Are DEI And ESG Finally Going MIA?

Issues & Insights ^ | 5 Mar, 2024 | I & I Editorial Board

[MtnClimber]

The efforts by government, captured institutions and radical activists to manipulate and menace can feel like an endless loop. But is it possible we’ve turned a corner, or at least nearing one that we can take? Recent events suggest so.

The flagship institution of higher education in the red state of Florida is shutting down its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) office. The University of Florida is ridding itself of the malign chief diversity officer position, sacking the program’s useless staff, and is also “halting any contracts involving the subject,” the Associated Press reports.

What a welcome development, thanks to a bill passed and signed last year that forbids schools from using state and federal funds to support discriminatory initiatives.

Writing earlier this year for I&I, Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller identified “DEI theology” as a movement that has warped universities’ moral compasses.

“These often improbably huge campus bureaucracies are the engine of sheltering and groupthink. DEI offers ‘protection’ in the form of tribalization – the perfect growth medium for prejudice and alienation – and a hair trigger for any perceived slight, insult, or anything deemed exclusionary.”

In one of many egregious instances of DEI indoctrination, every student-athlete at North Carolina’s Davidson College was required to watch “I’m Not Racist, Am I?” which, yes, Glenn Reynolds, does sound “like a hostile educational environment on account of race.”

There are an endless number of additional examples of DEI abuse, in which “public institutions of higher education,” says the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, “seek to compel students, faculty, and applicants to conform to a particular ideological position.”

While the DEI purge – we don’t mind using that term because the corrosive force that is DEI needs to be purged – moves through the rest of the state’s public colleges and universities, at lease one large, recognizable firm is backing off its commitment to following environment, social and governance business and investment practices. Under the ESG banner, companies are expected to make decisions based not on their bottom lines but on trendy, leftist causes, such as global warming, diversity-based rather than merit-based hiring, and how companies “police” themselves.

Don’t be fooled by what might sound pleasing to the ear. ESG is as toxic as DEI. While his description would differ from ours, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is admitting that ESG investing is a poor allocation of capital. His firm, according to our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, “with trillions of dollars of their clients’ money under management, is no longer trying to steer corporate behavior away from profitability, which in our view was actively destructive of shareholder value.”

In a report for the Pacific Research Institute, economist Wayne Winegarden looked at the 18 ESG funds with a 10-year track record and found their returns on investment are 44% smaller than returns from an S&P 500 index fund.

While Fink, says the Committee, “was the leader” among CEOs adopting ESG practices, his “remarkable turnaround” is only one a of a number of ugly corporate episodes that appears to be winding down.

“The weaponization of financial investment to promote environmentalist goals seemed to take a hit in recent weeks, with major financial companies claiming to be withdrawing from the largest activist investor engagement initiative concerning climate change,” the Dallas Express – “The People’s Paper” – reported over the weekend.

These incidents inspire some confidence and shore up our belief that reason eventually wins out. We hope that in just a few years, we’ll all have to think hard just to remember that DEI and ESG even existed.

[MtnClimber]

Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller identified “DEI theology” as a movement that has warped universities’ moral compasses.

That is the purpose of any of these marxist tools.

[Liz]

Wall Street’s DEI Retreat Has Officially Begun
Programs once meant for people of color and women are now open to all.

By Max Abelson, Simone Foxman, and Ava Benny-Morrison, March 4, 2024

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has made a surprising change to its “Possibilities Summit” for Black college students: It’s opened the program to White students.

At Bank of America Corp., certain internal programs that used to focus on women and minorities have been broadened to include everyone.

And at Bank of New York Mellon Corp., executives are being urged to reconsider hard metrics for workforce diversity. Lose them, lawyers have advised.

This is what diversity, equity and inclusion looks like on Wall Street today: anxious, fraught – and changing fast.

Bank executives are moving to head off accusations of reverse discrimination.Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg
From C-suites down, American finance is quietly reassessing its promises to level the playing field. The growing conservative assault on DEI, coupled with pockets of resentment among White employees, have executives moving to head off accusations of reverse discrimination. It’s not just Wall Street. In recent weeks, Zoom Video Communications Inc. cut its internal DEI team amid broader layoffs and Tesla Inc. removed language about minority workers from a regulatory filing.

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The seemingly small changes — lawyerly tweaks, executives call them — are starting to add up to something big: the end of a watershed era for diversity in the US workplace, and the start of a new, uncertain one.

“We’re past the peak,” said Subha Barry, former head of diversity at Merrill Lynch.

Wall Street has long skewed White and male, as it still does. Even an inkling that banks are retreating from DEI has some women and minorities questioning how real promises of change were in the first place.

Publicly, executives insist they’re as dedicated as ever. Goldman Sachs and other major US banks say they remain committed to attracting and promoting people from a range of backgrounds. Privately, however, many acknowledge that the high-profile campaign against DEI— amplified by billionaires including Elon Musk and Bill Ackman — threatens to set back what progress Wall Street has made.

[Liz]

THE DEI THAT DID-IN HARVARD’s PRESIDENT-—source: Fr thread

Harvard deleted nearly all DEI materials from its website following President Claudine Gay’s disastrous congressional testimony, in which she declined to say whether advocating for the genocide of Jews is permissible on campus. Recovered DEI documents through an Internet archive show
<><>DEI urges students to internalize the Critical Race Theory narrative,
<><>that America is systemically racist,
<><>that it is riddled with white-baiting code words
<><>words like “police brutality,” “white supremacist violence,” “weaponization of whiteness.”
<><>students are told to “unpack” their so-called “white” and “male” privileges,
<><>to consider their “white fragility,”
<><>ghetto-nurtured DEI says white privilege accrues to whites
<><>b/c of a society that protects and insulates them from race-based stress.

[ComputerGuy]

I’ve had two employers who relied heavily on IQ scores. That wouldn’t be fair in today’s USA.

[AndyJackson]

There is too much money in all the training courses and resulting lawfare for anyone to abandon it. Defeat is going to come hard, training facilitator by facilitator, power point slide deck by slide deck, inside the beltway connect woman and minority owned small business contractor, etc. It's going to be urban warfare in the streets of blue cities to eradicated this nonsense.

And that is before you start on the universities who suckered their donors into supporting this nonsense.

[RoosterRedux]

Good post, Liz.

Regarding this clip:

Wall Street has long skewed White and male, as it still does. Even an inkling that banks are retreating from DEI has some women and minorities questioning how real promises of change were in the first place.

The reason Wall St is mostly male is that it is a tough business and, in no uncertain terms, skews toward top performance. There's a lot of money involved and there's no room for anyone but the best.

It's a macho business because it requires toughness, but there are plenty of tough women and minorities.

People who are pussy cats of any gender or race don't stand a chance.

As an aside, I spent the biggest part of my career as an investment banker on Wall St. I was always shocked when some (a very few) people working for me brought up the subject of "life or family balance." That doesn't exist in firms that strive to be the best.

[alternatives?]

The eliminate the DEI departments but keep the controls in the HR department. They are not going to change their hiring.

[Alberta's Child]

In a report for the Pacific Research Institute, economist Wayne Winegarden looked at the 18 ESG funds with a 10-year track record and found their returns on investment are 44% smaller than returns from an S&P 500 index fund.

That's the only thing that matters. A virtue-signaling investment strategy is a losing one.

[DoodleBob]

One thing that is worth mentioning in these threads, is the potential for knee-jerk reactions and, dare I say, victimology on the side of normal Americans.

I’ve seen lots of FR threads going on and on about the “white male” being a victim of DEI, how the “whites” are under assault. Now, to be sure, that is a narrative that helps drive a wedge and is designed to frighten certain groups.

However, I’ve noticed a slight adoption of leftist victimization- people with poor work ethic etc are now blaming DEI for all their personal failures. It’s a page out of the leftist playbook, telling this or that group to blame “racism” for not getting a job etc. It’s a bad look.

Further, I sense that many posters think this blame game is being promoted by minorities. In general, no. Put bluntly, far left progressives who push this tripe, are actually lily white. Nearly seven-in-ten Progressive Left (68%) are White adults, making this group less racially and ethnically diverse than the other Democratic-oriented groups.

Yet, these chiefly white folks hold extremist views not JUST on race…

…but on a plethora of matters. Indeed, this lot holds more extreme views overall than those held by more racially-diverse Dem groups.

These whites live in enclaves in cities, prefer going to museums over going to the range, and think religion is sophistry. Their policies and language all reek of a Superiority Complex.

America is great because of her people. Not in spite of them. And We the People will discarded all the nonsense pushed by the jar-shakers on the way to greatness.

[Liz]

......the newest lefty moan - the adoption of “leftist victimization” - people
with poor work ethic etc are now blaming DEI for their own personal failures.

---

Good catch.

[lurk]

DIE etc is not dying.

It is mutating.

[FrdmLvr]

Yup! DOA!

[xoxox]

So what will they cook up to supercede them?

[xoxox]

They always mutate.

[Organic Panic]

No. It is here to stay. When have the Marxists ever given up anything. Remember Acorn? Remember the Ministry of truth? All the democrat marxist jerks do is rename it and hide it better.

[alternatives?]

“their own personal failures.”

So, you are concluding the rape victim is at fault? Or do you pick and choose who you prefer the victims are?

White men are currently victims in a lot of areas in our current society.

[alternatives?]

“America is great because of her people.”

America is controlled by the establishment.

[DoodleBob]

America is like a high school.

There are the popular kids - jocks, cheerleaders, and other losers - who think we envy them and aspire to be in their Snobitorium.

To be sure, there are many weak-willed people who are drawn to these cretins, like flies to manure. This symbiotic relationship keeps these codependent enablers tidally locked.

There are also people who see the popular kids and their retinue, and talk smack about them. They talk about these “elites” and how dangerous they are, and that nobody can see their lies. In truth, they are obsessed and a few would sell their friends to be One of Them.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the student body could care less about these losers and this charade. Further, a small but pernicious minority actively mock the popular kids in between class and attending rock concerts, because they know mockery is Kryptonite to the popular kids.

The Establishment has zero control over the people they want to control.

[alternatives?]

The Establishment has zero control over the people they want to control.

Really? They certainly decide what you can buy and do. They decide whether you can keep you job without a vaccine. They decide to fund a war in Ukraine, debasing the currency, without your approval. They let anyone cross the border and put them in your community. They are slowing restricting the choices of cars and trucks you can buy. They have restricted the choice of washers, dryers, hot water heaters, even table saws.