The Road to Diversity: An Evidence-Based Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Agenda for the Department of State
Achieving sustainable progress at the Department of State will require real political leadership and a coalition that can continue to push for change. But political will alone is insufficient -- effective policy interventions need to be developed that can overcome a legacy of structural racism, sexism, and discrimination in the United States’ first executive agency. There is no silver bullet, and many well-intentioned efforts to improve the diversity of our institutions have fallen short. Progress will require an evidence-based agenda for reform to ensure that goodwill is translated into real action.
This report is an effort to deepen our understanding of the research on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and build a strong foundation of evidence for evaluating the efficacy of future recommendations.
We evaluate the most common recommendations to improve DEI in organizations, categorizing each recommendation according to its likelihood of success according to the research. Where research is underdeveloped or inconclusive, we provide a blueprint for monitoring and evaluating (M&E) new policies to ensure the bureaucracy can learn from what works and dispense with failing policies. We also advocate implementing new policies with a principle of “do no harm”. This report is a summary of our findings.