Are DEI And ESG Finally Going MIA?
https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/05/are-dei-and-esg-finally-going-mia/
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.
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