Companies quietly pull back DEI push

George Floyd’s murder in May 2020 helped shine a spotlight on diversity, equity and inclusion issues—and on the companies and organizations that publicly proclaimed their support for the cause.

But five years later, some of those entities are quietly moving away from DEI.

Whether out of fear of losing federal funding, a desire to avoid litigation or a reluctance to seem political, organizations are changing the way they talk about diversity—if not outright cutting back on their pro-diversity efforts.

On Jan. 20, his first day back in office, President Donald Trump ordered federal agency heads to “take immediate steps to end Federal implementation of unlawful and radical DEI ideology.”

Local consultants say they’ve been busy with DEI-related client queries ever since.

“Anybody who’s a federal contractor, getting any type of federal funds at all, are completely eliminating” the words diversity, equity and inclusion, said JoDee Curtis, founder and owner of Carmel-based human resources consulting firm Purple Ink LLC.

And even if they don’t receive federal funding, companies might choose to move away from DEI language because they don’t want to be perceived as making a political statement, Curtis said.

“‘Diversity,’ now, I think that word will forever be linked with Trump as something he doesn’t like,” Curtis said.

Indianapolis attorney Doneisha Posey, who specializes in civil rights and immigration law, said her clients are also changing their language in response to the current political climate. Posey is founder, owner and CEO of consulting firm Impacto Strategies.

Clients that previously talked about their DEI or diversity efforts might now be talking about those same efforts with words such as “community” or “strategic engagement,” Posey said. “What we are seeing is a change in language, a change in how they are presenting publicly, but continuing to do the work that they’ve been doing.”

Curtis said some companies that never really bought into the concept of diversity might drop those efforts now that public sentiment has cooled.

But others, she said, will continue the work. Curtis noted that her firm is still fielding queries from companies interested in what they are now calling civility training or cultural sensitivity training. “I think that there are other words [besides diversity] that companies are using.”

New language

This shift is also evident among Indiana-based public companies, some of which have made noticeable changes in how they talk about DEI-related matters—or whether they talk about them at all—in their annual reports.

Indianapolis-based Corteva Inc., for instance, said a year ago in its 2023 report that it had “a robust inclusion, diversity and equity (‘ID&E’) vision and strategy.” In its 2024 annual report, released Feb. 14, the company said it had “a robust inclusion and belonging vision and strategy.”

Columbus-based Cummins Inc. changed its wording more dramatically over the past year.

In its 2023 report last year, Cummins used the phrase DE&I multiple times, detailed the gender and racial diversity of its board and senior leadership team, and mentioned an employee-led initiative “which seeks to dismantle institutional racism and foster systemic equality.”

The company’s 2024 annual report, released Feb. 11, did not use the phrase DE&I, nor did it mention its leadership’s diversity or the employee-led initiative. Instead, the company framed its commitment to diversity and inclusion in historical terms: “At Cummins, our commitment to inclusion dates back more than a half-century and continues to be core to our fabric and continued success.” The company underscored this point by including a quote from former Chair J. Irwin Miller, who served in that role from 1951 to 1977.

“Character, ability and intelligence are not concentrated in one sex over the other, nor in persons with certain accents or in certain races or in persons holding degrees from universities over others,” the quote from Miller said. “When we indulge ourselves in such irrational prejudices, we damage ourselves most of all and ultimately assure ourselves of failure in competition with those more open and less biased.”

In this section of the 2024 annual report, Cummins also included a statement affirming its commitment to following the law, including “U.S. and global laws and regulations related to civil rights and anti-discrimination.”

Corteva, Cummins and several other companies contacted by IBJ declined to detail why they had made these changes.

“We regularly evaluate all our business strategies and practices, including those relating to people and culture, and adjust where appropriate to ensure they reflect customer feedback and current business conditions,” Corteva spokeswoman Caroline Ahn said via email.

Cummins spokeswoman Melinda Koski said via email that the company updates its reports annually “to include changes to awards, activities and language that are specific and pertinent to that year—and that help us best share our story.”

‘Lots of questions’

Posey said she began getting diversity-related questions from corporate clients in mid-2023 following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that colleges and universities could no longer consider an applicant’s race when making admissions decisions.

She said the volume of diversity-related client queries picked up late last year after the election, and she saw another bump once Trump and Republican Gov. Mike Braun took office in January. One of Braun’s first acts as governor was to order the closure of Indiana’s Office of Equity, Inclusion and Opportunity, which had been part of the Governor’s Office.

Posey said a lot of her work right now is coming from nonprofit clients that rely on federal funding—either directly from the government or indirectly from sources that rely on federal funding.

“They have lots of questions,” she said.

Corporate clients, Posey said, are more concerned about the risk that they could end up on the receiving end of a DEI-related lawsuit.

To mitigate their DEI-related risks, Posey said, clients are asking her to assess their policies and procedures. She’s looking at everything from the words and images on a client’s website to the language in their job descriptions, employee handbooks and diversity statements.

The work is complicated by the fact that the rules of the game aren’t clear, Posey said.

“Both at the state level and the federal level, the conversation about DEI has been vague,” she said. “It’s only been eight weeks of this new administration, and we’re just seeing things happen very quickly and without much guidance.”

‘Pick a lane’

Jennifer Dzwonar, a partner at Indianapolis-based marketing communications firm Borshoff, said the current air of uncertainty is also sparking a lot of conversations at her firm. Borshoff’s areas of expertise include crisis communications and issues management.

“As the new administrations on the state and federal level have come into office and started making significant changes, we have been asked many times in the last few weeks and months [about] how to respond to the fluctuations,” Dzwonar said.

As Dzwonar sees it, organizations have five response choices: Make minor changes to their diversity-related language but no change to diversity activities; make major language changes but no change to activities; make no changes to language or activities; keep diversity-related language while overhauling diversity activities; or overhaul both the language and the activities.

Different approaches will make sense for different types of organizations, she said, and each approach has its risks and benefits.

A nonprofit, for instance, that declares it is not changing its DEI strategy might pick up some new donors while losing others. In contrast, a public university might decide it needs to change its language and suspend its DEI activities because it doesn’t want to risk losing state or federal funding.

Dzwonar said the most important thing is for an organization to decide on an option and stick with it.

“Pick a lane and be clear about your lane, and don’t drive all over the highway,” she said. “Don’t switch all over the place, because that’s when you create chaos.”•