{R} and Corporation, America’s most prominent avowedly nonpartisan think tank, and the leading policy adviser to the Department of Defense, is all in on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). “We’re committed to building and sustaining a culture that integrates DEI principles into our everyday operations and engagements,” the RAND website proclaims. This is a major setback for U.S. defense, economic, and health-care policy, as well as for unbiased analysis.

RAND (Research and Development) was formed in 1948 by General Curtis LeMay, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, and Donald Douglas, founder of what became aerospace manufacturer McDonnell Douglas, to blend “scrupulous nonpartisanship with rigorous, fact-based analysis” in advising the United States Air Force. Since then, RAND has become a key policy adviser to the Department of Defense and to governments and corporations worldwide.

The contributions made by RAND, which was the prototype for the term “think tank,” include the first comprehensive engineering study of satellites; one of the first mainframe computers with stored memory; the first successful AI program; packet switching, which is the foundation of the internet; and paradigm-shifting research on criminal justice, health care, worker’s compensation, climate, and drug abuse.

Today, RAND does more work for the Pentagon in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any other point in its history. RAND projects may originate in-house or with a funder and are paid for by contracts, grants, and donations. Except perhaps for its confidential defense projects, RAND retains control of its product. In 2022, it reported revenue of about $410 million, excluding a loss on investments, and net assets of $380 million, after that loss. It employs 1,775 staff in 55 countries, 53 percent of whom hold doctorates. RAND generally ranks among the most influential think tanks in the world.

For more than a decade, I was a member of the advisory board of the RAND Center of Corporate Governance and Ethics. I served alongside individuals with a wide range of views, including former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt, former attorney general Richard Thornburgh, then future SEC chairman Mary Schapiro, university professors, corporate executives, and consultants. I participated in, and saw firsthand, the effort RAND made to attract the brightest and most capable professionals, and to blend scrupulous nonpartisanship with rigorous, fact-based analysis.

With many of its professionals left-leaning, RAND often selected topics, language, and recommendations that better captured the range of left-of-center principles of big government than conservative perspectives. Still, a smattering of conservative analysts, an openness to listening to all views, and a commitment to excellence and nonpartisanship yielded results that were far more reliable and balanced than the norm for major think tanks.

For its 60th-anniversary celebration in 2008, RAND published a 120-page history that extolled its “quality and objectivity” and described projects such as helping the military learn from business, dealing with counterinsurgencies, reducing the cost of advanced weapons systems, helping the U.S. military keep its best officers, and helping the U.S. Army fill its ranks with skilled, capable soldiers.

In November 2015, RAND honored former secretary of defense Harold Brown, a longtime RAND trustee. The event was part of RAND’s Politics Aside series. In a note to all participants, Michael Rich, then RAND’s president, emphasized its ongoing commitment to avoiding partisan rhetoric. Building on this commitment, in 2018, Rich launched the “truth decay” initiative to explore the “diminishing role of facts and analysis in American public life.” The project identified nonpartisan concerns, including political and social polarization and the rise of social media, as well as neutral solutions, including refreshing civic education in public schools and journalism that better disentangles fact and opinion.

Then, things began to change.

In 2020, RAND finalized plans for its Center to Advance Racial Equity Policy. The Center’s director explains: “We are not interested in just ‘closing the gaps.’ . . . We are striving to equalize ‘the playing field.’” She adds: “Dealing with the aftermath of a racialized pandemic has left us with the dual responsibility to address the frayed social fabric of the US and its polarization of racial policy development. . . . We have to rethink our processes in order to transform policy development and implementation through a more inclusive, racially conscious lens.”

According to an analysis using the Wayback Machine, DEI was first added to the menu of RAND’s website in late October 2021, as the third item under “About.” It is presently the second item.

Rich retired last year. An event honoring his 45 years of service focused on the primacy of objectivity, truth, and facts. RAND’s 2022 annual report prominently proclaimed that it is “nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.” Until recently, the same slogan permeated RAND’s website, fundraising efforts, and presentations.

While the annual report preserved the mantra of nonpartisanship, its content showed the change under way. In place of subjects such as helping the military keep its best officers and recruit skilled, capable soldiers, the report described research on “increasing racial and ethnic diversity in Air Force officer accessions” and “leveraging diversity for military effectiveness.”

Under its new president, Jason Matheny, RAND’s website includes extensive information on its DEI commitment and activities and conspicuously declares at least twice: “At RAND, we strive to cultivate a community that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion as central to our culture, our values of quality and objectivity, and our mission to serve the public interest.” This is a platitude. DEI is the antithesis of merit and objectivity.

This month, at a celebration of its 75th anniversary, Matheny ignored RAND’s national-security legacy and announced that henceforth most of its research would be grouped into four main initiatives: “countering truth decay and autocracy,” “reducing inequity,” “governing technology,” and “advancing climate and energy solutions.” Three of the four initiatives are centered on DEI.

The “reducing inequity” initiative seeks interventions to classify Americans by race and other innate characteristics and then to allocate education, health care, jobs, and policing based on those characteristics instead of merit or the greater good.

The “truth decay” initiative has been corrupted under its recently appointed chairman, Ray Block Jr., an associate professor of political science and African-American studies at Penn State who writes extensively on racial, ethnic, and gender differences in civic involvement. He has little apparent background in media or communications. His presentation at the RAND event made clear that he would be steering the initiative to support DEI and the same progressive view of disinformation the Biden administration used to justify a massive censorship enterprise that has been enjoined by two federal courts in Missouri v. Biden.

In a presentation on the “governing technology” initiative, its director talked about the importance of expanding “equity” in health care. Reminiscent of the Biden administration’s allocation of Covid therapeutics by race, instead of continuing to find the best way to deliver health care to those most in need or to the greatest number of individuals, RAND will develop programs to pick who will receive medical treatment — perhaps who will live or die — based on their race, sex, and LGBTQ status.

Pursuant to the Fifth and 14th Amendments, Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1964, and numerous state constitutions and laws, implementation of DEI is generally unconstitutional and/or illegal when implemented or funded by federal or state governments, or when it involves a private employer of more than 15 individuals. Led by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, courts have rebuffed efforts to incorporate race into government and hiring decisions, absent a showing that the use of race is solely for the purpose of correcting specific acts of discrimination by that party and is narrowly tailored to produce that outcome.

Notably, the majority of Asian, black, Hispanic, and white Americans oppose admissions and hiring by race (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). They believe in traditional precepts of fairness and that American exceptionalism is based on merit and hard work.

In the past, “equity” was understood as a goal to be achieved by taking race out of the decision matrix. Today, the same word is instead used by DEI advocates to mean requiring proportionate outcomes based on race and other innate characteristics. There is nothing “equitable” (old definition) about “equity” (new definition). The philosophical underpinning of critical race theory, DEI, and intersectionality is a purported hierarchy of oppressors and oppressed that can only be cured by more racism, referred to by Ibram X. Kendi as “antiracism.” These philosophies are contrary to American, Western, and Judeo-Christian values. They have led to pervasive anti-Asian bias and, more recently, violent antisemitism. Neither the philosophies nor the methodology of DEI fall within the narrow exceptions permitted by the Supreme Court for the use of race by government or private employers.

For RAND to embed in every aspect of its culture and research a philosophy and practices that are incompatible with American values, the views of most Americans, the Constitution, and federal and state law cannot be nonpartisan. When the design, staffing, and purpose of research is partisan and incorporates DEI, the outcome is partisan and biased, regardless of the accuracy of the data.

RAND’s devolution is indicative of the trend dominating academia. Based on my conversations with RAND officials, this devolution also may be an effort to ride the ESG (environmental, social, and governance) funding wave that has already crested. The next administration may not embrace DEI, and the Supreme Court might bring its short, troubled life to an end. By its lurch to the left, RAND loses its authority. It becomes another Ford Foundation or Brookings Institution. Those are merely practical reasons for RAND to rethink its apostasy from its heritage. The better reason is that racism can never be justified, not even by an ESG grant.