Quote:Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, Wall Street firms rushed to institute policies and practices aimed at promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, and increasing the number of people from underrepresented groups in positions of power.
That trend now appears to be moving in the other direction with corporations that once championed the cause quietly doing away with DEI initiatives and reverting to a merit-based, non-discriminatory system of hiring.
According to Bloomberg, among those who have made changes to DEI-focused initiatives are Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. The former recently allowed white students to attend its "Possibilities Summit," which had previously been limited to black students, while the latter has stopped limiting certain internal programs to just minorities.
Their moves are symbolic of a shift in the industry; the era of a company's commitment to DEI taking precedence over its commitment to equal opportunity seems to be slowly reversing.
Although no major firms have done away with DEI completely, many have taken various steps to reduce its importance. Some, like Goldman and Bank of America, have opened up programs to people of all races, while others have done away with certain language.
As Bloomberg reports, Citigroup Inc previously included the term "anti-racist practices" in its regulatory filings, however in February it was dropped. JPMorgan Chase also nixed mentions of certain groups in its filings.
Data has shown that major companies' use of the terms "DEI" and "diversity" have gone back to pre-George Floyd levels. Following a peak in 2022, the terms have been on a steady decline, save for the second quarter of 2023 when the Supreme Court issued its ruling barring racial discrimination in college admissions.
The ruling has been credited by some as a turning point in large firms' move away from DEI, making them rethink the possible legal ramifications of preventing certain groups from certain programs and positions.
NMSU is currently conducting a search for a new President and is down to the final 4 candidates (Was 5 until yesterday when one of the candidates took the prez job at Missouri State).
(10-20-2023 06:49 AM)rath v2.0 Wrote: Companies realized that the useless women they normally employ for this add nothing, drain the bottom line, the employees think it's stupid and their clients don't care.
Quote:Much of Corporate America, and indeed many of the corporations in the Western-based world, are all message carriers more than they are producers of products now. Behind the scenes, many directors and executives sit in meeting rooms asking themselves, "What do we stand for?" instead of "How can we improve our product?" Marketing teams spend a good deal of time in meetings wondering how best to display a company's supposed "altruism" while trying to plan out the latest campaign.
It's all a lie, obviously. At the end of the day, a company really only cares about its goodwill with the public because it's a means to an end, that end being more money. However, in the quest to achieve the status of being one of the "good companies," many corporations embrace the politics of the mainstream only to find everything from their good name to their product decreasing in quality. Some corporations lose billions of dollars in the process, while some smaller companies completely go out of business.
So why do it?
Often, it's because they're strongarmed into it through threats of accusations of being sexist, racist, or other mainstream public "sins." The mere threat of having a finger pointed at you in this day and age is enough to scare major businesses into obedience.
Where do the threats come from? Oftentimes, the threats come from bigger fish in the corporate water. BlackRock is famous for threatening to withdraw funding benefits and lowering the rank of companies on stock lists if they don't comply with ESG policies. Larger corporations may punish smaller companies by not working with them if they feel like their management isn't diverse enough.
As Larry Fink of BlackRock openly said, this is the business of "forcing behaviors."
But quite often the threat of being labeled with the pariah status comes from within. Activist-minded employees will get hired by a business to do a job and begin doing what they consider it is their duty to do, and begin pushing leftist values on the business, namely DEI.
How do they succeed? Through guilt, fear, and pressure.
As YouTuber ComixDivision pointed out in his latest video, the co-founder of Sweet Baby Inc. effectively gave instructions about how to do this in a speech. You may recall that Sweet Baby Inc. has been covered on RedState before as a company that video game developers hire to go in and change a game's writing, characters, etc., so they're more appropriate for "modern audiences." What they generally end up doing is making the game mind-numbingly stupid, insulting to the player, and ultimately making the game unpopular.
Yet, despite the repeated pattern of failure, the company is continuously hired. It's no longer a mystery as to why. In fact, they'll stand up in front of a crowd and gladly admit to it and encourage others to do it.
Recently, a backlash against Sweet Baby Inc. has arisen within the gaming community, and this includes bringing old clips and tweets of its employees to light that display their radical leftism, including racism, sexism, and their willingness to use fear and guilt to control people.
Watch this clip talked about by ComixDivision that shows the patterns of people like feminist activist Anita Sarkeesian and the co-founder of Sweet Baby Inc., Kim Belair, who attempt to use threats of public derision to force companies into DEI and obedience to radical leftism.
It's a Mafia shakedown tactic. An activist employee goes to the marketing department and says, "Nice business you got here. It would be a shame if a rumor was started that it's racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., and the media started reporting about you, and boycotts and lawsuits started popping up everywhere."
The company, fearing for its existence, complies and institutes DEI policies that turn it into another host for the message. Moreover, it becomes another example for other companies to see. The lesson is simple. Comply or be punished and/or left behind.
It's a form of terrorism that threatens the reputation and, ultimately, the health of a business.
Right now, we live in an era where this form of terrorism is acceptable, and it's utilized well. That's not to say it's invincible. A decline in the embrace of leftism is clearly happening right now as the influence of ESG policies over businesses wanes and trillions of dollars are sapped from ESG funds. Governments and businesses alike are walking away.
But this doesn't necessarily solve the problem. The solution to all of this is for businesses to be very careful in who they hire. These activists don't necessarily hide their beliefs. Businesses looking to bring in more employees should comb the past of potential hires to make sure that, upon getting the job, their chief goal will not be to bring the business under the control of the body politic.
Being aware of these tactics is the first step to avoid being a victim of them. The second is to make yourself immune from the fear these activists try to instill in people, and in that regard, knowledge is power.
(This post was last modified: 03-07-2024 12:14 PM by CrimsonPhantom.)
(03-05-2024 01:21 PM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote: NMSU is currently conducting a search for a new President and is down to the final 4 candidates (Was 5 until yesterday when one of the candidates took the prez job at Missouri State).
Quote:Last week, the University of Florida announced that 13 full-time diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) positions had been eliminated, and 15 faculty members had their administrative appointments terminated. Similar announcements came from Florida International University and the University of North Florida. New College and University of South Florida dismantled DEI offices earlier. Only the University of Central Florida is openly defying Florida’s 2023 ban on DEI.
DEI ideology has flourished in our nation’s academic institutions, where it long ago captured faculties and then administrators. Disciplines such as sociology or gender studies have seen the principles of identity politics sewn into their professional standards, so there is no effective difference between subject matter mastery and deep ideological indoctrination.
Diversity advocates are absolutely correct that efforts to dismantle the DEI complex on campus mark a civilizational battle. “DEI activities,” writes Mathew H. Grendle of Elon University in Inside Higher Ed, “are designed to address and dismantle structures and systems that perpetuate universal harm” (emphasis mine). The “universal harms” are racial disparities. The cause of such disparities is having standards. Standards are the key to civilization.
Diversity advocates aim to dismantle essential elements of our civilization such as the rule of law impartially applied, in favor of a two-tiered system of justice based on group identity. “Intellectual diversity” or “free speech” are code words for white supremacy or white privilege to DEI bureaucrats, and are implicitly violent, because words can harm. Scientific achievement uses objectivity as a mask for racial and sexual disparities, so new standards for science are necessary. The Christian religion and traditional family must be dismantled because they embody heteronormative oppression.
What is new about our situation is the capture of the managerial class. Diversity regulations like affirmative action imposed from above by administrations have long been common at elite institutions, but these impositions became increasingly tyrannical after 2010. Higher education administrations across the country began requiring strategic plans to impose ideological hiring processes like “diversity statements” and “implicit bias” training, curricular transformation, and changes in student life such as separate commencement ceremonies for black graduates. Prosecution of professors for heterodox thinking became increasingly common.
Florida at the Vanguard
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leads the nation in laying out and applying a strategy of dismantle and replace to counter the DEI revolution. He has also understood the tactical importance of both policy and personnel in higher education and elsewhere.
The opening salvo in Florida’s higher education reform was the 2023 passage of SB 266, which called for the dismantling of DEI offices in Florida’s systems and for a review of general education. It also established counter-programming at major institutions and pointed toward program review in higher education. The strategy was clear: Building healthy entities required dismantling administrative opposition on campus.
After the law was passed, state agencies prohibited taxpayer funding of activities promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “political or social activism.” Individual Florida universities are now executing this rule.
Elsewhere in the nation there is no such improvement: The University of Texas at Austin has simply renamed its offices and continued its DEI push in violation of the Texas ban on DEI offices, because the university president and board of trustees are willing to defy political authorities. Gov. DeSantis and Florida executives in general have long been selective about who serves on university boards of trustees, since the trustees appoint and oversee university presidents. As a result, universities in Florida have few presidents crusading for DEI. The University of Florida, for instance, is led by Ben Sasse, the former Nebraska senator, whose provost is former professor and Trump appointee J. Scott Angle.
In addition, Florida’s higher education administrators have reviewed the state’s general education courses. At the end of the process, administrators voted to drop sociology as a course that fulfills general education requirements. “Students should be focused on learning the truth about our country,” Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz argued, “instead of being radicalized by woke ideologies in our college classrooms.” May this be a first step toward review of state support for programs that foster political activism.
Though only in the early stages, Florida is building an alternative vision for education to strengthen traditional learning, American competitiveness, and meritocratic achievement. DeSantis has allocated money toward bolstering the sciences throughout Florida’s university system, and Sasse has made this a priority. The governor supports the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education, a school dedicated to “support teaching and research concerning the ideas, traditions, and texts that form the foundations of Western and American civilization.” He has also pursued an emphasis on technical workforce education in Florida’s college system.
Dismantle the DEI Apparatus First
Many states are undertaking salutary but desultory anti-DEI actions. Such an approach risks playing whack-a-mole with the DEI institutions because leaders haven’t supported an alternative vision of education to replace the corrupt one. Other states such as Tennessee and Ohio have built centers akin to the Hamilton Center on campus without first dismantling the administrative DEI apparatus. Such dismantling is crucial, because an embedded culture of tenured radicals strains all academic centers. Hostile administrators are also likely to erode, defund, and dishonor institutes that stand for civil discourse or intellectual diversity.
Aside from embracing both sides of the “dismantle and rebuild equation,” governors must recognize that everything depends not only on their laws and executive orders, but on the personnel who will implement the laws and orders. DeSantis has taken a root-and-branch approach to remove the old growth and install his own.
Florida understands the stakes: DEI or civilization? Other governors should recognize the stakes and act accordingly.
(03-05-2024 01:21 PM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote: NMSU is currently conducting a search for a new President and is down to the final 4 candidates (Was 5 until yesterday when one of the candidates took the prez job at Missouri State).
This is one of more than a couple recent stories I have seen of soon to be college grads having job offers rescinded because the student associated themselves in some way to Anti-semetic positions regarding this Palestine / Israel conflict.
If you break this down to the lowest common denominator - these students are being fired/not hired for expressing their right to free speech - or "we do not like or agree with what you said, you cannot work for us". That is not very Equal, Diverse, or Inclusionary is it? Do these people have a claim?
I would suggest that this opens the door to others being fired for speaking out against anything their employer does not agree with and possibly firing people for any reason they want really?
In recent years it has become almost impossible to fire someone (short of a pure job elimination) without reems of documentation in order to CYA from some kind of trumped up Discrimination Claim - when the reality is that people suck at their job and the employer wants someone else to do it better.
Thoughts?
Brother, I hope so. That Maoist crap is only taught to sow division and not unity. What concerns me is that if it seems about to die, and the economy tanks from all of Joe "Nero" Biden's fiddling with the economy, then the main impetus for socialist agendas will be doused with gasoline.
damn. no lies detected though.
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