Attacks on DEI highlight the fallacy of zero-sum thinking

In its 2024 budget session, the Wyoming Legislature added a footnote to the budget for the University of Wyoming stating “no funds from this appropriation shall be expended on the office of diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of Wyoming or on any diversity, equity and inclusion program, activity or function.” As a result, the UW closed that office while reassigning some of its functions to other units. Then, UW’s Faculty Senate this spring agreed to terminate the undergraduate academic degrees in gender and women’s studies. Another bill defunding DEI more broadly was adopted by the legislature in 2025, but was vetoed by Gov. Mark Gordon.

I am continually baffled at why the Legislature, and others in Wyoming government, are so vehemently opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion. In my world, each one of those things is a value to celebrate, not an evil to eradicate.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder said at the time of the cut to UW’s budget that DEI has become a form of reverse discrimination. She claimed that DEI programs create “preferential treatment of one race, one gender over another, and [that] one race [is] inherently racist over another.” But that is a logical fallacy; specifically, a false dichotomy. It results from zero-sum thinking.

Zero-sum games are situations where for every winner, there is a loser. Think of a typical sale transaction: for every dollar the buyer pays, the seller gains a dollar. The net sum is zero. On the flip side, for every item the seller sells, he loses that item, but the buyer gains the item. Still a net zero.

But human interactions are seldom zero-sum games. They are most often plus-sum games, where both participants gain something from the interaction. Working together, respecting and learning from each other, leaves both participants better off. A plus-sum game. A win-win.

Since DEI practices and attitudes promote respect and learning between different groups, it is a plus-sum game. If a favored, dominant group reaches out to understand and respect a disfavored or oppressed group, that does not weaken the dominant group. The false dichotomy is that social prestige and opportunity are not a win-lose situation. One does not have to choose between which group has opportunities. Sharing opportunities can lift up both groups to heights neither could attain separately.

President Donald Trump has many flaws, but perhaps his biggest flaw is that he seems incapable of anything other than zero-sum thinking. Everything he does is transactional, and he must always “win.” He sees immigrants as taking “our” jobs. Foreign governments are stealing “our” money by having trade surpluses (never mind that private commercial transactions, not foreign governments, create trade imbalances). Law firms that represent his opponents are taking power away from him, so they must be punished. Courts that restrain his illegal actions also deprive him of power, so they must be attacked. All of this he does because of his irrational need to “win” the zero-sum games he perceives.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus, possibly taking their cue from Trump, is likewise stuck in zero-sum thinking. Its ongoing efforts to defund DEI programs appear to be an attempt to institutionalize the power of favored groups over disfavored groups, apparently in the belief that lifting up the disfavored group somehow diminishes the favored group.

But diversity, equity and inclusion are not zero-sum games. When we all work together — when we respect each other, share our talents with each other, treat each other with the dignity we deserve — we are all better off. Every one of us has a gift to make this world a better place. Let’s share those gifts freely with each other.