BY HANK REICHMAN
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has apparently restored its diversity, equity and inclusion program after lab Director Mike Witherell told employees that the program would be suspended on orders from the White House, which called such initiatives “un-American propaganda training sessions.” In a second memo, issued over the weekend, Witherell said a review of the lab’s diversity initiatives, combined with “clarified guidance” from the Department of Energy, which funds the lab, found that trainings offered at the Berkeley lab “are not of concern,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported late yesterday.
“In the unlikely event that the Lab leadership needs more information about a specific program, we will directly contact the person who runs that program,” Witherell wrote. “Unless you hear otherwise, you should continue with the conversations and programs that you had planned.”
The Chronicle report said it was unclear what type of clarified guidance the lab received, but reported that a DoE official said the programs at Berkeley “and across the entire DOE enterprise are still under review.” As of today the lab’s diversity website still included information and training sessions about topics like implicit bias and racism.
In response to the Trump administration’s instructions to federal agencies to end racial sensitivity trainings that address topics like white privilege or employ critical race theory, calling them “divisive, anti-American propaganda,” AAUP President Irene Mulvey issued a statement that deemed the move “a naked attempt to politicize our national reckoning with racism and a new escalation in the assault on expert knowledge.”
The Lab’s administrative decision gives dissenters, objectors or others refusing such “shaming” exercises, an additional affirmative defense at a federal level, and nearly perfect Civil Rights insulation in labor law. Otherwise, donations are being sought to bail out Louisville rioters. Perhaps they both require a “reckoning.”
Having been through one of those diversity “training” sessions back in the day, I agree with Matt Anderson’s characterization of them as “shaming” exercises. Perhaps the session I attended was an anomaly but EVERYONE — Black, White, and Other — came out of that room feeling insulted and slimed.
In theory, a short refresher session on government diversity policy and how it applies at a given facility might be useful. Of course, it could also be handled with a booklet or on-line course. In practice, though, from my experience and what I’ve heard from others, these “sensitivity sessions” end up making most recipients more INsensitive to diversity.