Kerby Anderson

A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal began with these sentences. “Memo to companies: Go ahead and cancel your DEI programs. That’s more or less the message of a recent report commissioned by the UK government finding that diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” The report found little evidence that DEI had any positive effect on corporate culture.

In fact, it is difficult to say what DEI means. The terms are, according to the report, “ambiguous, rapidly evolving, and often conflated.” Although the current fad is to focus on diversity among racial, social, or other lines, “a visibly diverse organization is not necessarily meaningfully heterogenous.” The Wall Street Journal editors concluded that “viewpoint diversity may be more important for a thriving company.”

As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, cancelling DEI programs, and closing DEI departments can save money. US companies spend $8 billion a year on DEI training. The other savings is in the legal area. Even in the UK, there have been lawsuits against companies because their DEI policies have “violated British protections on freedom of belief by punishing employees who dissented from the DEI orthodoxy on race or transgenderism.”

Last month I talked about the fact that the University of Florida announced it was ending its experiment with DEI. The college closed the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer and eliminated DEI positions, thereby saving more than $5 million each year on the controversial program. The Florida legislature passed a law prohibiting state funding of DEI programs and University of Florida President Ben Sasse implemented it.

I suggest other companies and universities follow their example.