Hey, everybody. I want to ask a favor. We want you to tell us a little bit about you. Please participate in a brief survey at cnen. Com/audi. That's cnen. Com/audi. This is CNN breaking news.

We have breaking news just into CNN. Harvard President Claudine Gay is set to resign today.

The toppling of Claudine Gay from the presidency of Harvard University.

Her resignation brings an end to the shortest presidency in the University's history.

Well, the whole episode was about a lot of things. She flared under the public scrutiny of the school's response to allegations of anti-Semitism. Her critics raked her past work and found instances of plagiarism. When she finally resigned, it became pretty clear the campaign was also very much about something else.

Claudine Gay was the symbol of the DEI regime that has conquered American academic life. They prioritize race and or ancestry and anatomy over scholarly merit, over fairness, over equality, over every other principle.

This is conservative activist, Christopher Ruffo, and he talks online about how Conservatives can be most effective countering the mainstreaming of progressive movements. He's now known as the architect of several media campaigns against trans rights, wokeism, and critical race theory.

That's why I fought so hard, both exposing the plagiarism and also putting pressure on Harvard to topple her because I knew that we were going to expose their contradictions.

We were going to make it very uncomfortable, and we ultimately forced them to make a choice.

Was Harvard going to prioritize truth or racialist ideology?

This seems like a good moment to mention that Claudine Gay is a social scientist whose research focuses on how a diverse voting population can reshape politics. Anyway, the movement against DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, includes presidential candidates and conservative intellectuals. For example, here's Ayyan Hrsi Ali, who's famous for anti-islam commentary.

I'm really one of those people today who is celebrating the resignation of Claudine Gay. But I think I'm also realistic enough to say that is just at the surface. The problem is much deeper. It started at universities. It has spread to corporations. It has spread to lower Ed from K to 12. It's everywhere in America.

After the death of George Floyd in 2020, there was mass protests, and corporations and institutions from schools to banks, pledged to interrogate racism within their ranks. Now, the people who were charged with doing the work of teaching the values of DEI are facing a backlash. You're going to meet one of them on this episode of The Assignment. I'm Adi Cornish. Celeste Headley is an award-winning journalist and radio host. Now, I've actually known her since we both participated in something called NextGen Radio. It was a program for budding journalists. In 2020, she became part of a wave of people carving out a place for themselves by helping corporations build effective DEI programs.

Working in public media for so long, there's the frustration that comes from seeing an industry put so much money and so many resources into diversity efforts and really see almost no movement.

She started hosting discussion groups to serve as a safe space to brainstorm how they could create lasting change.

The thirst for that honest discussion was so powerful. We just decided that, look, we know how to investigate. We know how to do research. If the things that we've been doing in the past don't work, and in so many cases, backfire. What does work? That's what we started working on, was investigating real evidence. Where were there examples of substantive change happening and how could we replicate it?

Celeste is President and CEO of Headway DEI, which she founded in 2021. It's a nonprofit that works to bring racial justice and equity to journalism and media. But as the atmosphere shifts, Headway AI is rethinking the way they serve some of their clients.

We've heard from companies who are coming to us desperate because there's new laws in some states saying they can't use any state funds for anything that has DEI anywhere in the description, and they don't know what to do. One of the ways we're getting around that is by describing it in terms of burnout and toxic culture.

Does that mean you're getting phone calls where someone says, Look, I still believe in this, but in my state, 8, you can't talk about the stuff you typically talk about?

Yes. They're saying, We need you to send something to us that doesn't have DEI in it.

Does it have things related to race or identity in it?

Yes, because it's still the same thing. We're still talking about belonging.

But at the top, it doesn't say DEI training.

We do not include DEI, that phrase, or diversity anywhere in the messaging. We talk about difference and we talk about belonging because that's the same thing.

What are other ways you felt backlash?

We're getting way fewer calls since the number of diversity initiatives have started to close down. We're also hearing from a lot of people who are no longer chiefs of diversity. Many of those people who were hired in a rush during 2020 are now losing their jobs or being moved to a completely different department. It's a different element.

What does that look like?

Essentially, they're often just either closing the entire diversity department down within corporations, like you'd have a chief of diversity. Oftentimes, you'd look at a company's executive leadership, and they would all be white, mostly male, and there'd be one non-white face, and that's the chief of diversity.

That's true. Or even HR, just like the people person or whatever the titles they give them.

Exactly. Now what is happening is those chiefs of diversity are being either moved, sometimes they're moved over into the HR department, they're being repurposed. Some of them are actually just losing their jobs.

Where this intersects in the news, interestingly enough, has been the battle over Harvard University President Claudine Gay. Obviously, the dialog with her started with her appearance at the anti-Semitism hearing in Capitol Hill. It moved into instances of plagiarism in her work. I want to step away from the plagiarism for a minute because in a way, a lot of the people who are cheering her demise have been talking about DEI, specifically. Yeah.

First, it makes me think that much like woke, DEI doesn't mean anything. It's been vacated of meeting at this point. The way that they're using DEI as an adjective for progressive hiring and for promotion. That's not ever what it is.

The idea that Claudine Gay herself somehow was the result of a DEI culture that would elevate her somehow unfairly due to her race and gender, that the university itself was captured by DEI values that somehow made them less inclined to... I don't know, but it goes on and on like that.

I mean, look, I'm Black and Jewish, so the taking down a Black woman because of an anti-Semitism issue is particularly obnoxious, in my opinion. It's so common for any non-white male who succeeds to be called an affirmative action, higher promotion, etc. Which, of course, is completely and totally.

But does this feel different? I feel like that's been around. As long as there's been affirmative action, there's been people second-guessing it. But there's something about this moment. On Twitter, I think it was Ion Hersey Ali, who was talking about this as well, following a discussion with Elon Musk online. She was alleging that somehow DEI is, quote, what they do behind closed doors and classrooms, boardrooms on campuses, and medical rooms to vulnerable students and professionals who speak up. They threaten to ruin people by amplifying their mistakes, pile up on them, and cancel them. That's changing now. This was like another crowing response to what happened to Claudine Gay.

Here's the thing. I'm sorry to say people of color don't have the power to do that. We don't have the power to take over. We have seen again and again that even people who are blatantly racist don't really take a hit. They talk about canceling people because of racism. Show me an example. People's very blatant and horrific racist opinions become public It's a topic of scandal for a week or two, and then they just go right on with their careers, and so nothing happened. I'm sorry. The people that I see most losing their jobs are women. You'll note that all of the three university presidents who to testify for this committee were all women. That's always been the case. It's always been that way.

After the break, how the DEI movement is holding up against conservative pushback.

I know you're busy. We all are.

But if you have 15 minutes or so every week and want to better understand the news, I've a podcast I think you should check out. I'm David Reind, and I'm the host of CNN One Thing.

Every week, I call up a plugged-in CNN correspondent, and we talk about a story they're covering.

We break it down carefully and with context without the unnecessary noise so you can get on with your week.

That's CNN One Thing. Listen on your favorite podcast app.

I want to go back to this idea where you said it's almost like people are using DEI in the way they started, not started, the way they did use the word woke, right? Taking a term from the left, beating it into submission with a new definition, and then introducing it into the culture as a bad thing. The activist Bill Ackman came out saying that DEI is, inherently a racist and illegal movement, that he was concerned about reverse racism, racism against white people. Elon Musk has said DEI is just another word for racism. Can you talk about what it means for the capture of this term and for the movement that was behind it, that we were seeing post-2020?

Yeah. I mean, this is just we literally See, every time there's a step forward, it makes a certain demographic, which is in our country's history, generally white males, and sometimes white females as well, afraid that allowing another group to advance inevitably means they will lose something. This capture of language is part of that same effort to thus far and no further. This fear that you can't get ahead without taking something from me. This is a zero-sum game, and we're going to fight like hell to make sure you don't get ahead.

Celeste, can I play devil's advocate for a second? Yes. It seems like it's working. Oh, it's totally working. Woke, DEI, just this, let's call it a progressive value, and the way it was promoted, there is a backlash. Are there ways that you look back now and you think that the way these programs were implemented or the way this was talked about in the culture also fueled the backlash?

No. I think no matter how it was spoken about, no matter how it was carried out, there was going to be a backlash. That was going to happen. The thing is that we just don't have enough leaders with enough of a spine to counteract it.

But is there something about the work itself? Because one thing I'll say about diversity, equity, and inclusion programming is it often works through institutions, the way we implement it in our society. The way I call it the awokening, worked is there was a heavy emphasis on personal and individual experience. What have you done? What have you said? A microaggression by definition is something that happens on a very day-to-day level between people. That's not the big systemic, I have a dream conversation. It's part of it. But sometimes I do think that that contributed to the sense of people feeling like, What is this? Why am I dealing with this? Why am I talking about this at work? Why is my kid talking about this? Why people feeling somehow individually under attack?

So, yes, I agree with you. Yes, but. So I agree that any of the training that we do as organizations that's designed to make us respect one another and not harm one another has been badly organized and it hadn't been updated until very, very recently. So there's that problem. But on the other hand, we are always talking about race in our organizations. It's just we leave out white. We're talking about all kinds of things which are about white culture, traditionally white cultures and people who belong to the white race. But because we leave the white out, because that's the standard and the normal, we think we're not talking about race. We are. We're just talking about the white race, which is okay. But you can't say it's okay to talk about this race and this culture, and then anything else that we talk about that's racial. I mean, you and I both know race is not real. It's not biologically real. It has to be okay to talk about it. It's not even just race, it's ability.

But just, I know you're saying we have to be okay to talk about it, but you were also saying earlier that people are now calling you being like, Hey, we need to figure out a way to talk about it without talking about it because Our companies, our states, because the backlash is real.

Totally agree. For me, that's okay. You know what? If you don't want me to say DEI, it's totally fine. It doesn't change what I'm going to teach you. Because what I'm going to teach you is designed to work with your brain, your neurology, to not trigger a defensive response. And that's how we get progress.

Did everyone approach it that way?

No. No. I mean, you asked me what makes us different. We wanted to figure out what was the real problem, what was preventing progress for so long. And one of the things that prevents progress is exactly what we're talking about here that's fueling the backlash, which is fear and defensiveness. How do you have this conversation without making people feel afraid and without triggering a defensive response? You have to think about the long game. You have to think about not only how do I have this conversation right now, about why certain terms, like peanut gallery, like grandfather claws, why we need to stop using them without making someone feel like they're the worst person imaginable, that you're calling them a monster because they said it.

Right. Or just sheer embarrassment that, wait, I'm not allowed to say X, Y, and Z. Yeah, you do get annoyed. You do feel like this is ridiculous.

My grandparents said that. Yeah. One of the things that I said In my book, Speaking of Race, was like, there's two kinds of people in this world, those who have said the wrong thing about race and those who will. There's no way that anybody can know everything that there is to know about race and identity and gender. You're We're going to make a mistake. If we create this culture of correction in which mistakes are not tolerated or acceptable, but it's not a zero sum, right? You're not a monster because you use grandfather clause. You can hopefully be thankful to someone who corrected you.

Can you tell me what's wrong with grandfather clause?

Oh, so grandfather clause- In a nutshell. Yes. Actually, It began during the years of Jim Crow, when a lot of the laws were written, specifically that said, you're only allowed to vote if you or your family could vote prior to 1860, which, of course, excluded every single formerly enslaved person. Those were called grandfather clauses. In other words, was your grandfather able to vote in 1860? That phrase is specifically about exclusion including African Americans from voting. That's why it's not acceptable.

But it's also a super common term, right? What's your response to people who see that as just a cultural policing? That some people are self-approved appointed officers in that culture?

Well, that's true. I get really sick and tired of people who do tone policing.

Yeah. How do you respond to people who think, well, see, this is also part of the problem. Yeah.

I say, you know what? It's really hard to get along with other humans, and yet it's what we have to do. It's hard to get along.

Or who appointed you the culture correction people. Right.

But it's also like, look, if I step on your toe I'm going to say sorry. Even if your toe was out in the middle of the pathway, if I step on your toe, if I hurt you, I will apologize, and I'm going to say, I'm not going to do it again. If I say something to somebody that that hurts them, I don't question whether they should be hurt. I just say, Oh, I'm sorry. I won't do that again. It's this simple. It costs you nothing to address people the way they want to be addressed. It costs you nothing to stop using a phrase that hurts other people's feelings. If you approach it that way, for example, I used the phrase Padywagon, and I had no idea that that has a really long history and a racist I'm from Boston, and I heard Patty Wagon, and I was like, They don't like that. Yes. I was corrected by someone who was from Ireland. I probably said it again after that, but each time I would correct myself. There's no skin off my nose, not to say it. I mean, it cost me nothing.

How worried are you that a lot of this programming is going to end? You've already Everybody talked about a decline, people in the business world losing their jobs, et cetera, state laws.

I'm not deeply worried, and I'll tell you why. You probably have seen the stories that have shown that 11 people are responsible for the vast majority of book banning protests and demands in the entire country. Eleven people.

Yeah. It comes from reporting that studied complaint hotlines of people filing formal complaints to school systems and states about certain books. You're right, the overwhelming number come from a small number of people.

I think that that's what's happening with DEI as well. I believe the majority of Americans want to see progress on race. I absolutely do. I think that there is a loud and vocal minority who are making such a stink at this point, and it's so effective. It's like Karl Rove level genius effectiveness that it is intimidating and actually changing the behavior of corporations, which, let's be honest, on an executive level, weren't always on board in investing in programs that actually made substantive change. They were already just oftentimes offering lip service to the concept. But I think Americans get it. I think this pendulum will swing back, and it'll swing back soon enough that we will see people pushing toward this again. We will see people demanding that their companies live up to their value statements.

We also were recently talking with Gen Z workers, and we do know this generation, in particular, they actually specifically care about the idea of a company and its values aligning with their personal values. As a generation, that is a thing that is on the table for them to think about.

Yeah. And especially as we see, we're in the middle of the largest retirement in the US history. As baby boomers begin to leave the workforce, there will be a change in what they demand. We're seeing it already in terms of these demands for a healthy work-life balance, complaints about toxic culture.

With that culture and those values that are, again, tied into this our conversation, there becomes friction.

It changes hard. You know what? Human beings don't love diversity. We love, our species, loves to be around people who are like us, who look like us, who sound like us, who have the same memories that we do. We want people who have our memories, our knowledges, our loves, our hates. We like to be around similar people, but we're better when people are different. It makes us better by almost every measure. It just doesn't mean that we're going to love it. If we can stop approaching diversity as though it's a kumbaya moment, and again, I use kumbaya, probably inappropriately. Yeah, are you allowed to say that? People should stop saying that. No, really should not. There you go. I'm correcting myself. Stop using kumbaya. If we stop treating it as a value to live up to and treat it more as a behavior, like this is a behavior, this is a habit of mind. We know a lot about changing behavior. We have no idea how to change values.

The current conversation around DEI has been heavily affected by the activism of Christopher Rufo, who is also behind the activist backlash movements around the term woke and also definitely around critical race theory. He said to Politico in an interview, I've run the same playbook on critical race theory, on gender ideology, on DEI bureaucracy. For the time being, given the structure of our institutions, this is a universal strategy that can be applied by the right to most issues. We've demonstrated that it can be successful.

He's right. It's not too far off with, you may remember, Lee Atwater's now infamous interview that he did in the 1980s on the Southern strategy, in which you start out by using the N-word, N-word, N-word, but you can't say that anymore. So now you say things like cutting taxes or state's rights and forced bussing, and it still works as Well, the reason it works is because it's playing on people's fears, and fear will always override every other thought in a person's brain. Once they become fearful, their higher values don't matter anymore. And this is what I mean when I say that one of the ways we approach this right now is by berating people and saying, You are awful. This is awful behavior. Stop doing this. That just adds to their fear. It means you're saying, We want you to leave that cult of white supremacy, and it is a cult because it's brainwashing, but there's no place for you here because we think you're awful. So you're asking them to jump off a cliff into nothing. Right.

That you're irredeemable also.

Absolutely. So the better strategy is to say you're biased. And it's not surprising because human beings are biased. It's a tendency. We can show you how to get over that. And you'll be welcome here. There is redemption. You can move away from this, and here's how you do it. You don't have to jump off that cliff into nothing. Step down or step across, and we will welcome you here.

Are more DEI consultants, people starting to talk about what you're talking about, acknowledging, Hey, maybe we need to change approach here?

Some are. I think that the way you see that is the increased use of the phrase belonging, because that's what this is all about. That's what this is about.

I hadn't heard that.

Belonging is the strongest need for Homo sapiens after food, shelter, and water. It's belonging, belonging to a community. Therefore, a lot of people now cling to those racist notions because that's the identity to which they belong. We can make belonging mean something else. We can say there is this community of people who've made mistakes and improved and gotten better. There's a warm welcome for you here. That's what inclusivity is. Inclusivity doesn't just mean including people who have been underrepresented in the past, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, LGBTQ community. It's not just that. Inclusivity means everybody. We'll include everybody as flawed human beings who have made mistakes and will make mistakes, and we will be each other's safety net. I'm watching out for you, and I want you to watch out for me. Make me better. Make me a better person.

Celeste Headley is the author of Speaking of Race: Why Everybody Needs to Talk About Racism and How to Do It. She's also President and CEO of Headway DEI. The Assignment is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Isoke Samuel. Our Senior Producer is Matt Martinez. Our engineer is Michael Hammond, and Dan Dizula is our technical director. The executive producer for CNN Audio is Steve Ligtai. Support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasari, Robert Mather's, John Dianora, Lenny Steinhard, Jamis Andress, Nicole Pessereau, and Lisa Namaral. Special thanks, as always, to Katie Hinman. I'm Audi Cornish. We'll be back in your feeds on Monday. Give us a follow or review, and thank you so much for listening.