Disney, Notre Dame keep DEI on the low

DEI’s adaptive AF. Now it’s ‘Belonging.’

As education continues to be a frontline hot zone in the political war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), Disney’s quietly launching a DEI initiative this week without calling it DEI. Their new DEI language also echoes that of Notre Dame and other institutions.

Less than a month into President Donald Trump’s second term, Disney rebranded its Reimagine Tomorrow website — its DEI information page — as MyDisneyToday, which focuses on attracting the “best, most talented” hires. The move was originally reported by Forbes and others as following a corporate-titan trend of abdicating previously held responsibilities to underrepresented perspectives in the workplace as seen from the likes of IBM and Meta.

Starting Monday, the mass media conglomerate embarks on an event series called Global Belonging Week according to a leaked email first reported by Business Insider’s James Faris. It includes voluntary livestream talks “designed to empower and inspire.”

There’s a fight to cancel the actual phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion” in what USA Today calls “the war on diversity.” For this very reason, Disney’s event itinerary uses the words “belonging” and “inclusion” without using the terms “diversity” or “equity.”

The Burbank, Calif.-based entertainment corporation pivot from policy and programs to events also removes the infrastructural footprint DEI once had in the company. The same practices of old no longer require a website, and “Diversity & Inclusion” is no longer included as a performance factor for executive compensation at Disney. Instead, “belonging” events come and go and leave little trace.

Education and government call similar plays.

Notre Dame just threw out any use of the all-but-cancelled phrase too according to Irish Rover writer Sienna Stephens. The Indiana-based university started the fall 2025 semester with a new name for its DEI Center: the “Sister Thea Bowman Center.” Its Office of Institutional Change also ironically changed — keeping true to its literal name by changing it — to the “Office of Belonging, Engagement and Mission,” which Disney’s new event series echoes. The institution positions these changes as a realignment with the Catholic mission and values, which theoretically lends DEI-ish initiatives a refuge in the church so to speak.

Saint Mary’s College employed the same logic, rebranding its Division for Inclusion and Equity to the “Center for Belonging.” UND’s sister school can continue inclusive initiatives as the proverbial Christian thing to do to dissociate it from what conservatives call the “woke movement.”

These moves are just the latest in a lengthy series of similar rebrands schools have made this year nationwide. The shift to specifically the word “Belonging” is organic and to be expected since it was a common substitute prior to Trump’s reelection.

This comes as conservative news outlet Accuracy In Media (AIM) reports that certain departments of the Raleigh, N.C. city government are protecting “radical DEI” programs from Executive Order 14151, whose title claims it ends “radical and wasteful DEI government programs.” AIM says certain departments provide a proverbial underground railroad to smuggle DEI programs out of the hot zone.

AIM’s yellow journalism serves its red audience a video in which their undercover reporter meets with Briana Scurry, African-American Asst. Dir. of Economic and Social Advancement for the city. A hidden camera barely captures her face as she appears to explain parts of her job.

Introducing herself as director of equity and inclusion, she tells the hidden camera, “We are certainly being strategic in the ways that we don’t wanna draw attention to ourselves, number one, right? But we certainly also wanna make sure that this work is as protected as possible.”

The orange gotcha comes when AIM President Adam Guillette marches up to Scurry’s office and corners her with questions about “pushing DEI in defiance of an executive order.” Righty sensationalism notwithstanding, it would stand to reason that some programs would shut down altogether if officials didn’t get creative about how to still sustain them in a political climate that liberals claim the right misunderstands.

E.O. 14151, which AIM cites in the video, doesn’t prohibit government DEI programs at the municipal level. It bans them at the federal level from both government entities and contractors. Moreover, executive orders don’t carry the force of law according to the Brookings Institution.

It’s an honest albeit performative social experiment.

DEI’s an honest mission, but one legit critique from the right remains that many practicing employers waste resources on it without pursuing that mission according to Dethra U. Giles — CEO at Atlanta-based consulting firm, ExecuPrep, and prolific TEDx Speaker. ExecuPrep helps companies overhaul ops like recruitment strategies, employee coaching and management. DEI’s just one of many areas of focus for her team when working with other companies.

Elite workplaces like Disney sometimes need instruction on how to genuinely commit to that honest mission. That’s why Giles spoke with Lil’ Biz Journal about the state of DEI from San Diego where she was addressing DEI for the Club Business Expo — an event organized by the Club Management Association of America (CMAA). The CMAA’s an industry group of elite country clubs all over the U.S. whose membership dues can cost individual constituents upwards of $30,000 a year.

“It begins to infiltrate every level of the organization if people are doing it properly. Now, what often happens is: you don’t have people that are doing it properly,” Giles told LBJ, and by that she means that “DEI is performative. ‘Hey, we got slapped on the hand because we recognize that our population — our staff, especially our leadership — does not reflect our actual population.’”

She provided the common example of a company whose staff is 15% Black but whose leadership is devoid of Black representation. Already, leadership doesn’t reflect population, so to some degree, there’s already a failure to navigate equitable, upward mobility among staff. Promoting from within is a requisite pipeline that should automatically preclude this disparity, and when it doesn’t, the organization’s imbalance generally gets increasingly inequitable.

So on one hand, the hiring process is key for establishing the right blend of differences among co-workers to make this possible, and the blend is only right if there’s still culture fit. On the other hand, this invokes another conservative critique that DEI yields unfair, anti-meritocratic hiring practices.