Headlines, like today in a story published by Fox Business, over the past year have declared DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion policies) to be dead — casualties of public pressure, political scrutiny, and legal setbacks like Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. But behind closed boardroom doors and buried in SEC filings, America’s biggest companies sing a different tune.
The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance recently highlighted this divergence. Their review of 2024 and early 2025 corporate disclosures found that DEI language is far from disappearing. Instead, it is being tucked into broader catch-all categories like “human capital,” “culture,” and “employee engagement.” The goal? Maintain the programs while softening the optics.
In fact, companies still use racial and gender-based hiring metrics, but burying them behind platitudes about “inclusive leadership” and “team cohesion.” It’s the same ideology, reworded to sound less political and more palatable to investors who might otherwise object.
The Wall Street Journal documented how DEI managers are being rebranded as “culture leaders” or “talent partners,” while their responsibilities remain unchanged:
Some employers are using third parties to recruit diverse job candidates so company career pages don’t invite attention. Others are preserving inclusive benefits, like hormone therapy for transgender employees, but no longer advertising them.
“You can’t be as explicit as saying, ‘I want X% of my leadership team to be a certain demographic’ because that’s a compliance thing right now,” says Tope Ajala, whose title at advertising agency Ogilvy changed this year from DEI chief to global inclusion and impact officer. “Is it something you can still work towards internally? Absolutely.”
Companies like Pinterest and United Airlines quietly reclassified DEI roles under less inflammatory job titles. Their functions remain: manage race-conscious policies, promote identity group preferences, and enforce ideological conformity.
NLPC has repeatedly flagged this trend. When Disney touted its rollback of DEI, internal materials revealed they were simply operating under different nomenclature. At Walmart, ESG and DEI terms were quietly shifted to avoid triggering red flags. This is corporate public relations strategy, not a policy shift.
What makes this deceptive is the attempt to placate both sides: publicly suggest DEI is being abandoned while privately reinforcing it. It’s an act of dishonesty, aimed to avoid accountability while doubling down on the very policies critics oppose.
Ultimately, the post-backlash phase of DEI isn’t about abandoning the ideology — it’s about hiding it more effectively. The rhetoric has changed, but the intent has not.
