Major League Baseball has removed the word “diversity” from the careers page of its website, joining other corporations that have pulled back on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts since President Trump took office.
“Our values on diversity remain unchanged,” MLB said in a statement to the Associated Press on Friday.
“We are in the process of evaluating our programs for any modifications to eligibility criteria that are needed to ensure our programs are compliant with federal law as they continue forward.”
Trump issued an executive order “ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity” that has forced companies to rethink their DEI efforts.
Axios reported that the MLB’s review has seemingly impacted the league’s Diversity Pipeline Program, which was first launched in 2016.
The change to the website, which was first reported by cupofcoffeenews.com, comes days before the league’s official opening day is set to take place. Opening day is Thursday, though the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs played the first game of the season in Tokyo last week.
As NR reported in 2022, the league has come to embrace a number of left-wing causes over the last several years. At the time, the league’s website featured a “social justice” section that promoted texts such as the 1619 Project and White Fragility — as well as authors such as Ibram X. Kendi and Angela Davis. A link to that page now takes users to a page on “allyship and advocacy,” that says baseball is “profoundly shaped by the power of inclusion.” The page includes information on the league’s employee resource groups such as “MLB Black,” “MLB Pride” and “Somos MLB.”
Perhaps the league’s most notable controversy among conservatives was its decision to pull its 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to Georgia’s election-integrity law.
But the less-noticed, more significant aspect of the league’s leftward shift, NR reported at the time, was its promotion of gender transitions for minors via LGBT-themed “Pride Nights” that have seen many of the league’s franchises promote or fund groups that encourage or provide sex-change procedures and gender-transition hormone treatment for minors as young as 12.
Now, MLB is one of a number of organizationss that have pulled back on or altogether discontinued their DEI policies under growing political and legal scrutiny, including BlackRock, Bank of America, Meta, McDonald’s and Walmart.