FIRST ON FOX: Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy ended its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs Tuesday, along with its social advocacy efforts including immigration reform and racial equity grantmaking, Fox News Digital has learned.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s chief operating officer Marc Malandro sent an email to staff Tuesday evening with the announcement.
The move comes after Zuckerberg’s Meta ended its DEI programs last month– a move to ensure that the company is “building teams with the most talented people.”
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Meta also ended its fact-checking program and lifted restrictions on speech to “restore free expression” across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, admitting its content moderation practices had “gone too far.”
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In the company-wide memo, Malandro said he and the leadership team have been reviewing CZI’s programs and practices “to ensure that they align with our focus as a science philanthropy as well as the current legal and policy landscape.”
“As a result, we want to reiterate that we made the decision a few years ago to wind down our social advocacy work and have since discontinued that funding, as well as share some new changes we’re making to our hiring and HR practices around diversity,” he wrote.
Malandro explained that CZI invests “the vast majority of our resources into building Biohubs and supporting research teams to solve complex questions around biology and health.”
Meta’s logo (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
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Malandro stressed that CZI is “very focused on solving four grand challenges that will give scientists the tools to help cure, prevent, or manage all diseases in the coming decades,” including building an AI-based virtual cell model to predict and understand cellular behavior; developing state-of-the-art imaging systems to observe living cells in action; instrumenting tissues to better understand inflammation, a key driver of many diseases; engineering and harnessing the immune system for early detection, prevention, and treatment of disease.
But Malandro announced that with CZI’s focus on science, they have “wound down our social advocacy funding.”
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“This includes our previous work on immigration reform, as well as our racial equity grantmaking as we’ve completed the five-year program we announced in 2020,” he wrote. “We haven’t launched new programs in this area for a few years. There are a small number of multi-year grant commitments we made previously that we will still honor, but none of these will support political activism.”
Malandro added: “Looking ahead, we expect CZI’s increasing focus to continue to be pushing the frontiers of biology and AI.”
As for DEI, Malandro cited “the shifting regulatory and legal landscape.”
“In addition, given the shifting regulatory and legal landscape, we will no longer have a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility team at CZI,” he wrote. “The three members of that team have transitioned to new roles and responsibilities.”
As for hiring, CZI has also “discontinued our Diverse Slate Practice.”
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“Going forward, we will continue to cast a wide net to source top candidates while always selecting the best candidate for the role,” he wrote.
“We remain dedicated to ensuring our work serves everyone, that you feel welcome at CZI, and that you can do the best work of your career here,” he continued. “To support this, we are building a workforce that reflects a broad range of experiences, thoughts, and opinions, supporting employees via our employee resource groups which are open to all to join, and driving effectiveness in our work by rewarding individual initiative, excellence, and hard work.”
