A clear-eyed reckoning with the failures of the DEI industry, and a case for how its tools can be revived to build power (or “DEI has never been the horizon, but we’ll miss it when it’s gone”)

The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Industry is everyone’s favorite political football. From the moment Trump took office in 2025, his administration delivered on their long-standing promise to eliminate DEI programs in the federal government, and many in the private sector followed suit. The left, meanwhile, has been attacking DEI for years, calling it an apolitical purveyor of false equivalences, rife with identity capitalists and elite capture. But DEI’s destruction has made it clear that the fight over who has access to the institutions where we work, learn, and build political power is more critical than ever.

In After Diversity, writer, organizer, and former DEI consultant Kim Tran takes a hard look at the industry’s fraught history, identifying the lawmakers, bureaucrats, and influencers who, in the decades after the Civil Rights movement, ensured that DEI failed to deliver on its lofty promises. From union-busting personnel managers co-opting the language of justice to celebrity influencers profiting from movements in the streets, DEI has largely offered a feeling of belonging that forecloses politicization and encourages loyalty to companies and institutions. 

Yet as Tran argues, the same features that made DEI such a threat to the right and so uncomfortable for the left are what makes it useful now. In creating spaces to address political feelings, build community, and confront institutional policies, whether through boycotts or coalition-building beyond the workplace, DEI’s infrastructure can be mobilized now in the fight against fascism and white supremacy.