On Building Bridges

I spent weeks writing about DEI back in January, following the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay, which came with a full orchestration of gloating from the anti-DEI activists who had pushed for her downfall.?

I believed then, and believe more strongly now, that organizations would maintain their commitment to diversity and inclusion because the talent pool from which they draw is increasingly diverse, and will only grow more so over time. And because inclusion is the only sustainable way to lead and manage a diverse workforce for the simple reason that those from outside the leadership mainstream are more likely to feel, and to be, excluded.

As the ugly boasts?from those seeking to upend DEI– “we got another scalp!”– began to grab less notice, I turned my attention to other topics. All the while knowing that we were not done with the campaign to undermine organizational commitments to building cultures in which the highest possible percentage of people feel they have a place.??

Bridging Workplace Divides

So here we are at the start of April, and once again events are pushing DEI into the news in ugly new ways. The grotesque trolling by opportunists attempting to link the collapse of the beautiful and essential Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore to DEI gives an explicit shout out to the racism that lies at the heart of this malignant worldview. I guess by now we shouldn’t be surprised by the effort to pin the collapse of a bridge hit by a tanker to the fact that Baltimore has a mostly Black political class.?

Never mind that this makes no sense because these officials have been elected. Not unless, as Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott quipped, DEI now “stands for Duly Elected Incumbent.”

The day the bridge collapsed, a friend sent me the Harvard Gazette’s report on a panel about diversity efforts in higher education. Straining for balance, the article cited the panel’s one strong proponent of DEI, Stacy Hawkins of Rutgers, and its one unremitting opponent, Ilya Shapiro of the Manhattan Institute.?

Hawkins distinguished between university efforts to diversify students, faculty, and staff, and cancel culture, which seeks to suppress specific points of view. She notes that, while cancel culture understandably elicits outrage by denying people’s right to say what they think, it has nothing to do with either a commitment to furthering diversity or the practices that build a culture of inclusion. Rather, it thrives on division.?

Shapiro’s statements exemplify this confusion by accusing DEI of undermining the kind of open inquiry and truth-seeking that has historically characterized higher education. Yet in fact, it is precisely this kind of repression that characterizes cancel culture. It has nothing to do with the aims of diversity and inclusion.

Inclusive Leadership

So why the mystification?

Leaving aside the obvious bad faith and bigotry of many anti-DEI activists, I do believe that the focus on unconscious bias that has been a big part of many DEI intiatives in the last two decades has played a role. After all, the thoughts that run through our heads are not really anybody’s business. Nor is it particularly valuable or appropriate to spill them to colleagues in the misguided belief that doing so will benefit us, our teams, or our organizations.

As someone who has been around these efforts since the beginning, I believe DEI could benefit from less focus on ideas and more on actions, less concern with what people think and more with how they behave toward one another. After all, inclusive cultures are formed by inclusive behaviors, not by politically correct thinking. So, to the extent that we have overweighted the unconscious bias part of the DEI equation, there is plenty of room to chart a more effective path.?

That said, organizational commitment to DEI, even when some of its methods are flawed, has dramatically changed the workplace for the better. Organizations are fairer, and have access to more diversity of thought and talent, than when people were expected to slot into a specific demographic or pattern. People who formerly had to suppress what was best about themselves in hopes of fitting in can now bring what is best about themselves to their work.?

Certainly that will be of benefit as the nation rebuilds the Francis Scott Key bridge.

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