Each side says it defends the individual, fairness, merit, and free speech, and each side sees the other as the threat to these values. Both quote MLK.
Places we can start:
- Personal. When has DEI, or its absence, helped or hurt you?
- The law. In 2025 the Supreme Court ruled 9–0 that a straight woman passed over for a job has the same right to sue as anyone else. When the law treats every worker the same, what is DEI for?
- Texas. In 2024 the state closed the DEI offices at its public universities. Supporters say students lost support. Critics say the state ended a costly and overreaching bureaucracy. If you were there, what changed, and for whom?
- Around the world. France mostly bans collecting data on race. India reserves government jobs and university seats by caste and tribe. Singapore sets racial quotas for every public housing block; supporters credit it with decades of ethnic peace, and critics say it limits minority families. What can we learn from each?
- Goals and methods. Most people agree on the goal: hire the best person. They disagree on how. One side says you can't find the best person without checking for bias, and skipping that insults the candidate. The other says once you count race or sex, you stop looking for the best person, and that insults the candidate. Which methods actually find the best person?
- Steelman. What's one thing the other side gets right?
Let's do our best to be generously empathetic and firm, in a way that lets us learn from each other and perhaps come up with something new.