the events of this year mark the most significant DEI developments since Floyd was murdered, so there are plenty of interesting topics to write about.
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Before this year, my biggest concerns over the long-term success of the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement in the business community were apathy and ineptitude.
As the lessons and feelings following George Floyd’s murder in 2020 faded in the rearview, my worry was company leaders would deprioritize DEI in favor of other pressing issues, or their haphazard rollouts with wavering commitments and resources would cause their DEI initiatives to collapse. Still, even if a quarter of the companies who made DEI commitments five years ago stuck with them long enough to make meaningful and structural change, I considered that a win. Progress is progress, however uneven.
Then, the second term of Donald Trump’s presidency began, and DEI was no longer a slowly fading corporate commitment. Instead, Trump’s anti-DEI fervor became unrelenting, threatening the financial stability and mere existence of any U.S. organization still pushing inclusive efforts. Now, companies still wanting to provide opportunities for their most-talented recruits and employees are largely trying to do so in the background. The DEI industry is more cautious now.
At WBJ, we briefly considered what this meant for our annual special edition focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. The focus topics for all WBJ editions are picked based upon what our readers find most interesting and what our advertisers want to be associated with. Since its launch in 2021, this special edition on DEI has typically been one of the better ones for advertisers to sign up, the bulk of which place their logos on the cover and will often write sponsored content about their DEI efforts. With the U.S. president openly hostile to any company with public DEI commitments, we wondered if it was better to switch the name of this special edition to include words like opportunity and belonging, in order to provide a safe space for companies to promote their inclusion initiatives.
However, even if we didn’t change the content, changing the name of this special edition still felt like capitulating to the anti-DEI crowd who doesn’t have the best interests of businesses or people in mind. Moreover, the events of this year mark the most significant DEI developments since Floyd was murdered, so there are plenty of interesting topics to write about. We are already planning out the special DEI edition for 2026.
Brad Kane is the editor of Worcester Business Journal.
