Companies are slackening their enforcement of post-2010 norms and expectations on identity issues. For instance, they are growing less likely to rapidly termina

Companies are slackening their enforcement of post-2010 norms and expectations on identity issues. For instance, they are growing less likely to rapidly terminate or suspend employees accused of sexual misconduct based purely on the word of accusers. At the same time, they are walking back their aggressive symbolic commitments to social justice and quietly defunding the financial pledges they made to various activist groups and causes. Many are also making aggressive cuts to the DEI-related positions that ballooned in recent years. Rather than rapidly caving to employee “social-justice” demands, as they had for much of the last decade, managers at knowledge-economy institutions are increasingly trying to reassert their authority, firing employees who attempt smear campaigns against colleagues and the companies they work for, and imposing new rules on how internal workplace channels are used. When workers at Netflix attempted to cancel Dave Chappelle in late 2021, the company didn’t respond by issuing apologies and promising more programming on LGBTQ topics, as it had in the past. Instead, executives issued a memo informing protesting employees that if they weren’t open to publishing content they disagree with, they should quit. When an insufficient number of activist employees took them up on this invitation, the company proceeded with aggressive cuts apparently targeting these employees and the programming they worked on. At Disney, following the box office failures of a number of high-profile movies promoting LGBT relationships—alongside a series of p.r. controversies related to Disney’s advocacy for the LGBT cause that culminated in bids by lawmakers to strip the company of its special governing and tax-exempt status in Florida—CEO Bob Chapek was ousted. Reinstated, ex-CEO Bob Iger immediately struck a more conciliatory tone on the culture wars Woke means broke.