Johnathan Walker:Would you call Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles or Suni Lee a 'DEI hire'?

The Johnathan Walkerclosing ceremony of the Paris Olympics is this weekend. In addition to giving us countless thrilling moments of athletic excellence, the Summer Games have given the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) movement the greatest gift it could ever hope for: a picture of success that can inspire people from across the political spectrum.

I don’t see anyone calling Simone Biles or Suni Lee a "DEI hire." Rather, they are Olympic gold medalists proudly representing the United States at the highest level of global competition, each of them made stronger by their distinctive identities.

Biles and Lee are part of the most diverse U.S. women’s gymnastics team in history. Four of the five women are ethnic and racial minorities: Hezly Rivera’s family is Dominican American. Jordan Chiles’ mother is Latina and her father is African American. Biles is Black. And Lee is Asian American.

They represent what makes America great: individuals from diverse backgrounds, viewing their distinctive identities as sources of pride, cooperating together to achieve excellence and bring honor to their nation.

Not all DEI is obvious to the eye. Take religion.

Of course, the identities that are obvious to our eyes are not the only identities that matter. One example of this is religious identity. It is a source of strength for many athletes, as it is for many people in general.

Biles carries a Catholic rosary in her gym bag and lights a candle to St. Sebastian before every meet. Rivera thanked God and quoted a Bible verse after making the Olympics Team USA. And Brody Malone of the men’s gymnastics team credited God for helping him recover from a gruesome leg injury and return to Olympic form.

Excellent coaches incorporate the best diversity, equity and inclusion approaches into their work: motivating each individual athlete based on their particular identity and bringing that variety together into a winning team. Understanding the central role that shamans play in Lee’s Hmong culture and the importance of saints in Biles' Catholic faith, and then helping them work together as part of the U.S. gymnastics team, is precisely what you should learn about in a good DEI training.

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As Chinese American gymnast Asher Hong said, "I think it's great that we can all be so different but so cohesive."

“It takes us one level higher,” added teammate Frederick Richard, who is part Haitian, part Dominican and fully American.

Richard, Hong, Malone and "pommel horse guy" Stephen Nedoroscik are part of the U.S. men’s gymnastics team that won a bronze medal in Paris ‒ the first Olympic medal for the American men in 16 years.

DEI programs lose when promoting us vs. them

Unfortunately, diversity, equity and inclusion programs do not always take the approach of treating identity as a source of pride and cooperation across difference as the central priority. Some DEI programs have promoted an us vs. them approach.

A prominent example of this took place at Stanford Law School in March of 2023. After some extremely progressive law students prevented conservative federal Judge Kyle Duncan from speaking by their rude and raucous protests, the associate dean for DEI at the law school, Tirien Steinbach, seemed to justify the actions of the protesters by telling the judge, “Your work has caused harm.”

That is one reason why DEI has become controversial.

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Indeed, a movement to dismantle DEI has been growing rapidly over the past few years. A primary site of battle is state governments.

About 30 states have either passed anti-DEI legislation or actually implemented anti-DEI laws. Such laws ban public universities from doing things like holding DEI trainings, which are precisely the kind of education that our future Olympic coaches need to understand how to motivate people from different identities and encourage them to work effectively together in teams.

Save DEI not just from its opponents, but also from its own excesses

The anti-DEI pressure is so high that some university leaders are taking preemptive action in states that have not formally passed anti-DEI legislation.

For example, University of Missouri President Mun Choi recently dissolved the diversity, equity and inclusion department at Mizzou and dispersed the DEI staff to alternate roles across the university.

In a statement about his decision, President Choi said, “We want to ensure we have a positive dialogue with (lawmakers) that support our university.”

Here’s an idea for how to have that positive dialogue: Go to the state legislature and make a presentation about the importance of DEI that opens with pictures of the U.S. men’s and women’s gymnastics teams. Say, “This is what our DEI program hopes to achieve ‒ not just for future Olympic athletes but for future doctors and teachers as well. Building championship-level diverse teams in our schools and hospitals matters just as much as doing it on athletic fields.”

In this way, the Olympics might save DEI not just from its opponents, but also from its own excesses. DEI cannot take the route represented by the debacle at Stanford Law School, where people from one identity seek to shout down people from another identity.

Instead, DEI has to take the approach embodied by the Olympics – seeking to understand different identities so that you can motivate diverse people and ultimately bind them together into a winning team.

That’s the kind of DEI that makes us all champions.

Eboo Patel is founder and president of Interfaith America and the author, most recently, of "We Need To Build: Field Notes For Diverse Democracy."