Brian Schatz: “All sorts of integration. And now we are deciding that some people are not eligible to serve, not because they can't…”

“All sorts of integration. And now we are deciding that some people are not eligible to serve, not because they can't meet the requirements but because somebody finds it weird. We are going back not 5 years but 20 or 30 in terms of--by the way, this anti-DEI and anti-woke thing, I just want to drill down on it just for a moment. If what you don't like about DEI is the whole consultancy where someone comes into your workplace with a PowerPoint or whatever and makes you feel guilty for your personal ethnic background, I have been in some of those meetings, and there is a lot of eye-rolling in there, and they are very ineffective, and they do not increase diversity, equity, or inclusion. I am sure there is good versions of it. But there is a lot of people who got frustrated with DEI because when they think of DEI, they think of a kind of goofy consultant guy telling everybody how to divide everybody in the workplace and how to be sensitive in the workplace, and a lot of people are thinking, I am fine, I am nice to people, I don't harass anyone, I don't discriminate, why are you hectoring me about this issue? But what DEI has become is anything that is related to civil rights, right? And so as these people, mostly kids, are getting access to the Federal payment system, they are clearly just looking for words like ``gender,'' right? So I think in the NSF, National Science Foundation, or CDC, I forgot, research, they are no longer allowed to say gender and--”