According to Trump World, a new internal enemy is loose in America threatening all that we hold dear. The name of this insidious menace is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

Dictionary.com defines DEI as a “conceptual framework that promotes the fair treatment and full participation of all people, especially in the workplace, including populations who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination because of their background, identity, disability, etc.”

DEI is actually not a new concept, just a relatively new label, but it’s one the Republican Party, in general, and President Donald Trump, in particular, have seized upon with gusto (along with “Woke”) as the culprit for virtually all of society’s problems and all of government’s shortcomings.

In a Jan. 30 press briefing, Trump went so far as to claim that the fatal crash between an American Airlines passenger plane and a military helicopter at Reagan International Airport “could have resulted” from diversity hiring initiatives that allowed air traffic controllers to work with serious disabilities, a claim that was quickly debunked. At a Pentagon town hall meeting a week later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the slogan “Diversity Is Our Strength” the “single dumbest phrase in military history.”

At its core, DEI is nothing more than a version of the Golden Rule, which states, in two of its various iterations, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow” (Rabbi Hillel, 1st century B.C.E.) and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Jesus of Nazareth, Sermon on the Mount).

A series of U.S. presidential executive orders and congressional laws, going back to 1961, has sought to prevent historically endemic workplace discrimination relating to race, creed, color and national origin. Gradually protections against discrimination based on age, disability, veteran’s status, and sexual orientation were added.

Over time, legal developments made it clear that employers were responsible not only for their own discriminatory policies and practices but for unsanctioned discriminatory acts perpetrated by employees against coworkers which the employer was aware of but failed to stop. In order to limit their potential legal liability, employers began using both in-house and outsourced DEI training programs to educate their employees about the law’s prohibitions against harassment and discrimination.

The desire to avoid legal liability, coupled with the notion that diversity can be good for business because it widens the talent pool and creates a more resilient workforce, has led to rapid growth in DEI. The Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements further accelerated that growth. Today, DEI is a multi-billion dollar industry.

As a Maine attorney, my own profession obliges me to take at least one credit of “harassment and discrimination” annually as part of my continuing professional education requirements. While I’ll admit I’m reluctant to sit through repetitive and tedious DEI-type seminars on topics I’m already quite familiar with, it’s hardly the societal menace Republicans make it out to be. Like training in workplace safety and digital security, it reinforces lessons that are essential to any business or organization.

Admittedly in certain work environments, especially colleges and universities, DEI has been carried to extremes. For instance, many institutions of higher learning have required faculty applicants have to state their plans for “advancing diversity, equity and inclusion” if hired, while some have included DEI standards in their tenure criteria.

These overgrown shrubs need pruning for sure. But a sweeping Presidential Executive Order, EO 14173, issued by Trump in January, sought nothing less than to obliterate the concept and practice of DEI from the American workplace and with it decades of strenuous effort to bring marginalized groups into the mainstream workforce.

The executive order hyperbolically described “illegal DEI” policies as not only violating “the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws,” but also undermining “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 required federal executive departments and agencies “to terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs, activities, guidance, regulations, enforcement actions, consent orders, and requirements” in their own personnel practices and in those of federal contractors and institutions receiving federal dollars.

It also contemplated DEI civil compliance investigations of, and potential litigation against, “publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of $500 million or more, state and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over $1 billion.”

While the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 2023 case of Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard, held that race-based affirmative action programs or quotas in college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, that’s a far cry from saying that DEI is illegal or harmful to society.

DEI programs aren’t equivalent to quotas or preferential treatment for minority groups, despite the attempt of Trump’s Executive Orders to portray them as such. Their primary goal is to insure that workers comply with anti-discrimination laws, not to promote reverse discrimination. Nor do they undermine “traditional American values.”

In fact, in a society where the wildfires of hate and prejudice are destroying “traditional American values” of tolerance, they may represent one of the last working firehoses.

Elliott Epstein is a trial lawyer with Shukie & Segovias in Lewiston. His Rearview Mirror column, which has appeared in the Sun Journal for 18 years, analyzes current events in an historical context. He is also the author of “Lucifer’s Child,” a book about the notorious 1984 child murder of Angela Palmer. He may be contacted at [email protected]