Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.

I live in the Quad Cities, which unite the states of Iowa and Illinois across the Mississippi River. It always has been a point of community pride that we are the home of the international headquarters of John Deere & Company, the major producer of farm equipment.

Since long before my family relocated to this community, it also has been a point of communal pride that Deere was a model of positive, active corporate citizenship.

Upon reading the Quad-City Times article titled “Deere rolls back diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives after conservative backlash,” it has become clear to me, in the words of Bob Dylan, that “The Times They Are A’Changin’.”

In a statement recently posted on X/Twitter, Deere announced the following changes to the company’s policies on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI):

• We will no longer participate in or support external social or cultural awareness parades, festivals, or events. 
• Business Resource Groups will exclusively be focused on professional development, networking, mentoring, and supporting talent recruitment efforts.
• Auditing all company-mandated training materials and policies to ensure the absence of socially motivated messages, while being in compliance with federal, state and local laws.
• Reaffirming within the business that the existence of diversity quotas and pronoun identification have never been and are not company policy.

The company added one last bullet point near the end of that statement: “We fundamentally believe that a diverse workforce enables us to best meet our customers’ needs, and because of that we will continue to track and advance the diversity of our organization.”

Deere’s decision to surrender to the forces of MAGA bigotry is one more harbinger of the dark days ahead for our nation should Donald Trump and his followers recapture the White House and Congress. Their vision of what it means to “Make America Great” is to return to a time before the successes of the civil rights and LGBTQ rights movements, when white supremacy was the natural order of society and white privilege was taken for granted as the American way of life.

That a corporate giant like John Deere should toss out its commitment to DEI is a frightening act of bending the knee to hate.

That they should do so in response to the social media pressure put upon them by such narrow-minded people as the “right-wing influencer Robby Starbuck” sends chills up and down my spine. Starbuck is a Tennessee filmmaker, whose documentary (“The War On Children”) “accused LGBTQ+ activists, critical race theory education and social media platforms like TikTok of endangering children.”

He also doxxed inclusive people by making public the “names and positions of various Deere employees who worked in Deere’s Human Resources department or posted positive social media posts about the company’s DEI policies.” To break under such social terrorism, instead of standing up to it, is a victory for the forces of evil over good.

The company’s latest decision does not reflect the culture of John Deere for most of its history. It is a sad irony that just this year, Ethisphere again recognized Deere among “the world’s most ethical companies.” Long ago, Deere hired Jim Collins, an African-American born in Rock Island, as a general laborer and casting sorter at the East Moline Foundry. By the time he retired 44 years later, Collins had risen to the position of president of the John Deere Foundation. 

Along the way, Jim Collins, with the support of Deere, was able to establish a reputation as one of the most respected and valued civic-minded citizens of the Quad Cities. It was a time when Deere richly deserved the honor granted to their company by Ethisphere. But it appears those days are over.

Today, it seems John Deere & Company has joined those who would abandon America’s commitment to human equality, along with our proud tradition of providing “Liberty and Justice for All.”

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Top photo taken outside John Deere Des Moines Works in Ankeny on October 20, 2021. USDA Photo Media by Lance Cheung, available via Wikimedia Commons.

Editor’s note: Here is the full statement John Deere posted on July 16.