DEI Overpromised, Under-Delivered, Ran Amok

The concept of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has been in the ascendancy for nearly a decade. The movement is an outgrowth and expansion of Affirmative Action, whose intention was to proactively promote opportunity for racial and ethnic minorities that were perceived to be historically disadvantaged. But as awareness that Affirmative Action had evolved into applying "good" discrimination to cure past "bad" discrimination, support for it waned, culminating in its apparent elimination by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

For many reasons, despite its noble aspirations, DEI should follow Affirmative Action into the dustbin of discarded feel-good but perverse social causes. In practice, DEI is irretrievably flawed. It has devolved into toxic authoritarianism on the part of those who control and promote it while undermining basic tenets of American values, societal cohesiveness, and free expression.

Last year’s turmoil at Harvard concerning the discriminatory treatment of certain groups according to their identities or ideologies has helped to bring some of these failings to light. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Douglas Belkin quotes professor Avi Loeb, a theoretical physicist in the Department of Astronomy, on how the DEI bureaucracy functions on campus:

Under [President] Gay's leadership [as Dean of the Faculty] ... the mandate of the administrative state of the university continued to expand and shift from serving faculty to monitoring them. The message was, "Don't deviate from what they find to be appropriate"... [DEI] became more of a police organization.

Not unlike the lords of old fiefdoms or the Mafia, DEI-instigated hiring processes now often require a loyalty oath in the form of diversity statements. Harvard even publishes a guide for conforming to the rigid expectations of DEI-controlled human resource departments. This is compelled speech, an appropriate accompaniment to censorship and policing. It is evocative of compulsory public demonstrations of fealty in repressive regimes. None of the three pillars of D, E, and I deserve support in their current form.

Paradoxically, the inclusion component of DEI has become the exploitable catch-all for suppressing ideas or expression disfavored by the DEI bureaucracy, or that offend virtually anybody on the DEI police's watch. Inclusion has thus been transformed into a highly circumscribed framework of acceptable behavior and speech, sometimes resembling a minefield to be negotiated gingerly. In the classroom environment, it has constrained or eliminated many debates and the study of aspects of history, literature, and even science that run afoul of the acceptability codes. Inclusion thus tends to retard rather than advance knowledge or the open-mindedness essential for learning and discovery. We are reminded of George Orwell's classic formulation in his immortal "1984": "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

Diversity also has downsides as practiced, because it is typically defined by immutable personal characteristics rather than viewpoints and life experiences. This has the inevitable effect of tribalizing a population because an individual's "place" is frozen; upward mobility is now stunted for the disfavored. “White males need not apply” too often is implied even if not stated, for example. A sense of community is infeasible, as groups not favored by the DEI regime are alienated, and the feeling of being labeled pervades the social dynamic. This works at cross purposes to inclusion and becomes highly destabilizing when false dichotomies, such as oppressor/oppressed or colonizer/colonized, are imposed.

Moreover, it remains debatable whether simple diversity of identities is beneficial in education, business, or government except for its public relations cachet. (We think its benefits have been oversold.) The dimensions of diversity that might enhance learning, productivity, or innovation are more likely to be viewpoints, experiences, backgrounds, and cultures (as distinct from race).

Lastly, there is equity. Often confused with equality (of opportunity), equity is affirmative action on steroids. It seeks to achieve social justice by rewarding immutable identity rather than accomplishment. It appears to strive for a Marxist-like utopia where everyone must be equal regardless of capability, character, or achievement. This has been anathema to America's bedrock principles since its founding.

To be sure, America has not lived up to the ideal of equality throughout its history. But that is an argument for doubling down on fiercely protecting citizens against discrimination, not discouraging advancement by "equitably" redistributing the spoils of effort and accomplishment.

Equity has a fundamental and uncorrectable flaw, illustrated by a simple question: Equity on what basis? Do we use a color wheel to define groups by skin color? Do we utilize genetic testing and prescribe thresholds of minority content for determining race? Should we continue allowing people to self-classify just to reap the benefits of equity?

And how finely do we slice and dice the relevant population to decide who deserves what outcome? Many different identity factors can be thrown arbitrarily into the stew that defines a person for the purposes of equity, producing a dizzying array of combinations and permutations to be taken into account in proportional outcomes. The DEI bureaucrats get to pick and choose to suit their ideologies.

And then there is the problem of how to achieve proportional outcomes. The only ways to get there are either impermissible discriminatory quotas or lowering the requirements for a job, promotion, or college admission to the point where the "qualified" pool is so large that there are sufficient representatives of every class to meet proportional objectives. This is the polar opposite of seeking optimal productivity and excellence, which are the foundations of growth and prosperity.

One of us (Dr. Miller) saw an example of what affirmative action can lead to when he was in medical school decades ago. The minority students were not able to pass Part 2 (the clinical section) of the medical board exams, a requirement for graduation, so the requirement was simply dropped. Students had to take the exam but were not required to pass it.

Bottom line: The three pillars of DEI are flawed, misdirected, unfair, partially self-contradictory, and have seriously undesirable consequences. DEI has devolved into a threat to our educational system, our economy, and our society. It is time to reverse course, dismantle the entire edifice, and return to the basic values of merit, achievement, and the vigorous pursuit of non-discrimination of any kind.

An earlier version of this article was published by Issues & Insights.

Andrew I. Fillat spent his career in technology venture capital and information technology companies. Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger distinguished fellow at the American Council on Science and Health. They were undergraduates together at MIT.