Mark Cuban emerged this week as one of the few billionaires willing to defend diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, saying hiring strategies should broaden the group of job candidates to include as many people as possible.
The Shark Tank star and Dallas Mavericks owner argued on X that using DEI in hiring doesn’t mean companies do not hire on merit. “Of course you hire based on merit. Diversity - means you expand the possible pool of candidates as widely as you can. Once you have identified the candidates, you HIRE THE PERSON YOU BELIEVE IS THE BEST,” Cuban wrote on Friday.
Most hiring is not based on a quantitative metric but is instead subjective, he added. Cuban pointed to basketball where the best players aren’t always the first picked in a draft and sometimes go undrafted. “How do you pick the best barista, sales assistant, marketing or salesperson, etc. More often than not it's an educated guess,” he wrote.
Cuban was one of several well-known investors arguing this week about the merits of DEI. His tweet came in response to Tesla CEO Elon Musk who, citing an earlier Cuban tweet in favor of DEI, asked when he would put a short white or Asian woman on the Mavericks.
Meanwhile, Bill Ackman, the billionaire investor who founded Pershing Square Capital Management, sided with Musk in the Twitter dust-up. Citing one of Cuban’s pro-DEI tweets, he wrote "That’s exactly what I thought until I did the work. I encourage you to do the same and revert. DEI is not about diversity, equity or inclusion. Trust me. I fell for the same trap you did.”
Ackman had earlier this week published an essay on X that claimed DEI policies were the "root cause of antisemitism at Harvard.”
The billionaires’ tweets came after the high profile resignation of Harvard’s President, Claudine Gay, who stepped down amid accusations she plagiarized portions of her scholarship, and who has been a vocal proponent of DEI. Ironically, Bill Ackman’s wife and a former professor at MIT, Neri Oxman, was this week accused of plagiarism herself.
This week’s Twitter debate over DEI comes three years after many U.S. companies committed to implement DEI strategies to attract and promote employees from underrepresented backgrounds following the murder of George Floyd. DEI-related job openings soared by 55% later in 2020, according to Glassdoor. In 2021, roughly 80% of U.S. employers had launched DEI initiatives, according to a study from WorldAtWork.
Last year, the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in higher education amid a broader pushback against DEI by many conservatives.
