Imagine this: Violence erupts in the Middle East, and ideologically diverse student groups at universities nationwide exchange views in a civil manner, disagree productively, learn from each other, and cooperate on matters ranging from biology labs to service projects.
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When researchers evaluate the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at those universities, they find that they have increased feelings of belonging, decreased prejudice, and improved relations between groups.
This is what excellence in DEI looks like. I believe diversity work is sacred, which is why I insist on holding these programs to the highest standard. But right now, many such DEI efforts are nowhere close to reaching those high standards.
In quick succession during the past month, three major pieces of research and reporting have portrayed a field that is falling short in too many ways. This is a travesty, especially at a time of rising prejudice and growing polarization. The goals of diversity work — respect for diverse identities, relationships between different communities, and cooperation for the common good — are more critical than ever.
The most recent example comes from the New York Times, where reporter Nicholas Confessore spent months investigating the University of Michigan’s diversity initiatives. Despite investing an eye-popping $250 million over the last 10 years on what university officials dubbed “DEI 2.0,” Confessore concluded that the program has met neither its social-mobility goals nor efforts to achieve cooperation across differences.
The percentage of Black students at Michigan has remained stagnant, at about 5 percent. And Michigan’s own internal DEI evaluation found that students and faculty report fewer interactions with those of different identities and perspectives, diminished feelings of belonging, and a less positive campus climate than at the program’s start.
DEI Bureaucracy
The DEI program, Confessore reported, has created “a powerful conceptual framework for students and faculty grievances — and formidable bureaucratic mechanisms to pursue them.” He profiles students who felt empowered by that bureaucracy to lodge formal complaints about the most minor slights, such as professors giving students playful nicknames in class. One law school professor was called out for having a student read from a Supreme Court case that used the word “Negro.”
Eric Fretz, who teaches a course at Michigan on entrepreneurship, compared the school’s DEI system to “giving a bunch of six-year-olds Tasers.”
Not surprisingly, the most telling critique involved the war in Gaza. Daicia Price, director of the School of Social Work’s DEI program, characterized discourse over the Middle East conflict as full of “screaming, fighting, yelling at people, telling them they’re going to burn in hell.” She felt students were as frustrated with the situation as faculty. They “were like: I think we do want to be able to talk with each other about these things in a way that’s effective. We just don’t know how to. We’ve never seen it.”
Isn’t the purpose of a university-based DEI program to model constructive engagement despite disagreements and educate students in doing it well?
The DEI movement is at a crossroads. If its leaders double down on defending the movement in its current form, I believe funders will pull money, thoughtful staff members will quietly quit, allies will start to jump ship, and enemies will pounce. That will be a tragedy. America needs high-quality diversity work that facilitates both social mobility and cooperation among diverse groups.
That is the underlying message of both Rachel Kleinfeld’s recent essay in Persuasion, “How To Fix DEI,” and sociologist Musa al-Gharbi’s new book “We Have Never Been Woke.”
Worthy Goals, Faulty Infrastructure
The commentary by Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, suggests that Michigan’s experience may be more the rule than the exception. Much like Confessore in the Times, Kleinfeld assumes that the ideals of DEI are worthy. She then runs through a litany of studies that show that the programs themselves are somewhere between ineffective and counterproductive, perhaps even increasing racism and misogyny rather than reducing them.
One of the studies cited by Kleinfeld found that the positive effects of DEI trainings lasted, at most, two days. Another concluded that antiracist trainings activate racial bias, rather than reducing it. A third found that DEI programs led to fewer women and minorities in management positions rather than more.
This is like scoring touchdowns for the other team — and paying top dollar for the privilege.
Al-Gharbi’s book is a rigorous sociological analysis of the progressive ideologies that permeate DEI programs. He concludes that such ideologies not only play no role in lifting up marginalized people, but actually further alienate them because “people from nontraditional and underrepresented backgrounds are among the most likely to find themselves silenced and sanctioned in these campaigns.” The real function of “woke language,” according to al-Gharbi, is as a status symbol for an insider group of intellectual elites.
The critiques from Confessore, Kleinfeld and al-Gharbi emerge from the world of people who, like me, broadly support the goals of diversity, equity and inclusion. But each has concluded that too many of the structures built to achieve these goals are either ineffective or counterproductive. Their critiques, in other words, are made in the service of improvement.
Other DEI critics, however, have a very different goal. They want to destroy the system entirely.
At the top of the list is Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire, whose film Am I Racist? is the highest grossing political documentary since Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004. Walsh disguises himself as a “certified DEI instructor” and gets a series of people within the DEI movement to say increasingly embarrassing things. “To hear some of these so-called DEI-consultants speak, is to want to rip your ears off,” wrote Vinson Cunningham in his review of the film for The New Yorker.
Walsh’s send up of DEI professionals is not meant merely as a critique of the structures in place to accomplish laudable goals. He wants to undermine the goals themselves.
A Better Way
And that is the sensitive place where we find ourselves. If DEI cannot evolve into something better by listening to thoughtful, rigorous, good-faith critique, people will not only lose faith in the system, but they will cease to support the intent of diversity work all together.
To come out of this crucible moment stronger and better, the DEI movement must adopt a posture of learning. Its topline message should be, “we are listening and evolving.” Instead of constantly insisting that those with power and privilege must be held accountable, DEI practitioners should recognize that the movement itself has become a power structure that requires accountability and reform.
I for one am rooting for DEI. I want campuses, nonprofits, and corporations to maintain their DEI programs, and for funders to continue to support them financially. But the status quo is simply not good enough. It’s time to become the movement that the nation needs it to be.
