Goldman Sachs to drop DEI board standards as Trump's anti-woke campaign spreads across corporate America
Goldman Sachs plans to remove DEI hiring standards for its board of directors, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
The company had removed a requirement for board diversity on companies it was taking public last year, but now plans to remove DEI language in the criteria for its own board members this month. The board's governing committee evaluates potential candidates based on four criteria, one of which is a more traditional understanding of diversity, encapsulating viewpoints, background, work and military service.
That section also has "other demographics" tagged on to the end, referring to race, gender identity, ethnicity and sexual orientation, according to the Journal. The board now reportedly plans to remove reference to "other demographics."
The expected change comes after the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit that owns a small stake in the bank, requested the change in September, according to the Journal.
Goldman Sachs struck a deal with the group under which the board would make the change of its own accord and the NLPC would not submit a formal request circulated to shareholders ahead of the company's annual shareholder meeting later this year, people familiar with the matter told the outlet.
The change comes as part of a wider rejection of DEI policies thanks in large part to President Donald Trump's return to the White House last year.
Trump moved quickly to drop the hammer on DEI, signing an executive order on day one titled "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," which directed federal agencies to stamp out DEI-style programs across the federal government. The following day, Trump signed a second order aimed at "restoring merit-based opportunity," including changes for federal contracting and related compliance.
CORPORATE AMERICA HAS DECIDED THAT DEI NEEDS TO DIE
"We’ve ended the tyranny of so-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military. And our country will be woke no longer," Trump said in March.
The administration has also targeted DEI initiatives at America's elite universities, seeking new funding agreements with Columbia University, Harvard and others.
Harvard has been a main target of the Trump administration’s attempt to leverage federal funding in order to crack down on antisemitism and "woke" ideology.
In December, lawyers for the Trump administration appealed a judge’s order to restore $2.7 billion in frozen federal research funding to Harvard University.
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Harvard sued the administration in April over its attempt to freeze the federal funding and argued in court that the actions amounted to an unconstitutional "pressure campaign" to influence and exert control over elite academic institutions.
Fox News' Emma Colton contributed to this report.