11 Dec 2025 Cisco’s DEI Under Scrutiny — Shareholders Insist on Measurable Returns

Washington, D.C. – Shareholder activists with the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) are demanding to know whether Cisco’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs provide positive financial value to shareholders or whether they needlessly increase litigation risk.

Stefan Padfield

As Cisco shareholders are voting on Proposal 5 at Cisco’s annual shareholder meeting on December 16, 2025, FEP Executive Director Stefan Padfield will say:

Platitudes about the alleged value of DEI can’t cover up the reality that DEI divides people on the basis of race and sex in ways that have been justified by DEI-proponents as “discrimination in the name of anti-discrimination.” And in addition to the obvious reputational and legal risks that come from such discrimination, no less an authority than Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School, has noted that: “There is no link between demographic diversity and performance, despite many flimsy reports claiming the contrary…. Indeed, the evidence is that quota-driven demographic diversity reduces performance.”

In its written supporting statement for Proposal 5, FEP cites several recent court cases that call into question the legality of corporate DEI programs, noting that Cisco may be incentivizing lawsuits by not changing course as other corporations have done — especially when the White House has also signaled its opposition to DEI initiatives.

The statement continues:

Despite these risks, Cisco’s CEO Chuck Robbins has commented that he believes that Cisco’s Inclusion programs are a net positive, noting that “the core reasons that you have a diverse workforce are still there from a business perspective.” Further, Cisco goes to great length to both continue its Inclusion initiatives and highlight them, despite warning from legal experts that such programs should be subjected to serious scrutiny.

Specific examples of potentially problematic conduct include:

• Cisco promotes “Inclusive Communities” that apparently divides employees on the basis of race, with one labeled “Connected Black Professionals.”

• Cisco Leaders at the Vice President level and above have apparently pledged to allocate mentoring resources on the basis of diversity.

• Cisco scored 100% on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which arguably requires excluding certain religious beliefs, biological truths, and child safety concerns….

Shareholders deserve to know how corporate leadership evaluates the return on investment of its Inclusion programs.

FEP urges Cisco shareholders to vote for this proposal (Proposal 5). Additional proxy voting recommendations can be found on ProxyNavigator, FEP’s mobile and web app.

About

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors.

FEP, the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life, aims to push corporations to respect their fiduciary obligations and to stay out of political and social engineering. More information about today’s proposals can be found in FEP’s mobile and web app, ProxyNavigator.

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