Breaking the Spell (Part I): How Owning Our Failures Can Revive DEI

What if the diversity movement isn’t just misunderstood—but has misunderstood itself?

For those of us who organized our lives around this work, this can be a troubling thought. Yet there’s an enduring truth about human systems: the more they succeed, the more they risk losing their way. Movements built on noble ideals are not immune to this irony. The DEI movement, created to expand opportunity and embrace our shared humanity, is no exception. Somewhere along the way, a movement meant to unite has become one of the most divisive topics in American culture.

But here’s a harder truth: that divisiveness isn’t just the fault of the movement’s critics. It’s ours, too.

This is not a comfortable realization for anyone who believes in the value of diversity, myself included. I’ve dedicated my career to navigating these relentless cultural rifts, striving to create workplaces that are fairer, more inclusive, and ideally, more sustainable and successful. At times, it feels confounding, such an easy concept to grasp, yet so impossibly hard to reach. Like many, I’ve often felt compelled to adopt tactics that I knew, based on evidence, were unlikely to succeed—choices driven more by urgency than by thoughtful, forward-looking strategy. I’ve watched as the loudest and most uncompromising voices dominated the digital stage, pushing nuance and balance into the mysterious realm of all the things we dare not say.

And when resistance inevitably came, I found the response deeply troubling. It wasn’t cutting through at all—instead it was consistently being overlooked, neglected, or outright rejected. Determined to get the most credible points from DEI critics into the conversation, I worked hard to frame the growing concerns as ones worth hearing out. In speeches, consulting, and workshops, whenever the opportunity allowed, I carefully wove in opposing perspectives, doing my best to approach them with patience, tact, and care. Eventually, it did start to feel like something was working.

There’s a certain kind of opportunity that comes along only once in a lifetime. For me, that opportunity was this special place called, Leaders Lounge. It wasn’t just the platform itself that made it special—it was the ethos behind it, cultivated by its founder, Shomik Banerjee. Shomik and I were deeply aligned on one crucial point of view: objective evidence matters, even when it’s inconvenient. In the modern world, we’ve grown accustomed to hearing what we want to hear, not what we need to understand to advance our problem solving. But in the Leader’s Lounge community, I found a rare and precious thing, a space where science truly mattered—even the uncomfortable insights were welcomed with curiosity instead of dread.

When I first got up on that stage, I was honestly worried people might boo me or just tune me out completely. But I pressed forward, something in me was convinced by the overwhelming evidence that dialogue—not avoidance—was the only way to bridge the divide. And to my surprise and gratitude, what emerged was a budding community that embraced what I had to share. Despite my consistent critiques of widely accepted corporate claims, they invited me to return again and again, and encouraged me to stay. (In fact, they all but pushed me into the digital arena, and that’s a major reason you’re reading this now.)

But, of course, it wasn’t enough to move the needle in a scalable way. There’s simply far too many things to divide attention, and far too few capable of reigning it in. Today, when I scan the trending discourse, I see a toxic cycle on repeat.

Have we fully processed the meaning of our recent “loss”? Trump won—decisively and democratically. Despite remaining outspoken about his intent to dismantle all things DEI, he won more hearts and minds, even making inroads with the very groups the movement sought to uplift. For those committed to inclusive social progress, this isn’t background noise—it’s a blaring alarm, echoing over and over, demanding our attention if our dedication to this work holds truth. But to move forward, we must face an uncomfortable but essential question: What role has the DEI movement itself played in making itself such an easy target for vilification?

The Mirror of Backlash

The instinctive response to backlash is to dismiss it as ignorance, prejudice, or resistance to change. These factors certainly exist, but they represent a story that is far from complete. To understand why DEI feels under siege, we need to look in the mirror.

When Donald Trump calls DEI divisive, millions of Americans nod their heads. Some may do so out of disdain for diversity, but many do so because they feel justifiably alienated by the way the movement has been presented. For them, DEI doesn’t represent fairness or opportunity—it feels like a scolding. It feels like exclusion. And more often than we’ve cared to admit, there’s no shortage of evidence to make this case.

This perception (and/or reality), while deeply frustrating, is not irrational. In recent years, both DEI’s rhetoric and conduct have been plagued by moral absolutism: the assumption that to challenge any part of the movement’s approach is to oppose its very ideals. But moral certainty can be a double-edged sword. It can inspire action, but it can also alienate those who feel unseen, unheard, or unfairly cast as villains.

This moral certainty has sometimes led the movement to overpromise—claiming that systemic injustice could be dismantled swiftly through fast-tracked change initiatives, workshops, and training—or to oversimplify, reducing complex social dynamics to “us versus them.” In doing so, we’ve left ourselves vulnerable to criticism and created a movement that too often feels inaccessible to the people it seeks to include.

The Context We Ignored

To understand DEI’s challenges, it pays to consider the unprecedented context in which it has operated. The past decade has been a pressure cooker of fear, division, and instability. Then came a pandemic that transformed every aspect of our lives. For the first time in modern history, a global threat touched everyone, everywhere, all at once, and for the first time in human history, everyone could watch. (Remember all the death tolls flooding every channel?) In that moment, survival mode became the default global state, as illness and loss eroded normalcy and isolation intensified distrust. In such a climate, is it any wonder that DEI became a lightning rod for hate—not because its ideals were inherently flawed, but because it was emotionally hyper-charged? Under the grip of piqued fear and a credible mortal threat, did any one of us make our best decisions? The fact is, our execution failed to meet the moment for the same reason it always does in times like these: we’re only human.

We asked people to control their unconscious while many were struggling to meet their basic needs. We framed diversity as an imperative while neglecting the genuine anxieties people felt about being left behind. And we presented DEI as a moral truth when what we needed was a human truth—one that acknowledges people’s fears and mistakes while inviting them to grow.

The Inevitable Missteps of Absolute Power

You’ve heard this song before: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The rise of DEI as a cultural and organizational priority brought with it unprecedented power and attention. Following pivotal moments like the murder of George Floyd, the movement surged into the spotlight, commanding significant resources, influence, and urgency. Yet with this power came a critical responsibility—one that, at times, was underserved.

Social science has long demonstrated that power, without careful checks and balances, has a corrupting influence. My former professor, Dacher Keltner at the University of California, Berkeley, reveals what he terms the “power paradox”: while power is often earned by qualities like empathy and collaboration, possessing it can diminish those very traits, leading to overreach and self-serving behavior. This dynamic can cause individuals and movements to misuse influence, focusing on quick wins or symbolic gestures rather than long-term, systemic progress.

In the case of DEI, we spent the currency of attention and influence like a broke person who wins the lottery—pouring it into visible but often shallow initiatives that, while well-intentioned, left the deeper structural inequities largely untouched. Sociologists have compared this phenomenon to a form of “performative activism,” where the appearance of progress takes precedence over measurable outcomes. High-profile campaigns, symbolic gestures, and diversity trainings became focal points, while systemic barriers within organizations and widespread, demographically agnostic economic hardship often remained unchallenged.

Compounding this was the allure of moral certainty—a belief that the movement’s goals were so self-evidently right that they required no further introspection. Yet, as history and neuroscience both reveal, moral absolutism can alienate potential allies and harden opposition. Efforts to simplify complex social issues into binary narratives risked polarizing audiences, fostering defensiveness, and ultimately diluting the trust and collaboration necessary for sustained change.

When the initial momentum waned and measurable results were few, DEI’s influence began to erode. Like the broke-rich-broke lottery winner, the movement was left grappling with the fallout of having spent its newfound currency too quickly, too broadly, and without a sustainable plan for the future.

Acknowledging these missteps isn’t an indictment of the movement’s values but an opportunity to reclaim its vision. Power can corrupt, but it can also catalyze transformation when wielded with humility, accountability, and a clear-eyed commitment to lasting change. DEI’s moment of influence was hard-earned; let’s ensure its next chapter builds on lessons learned rather than repeating past mistakes.

It’s Time to Break the Spell

This is a metaphor I’ll keep returning to until the deeper answers come: DEI, like many movements, has fallen under its own spell. At times, it has become so certain of its righteousness that it has forgotten to ask itself hard questions. What if the backlash isn’t just resistance to progress? What if it’s also a plea for inclusion—not of identities, but of ideas? What if the best way forward isn’t to double down, but to open up?

This isn’t about abandoning DEI—it’s about evolving it. To redefine the future of inclusion, we must first acknowledge that a deeper shift is needed. One that values humility, dialogue, and a commitment to learn from all perspectives—even the ones that challenge us most. It’s a call to fulfill what DEI stands for more fully by embracing the complexity and humanity of the people we’re trying to reach—including those who criticize us.

This means creating more inclusion when we cultivate “safe space”, one that welcomes honest, messy conversations where agreement isn’t faked. (Yes—I stopped editing the moment it rhymed.) With all sincerity, it means admitting where we’ve fallen short—whether in promising more than we could deliver, in excluding perspectives that made us uncomfortable, or in prioritizing optics over impact. Most of all, it means leading with humility, patience, and grace, recognizing that the work of inclusion is never finished, and we are never beyond critique.

A Movement Worth Saving

Movements succeed when they tell a story that everyone wants to be part of. The DEI movement’s story is worth saving—but its next chapter must be new. One where diversity isn’t about checking boxes, but about embracing complexity. One where equity isn’t anchored in making statistical assumptions about people based on their groups, but a shared commitment to objective fairness. One where inclusion isn’t just a buzzword, but a practice of listening, learning, and inviting everyone—yes, everyone—to the table.

We can’t afford to keep fighting the same battles. The stakes are too high. The world we want to build—a world where everyone has the opportunity to thrive—requires more than slogans, more than defensiveness, and more than moral certainty. It requires courage, vulnerability, and a willingness to admit that we, too, are still learning.

The choice is ours: to dig into our trenches or to climb out and meet each other where we are. I hope we choose the latter. It’s harder to choose, yes, but we already know what, no, looks like.

Sincerely,

Paul

Advocate for Shared Humanity