I agree with you that misuse of DEI aims has become rampant, and I've seen it become counterproductive in ways that make my head spin. However, I've also seen

I agree with you that misuse of DEI aims has become rampant, and I've seen it become counterproductive in ways that make my head spin. However, I've also seen cases of outright bigotry — sexism, racism, agism — where having a DEI office was a godsend and immediately nipped a different variety of bullshit in the bud. Ideally I'd like to see these DEI efforts settle on some reasonable application of goals and practices that reflect values that most people can agree on. I worry that having it bundled into HR will actually make it worse, as it will just become part of the unaccountable faceless bureaucracy that HR has evolved into, at least typically in the US. But such is my experience of modern life in the US — well-intended ideas become abused and performative, and then are either ingrained in Kafkaesque bureaucracy, or thrown out like the baby in the bathwater, and we go from one extreme to another.