Many of Idaho’s biggest businesses backed DEI. Are they caving to pressure?

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) — In October 2019, hundreds of Idaho business leaders gathered in a Boise State University ballroom for an annual diversity, equity and inclusion summit. Speakers insisted that DEI programs were crucial to state’s effort to attract a diverse workforce, especially in competitive industries.

Even then there were rumblings and defunding threats from state Republican lawmakers who took issue with the initiatives, including many programs meant to support students of color and LGBTQ students. But the summit forged on with the support and financial backing of prominent Boise businesses including Micron, St. Luke’s, Simplot and Boise Cascade.

Many of those businesses, once among the state’s most vocal advocates for corporate inclusivity, are quietly retreating from anything related to DEI.

The summit was put on by Boise State’s Blue Sky Institute, founded in 2017 in part by the school’s College of Business and Economics to focus on ”complex social challenges,” according to a capture of the Institute’s website, which no longer exists, taken by the Internet Archive in March 2023.

The summit ran for nine years until its last conference in November 2023. In a news release ahead of that summit, Boise State said the event “would not be possible” without the support of those Idaho businesses.

“They are the Blue Sky Institute’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion underwriters and year-round supporters,” the release said.

But there isn’t a summit scheduled this year, a Boise State spokesperson told the Idaho Statesman. There wasn’t one last year, either. The spokesperson declined to say why and said the Institute “hasn’t been in existence” for the last couple of years.

The summit’s demise may be the result of growing political opposition to DEI, which had been bubbling up in Idaho for years before President Donald Trump was re-elected.

Months before the 2019 summit, 28 Idaho Republicans wrote a letter to Boise State’s President Marlene Tromp, asking her to roll back DEI initiatives. Later, state lawmakers toyed with the idea of blocking American-born children of undocumented immigrants from a state-funded scholarship program that helps Idaho students cover the costs of higher education. They spoke out against the school’s use of gender-neutral bathrooms and hinted at plans to defund its DEI programs.

The Idaho State Board of Education decided to curtail DEI-related programming and offices in late 2024, closing cultural centers for Black students, offices providing LGBTQ students with support and women’s centers. Gov. Brad Little signed a bill in April solidifying the move to ban DEI initiatives in higher education.

Companies go silent on DEI

Of the four companies Blue Sky thanked in 2023, three opted to say nothing when contacted for this story.

Simplot, an agricultural icon in Idaho, did not respond to a request for comment about its past support for the summit or to questions about whether its contributions to other DEI-related initiatives in the community have changed.

A spokesperson for Boise Cascade, a nationwide leader in the manufacturing and distribution of wood products, also declined to comment.

And Micron, where CEO Sanjay Mehrotra for years affirmed the company’s “deep, global commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion” by publicly sharing employee demographic data in an annual DEI report, declined to comment.

(A spokesperson for the company inadvertently replied to an email from a Statesman reporter asking whether the annual report had been discontinued and if Micron’s internal DEI-related initiatives have changed with the message: “I’m assuming we’re ignoring this one?”)

The company, which sponsored the Micron Fireworks Show at Boise’s 2024 Pride Festival, also did not respond to a question about whether that support would continue.

The memory-chip manufacturer is the state’s largest for-profit employer.

It hired its first vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion, Sharawn Connors, months before the 2019 summit, in the middle of a summer roiled by debates over the value of DEI programs at Idaho universities. The international company had already been pushing to create a more diverse workforce, with thousands of employees in over a dozen different countries.

“Diversity is an important aspect of Micron’s business success,” Mehrotra told the Statesman in an interview at the time.

A couple of years later, Connors received a promotion and became Micron’s chief DEI officer. Now she no longer works at the company. And in 2024, Micron quietly stopped releasing its annual DEI report. On its website, the company replaced its section titled “diversity, equity and inclusion,” with one that says “global culture and workforce.”

Micron may have an incentive for its retreat from DEI. Trump, who has repeatedly attacked DEI programs and called them “radical and wasteful,” threatened early in his second term to rescind the federal subsidies in the CHIPS and Science Act that Micron says made its multibillion-dollar investments in Idaho and New York possible.

‘Deeply committed’ to inclusion

Alone among the four Blue Sky summit sponsors, St. Luke’s Health System agreed to comment. A spokesperson said St. Lukes had been honored to support the institute’s efforts to tackle complex issues.

“Each person brings unique needs, experiences and perspectives — and honoring that diversity is not only essential to quality care, but also simply the right thing to do,” the health system said in a statement. “We are deeply committed to fostering inclusion and a sense of belonging for our patients, our team members and the communities we serve.”

The spokesperson noted that many of the institute’s supporting organizations, including St. Luke’s, are now part of the nonprofit Idaho Inclusion Collective, which held its first gathering in February, according to the event’s host, Strelo, a consulting business in Boise.

Strelo’s website says the Collective is a group of business leaders who are “committed to empowering workplaces to foster inclusion and belonging.” It lists Micron, Boise Cascade, Saint Alphonsus Health System and Blue Cross of Idaho as sponsors.

But even St. Luke’s, the largest health system and the largest private employer in the state, is changing its ways in the changed political environment. It faced backlash in late May when it announced that it would no longer fly Pride flags at its medical centers during Pride month.

“In recent months, local efforts to raise the Inclusive Progress Pride flag have become increasingly contentious for some,” said an internal memo obtained by Boise State Public Radio. “This has diverted focus to public debates about the flag rather than our original intent to signal that St. Luke’s is a welcoming environment for all.”

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