Category: ethics

Diversity is at the Heart of ‘Pushback’ Against DEI

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In recent months, there has been lots of movement on the topic of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). Some companies, such as Target, have reduced their DEI efforts. Others, like Costco, have announced a recommitment to DEI. 

The Trump administration has moved to eliminate DEI in federal agencies and any organizations that receive federal funding. Universities have reacted to this with concern.

Meanwhile, professional associations in the public relations industry have also weighed in. For example, the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has a panel in the next few weeks addressing DEI “pushback.” Recently, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) released a position affirming its own commitment to DEI. The position was discussed at a Member Monday session, in which PRSA 2025 Chair Ray Day insulted those with alternative views to DEI as “being confused.” But leaders like him have not bothered to eliminate their own confusion about the pushback to DEI. Much of it is well-reasoned.

All of the above turmoil about DEI is evidence of diversity. That is to say, there is a diversity of opinions about diversity. 

Diversity, as well as equity and inclusion, are general concepts for which there is a large majority of people in favor. But DEI as it manifests itself in some cases as a specific program to achieve diversity is where there are legitimate differences on the nature of the problem, the causes of the problem, the scope of the problem, and its attendant solutions. DEI, as a set of assertions, attributions, assumptions, programs and policies, in many organizations violates the very principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. This is why many people—including many persons from what would be called minority groups (examples listed below)—object to DEI even as they endorse diversity.

I heard from several veteran PRSA members who were upset about PRSA’s statement. It assumes there should be one perspective on DEI, and that all members do or should share it. It expects compliance. Comments on PRSA’s social sites showed that there are differing opinions on the many nuances of DEI. But the responses showed that  other PRSA members violated the premise of diversity—as well as PRSA’s previous statements on ethics and civility—by descending into gaslighting, stereotyping, ad hominem attack and other emotional and childish rhetoric that showed no consideration given to inclusion of multiple opinions and equity of expression. 

I have experienced the same form of hypocrisy from PRSA when leadership denied me a seat on the national board saying I had violated its diversity policy when I expressed my Christian worldview on my personal blog. Read more about that episode here. 

So what are the objections to DEI? Not all DEI programs manifest themselves in the same way. But many do claim to champion diversity even as they stifle it. Here’s a list or problems:

  • It is based on anti-American values, namely critical race theory, which stems from critical theory, which emerged from the Frankfort School populated by Marxist philosophers. DEI’s roots are in the philosophy of Herbert Mercuse and his student Angela Davis, who basically claimed that dividing people by social class didn’t work so they would need to try division by race and gender. The whole point is division to gain power. Independent journalist Christopher Rufo does an excellent and objective summary of this—in which you can take Mercuse, Davis and others at their word—in his book “America’s Cultural Revolution.” 
  • The insistence on the false dichotomy of seeing the world as if everyone is ether an oppressor or a victim. Another socialist philosopher, Paulo Freire, wrote a book called “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” to indoctrinate the next generation through school curriculum. Paradoxically, this curriculum was tried and was rejected in socialist nations yet has its advocates in the United States, more of a “land of opportunity” than many countries around the world. Many of the people who reject the false “oppressor-victim” perspective are the very people DEI oppressively insists are victims. Take for example Blexit, a grassroots organization of Black Americans who are taking a “Black exit” from the victim mentality. 70% of its members are formerly of the far left. Or look at the rampant rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses—the sad outcome of this false perspective.
  • It favors category over individuality. Not only does DEI place everyone on a scale of either oppressor or victim, it maintains an unethical stereotypical categorization of people by race or “identity.” As such it does not acknowledge significant variation based on individual experience, condition, values and other individual attributes. In other words, it violates the central aspect of diversity. 
  • It favors representation over competence. For this reason, some have proposed MEI—merit, excellence, intelligence—as an alternative to DEI. Professor Victor Davis Hanson elaborates on the 10 problems with DEI. 
  • It makes unempirical assertions. Stemming from the above flaw, critical theory, unlike empirical theory, is based on speculative reasoning and not evidence. Thus, we have critical race theorists and others in DEI propagating false notions of universal “white privilege,” “white fragility,” “unconscious bias” and other fabrications. It would be insulting and preposterous to say all Africans are the same. Even in a single country like Nigeria, there are more than 300 languages spoken with associated tribes and cultures. It would be similarly preposterous to claim that all Asians are the same, all Hispanics are the same and so on. In the country from which my mother immigrated there are significant differences among provinces. Yet DEI insists on being prejudicial towards persons of a Caucasian heritage or white skin, without regard to actual experience, values, thoughts, behavior and other variables academics would study before making generalizable claims. 
  • It seeks equity over equality. This is another result of the socialist roots of DEI. It seeks the same outcome, as opposed to the same opportunity for all. This is the hallmark of socialist central planning, which has worked exactly never wherever it has been tried. The lessons of Friedrich Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” have been ignored here. The fallacy of equity (not equality) produces disincentive, loss of industry, disappearance of innovation, and a personal loss of any sense of accomplishment including for the people DEI programs claim to champion. 
  • It yields division, not unity. Numerous examples from diversity training show that the outcome often does not meet the objective. Employees or other members of a group come away divided, angry, silent, resentful, and offended. 
  • It favors certain perspectives over others. In the case of sex and gender, DEI seeks to affirm and promote one perspective, that of the LGBTQ and transgender communities, over those whose worldview of sex and gender is different and based not on culture but on faith or science. Such differing worldviews can coexist in an attitude of mutual understanding. That would exemplify actual diversity. But compelling all to accept one singular worldview is the antithesis of diversity.

These and other complaints are borne out in scholarship and other research. The Heritage Foundation has pointed this out in a commentary on its website that also was published in the Washington Times: “Research has already shown that (1) diversity training programs have failed to improve attitudes and behaviors for years, and (2) attempts to reduce bias through measuring just how much each of us has stored away in the recesses of our mind have been a spectacular bust. Anthropology Now reports that “hundreds of studies dating back to the 1930s suggest that anti-bias training doesn’t reduce bias.” The National Association of Scholars has determined that ‘implicit bias’ training hijacks justice.

Hal Arkes, an emeritus professor of psychology at Ohio State University, points out in an op-ed that typical DEI “training” has tests for “implicit bias” that fail tests of validity and reliability that any academic would consider. These trainings also do not accomplish more than awareness of flawed concepts because  the companies that do and profit from such “trainings” never measure to see if there were changes in racial attitudes, an elimination of so-called “implicit bias,” or tangible result of any kind. What really happens is a perpetuation of an unproven myth that America is systemically racist. Studies have found that DEI training causes people to find racism where none exists.

The negative effects of DEI seeping into scholarship are also documented in the book ‘Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody‘ by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. They blame the postmodern principles embedded in DEI orthodoxy, including knowledge (radical skepticism of objective truth) and politics (society is formed by systems of power hierarchies). In addition, DEI has damaged American higher education’s purpose and practice with its four themes of blurring boundaries, asserting the power of language, creating cultural relativism, and encouraging the loss of the individual perspective and universal truth.

As noted previously, many people in minority categories whom DEI would claim to support have started speaking out to resist the advance of a DEI system that is singular in focus and damaging to the very nature of diversity. They offer their own alternative perspectives and prescriptions, based on experience and evidence. Here are summaries of a the work and perspectives of some of them:

  • Candace Owens, “Blackout”—In this book, Owens, a Black woman who grew up in poverty, argues with evidence how the liberal policies intended to help Black Americans actually works against them, how the left ignores the importance of faith in the Black community, and how fathers in the home is the key to Black Americans rising out of the cycle of poverty.
  • Carol Swain, “The Adversity of Diversity” — Swain is a prominent Black political science professor, recently retired (and plagiarized by Harvard President Claudine Gay), who speaks against the billion dollar DEI industry that, in her words, “has become an aggressive force that takes organizations away from their core missions and often transforms them into divisive and disruptive institutions that openly violate the rights of members of disfavored groups.” Swain’s recommended alternative of Real Unity Training Solutions entails a return to core American principles that embrace nondiscrimination and equal opportunity in a meritocratic system that recognizes individual effort rather than group rights.
  • Teresa Manning, policy director for the National Association of Scholars, strongly insists from an academic perspective that DEI is a ‘false religion that will destroy America’:
  • Thomas Sowell, “Social Justice Fallacies” — The prolific Black Stanford Professor and economist’s most recent book points to the fact that “many things that are thought to be true simply cannot stand up to documented facts, which are often the opposite of what is widely believed. However attractive the social justice vision , the crucial question is whether the social justice agenda will get us to the fulfillment of that vision. History shows that the social justice agenda has often led in the opposite direction, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.” 
  • John McWhorter’s book “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America” details how “claims to “dismantle racist structures” is actually harming his fellow Black Americans by infantilizing Black people, setting Black students up for failure, and passing policies that disproportionately damage Black communities. What is called “antiracism” actually features a “racial essentialism that’s barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the past.”
  • Shelby Steele, a Black New York Times columnist, argues in his book “The Content of Our Character” (invoking MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech) that our culture has been trapped in putting color before character, or considering only racial categories and not individual attributes.  (Also see his son Eli Steele’s Substack newsletter ‘Man of Steele’)
  • Coleman Hughes, a young Black intellectual wrote “The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America.” Hughes argues for a return to the ideals that inspired the American Civil Rights movement, showing how our departure from the colorblind ideal has ushered in a new era of fear, paranoia, and resentment marked by draconian interpersonal etiquette, failed corporate diversity and inclusion efforts, and poisonous race-based policies that hurt the very people they intend to help. 
  • Robert Woodson, a contemporary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, founded the Woodson Center to help underserved communities fight crime and violence and restore families by applying the principles of market economy, faith, and personal responsibility. Woodson also edited the book “Red, White and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers” which features prominent Black scholars telling the story of Black people “living the grand American experience, however bumpy the road may be  along the way.”
  • Bari Weiss, a Jewish woman who left the New York Times to start her own media company The Free Press, writes how DEI is a movement focused not on diversity but power in her poignant article “End DEI.”

It should be obvious that when it comes to diversity, there is a diversity of perspectives. Yet certain people, and companies or organizations like PRSA, are unwelcoming to alternative perspectives. I have asked diversity officers about the concept of including and welcoming a diversity of perspectives and they get visibly upset. Sadly, people who bristle at consideration of diversity of perspective reveal that they are not about diversity—they are about conformity. They are not about equality—they are about power. And they are not about inclusion—they are about control.  

Diversity programs should stress non-discrimination, and at the same time be non-celebratory. Individuals and organizations should not double down on oppressive persuasion, but work  toward common understanding of legitimate differences, including perspectives on diversity. PR is based on communication, and the root of communication is “common.” Creating environments where people can disagree on particulars but nevertheless work toward common general goals would be productive. This would be good, ethical and civil public relations. It is also a picture of true diversity.

Does PRSA Leadership Consider Gaslighting Ethical?

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For years, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has designated September as ethics month. The organization also has its annual convention and leadership assembly, with delegates from every regional chapter, in October. So the last day of September is a good time on the cusp of the two to consider ethics and leadership in PRSA.

The key question as noted in the headline is whether the leadership of PRSA who promote ethics in the profession consider gaslighting to be an ethical action. That question comes up because that has been strongly alleged by one member, Mary Beth West, APR, Fellow PRSA.

West, a veteran PR professional and long-time PRSA member, has been in a long-term battle with PRSA leadership after she asked leadership questions about financial discrepancies, even to the point of non-compliance with New York State Law. She also requested information about finances and other leadership issues, such as the insider approach of the current board appointing their friends as new board members. She has continued complaining about a lack of disclosure and transparency.

“Disclosure of Information” is a provision of the PRSA Code of Ethics. However, after asking the PRSA leadership to basically adhere to its own code of ethics, West was met at first with stonewalling, and then with gaslighting, and even punitive retribution. PRSA leaders responded tersely, then harshly, and then threatened to take away her APR (Accreditation in Public Relations) and membership in the College of Fellows.  All this for being persistent in asking honest questions.

(Self-disclosure: I am also APR and a member of the PRSA College of Fellows).

Apart from her displeasure in PRSA leadership failure to follow its own ethics code, West is most concerned that members of PRSA are not aware of how the organization is being led and what is happening with their dues. This includes those members who will represent their chapter in a few weeks at the National Assembly. She has worked to bring these issues to light with her Facebook page called A Better PRSA and a series of YouTube videos documenting her interactions with the PRSA board called #prsagaslighting .

It is not clear if this issue will be resolved or sputter. But, it is not just something between West and the PRSA board; it is really between the board and all members. I know of more than a few long-time PRSA members who have let their memberships lapse or are considering doing so because of their own disappointment with leadership. 

The question is if those members who remain will take the time to review West’s documented evidence of questionable board behavior and then ask leadership some questions of their own. If more people do so, there may be a more honest and civil response. Or to use terminology from crisis theory, perhaps the board will be moved to more ethical response that eschews denial and attack the accuser strategies and moves to apology and corrective action. 

Public relations must take an ethical stand against a ‘culture of assertion’

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An online seminar a few months ago gathered CCOs together to talk about advising corporate boards on issues of ESG (environment, social, governance) messaging, corporate purpose and related topics. I was interested because I am doing research on the PR capacity on corporate boards, because so many of the issues in PR—CSR, ESG, DEI etc—are being discussed by PR academics and professionals.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska: https://www.pexels.com/photo/red-stop-word-coming-out-of-a-typewriter-5993648/

The outtake from this meeting was that ESG may need a new name because of the pushback being felt from consumers, investors and others in corporate America. An interesting concept was that any time something has three letters and becomes an acronym it is ripe for pejorative connotations. Using two words such as ‘corporate purpose’ is harder to misunderstand or misrepresent, and that is what one participant advocated. In other words, change the nomenclature but consider the practice.

The bottom line for these CCOs advising large corporate boards, beyond ensuring they had and could articulate a corporate purpose, was to consider two things. 

  1. Employee Expectations: How does the board address any disconnects between corporate priorities, or values, and the employee experience? 
  2. CEO Voice: Are protocols in place to ensure that the CEO can speak with authenticity, credibility, and conviction, in real-time, on topics that are germane to the interests of the business and its employees?

I agree with that. Proclaiming a purpose and expecting compliance from all employees is authoritarian, not genuine. CEOs speaking out can backfire or offend or be seen as shameless piggybacking on what is perceived to be the popular sentiment on cultural issues.

I’ve written about this before in a post advocating for neutrality in most cases, and also noting that the emphasis on social branding has led to an anti-woke corporate response to woke corporate messaging. 

 So I was intrigued recently to see an academic journal article addressing the unethical practice of asserting vs dialogue by organizations on social issues. The article was a case study on Larry Fink of Blackrock, an investment services and financial management firm, and his annual letter to CEOs, which leaves everyone trembling to obey because Blackrock owns ⅓ of all outstanding shares of major companies.

I had thought about the appropriateness of the annual Fink letter when I first heard about it at a different conference of CCOs a few years ago. Should so many organizations respond in sync to the opinions asserted by one powerful man or company?

The journal article addressed this directly. “Public relations, activism, and the culture of assertion: The case study of Blackrock’s Larry Fink and the Letter to the CEOs”, written by Joshua Foust and Burton St. John III of the University of Colorado-Boulder, was published in late December in theJournal of Public Relations Inquiry. 

Fundamental PR is about two-way symmetrical relationships, mutual benefit for all publics or stakeholders, dialogue and listening. But in this article the authors note an increase in raw assertion and a disdain for dialogic speech. They conclude that “Fink uses his letter to shape shareholder views and actions, using the power of his position rather than facts either as a result of dialogue or to spark dialogue.”

So an academic article comes to the same conclusion I did when I first heard about the annual letter from Blackrock. 

I then got to thinking that this “culture of assertion” is at the root of a problem I have both as a citizen and a public relations academic. We see an increase in assertive statements in our culture recently. Consider several assertions:

  • “The vaccine is safe and effective.”
  • “Whites need to acknowledge their privilege.”
  • “It was the most fair election in history.”

The above statements, relative to the Covid pandemic, the spread of a specific DEI ideology, and questions about irregularities in the 2020 election are ubiquitous and assertive. But what’s worse is that responses to the contrary have been de-platformed or labeled as “disinformation.” 

But in recent months the problem of assertion has been exposed. Now data is coming out and even Anthony Fauci, who once proclaimed “I am science,” has acknowledged they got things wrong about the origin of covid, the nature of its spread, and the efficacy of the vaccine. A growing chorus of Black intellectuals are opposing the “oppressor-victim” binary in explaining the scope, causes and solutions to racism and equality. Independent journalism and court cases have been showing that there were numerous incidents of fraud and suspicious activity in the last presidential election.

Journalists like Michael Shellenbarger, Matt Taibi, Bari Weiss and others through their work with the Twitter files, FOIA requests and other investigative journalism have been exposing the deception behind this culture of assertion. They have another name for it in their writing and in Congressional testimony: “the censorship industrial complex.”

Being assertive can be seen as laudatory, associated with positive adjectives like strong, confident, certain, competent. But assertion can also violate fundamental ethics of public relations practice and principles of democracy.

Ethicists talk about what makes an occupation a “profession.” The answer is that it has a valuable service to society at large. What is the “role morality” of publics relations? It is simply enabling informed decision-making in a democratic society. And people can not make informed decisions without all the information. 

Asserting one’s own perspective and silencing opposing views is clearly toxic and should be confronted. 

I’ll confront the culture of assertion by re-asserting some long-standing and valuable principles vital to democracy and consonant with ethical public relations practice: pluralism, marketplace of ideas, mutual understanding, discourse ethics, dialogic communications, engagement, empowerment, and listening. 

There is a lot of talk in this election year about “threats to democracy.” Let us not let the public relations profession be one of them. 

The Role of PR in Civil Society

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Salvatore Alaimo is a friend of mine and faculty colleague at Grand Valley State University. He is in the College of Education and Community Innovation, whereas I am in the School of Communications. He recently started a podcast called “Tilting the Earth’s Praxis,” which is all about different aspects and influences on civil society.

I was joined by two alumni. Jason Manshum has both his bachelor’s and master’s degree from the School of Communications. He has worked in public affairs for companies in various industries, and has taught as an adjunct in my Advertising and Public Relations program. He currently is Principal at 45th Parallel Strategies LLC. Stephan Syzmanski is a more recent graduate who has worked in public relations in the political realm, including candidate campaigns and currently works as a program associate at the Great Lakes Political Academy. 

We had a good and wide-ranging discussion about public relations, ethics, culture, media, politics and society. All of it relates to the central them of civics. 

Rather than writing for this blog post, I’ll let you hear the audio. Listen on Spotify or look for the ‘Tilting the Earth’s Praxis’ podcast on your favorite podcast service. 

It is Time to Return to a Discussion of Licensing Public Relations

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The notion of licensing the public relations practice is as old as Edward Bernays, one of the field’s early practitioners and an advocate for licensure later in his career. Bernays died in 1995 at more than 100 years old. The debate about licensing PR seemed to pass with him.

But last weekend at the International Public Relations Research Conference, I and two co-authors resurrected the idea. Professor Tyler Page, of the University of Connecticut, and Professor Luke Caprizzo, of the University of Missouri, and I started talking about this a year ago. Page led the project  and we presented our case based on current issues with the practice, realizing other attempts to standardize practice have failed, and with an idea to conceive of and incentivize licensure similar to what is done other professions. 

[Humble brag: our paper earned the award for “Top Paper on the Conference Theme.”]

One reason for reconsidering licensure for public relations is the increasing problems and challenges of mis- and dis-information in our modern communication landscape. Also, the scope of PR work across all channels has intensified. We argue the field should seize the moment to take our civic, deliberative and democratic responsibilities seriously.

Another reason that now is the time to reconsider licensure is that accreditation in public relations (APR) has not proven to be the suitable compromise to debates about licensure. It was seen to be a good idea for being voluntary, not mandatory. Others praised the APR as something managed by the profession, and not the government, and that it would be similar to the PRSA Code of Ethics which moved to an inspiration vs enforcement model.

However, only some professionals seek APR. Until very recently, APR was only available to members of PRSA and others member organizations of the Universal Accreditation Board (UAB). But the APR as not been strongly advocated for by PRSA outside the profession itself to employers, and certainly not to the point of recognition by the government. In fact, there have been expressions of disappointment that PRSA does not require the APR for members to serve on its national assembly.

So, the time is now to reconsider licensure for the field. But what we advocate is partial licensure—meaning a license would not be required for all to practice. This has been the largest objection to licensure, that it would violate the First Amendment. Since public relations practice is so broad and includes many forms of speech and communications, it can’t be restricted. However, if certain practitioners want to be licensed they could, and they would do so with the proper incentive.

This is not unlike the field of therapy, in which social workers, marriage counselors and those who give mental health advice can be licensed and gain a special title and certain privileges. But this does not stop others, such as life coaches, from giving advice to people about their lives.

Therefore, we propose that the incentive for public relations professionals to be licensed would be privileged information. This would particularly appeal to senior level public relations professionals who engage in “counseling,” especially with senior management, and would now be able to engage in discussions that could not be subject to a subpoena to testify subsequently.

We point to case law to support this. The Supreme Court in Jaffe, Upjohn Co. v. United States, 1981 ruled that privilege may be extended when it serves both public and private interests. The private benefit for public relations professionals would be the ability to counsel honestly with leaders in difficult situations, and not be encroached on by lawyers who already have attorney-client privilege. The public benefit would be the ethical advice of public relations professionals who are more inclined to advise transparency and honesty for the court of public opinion vs diversion and silence to avoid a court of law. 

One objection to this idea is evidentiary loss. However, organizations have many paper trails before a public relations person would be brought in, similar to lawyers, and all of that prior communication could still be subject to discovery as evidence in any trial.

The idea is conceptual now, but we think the path forward will be just as with other professions—to go through the states. Once enough states have granted licensure to public relations professionals, it will become a federal reality. 

It may take time, but in the end it will be a benefit to organizational leaders who can take advantage of privileged counsel from public relations professionals as well as lawyers. As such it will also benefit society, public relations professionals, and the reputation of the profession itself.