As the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) rhetoric continues to intensify across the hallways of our public and private institutions, as well as in media outlets and social feeds, there is a question we should be asking and addressing: When does rhetoric infringe on people’s safety?
Recently, a conservative non-profit group, American Accountability Foundation (AAF), posted an online DEI Watch List containing 57 federal employees. These employees are referred to as “dossiers” (after initially being called “targets”) and are pictured with their full names, along with varying information. Some profiles list their “DEI offenses,” such as their political donations, social posts, and their work on DEI programs.
The DEI Watch List website also contains a tipline, indicating that if you see or know of someone you feel has an “outsized influence on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts within the U.S. government,” to submit their name, agency and information.
In President Trump’s January 21, 2025, executive order titled “Ending Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” he addressed DEI initiatives in the public and private sector, describing them as “dangerous, demeaning and immoral,” that they “violate the text and spirit of our longstanding federal civil-rights laws” and further said that DEI programs “undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”
The order goes on to say, “As a part of this plan, each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large nonprofit corporations or associations” as well as “the most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners in each sector of concern.”
While the AAF’s list doesn’t represent the administration directly, their actions are operating under the spirit of the executive order’s direction, which is to identify DEI practitioners and employees who are active and or engaging in DEI initiatives. The AAF also advised Project 2025.
It’s still unknown where the names and other information of those who will be identified in the president’s executive order will be posted or made public. Yet we must ask: Who will be responsible for protecting the physical and online safely of diversity practitioners and their families?
Diversity Officers Are Caught In A Maze
Over the past decade, the pendulum regarding DEI in corporate America has swung both ways: far to the left in 2020 in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, and far to the right in 2024 with the election of our 47th president.
This shift in agenda has positioned diversity leaders in ways in which they’re quickly being asked to be everything to everybody. And like any role within an organization, that isn’t plausible.
The qualifications and efforts of DEI practitioners, some of which have MBAs, PhDs and decades of experience in corporations or federal agencies have, in many cases, been overshadowed by the “merit of DEI’’ conversation.
DEI greatly expanded as a profession over the past decade in the U.S., the reality is that many DEI departments were created to protect companies from litigation and claims made against them, while not offering any protection for the DEI practitioner themselves.
This is just one of many reasons many DEI practitioners are caught in a maze.
Some executives are bringing their chief diversity officers to the boardroom and committing to including their voice, their experience and their vote in management decisions, as well as providing clarity and commitment to their status and their work.
On the other side of the coin, many diversity officers—who took on roles originally intended to help companies carry on the important work of ensuring that all have a seat at the table—are spending every day in their cubicles and offices in a state of invisibility, in addition to fear for their status at the company going forward. They are being minimized and worked around, prohibited from speaking on public panels and prevented from engaging with their colleagues or remaining relevant internally. All of this leaves their professional pride, self-esteem and passion to deliver workplace equity in a state of purgatory. And I’m only speaking about those who stay—as many as 60% of all CDOs have left their roles at S&P 500 companies.
Free Speech Vs. Free Peace
Nothing the AAF is currently doing is illegal because it falls under free speech laws. However, if the attorney general is enforcing the president’s executive orders, it’s important to examine the situation from the diversity practitioners’ point of view. Yes, the AAF’s activity is free speech, but what about the free peace of those whose names are being publicized? Of all people, haven’t they earned the right to live in peace? After years of navigating such a sensitive role within an organization, they shouldn’t be blindsided by finding out they’ve been singled out and listed online for “DEI offenses.”
According to the AAFs website, “The DEI Watch List is focused on exposing the unelected career staff driving radical Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives within the federal government.” But is DEI work really “radical”?
Beyond that, the federal government hired them to do this work. If there is a list, shouldn’t the people whose enacted these policies be identified, not those being paid to carry out the directives?
Those employed to build a more fair, equitable and diverse workplace should, at a minimum, be protected by the institutions they were hired to serve.
It is neither fair nor equitable to have to pay for your own physical safety going to and from work, or to have to look over your shoulder as you eat out at a restaurant. No one wants see derogatory messages in their inbox on social or feel the need to scrub their LinkedIn page of their name or the program or projects they’ve worked on across their careers.
When is the right time for employers to step in, and what should they do when the time arrives?
This moment in history is a test, and an opportunity for us to evolve to a new place—one in which we have empathy for those who spent some of the best years of their careers ensuring that their organization had empathy for others.
As a society, the last thing we need is a message being sent that potentially puts someone in harm’s way.