The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – Mark Zuckerberg’s multibillion-dollar philanthropy charity – has scrapped its diversity team and cancelled funding for projects promoting inclusivity as the Great Unwokening gains pace. The Telegraph has the story.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), which handles the philanthropic efforts of Mr Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, told staff it would abandon a series of programmes aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
The for-profit charity will drop its internal DEI initiatives and stop all “social advocacy funding”, including work focused on immigration and countering racism.
In an email to employees seen by the Guardian, Marc Malandro, CZI’s Chief Operating Officer, said: “We will no longer have a diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility team at CZI.”
The organisation has dropped its so-called diverse slate practice, an inclusive hiring policy, and told applicants for $1.1m (£870,000) of grant funding for a programme celebrating diversity in science that the award had been cancelled. The charity also scrubbed mentions of diversity from its website, including a statement that the foundation focused its work through “a diversity, equity and inclusion lens”.
The charity would instead focus on “biology and AI” funding and will lay off staff within its community team, which had worked on promoting “economic inclusion”.
The decision comes weeks after staff at the CZI were reassured that sweeping cuts to diversity programmes at Mr Zuckerberg’s Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, would not impact the charitable organisation.
Worth reading in full.
The Telegraph has compiled a list of the some of the key developments in the Great Unwokening so far:
- McDonald’s, January 2025: McDonald’s says it will abandon targets for achieving diverse representation in senior roles and change the name of its diversity team to become the Global Inclusion Team [a.k.a. the GIT?!]
- Meta, January 2025: Meta is ending “equity and inclusion programs and changing hiring and supplier diversity practices”.
- Amazon, December 2024: Amazon says it is “winding down outdated programs and materials” as part of a broader review of hundreds of initiatives.
- Walmart, November 2024: Walmart says it will phase out terms such as “DEI” in company materials.
- Toyota, October 2024: Toyota says it will no longer participate in DEI events such as cultural festivals and parades.
- Ford, August 2024: Ford states that it would no longer be participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.
- John Deere, July 2024: John Deere says it will no longer sponsor “social or cultural awareness” events.
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