Sinking DEI and Restoring Institutional Focus

Ohio State president Ted Carter was a U.S. Navy flight officer with the call sign “Slapshot,” no doubt a nod to his passion for hockey. As a pilot myself, I’m impressed by his unmatched record of 2016 successful landings aboard the rolling, pitching, postage-stamp sized deck of an aircraft carrier.

My logbook record of 1131 landings to long, stationary runways situated perfectly well on terra firma pales in comparison.

Naval aviation is one of the most dangerous and demanding endeavors ever devised. Only the best of the best are ever selected for training, and only the best of those become carrier certified.

In the back seat of those jets, Slapshot Carter was responsible for weapons and navigational systems, putting his life squarely in the hands of the pilot-in-command of the aircraft and the crew on board the carrier. His successful record is a testament to the culture of excellence unquestionably demanded on board those mighty ships.

Errors cost lives and compromise mission readiness. Focus is key.

There’s no room for excuses.

Rear Admiral Carter will need that same kind of focus to successfully navigate my beloved alma mater through the roiling conditions currently surrounding the wrongheaded swapping of identity for merit in endeavors that matter.

Some call it affirmative action or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). But the U.S. Supreme Court calls it unconstitutional.

DEI is an outgrowth of critical race theory, which posits that disparities in outcomes between people who differ by race, sex, religion, or any of the other legally protected classes, are inherently the product of cultural structures of power, with those in power oppressing those with less of it.

But treating people differently based on irrelevant characteristics is more than just unfair. It can be deadly.

The scandal emanating from the unpreparedness of Los Angeles to confront the recent wildfires is just the latest example. While LA leaders placed a high priority on DEI programs in the fire department, they allowed fire preparedness to wither.

They are the modern-day personifications of Emperor Nero, most famous as the cruel leader who’s said to have played his fiddle while Rome burned.

Fairness matters. But, as research out of Rutgers University shows, these initiatives can increase perceptions of disparity, even where none exists, and the oppressor/victim dichotomy robs people of power over their own lives.

Most pernicious of all, especially as it relates to critical areas of national defense and public safety, these programs are a distraction from the reason those organizations exist in the first place.

Time and money are finite resources. Every minute and every dollar spent on programs untethered from the organization’s primary purpose carries the opportunity cost of time and money not spent on that purpose.

Deadly distraction was fully on display when Californians demanded accountability from those tasked with being ready for wildfires. Virtually all we heard from political and municipal leadership were excuses.

Despite billions of taxpayer dollars spent over decades, the problem wasn’t their failures, it was hurricane-force winds, drought, and the latest all-purpose bogeyman — climate change.

It’s all irrelevant deflection.

Wildfire is common there. So are droughts, high temperatures, and the Santa Ana winds. They always have been. A review of California precipitation records is remarkable only for it’s unremarkably consistent variability over the past 125 years.

The state hasn’t built a new reservoir since 1979 — its population having nearly doubled in that time — and has removed several large ones instead.

The simple fact is that those responsible for fire prevention and mitigation failed. Those responsible for assuring adequate water supplies failed. Their excuses are like the captain of an aircraft carrier whining about waves while soldiers and sailors die for lack of air support.

There is hardly a better current example of how DEI programming can lead to confused priorities than the words of Deputy Fire Chief Kristine Larson of the Los Angeles Fire Department.  In a promotional video, Deputy Chief Larson says: “You want to see someone that responds to your house, your emergency — whether it’s a medical call or a fire call — that looks like you.”

She then asks a hypothetical question about female firefighters, “Is she strong enough to do this? Or You couldn’t carry my husband out of a fire.” To which her response is “he got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”

No one but navel-gazing bureaucrats or reality-deprived activists care what the government employees who respond to an emergency look like — they only care if they can do the job and aren’t making negative judgements about victims while they do so.

A fire department exists to prevent and snuff out fires and save lives.

But saving lives isn’t the top priority of those bureaucrats and activists. A long-time member of the LA County Fire Department recently shared with me that in a meeting with senior department leaders last year, the two top priorities for the department were DEI and budget reductions.

Public safety wasn’t even on the list.

As CEO of my company and member of my local school board, it was a priority to explicitly include our mission and purpose in every meeting to remind team members why we were there.

Clarity matters because distraction can be so costly in time, money, and lives.

Racism, sexism, and many other sorts of discrimination still exist. It’s good for all of us to work together to root them out and our legal system has many avenues to do just that. The divisiveness, exclusion, and incompetence that results from the distraction of DEI programming isn’t the way to do so.

While the sailors on the decks of the carriers where Rear Admiral Carter landed are identified by the colors of their uniforms, the actual humans wearing them should not be. They ought to be identified solely by their diligence, expertise, and positive influence.

So too should the students, faculty, and staff of The Ohio State University President Carter now leads.

DEI should be buried at sea without honors, its flotsam studied for the wreckage it wrought.