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EUC Professor on 'the short shelf life of corporate DEI'

EUC Professor on 'the short shelf life of corporate DEI'

Ilan Kapoor, a professor at York’s Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change, discusses the end of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in major United States corporations in a recent article published in Al Jazeera.

Meta recently announced that it would be scrapping diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes and fact-checking on all its platforms [File: Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters]

The article claims that the discontinuation of DEI initiatives highlights a shift driven by political and economic pressures. Initially adopted to enhance equity and brand reputation, these programs are now deemed outdated amid a conservative backlash and cost-cutting priorities. Some analysts argue that DEI efforts often served as superficial branding rather than addressing systemic inequality. Now that DEI has been abandoned, inequality (and inequity) may be exacerbated: "If DEI put a human face on this inequality, its abandonment will make inequality more naked: corporations will now be less hesitant to continue to engage in hiring and procurement practices that privilege the already privileged."  

Learn more about Kapoor's research here.

Originally published on Al Jazeera.

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