By Spencer Lindquist | Daily Wire
The Department of Defense leaned on debunked McKinsey and Company studies touting the benefits of diversity as justification to embed the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda into the military.
The consulting giant’s debunked studies, with titles such as “Diversity Wins” and “Diversity Matters,” are referenced in multiple reports from the Navy, a Pentagon newsletter, and a document from the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, all of which advocate for the DEI agenda to be embedded deeper into the operations of the U.S. military.
McKinsey and Company published a number of studies claiming that the use of DEI policies led to increased profitability for corporations, stating that companies become more profitable as their executive levels become more diverse. But now the results have come under scrutiny, with a study from Econ Journal Watch finding that McKinsey’s studies were deeply flawed.
“Caution is warranted in relying on McKinsey’s findings to support the view that US publicly traded firms can deliver improved financial performance if they increase the racial/ethnic diversity of their executives,” the study reads. It goes on to point out that the McKinsey study measured “firm financial performance over the four or five years leading up to the year in which they judge the race/ethnicity of firms’ executives,” a testing structure that the Econ Journal Watch says is unable to substantiate the claims of the McKinsey study.
The flawed findings from McKinsey were used to justify the DEI agenda, not just by corporations, but by the Biden administration’s Department of Defense. The DOD’s embrace of the far-left ideology came in the wake of Biden’s Executive Order 14035 in June of 2021, which directed the federal bureaucracy to embrace the DEI agenda.
The revelation comes as the Pentagon and other federal agencies work relentlessly to embed the DEI agenda into policies and practices, spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to do so.
Various different entities within the DOD justified their DEI policies by appealing to the flawed McKinsey studies. One edition of the Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service Newsletter explicitly referenced studies from McKinsey.
“[T]here is a business case for the Department’s prioritization of DEI as normal operations,” the newsletter reads. “McKinsey & Company reports diversity in executive teams makes them stronger and ‘the most diverse companies are now more likely than ever to outperform less diverse peers on profitability,’” it goes on to say, referencing a study called “Diversity Wins: How Inclusion Matters.”
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who serves as the Chairman of the Anti-Woke Caucus and is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, warned that Biden is leveraging faulty studies to further an explicitly political agenda.
“The Biden administration is using junk science to transform our military into a far-left social experiment and push conservatives away from service. DEI divides, shrinks, and weakens our military, all to the benefit of Communist China,” Banks told The Daily Wire.
At least two different documents published by the Navy also rely on the findings of the flawed McKinsey studies.
The Navy’s “Health of the Force” report in 2021 reads “Gender-diverse organizations are 15% more likely to outperform other organizations, and diverse organizations are 35% more likely to outperform their non-diverse counterparts,” citing McKinsey’s 2015 study, “Diversity Matters.”
Then again in the Navy’s “Task Force One” report, the military branch asserted that “gender-diverse” organizations are likely to outperform “non-diverse counterparts,” again citing the same study from McKinsey.
There’s also a collection of news articles compiled by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, which exists to “advance an agile and inclusive force.” The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute highlighted one article that touted the flawed McKinsey studies.
“They found companies in the top quartile of gender diversity and those in the top quartile of racial/ethnic diversity were more likely to generate financial returns above their national industry median,” the article says, also directly referring to a McKinsey study.
While the DOD has used the flawed studies to grant legitimacy to Biden’s DEI agenda, the Pentagon has aggressively pushed leftwing ideological material and policies on the federal bureaucracy and armed forces at great cost to the taxpayer.
The DOD has spent as much as $270 million on the DEI agenda from fiscal years 2022 to 2024.
The ideological bias within the military was exemplified recently when the United States Air Force Academy hosted a transgender military official who led the effort for the military to recognize “transgender day of visibility” at a leadership symposium, where he told the cadets to push for transgender inclusion within the military.
There was also a DEI glossary produced by the National Security Agency (NSA), exclusively obtained by The Daily Wire, that included terms like “white fragility,” “queer theory,” “settler colonialism,” and the gender-neutral pronouns “ze” and “zir.”
Even the United States’ top intelligence office, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), has been captured by far-left ideologues.
A newsletter sent by ODNI to the entire Intelligence Community, including intelligence components within each branch of the military as well as the FBI, CIA, and NSA, urged agents to avoid using “hurtful” language when discussing Islamic terrorism. It even included an article from an anonymous intelligence official who claimed that crossdressing makes him a better intelligence agent.
While the Biden administration has worked to embed far-left beliefs on race and gender into the military and other aspects of the federal government, policy architects from the former Trump administration have crafted plans to gut the administrative state if Trump is reelected, using tools like Schedule F, an executive order, to strip civil service employment protections from bureaucrats who have influence over the policy-making process.
“We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States,” Trump said at a rally, touting the plan. “The deep state must be brought to heel.”
Others are preparing to fill in the gap left by outgoing officials, assembling a personnel database of those who might serve in the next administration through the Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project, an initiative from the Heritage Foundation that seeks to “pave the way for an effective conservative Administration.”
First published on The Daily Wire
Here's why this is such a big deal:
These McKinsey studies were the gold standard in the DEI industry.
Nearly every major institution in America cited them to justify their DEI programs.
Turns out, it was all a lie. The studies were false.
Let's look at a few examples…🧵 https://t.co/47hUSUp2Ij
— America 2100 (@America_2100) April 2, 2024
‘This Is Some Bull****’: Charlamagne Tha God Blasts DEI (Daily Wire, 4 Apr 24)
Charlamagne Tha God blasted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the workplace and called it “garbage.”
During the guest host’s appearance on “The Daily Show,” the radio host — born Lenard McKelvey — argued that DEI does nothing to help racial minorities as he played advertisements created by large companies like Heinz, Vaseline, and General Mills, bragging about their DEI efforts.
“The truth about DEI is that although it’s well-intentioned, it’s mostly garbage, okay?” the guest host said. “It’s kind of like the black little mermaid. Just because racists hate it doesn’t mean it’s good. And you know I’m right because everyone one of you has sat through one of those diversity training sessions and thought, this is some bull****.”
“And it’s not just you,” he added. “Over 900 studies have shown that DEI programs don’t make the workplace better for minorities. In fact, it can actually make things worse because of the backlash effect.”
“The truth about DEI is that although it’s well-intentioned, it’s mostly garbage.” @cthagod pic.twitter.com/IYNJKWm94G
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 4, 2024
“The biggest failure of DEI is that the number of black people in power at big companies [is] basically the same as it was five years ago,” McKelvey continued. “In fact, maybe the only thing that DEI has accomplished is giving racist white people cover to be openly racist.”
The radio host closed out the segment noting that he’s “not surprised” these DEI programs “didn’t work” because he said “it’s just corporate PR … and also they want to cover their a**” in case they get sued.
“We don’t need corporate DEI,” McKelvey said. “Yes, we want diversity, equity, and inclusion. … Real DEI is only going to come from black leadership.” . . .
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