Appeared in SUBSTACK on June 16, 2025
https://anandanandalingam649613.substack.com/p/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-are?r=o7w77
When I was Dean of the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, I came to the realization that there were no tenure-track women faculty members in the Finance Department of over twenty-five professors: zero! Finance was the largest major among business undergraduates at the University with well over forty percent female students. It made sense for us to hire one or two female faculty members in Finance, but when I broached the department, the faculty asked me whether I wanted them to dilute the quality of the department by not hiring on merit. I said “no”, I wanted them to work hard and hire female faculty members whose research quality matched or exceeded that of the department. They had to try hard! They now have three out of around thirty. And the students are better off for it.
That episode reflects in a microcosm how the right wing reacts to anything that threatens the status quo – in this case the supremacy of males dominating a field or a department at a university. Any change to ensure equity, to include anyone who has been left out, is always framed as trying to dilute something more meritorious. The attempt at ensuring outsiders do not threaten the power status quo is nothing new; has been practiced over millennia using cultural artifacts, sometimes supported by pseudo-science. However, over time, countries all over the world have dispensed with old frameworks and institutions that have held back inclusivity and diversity and have become more equitable. For example, today we see over fifty percent female students at medical schools in countries as diverse as the United States and India, and the profession is thriving.
You could say that most countries have woken up to the fact that having a diverse workforce, including people from all ethnic groups, gender and sexual orientation, and distributing the largesse of the capitalist system equitably actually leads to better productivity, a more dynamic economy, and a better life for everyone. McKinsey & Company studies show that companies with above-average diversity scores drive 45% average revenue from innovation, compared to 26% for companies with below-average diversity scores. This message seems to be lost in the current turn of events in several western countries, and even in India, where to get elected, politicians are going against the very things that made their countries “great”. The United States under the new Republicans and Donald Trump is the “poster boy” for turning its back on what made America great: diversity, equity, and inclusion. However, the blame lies also with the liberals in power who claim to further these ideals as much as on those who are trying to destroy them.
What is “diversity”? Diversity is the range of human differences, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, social class, physical ability or attributes, national origin, and political and religious beliefs. Diversity, in its broadest sense, refers to the presence of variety within a group, encompassing differences in characteristics, ideas, perspectives, and experiences. Whether one likes it or not, many countries have diverse populations, and the United States is more diverse than most. To be against diversity is in a way quite un-American.
The term “equity” refers to fairness and justice and is distinguished from equality: Whereas equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge this and make adjustments to rectify imbalances. The American Declaration of Independence starts with a statement of equity, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”. The phrase “with liberty and justice for all” comes from the Pledge of Allegiance and is an ideal that embodies the principles of a fair and just society, where all individuals are treated equally under the law and have the freedom to pursue their goals. The principles of fairness and justice are also reflected in the U.S. Constitution, particularly in the Bill of Rights, which guarantees fundamental rights such as freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, as well as the right to a fair trial. Thus “equity” is enshrined in much of the founding documents and the evolution of the American value system over the ages.
Inclusion, as best defined, means that people of diverse backgrounds feel that they are valued, respected, and included regardless of their background or identity, and treated in an equitable manner. They have the same opportunities as others, and they are not overlooked or excluded. Inclusion is the natural outcome of following American realities of diversity and American values of justice and fairness, i.e. equity. So why this attack on the basic premise of America, diversity, equity and inclusion?
Perhaps while the Founding Fathers, and, over the years, the intellectuals in ivory towers extolled the virtues of equity and inclusion, the reality is that the actual polity simply followed the principle that Might is Right. Might was certainly not distributed diversely. For years, the white population, especially white men, have been at the forefront of economic and political power in the United States. It is not surprising that the mighty white men did not want equity or inclusion in different aspects of American life, whether economic, political or cultural. For centuries since the colonization of the Americas, white men were political leaders and after independence from Britain, all Presidents, Vice Presidents, leaders of the Senate and House were white men. The election of Barak Obama, a mixed-race man in 2008 was a surprising anomaly. The chief executives of the top corporations were all white men until 1972 when Katharine Graham made history as the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company when she assumed leadership of The Washington Post. In this case too, it was not a simple matter of electing a female CEO: Katherine Graham became CEO after the previous CEO, her husband Philip died. The first non-white CEO of a Fortune 1000 company was Clifton R. Wharton Jr., who became CEO of TIAA in 1987.
Today, after decades of consciously pursuing diversity and equity, we are witnessing a measurable shift, with 52 companies within the Fortune 500, i.e. 10%, being led by female CEOs. In 2024, about 10.7% of Fortune-1000 companies had non-white CEOs. Around 11% of board seats in Fortune-1000 companies were held by African Americans. Korn-Ferry reported that less than 10% of senior P&L leaders in the Standard & Poor 100 were African American. Clearly, the commitment of DEI did not seem to extend to leadership hires in a significant way. Cabinets of most United States Presidents had very few non-white Secretaries. In the current Trump administration, for example, there is only 1 man and 1 woman of color out of 24 cabinet members; 16 of these are men!
In 2022, 72.6 percent of presidents of the US News and World Report top-50 universities were White. Black or African American presidents were the second largest group (13.6 percent), followed by Hispanic or Latino (5.8 percent), Asian (2.7 percent), and multiracial (2.4 percent). According to Poets and Quants, business school deans “aren’t just mostly male — they are overwhelmingly white and older, too.” AACSB’s latest report shows that 70% of current B-School deans being male, 65% are non-Hispanic white. While it was difficult to get an exact number for deans of engineering schools, the best estimates seem to suggest that about 70-75% are white as well. Harvard University arguably the best university in the U.S. had only 6% African Americans in their tenured faculty and only 25% women. Of the entire tenure-track faculty, only 17% were non-white.
While the top ranks of politics, business and even academia did become diverse and inclusive, the results were anemic at best. However, in business and academia, there was a lot of pronouncements about promoting and supporting DEI. Every potential CEO candidate had to pledge that they would be champions of diversity and inclusion, and even other senior rank appointees had to be vocal about their commitment to DEI. In academia, especially at the top-tier universities, candidates for leadership positions, deans, provosts and presidents, had to have a clearly written “DEI Statement” that detailed their commitment to uphold diversity and inclusion. Several companies appointed DEI Directors and even DEI divisions as an appendage to their HR departments to signal that they were putting money where their mouths were. These DEI initiatives were pushed harder at the lower ranks than at the level of the C-suite.
Bloomberg (quoted by a CBS affiliate in Austin, Texas) reported that 94% of the more than about 500,000 jobs added in 2024 went to people of color. Hispanic individuals accounted for the most hires with 40%, followed by Black and Asian people with 23% and 22% respectively. Much of the workers of color accounted for in Bloomberg’s analysis were in lower-level roles. Among the 88 companies in the S&P-100 which employ a combined 9 million people, 74 saw an increase in the number of workers of color from 2020 to 2021. In the spotlight was OneTen, a nonprofit coalition which strives to get 1 million middle-class jobs for Black employees within a decade. At major companies that lost employees, 68.5% were White workers compared to 16.5% Black, 9.7% Hispanic and 2.3% Asian.
Thus, DEI initiatives at companies, while not making impactful changes in leadership positions, affected hiring and promotion at the lower levels more significantly. It should not be surprising that there were significant number of people, especially white men, who reacted negatively to the promotion of DEI initiatives. It was also easy to blame DEI initiatives and pronouncements as the sole reason why they were not paid well or promoted. Isolated but well publicized cases where a LGBTQ+ candidate or a person of color was chosen for promotion over almost anyone else helped to pitch DEI as simply discriminatory rather than progressive. It should not have come as a surprise that people who are simply getting by see DEI initiatives as standing in their way to a better life. And, of course, the promotion of diversity is a lightning rod for the burgeoning racism in the United States as well.
Where do honorable right-thinking people with real American values go from here? For starters, the worst thing one could do would be to abandon diversity, equity and inclusion as guiding principles in industry, government and academia for political expediency or to avoid the fight with right-wing reactionaries. Several institutions are beginning to do just that under the orchestrated and concerted attack on DEI by the Trump administration and several Republican governors. Moving away from DEI would be the recipe for economic disaster in the country. To give one example, just imagine that there is no concerted effort to include white women at every level in the workforce, from entry-level to the C-suite. Why would a country pursue prejudice against half their productive workforce, especially when all evidence points to the fact that the country would be better off economically with the inclusion of women? Minorities in the electronics industries and Silicon Valley are at the forefront of innovation and the formation of new companies. Between 2006 and 2012, 33.2% of engineering and tech startups formed in the US by immigrants were created by individuals of Indian origin; another 17% by those of Chinese origin. If those of Indian and Chinese origin are restricted by dropping DEI, America would lose its current edge in the digital world. In the entertainment industry, not including LGBTQ+ professionals would be a disaster. According to the Writers Guild of nearly 12% of TV series writers identifying as LGBTQ+ with the actual number being much higher.
It makes no sense for politicians to pander to a group of voters who have been brain washed into thinking that their bad state of being is because the important pillars of the American value system, diversity, equity and inclusion, are going against their interest and advancement. It is much more important to proactively show those who are angry at DEI, especially the white working class, that equity and inclusion means that everyone is advantaged by economic growth by promoting minorities and women, not just those leading industry, government and academia. And “diversity” does not mean simply promoting African Americans, women and LGBTQ+ but also bringing into the tent people of every ethnicity and persuasion. To do this, in the next decade or so, “diversity” must be defined to seriously consider those who are economically disadvantaged rather than simply focus on race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and sexual orientation. It is also important to define “equity” as improving the economic status of all those who are at the bottom of the pyramid. This will involve a serious commitment to income distribution including increasing the minimum wage and providing free healthcare and education for all, and increasing taxes on the rich to pay for the economic cost of upholding American values of diversity, equity and inclusion.
It will be a fight to loosen the grip of those using DEI to simply curry favor with one set of voters and those who are vocally anti-DEI to feather their own nest and get popularity with white voters. It will be a worthwhile fight to uphold American values of justice, fairness and inclusion, and build a truly diverse country in both economic and political terms.
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