DEI in Retreat? 

A few years ago, the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) vaulted to national prominence. Having first gained institutional traction in the mid-to-late 2010s, DEI initiatives spread exponentially after the summer of 2020, amid the flurry of anti-racist activism that followed George Floyd’s death. Fortune 500 corporations, major nonprofit organizations, large professional firms and associations, and institutions of higher learning launched DEI programs if they had not already. DEI became a nationally recognized brand and multi-billion-dollar industry. 

But for nearly two years now, institutional DEI has been in retreat. The retreat began in the summer of 2023, when the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions. A more decisive shift occurred after the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. Hamas’s assault was still underway when campus groups across the country publicly blamed Israel. A couple months later, the presidents of Penn and Harvard—institutions not known for protecting conservative speech—equivocated in legalese when asked whether calls for the genocide of Jews violated their schools’ codes of conduct. As Israel’s invasion of Gaza unfolded, a stream of commentators argued that Israel, not Hamas, bore primary responsibility for the civilian bloodshed. More than a few said Israel was perpetrating a genocide. 

These developments offended many Americans, who deduced that many progressives, including those in the DEI industry, were insensitive to Jewish suffering and undisturbed by anti-Semitism. In this context, the usually sympathetic New York Times published critiques of DEI, including an August 2024 guest essay, “DEI Is Not Working on College Campuses. We Need a New Approach,” and an October 2024 investigative report, “The University of Michigan Doubled Down on DEI. What Went Wrong?” 

Anti-DEI efforts shifted into overdrive with President Trump’s victory in the 2024 election. Roughly fifteen states had already passed laws targeting DEI, but Trump took sweeping federal action. His administration eliminated DEI departments and laid off DEI staff across the federal government. It ordered federal contractors and grantees to terminate DEI programs. Recently, it has used federal funding to pressure elite universities to implement various DEI-related reforms. 

Considering these developments, many believe that DEI is dead. That may be true of the DEI brand. According to several recent studies, nearly 40 percent of American companies and a similar proportion of universities have renamed their DEI programs or intend to do so. While the terms inclusion and inclusive remain widespread, diversity and especially equity are giving way to access, engagement, opportunity, belonging, community, and excellence. JP Morgan, for example, now promotes diversity, opportunity, and inclusion, and McKinsey has dropped the term “equity” from its website. The Chief Diversity Officers at Google and Walmart have become the Vice President of Googler Engagement and the Chief Belonging Officer, respectively. Harvard’s Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging is now the Office of Community and Campus Life and is headed by the former Chief Diversity Officer.

But DEI (including rebranded DEI) remains a growth industry. Jobs in DEI continue to increase, albeit at a lower rate than in 2021 and 2022. More companies are increasing DEI-related funding than cutting it, and companies that have cut DEI jobs may be outsourcing DEI-like work to consultants. Although many universities have renamed, restructured, and in some cases closed their DEI offices, few have laid off DEI staff. An ongoing report on DEI reform at more than 100 universities cites just a few examples of layoffs and firings, all in Texas. 

In short, companies and universities are rebranding DEI but not laying off or replacing DEI personnel at scale. Critics of DEI thus worry that little has changed or will change—that DEI’s supposed retreat just means old wine in new bottles. Assuming DEI needs substantive reform or replacement, that is a valid concern, and critics should remain vigilant. 

But meaningful change is underway. The corporate world is substantively evolving, not just rebranding, in the DEI domain. According to a recent survey, 40 percent of companies have eliminated representation goals for racial minorities, women, and sexual minorities. Roughly a quarter are pausing internship and career development programs for these groups. Nearly one in five are pausing participation in external rankings such as the Human Rights Campaign’s LGBT-focused Corporate Equality Index. A growing number are adopting or moving toward institutional neutrality. 

Higher education is changing, too. Diversity statements are gone at Harvard and MIT and in various public university systems. Since the October 7th attacks, well over 100 universities have embraced institutional neutrality. New centers of civic education at state flagship universities have created roughly 200 new faculty lines. At elite universities, classical and religious independent institutes are proliferating. So are internal and external programs designed to expose college students to diverse perspectives and encourage civil dialogue and friendship across lines of difference. College presidents increasingly acknowledge the importance of viewpoint diversity to the academy’s truth-seeking mission. The recent backlash against DEI has led to genuine self-examination, prompting many colleges to pivot away from traditional DEI.

If the DEI label is losing traction and institutions are substantively evolving, what, if anything, might replace DEI? Some, like Jonathan Haidt, have urged universities to choose the pursuit of truth over the pursuit of social justice (a synonym of DEI). Others have proposed that companies replace DEI with MEI—merit, excellence, and intelligence. But DEI advocates regard DEI as compatible with, and largely orthogonal to, truth and excellence. For them, DEI is a moral endeavor to improve the internal culture and values of institutions. This moral endeavor, they believe, requires institutions to prioritize the needs of certain groups, especially racial minorities, women, and sexual minorities.  

The problem with DEI is that, as a moral endeavor, it tends to become narrow and divisive. Despite the best intentions, DEI conveys to people that if they do not fit into the designated marginalized categories, they do not need institutional support and should focus on helping those with less privilege. Inevitably, some find this alienating or unfair, particularly if they have suffered a kind of adversity that DEI does not seek to ameliorate. Also, in any institution, some members will simply disagree with DEI’s premises. They may find the identitarian framing corrosive or think the particular focus on race, sex, and sexuality is misplaced. They may subscribe to traditional views of sexual morality or believe that DEI’s claims of oppression are overstated. 

A more uniting moral vision is needed. Causes like viewpoint diversity and new frameworks like pluralism are steps in the right direction, but they do not suffice as moral alternatives to DEI. The push for greater viewpoint diversity in higher education implicitly accepts diversity as a central moral value and seeks to enlarge the concept by adding a viewpoint axis to existing axes like race, sex, and sexuality. The pluralism framework offers recognition to conservative and religious viewpoints and promotes civil dialogue and mutual understanding between opposing ideological camps. Though laudable, these approaches do not posit a universal good or moral value that would unite people in their diverse identities and viewpoints and give people a reason to be civil and seek to understand each other. 

Personalism does this. Personalism begins from the premise that every human being has measureless dignity, simply by virtue of his or her humanity. In broad terms, an institution with a personalist culture seeks to protect and honor the dignity of every member and seek his or her flourishing. This approach naturally preserves what is right and good in DEI while guarding against its missteps. On one hand, personalism aligns with DEI’s mission to combat unjust race-, sex-, or sexuality-based prejudice, which undermines human dignity. But unlike DEI, personalism focuses on what unites people: their status as human beings and their membership in a particular institution. Personalism is skeptical of identity-based discrimination in any direction and recognizes that tension and conflict are resolved through relationship and sympathy more than through trainings and bureaucracy. Above all, personalism attends to the well-being of every employee, including through the promotion of universal virtues like justice, generosity, and fortitude. 

Concretely, institutions seeking to adopt a personalist approach can take various actions. They can encourage job-crafting, a practice that increases worker fulfillment by allowing employees to shape their roles in accordance with their needs, skills, and passions. They can promote balance by expecting high performance but also urging employees to unplug after work and focus on family, friends, and other pursuits. They can institute worker well-being programs, which have led to improvements in employee mental and physical health and social connectedness. They can sponsor employee reading, discussion, and accountability groups designed to foster more virtuous habits. They can make it a priority to recognize and celebrate individuals for growing in character, mastering tasks, or making significant contributions to the institution. They can stress that members of the community must respect others’ viewpoints but never be forced to accept them. They can practice identity-blind, merit-based hiring and compensation.

These are just examples, and there are many more. The point is that personalism offers a way forward that is more fully adequate than traditional DEI to what helps human beings flourish. As DEI retreats, let us hope and seek to ensure that personalism advances. 

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