Chances are good you’ve heard plenty about the backlash to DEI.
And then, of course, there’s the backlash to the backlash – with companies like McDonald’s squarely in the crosshairs of pro-DEI groups, who have pushed for protests and boycotts to try and stem the losses as lots of companies scale back their DEI programs.
Those boycotts – including the even more-publicized Target boycott – have thus far failed to make a visible dent in the trend of organizations abandoning DEI as high-profile names continue their retreat from these (mostly) pandemic-era programs.
In fact, the McDonald’s boycott seems not to have had any measurable impact at all – but please leave a comment if our team has missed something, of course.
And while a lot of the headlines have been captured by controversies like Target’s and McDonald’s…
Not to mention big names like Meta, Walmart, Amazon, and the like…
The fact of the matter is that the pushback against DEI is happening in lots of lesser-known places too.
Case in point: Just last week, George Mason University’s board voted to end its DEI programs within the next 30 days. You may not know George Mason – unless you’re from Virginia – but it enrolls over 27,000 undergraduate students and boasts a top-50 law school.
(There are, of course, on-campus protests in response.)
Mason is exactly the kind of organization that isn’t going to snag lots of big headlines – but could have an absolutely massive impact given how many students and future leaders pass through its doors.
And of course, it joins a long list of organizations that have been winding down their programs – from Deloitte to Comcast, Coca-Cola to Harley-Davidson, plus Stanford, Boeing, and more.
Despite high-profile controversies and pushback – the tide continues to be against DEI, at least for the time being, as each additional organization that pulls back offers a permission structure or “bandwagoning effect” for more others to do the same.
What the future of DEI looks like from here is, of course, unclear – the future being difficult to predict – but everyone can be confident that, whatever happens next, it’ll be controversial.
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