states,
“The immediate aim of the 1866 Act was to secure equality for the newly freed slaves, but its benefits extended generally to all citizens, as did the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment that were modeled on the act. . .Opponents of the act nevertheless charged that it resulted in reverse discrimination in favor of African Americans by granting them benefits never previously granted to whites or to other ethnic groups, notably Native Americans. ”
Rutherglen articulates the act to reflect how some contemporary diversity and inclusion practitioners, including myself, see their work. It was about creating the conditions to mitigate discriminatory acts against all people, including the (mostly) men in the workforce at the time. And the reality back then was that the levels of adverse impact were disproportionately levied against blacks.
While not all agree, the data clearly illustrate that society has come a long way since then. However, with the current rhetoric in opposition to DEI, to some, the current so-called attack, aka pushback, rollback, blowback, anti-woke, anti-DEI performances, are taking us back to the 19th century.
That is far from the truth.
Skin in the Game
Most Americans and people worldwide expect and/or embrace the inevitable collective mixtures of similarities and differences amongst humankind.
These mixtures won’t disappear by superficially prohibiting three (or four if you add the ‘A’ for accessibility) letters from policies, training offerings, and decisions made. Similar to how prohibition didn’t disappear alcohol; it just took it underground. The executive order for “Illegal DEI” will not make differences, similarities, relationships in organizations, or the need for people to work effectively together disappear.
I anticipate that the companies that back off publicly and affirm their commitment will use the time off Washington's radar (and the grifters trying to make their name on the public shaming of companies openly engaged in such work) to create approaches that are normatively accessible to everyone, prioritized as core to organizational health, and aligned with the organization’s reason for being.
When I first started the research for Reconstructing Inclusion in 2019, I’d recently exited a (way longer than expected) nearly 10-year stint in a large pharmaceutical company. That same year my wife had our son and I moved to Switzerland where she was born and raised (in a French-speaking canton to Spanish immigrant parents).
My point of view naturally changed with the life changes I was experiencing. So, while researching based on the theory of change I’d used for years, I started recognizing how little attention I’d paid to much of the DEI discourse and so-called “thought leaders” who emerged during my tenure inside of a large multinational firm.
Looking at the then-current state, it was clear that my attention was sparse, and I’d had blinkers on. For example, I was unfamiliar with the term "cultural Marxism," which I only learned about in the past four or five years. I had never even heard of the idea of a “DEI hire,” except I had heard many people say that some individuals of a particular hue only got jobs or got into elite schools because they were from a specific group.
It occurs to me that people use such erroneous phrases because many companies publicly promote aspirational targets related to particular group identities. Also, bad faith actors use them because they are memorable and readily repeatable. Thus, serving the purpose of furthering the re-branding of DEI as contemptuous via an ideology opposed to anti-racism and wokeness (making these words DEI synonyms) for most, without having opinions formed on their own beyond the social media echo chambers they frequent.
Nonetheless, there is zero evidence that suggests gender equity, gender equality, or representation percentages equivalent to the population of a country, society, or industry will necessarily create better business outcomes. For those about to cite McKinsey studies, their data is flawed, and countless reputable researchers have made that clear. It might feel good to think or even hope this is true, but there's no evidence that it works, and usually, it doesn't.
Typically, when you have a quota, you fill it, and not too long after—whether a few years or months—it goes away because the conditions were not created for the people to thrive. That is, there wasn’t a clear priority for designing conditions allowing everyone to thrive and make their best contributions regardless of their background.
Many of those who seem to be the attackers have little to no idea what DEI is beyond shouts of “Cultural Marxism” (which I have even heard said amongst friends) and woke washing. Other similar slogans were amplified by popular influencers–mainly to foster political advantage for the Right.
They describe an ideological preference in a matter that evokes an emotional response. Cultural Marxism being positioned next to DEI, has served as a rallying cry against “socialism” or “communism,” and a way to “own the libs.” But when you go deeper into whether it makes sense, it doesn’t. You can’t remove social class out of Marxism and it make sense any more than you can remove eggs from an omelet. No eggs, no omelet. No social class, no Marxism.
Again, all of these terms are political. Politics follows money. Those who seek financial gain being anti-DEI will continue to hunt for power and influence among the politically en vogue.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, a frequent response to the Trump administration’s order has been “it’s racism,” particularly a refrain of the “systematic” type of the past several years. This is a relatively lazy reaction to silliness.
Understand that resisting silliness is to fall into the trap of distraction. Right now, the noise on social media is like it tends to be: a clamor of incompleteness searching for a host mind to replicate itself.
Take your mental echinacea. It will be challenging to fight off, but if you desire to go beyond the rights vs. wrongs of a limited perspective (which we all cling to), then intentionally engage with viewpoints that contradict your own.
Use these interactions to make distinctions between what the “so-called other” might think right now and who they are. It won’t always be pleasant. The interactions may put you in a perturbed state for a while. Fortunately, you can avoid the longer-term effects of allowing misery to be injected into your days and nights.
So, I'm not defending DEI. As an insider, I've been mindfully and intentionally critical of the industry in theory and practice.
Whether anti- or pro-DEI, if it is steeped in ideology, it is stuck. And it’s all colored by a self-interested appeal to concur with one’s polar preferences. Whether so-called left or right, ideological stances about relational dynamics reflect a gross misread of human systems and communities; such beliefs distract from seeing and betting on our shared humanity.
Attacks on ideology are irrelevant to anyone practicing principles that enable people and organizations to flourish because their actions are not based on a dogmatic frame. Maintain such efforts at all costs! I am not saying that it will be easy because the distinctions are rarely made consistently clear. The work will require greater capacity for network weaving.
Conversely, those practicing ideologically (including academic institutions) now have the opportunity to sunset the old and reinvent approaches that move them closer to their aspirations, focused on creating a direction that naturally syncs with organizational strategy and goals.
I'm committed to principles–not ideology. Join me in principle-centeredness. It doesn’t matter if our principles are contradictory. However, I surmise that they are likely to intersect only in the ways principles can.
If someone disputes principles that are consistently upheld and acted on, I welcome such dissent.
I will defend my principles (but not DEI) because they are durable and dependable.
Imagine if principles guided our workplaces.
To #ChooseHumanity is the keystone principle of my work. I’ll hold onto that choice for life.
Ready to transform inclusion from concept to culture?
When inclusion becomes "the way we do things around here," it transforms from initiative to being a key part of organizational identity.
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I hope this was helpful. . . Make it a great day! ✌🏿
https://abcnews4.com/news/local/trumps-dei-ban-hits-home-ashley-hall-girls-stem-event-cancelled-donald-trump-diversity-equity-inclusion-wciv-abc-news-4-02-11-2025
Thanks for this piece! Very insightful.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s tired of hearing the “Marxism!” accusations floating around. It’s always sounded silly to me, a jargony buzzword people only want to believe to make a jab at their rivals.
There are many progressive movements that have done good, and even many of the more so-called “radical woke” still have good causes and good intentions behind them. But nowadays it’s sadly immediately brushed off as “woke nonsense.”
I’ve lived through that nonsense and a high school with the problematically misused DEI attitude many are afraid of. But inclusion isn’t a bad thing, and I’m curious to explore what a healthy alternative could like like!