What’s Lost When We Scapegoat DEI

Real leadership calls for honest analysis of business outcomes, not surface-level blame.

The convenient scapegoating of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as the principal source of America’s corporate ills, from tragic plane crashes to wildfires, in the media and political discourse today not only lacks sound reasoning, but moreover obscures the critical lessons in organizational leadership and strategic failures of companies that we as future leaders are 

tasked with solving.

Among the cases covered throughout the RC curriculum this semester, we’ve recounted histories of both corporate failures and turnarounds. From Enron and TXU to Eaton and Delta Air Lines, we’ve studied organizations that suffered catastrophic governance failures, fell victim to elements of the fraud triangle, and collapsed under the weight of excessive leverage. At the same time, we examined companies that thrived by executing a streamlined strategic focus, pursuing thoughtful M&A, and prudently managing capital structures at critical moments. While the backgrounds of the protagonists in these cases varied and company policies differed, leader identity alone was never central to our analysis, whether in stories of success or failure.

That is not to say identity does not shape how one leads or is perceived (we explored that complexity throughout LEAD), but rather to push back on how public discourse often treats leaders from underrepresented backgrounds in times of crisis as evidence, in and of itself, of them being unqualified. Business failures and successes occur under leaders of all backgrounds, and yet, in the former, identity often becomes the first explanation when the leader belongs to an underrepresented group. Meanwhile, others in similar situations are rarely subject to the same scrutiny because of their race or other identity, as “merit” is assumed as the unquestioned default, and failures are viewed as isolated rather than as a question of “qualifications” tied to an individual’s broader community.

To be clear, we can and should have honest conversations about the design and implementation of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in corporate organizations and education, and how we can ensure that they are accomplishing the goals they were created to serve in terms of expanding access to opportunity.

The premise itself, however, should not be controversial. The legacy of legal and de facto exclusion in the United States across a range of identities is far closer to the country’s present existence than to that of its original. For African Americans, for example, barriers like slavery, sharecropping and grandfather clauses that barred voting and land ownership, Jim Crow laws, redlining, police brutality, and predatory credit practices have been structural in the sense that many were codified into policy, enforced through institutions, and designed to restrict access to wealth creation and civic participation. Today, this legacy continues to manifest in persistent biases: homes in majority-Black neighborhoods are valued at 23% less than near-identical homes in majority-White neighborhoods, and comparable job applicants with traditionally Black-sounding names (yes, still) receive fewer callbacks than those with White-sounding names. In business, we know that investors were found to be 2.2 times more likely to fund a pitch when narrated by a male voice versus a female one, despite the pitch content being identical, and that women founders are evaluated more skeptically than their male counterparts. These biases are illuminated by the fact that, despite women founding nearly 40% of all privately held firms in the United States, solely-women-led companies receive only 2% of U.S. venture capital financing and 13% for founding teams with at least one woman.

In a world where the numbers of a child’s ZIP code still shape life expectancy, education, and economic mobility, DEI initiatives are not about fixing outcomes; they’re about addressing these structural disadvantages that so many are born into by chance (and are not limited to socioeconomic class alone). The acknowledgment of these disparities in no way discounts or takes away from the individual hard work of those who have benefited from privileged resources (myself included), but rather highlights the fallacy in the idolized chase for “merit” in a world where access to opportunity is so disparate and circumstantial. DEI programs that expand this opportunity or reduce gatekeeping do not lower standards; rather, they help ensure the most qualified people have access to a fair shot. Supporting the dismantling of DEI programs in the name of meritocracy while remaining silent on the advantages afforded in society by nepotism, informal referral networks, or legacy admissions in education is intellectually inconsistent. Recruited athletes, legacy students, and the children of donors and faculty were found to make up just 5% of the Harvard College applicant pool yet accounted for roughly 30% of admitted students. That’s not to cast doubt on the qualifications of these individuals, nor to critique the legacy admissions system itself, which presents many benefits to the broader student body. Instead, it is meant to highlight the double standard of how conversations about qualifications tend to intensify only when opportunity reaches certain groups.

The current revisionism of historical movements and initiatives that were created to combat barriers to equal opportunity in this country and the recasting of them as somehow a form of discrimination is deeply troubling. This critique does not even mention the growing public erasure across K-12 education, national museums, and government archives of the contributions and integral histories of these very same communities (from Harriet Tubman to the Tuskegee Airmen to the word “Black” itself) in the name of eliminating “divisive” content. This, as if the mere acknowledgement of the existence and history of Black Americans is itself divisive, rather than a reminder of what the country has endured and the potential for unity it can achieve.

Today, our country faces urgent and consequential challenges, including aging public infrastructure, a fiscally strained retirement system, rising costs of education and housing, an overstretched healthcare system, and destruction caused by natural disasters and intensified by climate change. As future leaders, we should be willing to engage seriously with the complexity of difficult conversations and resist the temptation of easy narratives and, in doing so, live up to the responsibility that our leadership requires from us.

Maria Curry (MBA ‘26) is originally from Peachtree City, Georgia. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 where she dual-majored in Finance and International Studies through the Huntsman Program. Prior to HBS, Maria worked in Investment Banking and in Growth Equity Investing. The views expressed here are her own and do not represent past or future employers, nor any organization.