Harley-Davidson anti-DEI campaign revs up over new 'woke' allegations

Nearly two years after Harley-Davidson said it was rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, activist Robby Starbuck has fired up his campaign again, accusing the iconic motorcycle company of breaking its promises to root out “wokeness.”

Starbuck, who led a consumer boycott in 2024 over a range of “woke” offenses, from hosting an LGBTQ+ boot camp to supporting gay and transgender equality legislation, called on ride-or-die Harley buyers to switch brands. 

"Harley-Davidson said they were dropping all these crazy woke policies I exposed," he said in a video on social media platform X. "I regret to inform you that unfortunately today I am going to have to expose them again.”

Chief among his concerns is the leadership of Artie Starrs, Harley-Davidson’s newly minted CEO who took over in October.

"So after an extremely tumultuous period where your brand was torn down and now is seen as weird, woke and weak, you're gonna bring in a CEO that is gonna, like, project the masculine identity of the brand right? The pro-America identity of the brand. Well, maybe not so much," Starbucks said before calling out Starrs for sponsoring a pride group and an LGBTQ+ golf tournament that raised money for San Francisco Pride when he was running Topgolf and for launching antiracism training for educators while CEO of Pizza Hut.

Starbuck also questioned Starrs' choice of chief brand officer, Marcus Fischer, the former CEO of the Minneapolis-based advertising agency Carmichael Lynch who encouraged more transgender representation. 

“Is this seeming like the guy to turn around a brand that has a wokeness problem?” Starbuck said.

Harley-Davidson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

More 'woke' allegations to come, Starbuck says

Starbuck was at the forefront of a wave of the social media backlash against the commitments corporate America made to DEI and to gay and transgender people in response to the 2020 police killing of George Floyd.

He began by targeting Heartland companies such as farm equipment manufacturer John Deere and rural retail chain Tractor Supply whose shoppers skew male, rural and politically conservative then expanded his campaign to the nation’s largest companies including Ford, Lowe’s and Walmart.

Harley-Davidson was also an early target. “Just get rid of the social issues and divisive causes,” Starbuck told the company at the time. “No more DEI departments, no more woke trainings, no more donations to woke causes, no more donations to Pride parades.” 

After a two-week social media blitz, Harley-Davidson complied. The company put out a statement that it was “saddened by the negativity on social media” and that it had not had a DEI department for months, did not have hiring quotas and had stopped pursuing supplier diversity spend goals. Going forward, Harley-Davidson also pledged to no longer participate in a benchmark index the Human Rights Campaign uses to measure how friendly a company’s policies are to LGBTQ+ people.

But on Monday, Starbuck warned the company on X: “You have a lot of explaining to do. I thought you learned your lesson last time.”

When USA TODAY asked for examples of “woke” activities inside Harley-Davidson, Starbuck said he would highlight those soon. "I have MUCH more I’ll release in the coming weeks," he said on X.

The new attacks on Harley-Davidson show the potential pitfalls major brands risk when they try to appease everyone in a highly polarized political climate, said David Primo, professor of political science and business administration at the University of Rochester in New York.

Target, too, recently found itself in the cultural crosshairs after bowing to external pressure to scrap its DEI policies. From church pulpits to community gatherings, the policy U-turn was widely viewed as a betrayal of Black American shoppers who launched boycotts.

“These new attacks are further evidence that firms that try to placate activists on the left or the right without having a clear vision for their brand are doomed to become perennial targets,” Primo said. “We saw it with Target from the left, and now we’re seeing it with Harley-Davidson from the right.”

The decision to target Harley-Davidson now is not coincidental, according to Primo. Like Target, it has a new CEO and is in the midst of a turnaround effort.

“Just as with Target and its attempt to retool, this is a distraction the new CEO doesn’t need,” he said.

The campaign is the first in a while for Starbuck. When Donald Trump took office for his second term and issued a series of far-reaching executive orders to purge diversity initiatives in the federal government and the private sector, Starbuck said he began working behind the scenes, negotiating directly with business leaders to reform DEI efforts and checking up on companies to make sure they did not walk back the concessions they made. 

“We try to be fair to companies by giving them time to course correct after they commit to ending woke policies but Harley-Davidson’s recent hires make it clear to me that they didn’t learn their lesson,” Starbuck told USA TODAY in a statement. “At the end of the day, I’m a megaphone for consumers who feel left behind by brands chasing far-left brownie points. At some point, consumers have to leave a company behind when it continues making decisions that oppose their values. For Harley, that time is now. They don’t deserve another chance.”