Newsfront COMMENTARY


Divisive, Extreme, and Intolerant


That’s what DEI has become. And conservatives are no longer the only skeptics.


I BY NEETU ARNOLD


n october, the new york Times uncovered that the Uni- versity of Michigan’s programs to promote supposed diversity,


equity, and inclusion — at a cost of about $250 million since 2016 — instead fueled campus discord. After years of a heavy emphasis


on DEI, Michigan students struggle to engage with peers from different racial, political, or religious back- grounds. The Times’ coverage was a turn-


ing point. For years, news outlets dismissed critiques of DEI as “racist dog whistles,” “slurs,” and the new “Red Scare.” Meanwhile, universities and cor- porations adopted racial consider- ations in hiring to meet equity goals. Universities established bias


response teams to monitor speech, ostensibly to protect minorities from feeling excluded but often targeting views they simply disagreed with. And university faculty recruiters


used diversity statements to filter applicants based on their political commitments to progressive causes. All of these decisions aroused ire


from conservative media, but the opposition failed to deal a decisive blow to the movement. The debate around DEI was over values rather than facts, and few people in the mainstream wanted to challenge inclusivity as a value.


FALSE INFORMATION So, an entire industry was quietly built by appealing to these values, consist- ing of DEI consulting firms, authors,


10 NEWSMAX | DECEMBER 2024


and workshops. Individuals like Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, and Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, became famous as DEI gurus, charging five-figure speak- ing fees to prominent universities and corporations. This past year, it’s become increas-


ingly clear that the DEI industry is built at least in part on false information. Consulting firm McKinsey & Com-


pany, in a series of reports published since 2015, claimed corporations with more diverse executive teams are more profitable. Even the U.S. military cited McKinsey’s results as a justification for investing in DEI. But when the study was replicated


in March with another sample of firms, it turned out that the original findings didn’t hold up. In fact, McKinsey’s methodology was flawed because it couldn’t demonstrate a causal link between diversity and profitability.


F


undamental flaws have also appeared in research concerning


DEI in healthcare. The push for racial equity in the healthcare industry was based in part on a 2020 study that claimed Black babies fare better with Black doctors, attributing high mortality rates for Black infants to systemic racism and implicit bias among white doctors. But the narrative was called into


question when Harvard professor George Borjas and Manhattan Insti- tute fellow Robert VerBruggen con- trolled for birth weight differences between infants, a variable that was not considered by authors of the orig- inal 2020 study. The results of the


original study disappeared once birth weight was considered.


WHAT WENT WRONG? The intensity of the racial reckoning of 2020 pushed many corporate execu- tives and university administrators to make hasty decisions about DEI initia- tives. And the moral fervor surround- ing the issue squelched any dissent. Now that the haze has cleared, we’re


starting to see how individuals exploit- ed the “DEI moment” for personal gain or to promote their political agendas. As major institutions and large employers such as Ford and Lowe’s begin to distance themselves from DEI, many will start to look for a replace- ment. DEI was born out of a general sense


that our country’s institutions hadn’t yet reached the ideals of equality and fairness characterizing the Civil Rights Movement, and that more needed to be done. The DEI movement led people who


wanted more fairness on an extrem- ist path, promoting racial resentment and language policing instead of real solutions. If we want our institutions to stay


away from the politics of racial resent- ment as DEI wanes, we need other pathways to address real issues of unfairness and exclusion. Academic and business institu-


tions alike should focus on diversity of thought, teaching students and employees to handle disagreement in healthier ways. We should eradicate unfair policies


like legacy admissions at elite univer- sities, which hypocritically claim to champion equity. And government agencies should dismantle all race-based policies, which have fanned the flames of racial resentment for far too long. The death of DEI isn’t a tragedy — it’s an opportunity.


Neetu Arnold is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute.


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