Corporate Diversity Pledges Fizzle Amid Layoffs, GOP Backlash

Ha!

At Bloomberg:

Workplace diversity and inclusion efforts adopted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and ensuing protests are fading as sweeping layoffs blunt companies’ bold commitments to boost underrepresented groups in their C-suites and ranks.

The global Black Lives Matter movement that followed Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody in 2020 prompted a hiring boom for diversity, equity, and inclusion professionals and pledges by major employers to address racial inequality in the workplace.

But many of those hired—largely people of color—to diversify the workplace have been let go over the past year amid ongoing layoffs as a cost-cutting measure. Employers have cut DEI roles at a higher rate than others, according to a February study from workforce analytics firm Revelio Labs.

More than 300 DEI professionals departed companies in the last six months, including Amazon.com Inc., Twitter Inc., and Nike Inc., the report found. These diminishing roles have left observers questioning whether the sense of urgency to increase workforce diversity that corporate leaders made almost three years ago was genuine or simply a reactionary business decision to mitigate reputational risk.

“They heard concerns about the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Fast forward to three years later, that push isn’t that much present in the media every day and prevalent on social media,” said Robert Baldwin III, founder and managing attorney at Virtue Law Group, a plaintiff-side labor and employment firm.

“Since that push isn’t that prevalent,” they don’t feel the pressure to prioritize racial diversity and inclusion, he said.

DEI U-Turn

The slashing of these roles indicates that some companies don’t see DEI as essential, said Jean Lee, president and CEO of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, which advocates for diversity in C-suites.

“This is concerning,” because prospective workers from underrepresented backgrounds might get discouraged from seeking employment at companies that have taken a drastic U-turn with their diversity and inclusion efforts, Lee said.

It may also take a toll on the output and morale of remaining workers, who would question their employer’s commitment to diversity and be forced to take on the responsibility of reporting workplace issues to management and advocating for their needs.

“I think the most important thing employers must consider is the message they’re sending” if they’re cutting back DEI initiatives, Lee said. “That affects your brand and communication.”

Lee, who advises employers on DEI matters, said many companies are grappling with how to use layoffs to cut costs amid inflation and rumblings of a looming recession without undermining their diversity efforts.

Liability Potential In addition to potentially harming employee morale and hiring efforts, employers risk exposing themselves to litigation because DEI leaders are often the ones who spot pitfalls and report unaddressed workplace issues that carry serious legal consequences, employment attorneys said.

Research by a US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission task force found that a lack of diversity and inclusion in the workplace can promote discriminatory behavior and allow such conduct to go unchecked.

“When you are gutting the roles of people tasked with holding you accountable and ensuring your workplace is diverse and inclusive, what follows is increases in instances of bias,” said Samone Ijoma, an employment attorney at Sanford Heisler Sharp LLP.

“I do think that getting rid of the people with that expertise, and who are working to change corporate culture, would likely lead to more lawsuits in that realm,” she added.

Diversity shouldn’t be treated as a project to fill a quota, but must be viewed as a business strategy that leads to better outcomes, she added...

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Is Tearing Academia Apart

From John Sailer, at UnHerd, "Ideological litmus tests are becoming the norm in America":

Ideological litmus tests are becoming the norm in American academia. Already, many universities require faculty job candidates to submit “diversity statements” — 19% of the faculty job listings in one recent survey. Now, similar requirements increasingly apply to sitting faculty members, as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements and criteria have become standard components of the promotion and tenure process.

To give one example: last year, the highly-ranked Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine released its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Strategic Action Plan, listing dozens of “tactics” for advancing social justice. Here is an example:

“Include a section in promotion packages where faculty members report on the ways they are contributing to improving DEI, anti-racism and social justice. Reinforce the importance of these efforts by establishing clear consequences and influences on promotion packages.”

The reference to “consequences” reads like a warning to dissenters, especially given that concepts such as “equity”, “anti-racism”, and “social justice” often simply connote adherence to progressive political views. Thanks to the ubiquity of Ibram X. Kendi’s work, many American professionals are primed to point out that anti-racism, far from merely being “not racist”, entails embracing “race conscious” policies, coupled with the belief that any disparity is by definition racism.

With official DEI requirements for promotion and tenure on the rise, Kendian “anti-racism” has come closer to a formal requirement for many in academia. In its 2022 survey of tenure practices, the American Association of University Professors found that 21.5% of the institutions it surveyed had DEI criteria in their tenure standards. For larger institutions, it was 45.6%.As diversity officers increase, so too will their preferred policies.

Unfortunately, the diversity statements can easily stamp out dissenting viewpoints. At UC Berkeley, for example, job candidates will receive a low scores on their diversity statements for “explicitly state[ing] the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same’”, and a high score for “Discuss[ing] diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as core values that every faculty member should actively contribute to.” Institutions from Emory University to the Texas Tech University Department of Biological Sciences have adapted the UC rubric, proudly policing the core values of faculty.

DEI requirements for promotion and tenure often come in the form of evaluation criteria, rather than required statements. The California Community Colleges (CCC) system — the largest system of higher education in America, serving almost two million students — recently mandated that all faculty, staff, and administrator evaluations “include DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] competencies and criteria as a minimum standard for evaluating the performance of all employees.”

The resolution mandating these competencies employs unmistakably ideological language...

Still more. 

WATCH: What Do We Know About Diversity? DEI's Unknown Unknowns (With John McWhorter)

Here's the discussion at Glenn Loury's Substack, "What do we know about the effects of DEI initiatives? In one sense, we know quite a lot."

And at the video, these are great guys:

Japan Olympics Diversity

Japan's population is 98 percent Nihon. For reasons of ethnic chauvinism, fear of the outer world (like the U.S. and Commodore Perry's expeditions to that country in 1853-1855), or outright racism, it's unreasonable to expect much "diversity" to be coming to that nation's shores anytime soon.

Frankly, given the above, I'm not sure what's the purpose of this article. *Shrug.*

At LAT, "Tokyo Olympics: Diverse faces are representing Japan. Does it reflect real change?":

TOKYO — With millions around the world watching, Rui Hachimura walked onto the gleaming white floor of Japan’s Olympic Stadium on Friday waving the country’s red-and-white flag.

The 6-foot-8 Washington Wizards forward with a Japanese mother and Beninese father led his nation’s athletes in procession, a beaming smile peeking out of the sides of his face mask. Towering 20 inches over his fellow flag bearer, wrestler Yui Susaki, the 23-year-old’s careful steps signaled a changing face of Japan.

But in an unpopular Games, echoing with protests outside the largely empty Tokyo stadium, the discontent and ire over the influx of foreign visitors in the midst of a pandemic threatened to overshadow the inclusive image Japan had intended with Hachimura.

Even apart from the COVID-19 pandemic, the years and months leading up to the Games have been marked by a series of disappointments over promises to highlight diversity. The planet’s biggest sporting event has been troubled by high-profile resignations following scandals involving sexist and discriminatory remarks. The Olympic moment will come and go with neither a highly anticipated new anti-discrimination law nor immigration policies that reflect Japan’s fast-changing needs and norms.

It has left a conflicted feeling for Japanese like Hachimura or tennis great Naomi Osaka, who lighted the Olympic torch capping Friday’s ceremony, who haven’t always felt accepted. Some Japanese cling to notions of ethnic and cultural homogeneity even as the country needs young people to replace the world’s fastest-aging population. Though cities like Tokyo have become more cosmopolitan over the last half century, only 2% of babies born in Japan have at least one foreign parent.

Athletes like Hachimura are “one of the few people that can bring major changes for us,” said Alonzo Omotegawa, who has a Japanese mother and Bahamian father and has lived in the Tokyo area his entire life. Yet he has been repeatedly told: You are not Japanese.

The 25-year-old English teacher said he questions whether Hachimura’s popularity and symbolism will be enough to stifle the discrimination he faces on a daily basis — change the minds of landlords who refuse to rent to him because of his skin color, children who ask if it will wash off or police who stop and search him without a warrant, saying people with dreadlocks like him “tend to carry drugs.”

“The country is only on our side when it wants to be,” he said.

Organizers devoted a chapter of Friday night’s opening ceremony to a performance featuring children of diverse ethnic backgrounds assembling the Tokyo Olympics emblem. For months, the slogan “Unity in Diversity” had been pasted on posters around the city, projecting at least for the international media that this nation of 126 million was pledging to become more nuanced and accepting.

At the same time, the pandemic, as it has elsewhere, has brought out in Japan suspicion of those who look different, and a fear they may bring danger. That unease has been amplified in recent days as tens of thousands of athletes and others from around the globe have filtered into a nation that had kept its borders heavily restricted, even keeping out many foreign expats who’d long called Japan home.

Gracia Liu-Farrer, a sociologist at Tokyo’s Waseda University who studies migration and inequality in Japan, said of the Olympics: “It’s ironic. It’s not a moment of change but a moment of almost intensification of xenophobia because of this global health crisis.”

Even so, she said, the international attention around the Olympics has led to soul-searching and introspection over discriminatory opinions and remarks that may have previously gone unchallenged. The week before the opening ceremony, a director who’d made a Holocaust joke years ago and a composer who admitted to once bullying disabled classmates stepped down from their roles...

 Still more.

Defining Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

USA Today's got a freakin' glossary on CRT and DEI. 

Here, "Schools keep talking about critical race theory and DEI. What do those terms really mean?"

Latinos Now the Majority at the University of California

This seems, umm, anticlimactic.

And Michelle Malkin's got the rejoinder:

They're allowed to celebrate this, but if I talk about it, I'm a racist conspiracy theorist...

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) July 16, 2020

Social Distancing in College Classrooms

I really don't know how this is going to work.

First, given reports of the last few days, and especially the news of the Harvard study indicating social distancing may be needed well into 2022, I'm not sure colleges will even be back in the classrooms.

Second, though, how are colleges supposed to do this? At my school, we have enrollment in each class capped at 40 students, which is a full classroom. You're not going to be able to distance students within the class. Either class maximums have to lowered by about half, or teachers are going to have to double their teaching loads, which won't happen.

Man, all of this is crazy.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Social distancing in a classroom? Newsom suggests major changes when schools reopen":

Social distancing in a classroom? Newsom suggests major changes when schools reopen https://t.co/PYSfNIzqZs

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 14, 2020

Although campuses are likely to reopen in the fall, the school day may unfold in starkly different ways, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday, suggesting staggered start times, “reconfigured” classrooms that allow for social distancing and some continuance of online learning.

The governor said that physical distancing and other precautions against transmission of the coronavirus could remain in place for a lengthy period at schools after stay-at-home orders are lifted and California begins to gradually reopen.

School district leaders will need to begin considering a host of safety measures, he said.

“Can you stagger the times that our students come in so you can appropriate yourself differently within the existing physical environment — by reducing physical contact if possible, reducing the congregate meal, dressing issues related to PE and recess?” Newsom said. “Those are the kinds of things — those are the kind of conversations we’re all going to be having over the course of the next number of weeks and the next number of months.”

“We need to get our kids back to school,” he added. “I need to get my kids back to school. We need to get our kids educated.”

Such precautionary measures would have a profound impact on the experience of school for the state’s 6.1 million students in kindergarten through 12th grade as well as for students attending college. Since early to mid March, virtually all schooling in California has become “distance learning,” typically involving students and teachers interacting online.

The biggest concern has centered on the effect of the altered learning environment for students who lack computers, adequate broadband or suitable study conditions at home. Many school districts are loaning out computers and arranging for internet access. Los Angeles Unified is spending $100 million on computers and broadband hot spots for its students — 80% are members of low-income households.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said he’s encouraged by the governor’s optimism, the incremental progress in the fight against COVID-19 and the early thinking on reopening schools. All the same, he said, schools need to “continue working on distance learning,” make the most of the current school year and look at using the summer to address academic issues.

On Monday, L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner announced that campuses in the state’s largest school system would remain closed through summer, with online courses available. District officials also said Monday that no student would receive a failing grade for spring classes...

My college is also having online summer classes, and faculty are waiting to hear what's going to happen for the fall semester.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Heather Mac Donald, The Diversity Delusion

*BUMPED.*

 At Amazon, Heather Mac Donald, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

Heather Mac Donald Interview (VIDEO)

On Fox News, on "Life, Liberty & Levin."

And check out Mac Donald's book, at Amazon, Heather Mac Donald, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

Heather Mac Donald Discusses The Diversity Delusion

Video at AEI, "Heather Mac Donald on how universities have become hatred machines poisoned by identity politics."

And at Amazon, Heather Mac Donald, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

The 'Diversity' Racket at UCLA

At great piece, from Heather Mac Donald, at the Los Angeles Times (surprisingly), "UCLA's infatuation with diversity is a costly diversion from its true mission":

UCLA's infatuation with diversity is a costly diversion from its true mission. https://t.co/18cp5KhBJ8 pic.twitter.com/Fl6E67j1mu

— L.A. Times Opinion (@latimesopinion) September 2, 2018

If Albert Einstein applied for a professorship at UCLA today, would he be hired? The answer is not clear. Starting this fall, all faculty applicants to UCLA must document their contributions to “equity, diversity and inclusion.” (Next year, existing UCLA faculty will also have to submit an “equity, diversity and inclusion statement” in order to be considered for promotion, following the lead of five other UC campuses.) The mandatory statements will be credited in the same manner as the rest of an applicant’s portfolio, according to UCLA’s equity, diversity and inclusion office.

A contemporary Einstein may not meet the suggested evaluation criteria. Would his “job talk” — a presentation of one’s scholarly accomplishments — reflect his contributions to equity, diversity and inclusion? Unlikely. Would his research show, in the words of the evaluation template, the “potential to understand the barriers facing women and racial/ethnic minorities?” Also unlikely. Would he have participated in “service that applies up-to-date knowledge to problems, issues and concerns of groups historically underrepresented in higher education?” Sadly, he may have been focusing on the theory of general relativity instead. What about “utilizing pedagogies addressing different learning styles” or demonstrating the ability to “effectively teach and attract students from underrepresented communities”? Again, not at all guaranteed.

As the new mandate suggests, UCLA and the rest of the University of California have been engulfed by the diversity obsession. The campuses are infatuated with group identity and difference. Science and the empirical method, however, transcend just those trivialities of identity that UC now deems so crucial: “race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, language, abilities/disabilities, sexual orientation, gender identity and socioeconomic status,” to quote from the university’s Diversity Statement. The results of that transcendence speak for themselves: an astounding conquest of disease and an ever-increasing understanding of the physical environment. Unlocking the secrets of nature is challenge enough; scientists (and other faculty) should not also be tasked with a “social justice” mission.

But such a confusion of realms currently pervades American universities, and UC in particular. UCLA’s Intergroup Relations Office offers credit courses and “co-curricular dialogues” that encourage students to, you guessed it, “explore their own social identities (i.e. gender, race, nationality, religion/spirituality, sexual orientation, social class, etc.) and associated positions within the campus community.” Even if exploring your social identity were the purpose of a college education (which it is not), it would be more fruitful to define that identity around accomplishments and intellectual passions — “budding mathematician,” say, or “history fanatic” — rather than gender and race.

Intergroup Relations is just the tip of the bureaucratic diversity iceberg. In 2015, UCLA created a vice chancellorship for equity, diversity and inclusion, funded at $4.3 million, according to figures published by the Millennial Review in 2017. (The EDI vice chancellor’s office did not have its current budget “at the ready,” a UCLA spokesman said, nor did Intergroup Relations.) Over the last two years, according to the Sacramento Bee’s state salary database, the diversity vice chancellor’s total pay, including benefits, has averaged $414,000, more than four times many faculty salaries. Besides his own staff, the vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion presides over the Discrimination Prevention Office; BruinX, the “research and development arm of EDI”; faculty “equity advisors”; UCLA’s Title IX office; and a student advisory board. Various schools at UCLA, including medicine and dentistry, have their own diversity deans, whose job includes making sure that the faculty avoid “implicit bias in the hiring process,” in the words of the engineering school’s diversity dean.

These bureaucratic sinecures are premised on the idea that UCLA is rife with discrimination, from which an ever-growing number of victim groups need protection...

 Keep reading.

What Happened to the Liberal Arts?

Heather Mac Donald's new book is out on September 4th, at Amazon, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

And see the roundup on Ms. Mac Donald at AoSHQ, "Late Summer Saturday Open Thread August 25."

And at Prager University:

University of California Boosts Transfer Admissions

This is interesting.

And it's very helpful for me as a professor, because with efforts by U.C. to increase transfers, and real data on the increased numbers, I can better prod my students to work hard toward attending the U.C. system.

At LAT, "UC opens doors to record number of Californians, led by growth in transfer students":

UC opens doors to record number of Californians, led by growth in transfer students https://t.co/COB6Cbm8NY pic.twitter.com/xvz9Syf0xo

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 11, 2018

The University of California opened its doors to a record number of Californians for fall 2018, led by growth in transfer students from across the state, according to preliminary data released Wednesday.

The public research university’s nine undergraduate campuses offered seats to 95,654 Californians, nearly 3,000 more students than last year. Overall, UC admitted about three-fifths of the 221,788 California, out-of-state and international students who applied.

“After reviewing yet another record-breaking number of applications, our campuses have offered admission to an exceptionally talented group of students,” UC President Janet Napolitano said in a statement. “With the benefit of a UC education, these accomplished young people from different backgrounds, with diverse beliefs and aspirations, will make California and the world a better place.”

The data reflect UC’s stepped-up efforts to reach more deeply across California for community college students, as it responds to growing pressure from Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature to open access for more residents.

Brown has long advocated the transfer option as a cheaper alternative to a four-year degree at a time the state is projected to face a 1.1-million shortfall in college-educated workers by 2030, and he has used his budget power to prod UC to adjust its admission policies. In recent years, state elected officials also have successfully pressed UC to boost enrollment of Californians and limit out-of-state and international students.

The mix of offers for freshmen and transfer students slightly shifted this year in response to such pressure. Most campuses increased offers to California transfer students and decreased them for freshmen.

UCLA, for instance, admitted 562 fewer freshmen but 64 more transfer students this year. Berkeley, Merced, Riverside, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz also boosted their admission offers to state transfer students. Offers to California freshmen were down at Berkeley, Irvine, San Diego and Santa Cruz in addition to UCLA.

“Transfer students are the future of our university,” said Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, UCLA vice provost of enrollment management.

One of them is Francisco Cruz Tapia, a 24-year-old transfer student from Moreno Valley College who plans to study computer engineering at UCLA this fall. He said he chose to start at a community college to stay closer to family and save money. His costs were minimal, he said, because he lived at home and received a fee waiver for his classes.

At UCLA, his tuition and fees will be covered by Cal Grant and university aid, but he said he’ll need to pay rent in the pricey Westwood area. Cruz Tapia said, however, that the costs will be worth it for a chance to pursue his research interests in artificial intelligence.

“It was really challenging to transfer because I had to take a lot of math and physics classes, but I’m excited to go to one of the top universities in the nation,” Cruz Tapia said.

UCLA particularly focused on recruiting in the Central Valley this year as part of a joint effort between UC and California Community Colleges to increase students from areas with historically low transfer rates. Under the partnership, launched in September 2016, the college system gave UC $2.6 million to help students at 39 of its 114 community colleges become more competitive applicants.

Copeland-Morgan said the campus chose to work with four Central Valley colleges — San Joaquin Delta, Bakersfield, Solano and Reedley — because students there are more geographically isolated, often low-income and the first in their families to attend college. Many have less access to the resources and information needed to succeed in the competitive world of college admissions, she said.

Her recruiters made multiple trips to the colleges to help students and counselors understand how to become not only eligible but also competitive for UC admissions. UC requires a minimum 2.4 GPA for California transfer applicants, but Copeland-Morgan said most successful UCLA applicants have at least a 3.6 GPA..

UCLA boosted applications from those colleges by 29% and admission offers by 34% this year. Overall, the Westwood campus admitted students from 109 state community colleges...

RTWT.

What If Diversity Isn't America's Strength?

From Jonah Goldberg, at LAT, "This should elicit some fun email":

Sen. Lindsey Graham says he scolded the president for saying something scatological about certain countries and their immigrants. "Diversity has always been our strength," he allegedly said. By my count, this makes Graham the bazillionth person to proclaim some variant of "diversity is strength."

Is it true? I think the only close to right answer is, "it depends." Specifically, it depends on what — often clichéd — analogy you have in mind. Diverse stock portfolios are more resilient. Diverse diets are healthier. But that doesn't mean picking bad stocks will make you richer or that eating spoiled foods is good for you.

I once heard Jesse Jackson explain that racial integration of the NBA made it stronger and better. He was right. But would gender integration of the NBA have the same effect? Would diversifying professional basketball by height? Probably not.

All of these analogies can take you only so far. Thomas Sowell once said, "The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department."

There's a growing body of evidence that even if diversity— the kind that results from immigration — once made America stronger, it may not be doing so anymore. Robert Putnam, a liberal sociologist at Harvard, found that increased diversity corrodes civil society by eroding shared values, customs and institutions. People tend to "hunker down" and retreat from civil society, at least in the short and medium term.

I think the real culprit here isn't immigration or diversity in general, but the rising stigma against assimilation. Particularly on college campuses, but also in large swaths of mainstream journalism and in the louder corners of the fever swamp right, the idea that people of all backgrounds should embrace a single conception of "Americanism" is increasingly taboo.

Anyone of any race or national origin can be an American, but it requires effort and desire from both the individual and the larger society. There's a shortage of both these days...

More.

The U.S. Must Celebrate Unity

From VDH, at the Hoover Institution, "Diversity Can Spell Trouble."

Google C.E.O. Sundar Pichai Should Resign

An excellent op-ed, from David Brooks, at NYT, "Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O."

Google Fires James Damore, Engineer Who Wrote 'Anti-Diversity' Memo

Well, you can't have a different opinion about such things. The guy should've known that, of course.

At Bloomberg, "Google Fires Author of Divisive Memo on Gender Differences" (at Memeorandum).

Also at Breitbart, "Google Fires Viewpoint Diversity Manifesto Author James Damore."

PREVIOUSLY: "Google Manifesto."

ADDED: Oh, the drama, at LAT, "Google employee's sexist manifesto is the latest crisis for a tech industry struggling to diversify."

Google Manifesto

I wondered what this was when tweeps were tweeting "Google manifesto." I'm like, "huh?"

At Gizmodo, "Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google."

And at the Verge, "Not all Google employees disagree with anti-diversity polemic."

How the Lack of Ideological Diversity on College Campuses Slows Progress and Threatens the Ideals of Liberal Education

From political scientist Samuel J. Abrams, at the American Interest, via Instapundit, "HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Mind The Professors."

Super Bowl Commercials

Disgusting politicization of sports.

At London's Daily Mail:

Anti-American leftist corporations troll #PresidentTrump with stupid pro-diversity commercials. #SuperBowl https://t.co/zzSs06F4K6

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 6, 2017