Cisco shareholders join investors in 31 out of 31 corporations that voted overwhelmingly to reject anti-DEI proposals in 2025, as Trump tirade against DEI turns to proxy advisors and shareholder democracy.
Reporting by Nancy Levine Stearns, December 16, 2025
Shareholders of Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) voted today to reject an anti-DEI proposal presented at its annual meeting, by a tally of 99-1 percent of voting shares.
The voting today at Cisco caps 2025 shareholder voting to overwhelmingly reject anti-DEI proposals at 31 out of 31 corporations. Investors in companies including Costco, Apple, and Coca-Cola, collectively valued at more than $13 trillion, have underscored a resounding message: Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI or by any other name) is a business imperative.
Cisco Board of Directors unanimously urged shareholders to vote to reject the anti-DEI proposal, writing in its proxy statement:
“Cisco values inclusion as an innovation accelerator,” and “Cisco endeavors to attract, retain, and develop the best talent to help our customers connect and secure their infrastructure, and accelerate their digital agility. Cisco values inclusion as an innovation accelerator to further our strategic priorities and generate stockholder value. Cisco’s customers span a diverse range of industries and markets globally and we strive to build an inclusive workforce that can effectively innovate and service them.
“Cisco believes that innovation thrives in an environment where different perspectives, experiences, and ideas come together to solve the world’s most complex challenges. By embedding these values into Cisco’s daily operations, we strive to remove barriers to success to help ensure everyone has a chance to contribute to meaningful technological advancements and create an inclusive culture that is welcoming, positive, creative, and rewarding. In addition, our Board oversees Cisco’s programs, initiatives, and risks related to talent and culture.”
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins had defended DEI initiatives at the company during an interview with Axios in January in Davos, Switzerland. Robbins said, “You cannot argue with the fact that a diverse workforce is better. There’s too much business value,” adding “the core reasons that you have a diverse workforce are still there from a business perspective.”
In its anti-DEI proposal to Cisco, conservative shareholder activist group, the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) asked the tech giant to report on how its inclusion initiatives provide financial value and impact litigation risk.
NCPPR’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) presented the proposal to Cisco today. The group presented many of the 31 anti-DEI proposals to corporations in 2025 and has lost by overwhelming tallies in all shareholder voting. FEP says it is “the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life.”
The NCPPR cited as problematic: Cisco’s “Inclusive Communities” in particular one labeled “Connected Black Professionals.” The NCPPC also complained that Cisco scored 100% on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, a tool rating companies’ LGBTQ+ policies.
But data shows that the NCPPR’s anti-DEI proposal to Cisco is without merit.
A study released earlier this year by the Human Rights Campaign and Whistle Stop Capital, analyzing 15 years of data, showed that companies that embraced LGBTQ+ inclusion policies enjoyed strong financial performance across multiple metrics, including higher revenue, stronger profits, and steadier market performance.
Likewise, the NCPPR’s claims about risks related to inclusion programs are not consistent with data. A 2025 study from NYU School of Law Meltzer Center and Catalyst showed corporations incur risk of retreating from DEI initiatives. The study revealed that companies that retreat from DEI incur increased risk across four business pillars: financial, legal, talent, and reputation.
“Institutional investors agree: 87% still believe ESG factors—including DEI considerations—are indicators of financial risk, not ideological positions,” wrote Rachel Robasciotti, Founder and co-CEO of Adasina Social Capital, and Stacey Abrams for Fortune in August, citing a BNP Paribas study.
They wrote: “In an environment charged with fear and polarization, some may retreat from these proven frameworks in search of perceived safety. But like anyone in a volatile marketplace understands, smart money demands we stay the course. Integrating environmental risks, social dynamics, and governance structures leads to savvier decisions and stronger portfolios. It’s not political—it’s prudent.”
Experts dismantle anti-DEI proposal to Cisco
Paolo Gaudiano, Chief Scientist at Aleria and author of the book Measuring Inclusion messaged Impactivize:
“I find it ironic that they [NCPPR] would ask Cisco to prove the ROI of something that Cisco has made very clear has worked very well for them, but at the same time, they do not think to ask what would be the ROI of conducting the studies they are asking for, or the ROI of eliminating existing practices that have been very successful for Cisco.”
Gaudiano said NCPPR’s anti-DEI proposal amounts to “a thinly veiled attempt to cause polarization, and to create the kind of negativity that can lead to legal action of the kind that they warn Cisco about.”
About Cisco’s rationale for maintaining DEI programs, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Ph.D., the Barrett Hazeltine Professor of the Practice of Engineering at Brown University messaged Impactivize:
“In companies that have longstanding inclusion initiatives (like Cisco) that are embedded within the organization’s culture, business strategies, and innovation practices, DEI is an enabler of business outcomes.” She added that the anti-DEI proposal “assumes DEI sits as a cost center within the organization when, in reality, DEI is embedded in the values, practices, and processes that lead to business success.”
The War on Corporate DEI
President Trump issued an executive order on Day One of his current presidency, targeting DEI in the private sector. An avalanche of attacks has followed and intensified.
In July, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held an anti-DEI subcommittee hearing. Chaired by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), senators emphasized that corporations “rebranding” DEI programs, i.e., Belonging, Inclusion, Culture, won’t insulate them from government attacks.
U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon testified to senators at the hearing, “Either DEI will end on its own, or we will kill it.”
By “we,” Asst. AG Dhillon was referring to the Department of Justice acting in partnership with the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) – whose chief Andrea Lucas has vowed to “root out” DEI in the workplace.
Another witness at the Senate Judiciary hearing in July was the head of a legal group co-founded with Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller. The Miller-cofounded group, America First Legal (AFL), has filed 44 legal complaints against privately held corporations — most of which are publicly traded. Starting in 2022, AFL has targeted companies including Apple and Nike, with most of their complaints alleging discrimination against white men.
Most recently, AFL filed a federal complaint last week against the National Football League (NFL)’s San Francisco 49ers, as Impactivize reported.
Miller’s AFL cofounder Gene Hamilton, former Deputy White House Counsel to President Trump, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the hearing in July. Hamilton told senators about AFL: “We have made it an organizational goal to dismantle and destroy DEI.”
The War on Shareholder Democracy
As 2025 proxy voting comes to a close with shareholders of 31 out of 31 corporations voting overwhelmingly to support DEI initiatives, the government has turned to targeting shareholder democracy itself.
Last week, President Trump issued an executive order targeting proxy advisor firms Glass Lewis and ISS Shareholder Services. The firms are the largest advisors to corporate boards of directors, providing guidance on proxy voting to optimize business outcomes for shareholders and stakeholders.
In his EO, Trump misleadingly stated that the proxy advisor firms “prioritize radical political agendas.” Proxy advisor firms’ recommendations to corporations facing anti-DEI proposals are consistent with data showing that DEI is a business imperative.
Trump’s EO directed the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Paul Atkins to review, revise, or rescind “rules and regulations related to proxy-advisors that implicate ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) and ‘environmental, social, and governance’ (ESG),” as well as the shareholder proposal process itself.
Atkins seems to have already begun responding to the president’s order.
As Andrew Behar, CEO of shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, wrote for Fortune earlier this month: “SEC Chair Paul Atkins laid out a plan that would fundamentally redefine what it means to be a public company in the United States.” Behar added, “De-politicization is a euphemism for de-democratization.”
The proxy advisor firms are also in the crosshairs of state officials. Texas Attorney General had opened an investigation into the two proxy advisor firms in September. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sued the proxy advisor firms in November.
The world’s largest asset managers, which control the largest number of voting shares, have also been targeted by the government. BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street have voted their vast pools of shares to reject anti-DEI proposals.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced the introduction legislation this month to prevent large asset managers of federal employee retirement funds (around $1 trillion) from exercising shareholder voting rights. In his presentation of the Stop TSP ESG Act, Cruz accused the large asset managers of pushing “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies.”
The three largest asset managers in the world collectively manage more than $25 trillion in assets. Stewardship at the firms has become a critical component of investment strategy. As ESG News reported: Cruz’s bill is: “Framed as an ESG Crackdown but Written to Remove Voting Power Entirely.”
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, and the War on corporate DEI
Anti-DEI shareholder proposals presented to corporations are part of a multi-pronged war on corporate DEI that follow the directives of Project 2025, the 920-page manifesto authored in 2023 by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 was called “The Blueprint for Christian Nationalist Regime Change,” by the Kettering Foundation.
David Graham, staff writer at the Atlantic and author of The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America told PBS about the Heritage Foundation’s vision, “They see the Christian heritage of the United States as being essential and something that needs to be brought to the fore.” And “when they take on DEI programs,” those initiatives are coming from this vision.
Russell Vought who helped found Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, is currently Trump administration director of OMB (Office of Management and Budget). Vought was called the “shadow president” by ProPublica. He has identified himself as a Christian nationalist and said, “We are a Christian nation.”
Trump administration FCC (Federal Communications Commission) chief Brendan Carr, author of the Project 2025 chapter about the FCC, has deployed extortion-type tactics against companies, pressuring them to cancel their DEI programs.
Carr’s FCC blocked acquisition deals of T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T, unless the telecom giants agreed to eliminate their DEI programs. The companies capitulated, and the FCC approved their deals.
Days after Walt Disney Company shareholders voted to reject an anti-LGBTQ+ proposal by a tally of 99-1 percent in March, Carr launched an investigation into the entertainment giant, alleging “invidious forms of DEI discrimination.”
Of note: the word “invidious,” a word not in the common lexicon, is also invoked in Project 2025 to attack DEI initiatives.
The Project 2025 chapter about the SEC was authored by David Burton, a leader at the Heritage Foundation. Burton argued for changes at the SEC, targeting ESG and DEI.
Burton stated that Congress should “oppose efforts to redefine the purpose of business in the name of social justice; corporate social responsibility (CSR); stakeholder theory; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria; socially responsible investing (SRI); sustainability; diversity; business ethics; or common-good capitalism.”
Burton argued that “Offices at financial regulators that promote racist policies (usually in the name of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’) should be abolished.”
Of the current SEC proposed changes, Andrew Behar wrote: “Taken together, they represent a dramatic shrinking of the public market’s core accountability mechanisms, which made the U.S. the financial capital of the world. This new plan would hollow out the very structures that distinguish public ownership from private capital. Structures that have been in place since the 1934 creation of the SEC to protected investors, markets, and the public interest.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Capital Markets Initiative
In April, the Heritage Foundation announced that anti-DEI activist Robby Starbuck would head its Capital Markets Initiative. Starbuck had led a boycott threat campaign against corporations starting in 2024.
Starbuck was interviewed in March by Japanese newspaper Nikkei Asia. “Using DEI practices to artificially raise disadvantaged peoples to the same level as white males is ‘a communist concept that is really not friendly to the idea of free markets and capitalism,’ said Starbuck,” the financial newspaper reported.
A handful of companies had knee-jerk reactions in 2024 to Starbuck’s threats of “exposing” their “woke” policies, including McDonald’s and Harley Davidson. But most publicly traded corporations have maintained their commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI or by any other name), citing correlative positive business outcomes. Impactivize has compiled a list of more than 400 corporations that maintain their stated commitments to DEI or by any other name.
Boards and CEOs: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a Business Imperative
The shareholder vote today at Cisco puts an exclamation point on 2025 shareholder voting. Government entities and conservative nonprofit groups may continue to wage war on DEI, but most corporations are holding the line, saying inclusion is a business imperative.
The CEO of global health care company Merck (NYSE: MRK) voiced the collective message of investors, board members and C-suite executives in 2025.
After Merck shareholders voted by a tally of 99-1 percent to reject an anti-DEI proposal at its annual meeting in May, CEO Rob Davis responded to a question about DEI during the Q&A session. Davis told investors that diversity and inclusion initiatives are “a strategic imperative.”