At a Silicon Valley off-site meeting in February for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan were asked to reassure their staff about their philanthropy’s approach to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Dr. Chan, a pediatrician, spoke first. She told employees that words such as D.E.I. would be de-emphasized internally, according to four attendees, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the confidential meeting. But, Dr. Chan insisted in lengthy remarks, the charitable organization’s commitment would not change.
Then Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, chimed in. Their philanthropy was going to hire the best talent for the job, he said bluntly.
Within days, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative ended diversity-based recruiting and laid off or reassigned employees who ran diversity initiatives, scrubbing its website of all references. A few months later, a school for low-income students that Dr. Chan had founded announced it was closing. The philanthropy also axed its work in housing, its most progressive remaining project.
The moves capped a startling retrenchment for an organization that had once set out to be a sprawling left-of-center philanthropic endeavor. Mr. Zuckerberg, 41, and his wife, Dr. Chan, 40, had started the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015 using the wealth from their social networking empire to form a “new kind of philanthropy” and pledging to fix American education, transform U.S. public policy and “cure all disease.”
“Our hopes for your generation focus on two ideas: advancing human potential and promoting equality,” Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan wrote in an open letter about the effort to their newborn daughter, Max, at the time. They added, “We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates.”
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