Cultural work is not a crime. I will keep doing it.

These past few days have been chaotic, disorienting, and infuriating for the US intercultural field. The new administration has taken an exceptionally heavy-handed approach to culture, not only by calling DEI illegal, but by issuing a series of executive orders designed to terminate federal programs and projects, overturn longstanding antidiscrimination rules, shutter websites and end communication relevant to specific cultural groups, root out dissent, and punish private sector organizations that fail to fall in line.

I am not a DEI professional, and I don't think DEI programs are above critique. Their quality, usefulness, and impact likely vary widely, depending on many factors that are best addressed in a different article. Even so, I am gravely concerned for multiple reasons.

In the first place, it is disproportionate for the highest office in the country to single out a specific profession or kind of work and declare it out of bounds. This is an attempt to make a class of worker persona non grata, and it is positively Orwellian to frame bringing cultures together and advocating for the less advantaged among us as criminal. (It's worth pointing out that there are plenty of professions that Americans complain about, from building contractors to doctors, but we don't see this kind of broad government assault on anyone else).

Second, it is accomplished through bullying. It is unprecedented for a democratic government to order its employees to snitch on each other and to threaten organizations outside of the federal government with vague repercussions unless they comply in advance. Whatever you think of DEI's merits or drawbacks, in a free society we let companies, nonprofits, institutions, and professional associations make their own decisions, since they are best positioned to understand their own needs, goals, resources, and priorities. (Why does the administration care about the minutia of internal programming and HR policies inside American organizations, anyway? Surely such micromanaging amounts to government overreach.)

Third, such intimidation tactics infect the risk calculus - not just for DEI professionals but for everyone. Cultural workers are just the low-hanging fruit. It is a bad sign when people's first question shifts from "what do I need or want to do" to "will the leader approve" and "how might this hurt me?" This indicates that power is vested in a person, instead of the office. And since people can be fickle, this places individuals and businesses in the tenuous position of having to guess which way the winds will blow, rather than putting their faith in institutional integrity, civil liberties, and legal precedent. In this perilous atmosphere, they will self-censor, avoid controversy, and retreat from public life - or scramble to kiss the ring. This will hollow out our civil society, promote cynicism and allow problems to fester. It may also turn out to be bad for business. Filipe Campante and Raymond Fisman warn that crony capitalism ultimately handicaps economies because when we are consumed with currying favor, we stop paying enough attention to what the real marketplace demands, and we fall behind.

Fourth, it is simply counterproductive to declare culture off-limits. To be frank, it seems like a mostly monocultural cabal basically decided that we aren't going to bother with all of this messy cultural stuff anymore. We will just pretend that everyone speaks English (or should), that we live in a pure meritocracy where the best talent naturally gets nurtured and rises to the top, and that any issue or identity we don't personally experience is imaginary. Not only will we wash our hands of all this complexity, but we'll force everyone else to shut up, too. But just like turning a light off in a room doesn't make the furniture disappear, pretending that culture and diversity don't exist doesn't make them go away, either. Moreover, devaluing intercultural skills (or making them taboo) won't help agencies serve their publics or organizations improve innovation, collaboration, retention, or customer service.

Fifth, it smacks of not just legal but political overreach. Despite the fan club's euphoria, the November electoral victory was one of the slimmest in US history: 49.91% of the vote to the Democrats' 48.43%. As Peter Baker in the New York Times points out, this was "neither unprecedented nor a landslide." Similarly, the Republican Party has the narrowest majority in Congress since 1931. This hardly amounts to a mandate for such extreme measures, even if people found some of their corporate diversity trainings to be tedious. American politics is cyclical, and the fastest way to alienate regular people is to dictate what they can and can't do, as the left discovered during the pandemic protests against masking, vaccines, and remote school. (And anyway, this election was supposedly about the price of eggs, right?)

Right now, I feel defensive for my esteemed DEI colleagues and disgusted as an American citizen. I am also uncertain about what this will mean for me and my work. As we have seen with restrictions on medical care in many states, even if the letter of the law (supposedly) allows for nuance and free decision-making, the fear-inducing spirit of the law can discourage people from acting in a normal way, lest they attract unwanted attention or penalties. Thus, even if a total ban on cultural work is improbable, it is now plausible that the wide range of organizations that typically hire me will simply freeze those conversations and contracts.

Nonetheless, I will continue to share my expertise and serve as a bridge between the US and the world anyway, and to use my own voice to speak freely.

Because cultural work is not a crime.