It’s not exactly a U-turn, but ICANN has issued a statement clarifying that it’s still committed to the values of “diversity and inclusion”, if perhaps not the words themselves.
CEO Kurt Lindqvist posted on the ICANN blog last night:
While some terminology may have changed, the values that guide our work have not. Our actions and commitments remain the same. We have not stepped back from, retreated from, or abandoned ICANN’s core values, or an environment where all voices are welcomed, respected, and valued.
The metadata summary of the post, which shows up in RSS feeds and such if not the visible components of the web page itself, reads: “ICANN reaffirms its commitment to diversity and inclusion amid recent updates to webpage language.”
There have been no changes to policy or ICANN programs like the Fellowship or NextGen, he wrote.
The post follows the revelation last Thursday that ICANN had expunged almost all references to “diversity” and “inclusion” from a page formerly called “Diversity at ICANN” and now called “Representation at ICANN”.
What Lindqvist’s clarification does not clarify, or even address, are the reasons why ICANN felt the need to suddenly and sharply distance itself from language it has been enthusiastically promoting for over a year.
But perhaps no explanation is necessary. Anyone paying a modicum of attention to US politics this year can’t have failed to notice that the abbreviation “DEI” — diversity, equity, inclusion — has become politically toxic and the target of attacks from the Trump administration and its loyal MAGA followers.
What we seem to be looking at here is the ICANN equivalent of the Department of Defense panickedly erasing the Enola Gay from its web site.
While ICANN’s structural ties to the US government have been pretty loose and minimal since the IANA transition in 2016, it really doesn’t need to find itself fighting off a Trump attempt to renationalize the root.
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