DOGE is a DEI Department

If a professional setting policies to support workplace diversity is engaged in DEI,

then so too is a policymaker setting rules that limit diversity efforts.

If, as noted in the Washington Post article, See inside DOGE’s playbook for eliminating DEI, “[DOGE] documents make clear that the ultimate goal is to fire all employees identified as somehow doing DEI-related work.” then DOGE will have to fire all of its personnel. 

Elon Musk will have to fire himself. Before he does that, while he still has his mystifying Kafkaesque-Orwellian powers, he’ll have to fire many other people in the current administration who are responsible for some of the most consequential DEI policy and practices this country has ever experienced.

But we don’t seem able to see that. The press seems unable to see it, and, perhaps as a result, the public seems unable to see it.

If it were not having such devastating consequences, it would be fitting stuff for a Monty Python skit. 

Let’s please get this straight once and for all, DOGE is a DEI Department. In fact, it’s the most powerful DEI office in the country.

Trump is the DEI Commander in Chief. Musk is the Director of DEI and Human Resources for the Trump administration. JD Vance is the DEI Public Relations Officer. And Russ Vought is the DEI Chief Financial Officer.

By accepting and repeating the administration’s rhetoric that it is "eliminating DEI," journalists risk perpetuating a false narrative that masks what is actually a shift toward a brutally restrictive DEI model and obscuring the real story, which is that DOGE is not removing DEI—it is shrinking DEI to privilege select groups while excluding others.

Journalists, analysts, and the public must hold this administration accountable by rejecting the false premise that DEI can be eliminated. To be human is to be inescapably involved in DEI processes and decisions (about how much diversity is acceptable, whether or not some people get to be more equal than others, and who gets a seat and a say) . 

The real issue is not whether DEI is to be or not to be, but who gets to determine its parameters and whom it is designed to serve.

A detailed explanation of this corrective view of the current discourse on DEI can be found in Chapter One of Diversity Without Divisiveness: A Guide to DEI Practice for K-12 Educators.