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Staffers at the notoriously secretive hedge fund D.E. Shaw fear the wildly lucrative left-wing firm could face “reprisals” from the Trump administration over its woke DEI policies, The Post has learned.
The New York-based powerhouse founded by billionaire David E. Shaw — whose algorithm-driven trades made it the most profitable hedge fund in 2024, raking in $11.1 billion for investors, according to Institutional Investor magazine — has grown remarkably quiet of late when it comes to diversity, equality, and inclusion, sources said.
D.E. Shaw did not respond to The Post’s emailed request for comment for this article.
The company, which gave a young Jeff Bezos his big break in finance before he set up Amazon in 1994, has promoted DEI policies for years.
A June 2019 memo obtained by The Post that was written by managing director Eddie Fishman encouraged staffers “to display their pronouns” that “align with their gender identity” in their emails so managers could “foster an inclusive culture.”
But a review by The Post of archived pages from D.E. Shaw’s website shows that its DEI language has since been scrubbed, including references to how the firm “actively promotes LGBTQ+ inclusion.” Now, its site merely says it’s seeking “talented people with diverse perspectives and backgrounds.”
One insider said top brass at the Wall Street firm — whose 74-year-old namesake helped bankroll the presidential campaigns of Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — made “a strategic move” to steer away from full-throated wokeness over fear of catching the attention of the White House.
“There was some concern that aggressive policies would make the firm a target for reprisals by the current administration,” the source said. “And we were about as aggressive as you could get.”
“They were going 100 miles an hour on DEI in public, only then to drop to zero and fall off a cliff,’ said another staffer.
“The communications have certainly been ratcheted back,” claimed a third employee. “It’s not as in-your-face as it once was.”
D.E. Shaw’s retreat follows a Supreme Court ruling last month and a White House-led crackdown on corporate DEI policies, which critics say lower performance standards and foster so-called reverse discrimination.
Top Department of Justice lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, issued the starkest of warnings to corporate America during a testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 23.
“The goal is clear: either DEI will end on its own, or we will kill it,” the top Trump administration official said.
Nevertheless, five sources with direct knowledge of the matter told The Post that executives at the company — founded by computer scientist Shaw in 1988 after he did stints at Stanford, Columbia and Morgan Stanley — are still paying lip service to wokeness to the rank and file.
“They have said internally that our commitment and programs regarding DEI are not changing,” said another senior D.E. Shaw source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“They have themselves in a bit of a bind. They went hardcore DEI to appear progressive and cater to liberal recruits,” a veteran of the firm added. “Internally, they are putting a brave face on it. But they are now very worried that the administration will start looking into them.”
Fearing Trump’s ire, the hedge fund appears to have axed its “inclusive” Bridge internship. The program was set up in 2016 for “historically underrepresented” groups in finance.
The ‘woke’ job placement schemes still featured prominently on D.E. Shaw’s website last week. But they have now been deleted after The Post approached the firm for comment on their DEI policies on Friday.
According to an archived version of D.E. Shaw’s Campus website — an online recruitment portal — the firm created three programs aimed at diverse recruitment. Its “Discovery” program was “designed for students who self-identify as women”, while “Momentum” was aimed at those “who self-identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community
D.E. Shaw also had a program called “Latitude,” which was “for students who self-identify as Native American or Alaska Native, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, or Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.”
Other Wall Street giants including Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Bank of America and Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan Chase have scaled back their public commitments to DEI. The Post reported exclusively how Goldman decided to give woke the boot — on its website at least — when its partners met with CEO David Solomon in Miami in February.
The Post attempted to speak to additional employees at D.E. Shaw, but they declined, citing fears of retribution from D.E. Shaw’s management, which has even been known to weigh in on whether employees can attend social gatherings with people who have left the company.
“It is definitely something that people are talking about at the firm,” a separate person briefed on the matter told The Post.
“The irony is that the whole firm is still very white and very male,” said another source.
The hedge fund’s leadership team counts two females, Alexis Halaby and managing director Anne Dinning, amongst its ranks.
The firm last made major headlines in 2022 when it was forced to pay a $52 million defamation settlement to one of its former rising stars, Dan Michalow, after an arbitration panel found that it had falsely accused him of sexual misconduct.
Michalow, who always denied any wrongdoing, left the company not long after the start of the #MeToo movement, where hundreds of rich and powerful men were accused of sexual misdeeds.
Aside from Amazon’s Bezos and his ex-wife, Mackenzie Scott, D.E. Shaw’s most famous alum is arguably Lawrence Summers.
He served as treasury secretary under Bill Clinton and as director of Barack Obama’s National Economic Council.
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