“A growing number of high-profile cases suggest that diversity workshops and their supporting materials regularly promote questionable claims—particularly about the overarching, malicious character of the majority population. Similarly, hostility toward those who challenge DEI claims is part of the pattern,” Mr. Haskell wrote.

“The national and international research shows there is often a disconnect between the evidence and the claims of DEI advocates.”

In an extreme example, Richard Bilkszto, a 60-year-old Toronto District School Board principal who had challenged DEI claims, took his own life on July 13, 2023. His lawyer, Lisa Bildy, suggested that harassment he received following DEI training in 2021 directly contributed to his death. A Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) ruling confirmed that he had been the subject of “workplace harassment and bullying.”

Claims that Canada and other Western countries are “systemically racist” are not borne out by a statistical analysis of “differences in outcomes,” Mr. Haskell’s paper states. It cites foundation colleague Matthew Lau, who wrote: “The data on disparities in income, educational attainment, occupational outcomes, and public school test scores show that, on average, Asians are doing better than the white population.”

The paper also argues that the purported positive results of DEI training are as questionable as its premise and that a focus on “implicit bias, white privilege, and micro-aggressions” do not foster harmony.

“To ‘prove’ the effectiveness of DEI instruction, proponents often point to surveys conducted before and after workshops that show, following training, participants are much more likely to articulate answers that align with the pro-DEI ideas,” Mr. Haskell wrote.

“This type of methodology has drawn criticism and has proven to be unreliable.”

In an annual review of psychology published in 2022, U.S. research psychologists Patricia Devine and Tory Ash criticized DEI proponents’ “proxy measures for success that are far removed from the types of consequential outcomes that reflect the purported goals of such trainings.”
The authors concluded, “Implementation of DT [diversity training] has clearly outpaced the available evidence that such programs are effective in achieving their goals.”

Positive Results Negligible
Numerous systemic reviews and meta-analyses reviewed by Mr. Haskell similarly found that positive results from DEI training are “undetectable or negligible.”

In their annual review of psychology published in 2009, then-Harvard professor Elizabeth Paluck and then-Yale professor Donald Green examined 985 studies and found, “Due to weaknesses in the internal and external validity of existing research, the literature does not reveal whether, when, and why interventions reduce prejudice in the world.”
A subsequent meta-analysis by Ms. Paluck, Mr. Green, and two other researchers, published in 2021, reviewed 418 experiments reported in over 300 manuscripts from 2007 to 2019 and found support for DEI as dubious as before. “Although these studies report optimistic conclusions, we identify troubling indications of publication bias that may exaggerate effects,” the co-authors wrote.

Mr. Haskell said the harms of DEI are more clear than its benefits.
“DEI instruction has been shown to increase prejudice and activate bigotry among participants by bringing existing stereotypes to the top of their minds or by implanting new biases they had not previously held,” he wrote.
In 2018, Harvard sociologist Frank Dobbin and colleague Alexandra Kalev published “Why Doesn’t Diversity Training Work? The Challenge for Industry and Academia” in the journal Anthropology Now.

“Hundreds of studies dating back to the 1930s suggest that anti-bias training doesn’t reduce bias, alter behavior or change the workplace,” the authors wrote. “Field and laboratory studies find that asking people to suppress stereotypes tends to reinforce them–making them more cognitively accessible to people.”

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