Diversity Initiatives, Under Political Attack, Need a New Training Regimen

Researchers recommend eliciting and acknowledging the fears some employees have, but no retreat from DEI goals

The Trump administration’s push to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the federal government, and to pressure federal contractors to follow suit, has, at first glance, had the desired chilling effect. Seven in 10 federal contractors surveyed by Catalyst in early 2026 said they had publicly signaled they were dialing back or abandoning their inclusion programs.

Yet this isn’t a complete retreat, as that public signaling appears to have been more performative than substantive for a sizable chunk of those contractors; just 50% said they had actually changed their organization’s DEI policies and programs. Moreover, nearly one-third of federal contractors surveyed said they had actually increased their DEI initiatives.

A recent article in Public Administration Review argues that this tension between today’s political climate and retaining a commitment to inclusion is challenging the broader public sector as well. 

University of Washington’s Ines Jurcevic, UCL School of Management-London’s Felix Danbold and UCLA Anderson’s Miguel Unzueta frame this “existential threat” to DEI as being especially consequential for public service entities — city hall, schools, etc. — given the importance that their workers reflect and acknowledge the realities of the people they serve. 

To  survive, the authors argue that DEI programs need a renovation. To date, DEI programs have often been delivered as an unqualified, unassailable good. The authors suggest that this “happy talk” approach fails to engage the “movable middle”: workers who feel skeptical, uncomfortable or threatened by what DEI could mean to their jobs, job security and place in society, but aren’t explicitly and irrevocably against it.

Drawing on decades of research on organizational structure, DEI and threat dynamics, they recommend that employers more explicitly acknowledge the anxiety DEI initiatives can pose to some employees and develop ongoing training programs that help those “movable” workers reframe DEI as a challenge to be met, rather than a threat to resist. 

Although the article is targeted at public administrators, its advice is just as applicable to private organizations eager to improve the effectiveness of their DEI initiatives.

Acknowledge the Elephant in the DEI Training Room

Jurcevic, Danbold and Unzueta are not suggesting the happy talk be ditched, but that it is an incomplete approach that hampers effectiveness because of its implicit, if not explicit, disregard for groups that have concerns. DEI can and should still be positioned as a worthy organizational goal, but implementers must simultaneously identify the open-to-change skeptics, take their concerns seriously as barriers to program effectiveness and, crucially, give the entire organization tools to help people become more engaged and open to DEI in their workplace.

This approach requires first identifying the “socially privileged” within an organization. That is the academic term for any group or groups that enjoy advantages in the workplace. That typically includes white people and men, who continue to hold authority and influence in many workplaces. Thus, in many organizations, white men may be among the employees most likely to see DEI as a threat to their privileged standing. (Danbold and Unzueta previously co-authored research on how different groups view diversity quite differently.)

Once identified, these uncertain groups must be encouraged to share the specific concerns they have, to give the organization a framework for helping them work through it all. If employees are worried that DEI will change hiring, promotions, raises or workplace norms, leadership needs to say what is changing, what is not changing, and why the organization believes any change is worth making.

And that leads to the authors’ big refinement in DEI strategy, which they name holistic diversity preview. Simply put, the adaptation is to explicitly acknowledge at the start of any DEI training that this process can be challenging for some. 

The goal is to normalize discomfort rather than pretend it doesn’t or shouldn’t exist. 

Once all that is out in the open, a key part of DEI training is to have everyone work through specific “if-then” scripts for how to handle discomfort or resistance. The idea is to anticipate pressure points and give everyone a map for how to navigate them. If you hear someone make what you perceive to be a biased remark, here’s how to address that. If you disagree with a point being made, here’s how to raise your concerns constructively. Without this kind of preparation, it’s natural for someone feeling anxious or threatened to stay quiet for fear of being beaten down, or to get defensive if the feedback they receive is harsh rather than constructive.

The authors are clear that none of this is about coddling the groups that feel threatened. The goal is not to water down DEI until traditionally privileged groups feel comfortable. Rather, it’s to create an environment where everyone acknowledges it may be harder for some people than others to adjust, and where employees who feel threatened are given enough clarity, structure and support to consider the change as a challenge they can meet.

Just as important, these new segments of an organization’s DEI training should be developed with input from across the organization. This is not about centering only the perspective of privileged employees. It is about acknowledging that change is not a frictionless process and building broad agreement about how the organization will manage that friction while continuing to advance workplace diversity.

The point is not to make DEI less ambitious. It is to make it more likely to work.