Editor’s Note:
2025 redrew the boundaries of responsibility. As public institutions retreat from their longstanding responsibilities to protect equity and truth, the burden of moral governance now rests on those with scale, reach, and conscience. This special issue reflects on that shift — and the courage required to lead through it.

Sheryl Daija

founder & CEO

WHEN GRAVITY SHIFTS

There are moments in a nation’s life when the center of gravity shifts.
Not by choice, but by necessity.

Not because institutions want more responsibility, but because the structures designed to protect equity, fairness, and truth begin to erode — and someone must fill the void.

2025 has been one of those moments.
A year when systems we long believed to be stable revealed their fragility. When agencies once anchored in the enforcement of civil rights became unpredictable. When protections were recast as problems, and safeguards were reframed as ideological threats.

In this climate, the question reverberating across industries, campuses, boardrooms, and communities has become stark:

What is the role of private institutions when political ideology overtakes public governance?

The answer is not theoretical.
It is urgent, immediate, and shared.

I. WHEN LEADERSHIP RETREATS, RESPONSIBILITY ADVANCES

The past year has shown us that regression rarely announces itself with fanfare. It arrives disguised — disguised in the language of tradition, fairness, merit, “protecting children,” “restoring order.” It uses familiar phrasing to dull the edges of radical change. It counts on exhaustion, confusion, and resignation.

.

And when public institutions abdicate, the consequences are not neutral.
Trust erodes. 

Protections weaken. 

Communities fracture.

The burden of moral leadership shifts outward — toward organizations that were not designed to serve as society’s last line of defense but are increasingly being called to do so.

Private institutions — businesses, universities, media, nonprofits, and civic organizations — now hold the levers once steadied by the public sector. They employ the majority of Americans. They shape access to opportunity. They influence culture, information, capital, and community.

Whether they asked for this role or not, they now carry it.

And like all structural shifts, this one demands something rare: not charisma, not consensus — but courage.

II. THE NEW BURDEN OF MORAL GOVERNANCE

Over the past year, I have found myself returning to a question that continues to echo:
Where are our leaders?
As though leadership were a throne someone else was meant to occupy.

But leadership is not a title or a podium.
Leadership is responsibility — especially when systems falter.

When governments narrow protections, organizations must widen them.
When laws are reinterpreted in ways that weaken protections, institutions must reinforce the standards that prevent discrimination.
When political actors attempt to rewrite narrative, institutions must protect truth from distortion.

This is not about partisanship.
It is about principle.

It is about understanding that governance lives wherever power impacts people’s lives — and today, that impact comes more from employers, universities, platforms, and corporations than from Congress or federal agencies.

Private institutions have become the guardians of the values we once relied on government to uphold:

• Fairness

• Inclusion

• Equal opportunity

• Freedom of expression

• Protection from discrimination

• Truth

When public systems retreat, governance migrates.
And where governance migrates, so does responsibility.

III. INSTITUTIONAL AUTONOMY IS NOW THE FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE

Institutional autonomy used to be a procedural concept.
Today, it is a moral one.

The ability of an organization to define its mission, uphold its values, and act in the best interests of its people has become an essential safeguard against political coercion and ideological overreach.

Across sectors, we have watched a familiar pattern unfold:
Attempts to silence through funding constraints.
Attempts to punish through regulatory pressure.
Attempts to discredit through narrative manipulation.
Attempts to confuse by relabeling inclusion as exclusion.

In previous eras, such pressures were anomalies.
In 2025, they have become increasingly systematic.

And so, the autonomy of institutions is no longer simply about operational independence — it is about protecting the dignity, rights, and freedoms of those within their care.

When governments retreat from preserving equity, institutions inherit the responsibility to do so.
Even when it is inconvenient.
Even when it is unpopular with the powerful.
Even when it carries risk.

This is not the time to be palatable.
This is the time to be principled.

IV. THE CIVIC COMPACT MUST BE REBUILT — AND IT STARTS OUTSIDE GOVERNMENT

In healthy democracies, government sets the direction, and institutions align to build the future.

But history shows us what happens when the state begins to centralize power, constrain truth, or single out certain communities. The guardrails fall. The norms shift. The language changes before the policies do.

I was raised under apartheid South Africa — a regime that turned propaganda into policy, policy into punishment, and punishment into permanence. It taught me something that continues to guide my leadership:
When government abandons equality, it is the institutions with scale that preserve it.

This was true in South Africa.
It was true in Germany, Italy, and Spain during the darkest chapters of the 20th century.
And it is true now, in quieter but the same dangerous ways.

The civic compact — the shared agreement about how we live, work, learn, and lead together — used to be reinforced by government.
Today, it must be rebuilt by organizations, leaders, and communities.

And rebuilding that compact requires clarity:

• Companies cannot confuse compliance with courage.

• Universities cannot mistake neutrality for integrity.

• Boards cannot allow politics to outrank principle.

• Leaders cannot outsource their responsibility to a system that no longer carries it.

When institutions stand firm — in values, in truth, in fairness — they not only protect their people; they protect the scaffolding of democracy itself.

This is why inclusion remains essential.
Not as a corporate mechanism, but as the front line of the unfinished civil rights movement.
Inclusion is not “political.”
Inclusion is how organizations ensure that progress is realized, not merely promised — and how they safeguard their cultures, their people, and their futures.

V. FORWARD WITH COURAGE

So what does this moment require of private institutions — not in theory, but in practice?

It requires that companies protect the dignity of their employees.
That universities safeguard inquiry, access, and belonging.
That organizations use their power not merely to comply, but to care.

Because institutions shape daily life more intimately than any policy debate ever will.
They decide who is hired and promoted.
Who is protected and supported.
Who is heard — and who is left navigating uncertainty alone.

This is the real work of institutional leadership now.

Not abstract courage, but concrete responsibility.
Not performative values, but lived ones.
Not neutrality, but stewardship.

The future will be shaped by the choices institutions make — quietly, consistently, and long before they are tested in public. It will be shaped by how leaders act when responsibility is clear, even if recognition is not.

To preserve what matters.
To protect what is vulnerable.
To stand for people — not as a reaction, but as a commitment.

That is the role of private institutions now.
And it is a responsibility we must be willing to carry forward, with courage.

ABOUT PROJECT FORWARD

Led by BRIDGE, Project FORWARD is a weekly leadership briefing that distills the most consequential legal, political, and reputational developments shaping DEI and inclusive growth. Each issue provides legal interpretation, BRIDGE’s point of view, and actionable strategies to help leaders safeguard trust, anticipate risk and make credible value-based decisions in a volatile environment.
 

Who it’s for: CMOs, CCOs, Chief DEI Officers, GCs, Heads of Risk, CHROs, and senior leaders across DEI, marketing, brand, policy, and legal functions.

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*These Project FORWARD updates should not be construed as legal advice or counsel. They are for educational and instructive purposes only, to aid our understanding about how best to actively continue our mission in response to this moment.