Nasdaq Attack Targets Conservative Values

America’s financial institutions are highly regulated, yet the Nasdaq stock exchange is about to embark on a practice considered to be “super illegal.”

And Washington might allow it to happen!

Nasdaq is petitioning the federal government for the ability to delist companies from its trading floor that won’t meet its woke demands. In particular, Nasdaq wants to effectively set up diversity hiring preferences that require companies to have at least one board member who is female and another who is a member of a minority racial group or LGBTQA+ sexual minority.

In a commentary published by The Federalist, Justin Danhof, Esq. – the director of the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project – points out:

This is the definition of racism and sexism, which are illegal in U.S. employment, but it’s also the state of play in corporate America: Follow the leftist political directives of the Wall Street and Davos crowds, or lose the ability to finance your business in the public marketplace.

Justin calls Nasdaq’s plan “wholly unconstitutional.” He says it would “financially strain many American businesses” despite the stock exchange never providing proof “that financial performance improves because a company increased the surface-characteristic diversity of its board.”

Nasdaq feels confident in doing this because “it thinks no one will have the courage to stand up and stop it,” Justin explains, adding:

Let’s be clear-eyed about what Nasdaq is doing, beyond expressing its ideological commitment to identity politics. It is trying to set up a system similar to tenure for professors in higher education. Whatever its possible noble origins and designs to protect academic freedom, tenure has become nothing more than a means to blackball conservative academics from college campuses.

The left has been so successful at blocking conservative thought in academia that, according to the National Association of Scholars, “faculty political affiliations at 39 percent of the top-tier liberal arts colleges … are Republican free — having zero Republicans … and 78.2 percent of the academic departments … have either zero Republicans or so few as to make no difference.” This is exactly what is already occurring in corporate boardrooms and what Nasdaq is trying to accelerate.

With conservatives already underrepresented on corporate boards, Justin writes that “it’s up to the Americans who prioritize business success over virtue signaling to do something about it.”

Click here to read all of Justin’s commentary – “Nasdaq Wants to Push Companies to Hire Fewer Straight, White Men” – at the website of The Federalist.



The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.