They aren't just for show, but the optics of a well-funded diversity departments is irresistably good.
I don't think they are, in most instances. I try never to attribute to malice, but it has been years of giving them undue, novel power. This is corruptive and they demonstrate this corruption in every case.
Any normal person would be corrupted given the same power, all of a sudden, and a mandate to use it.
To a diversity hammer everything looks like a seminar / written statement / fired for cause nail.
That makes them even worse, even more dangerous.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis
And I am not making any of that stuff up, that used to be (and "the god tries you" still is) part of generally accepted theology; C. S. Lewis definitely subscribed to "the god sends you trials" part of it which does make that quote hilariously blind-spotted.
As a bureaucracy grows its purpose increasingly becomes its own preservation and growth. Whatever it was made to do becomes secondary.
DEI is a program for handing out patronage jobs.
I disagree. While there are certainly some people with honestly good intentions in these departments, they are also lairs of Marxist-types that would gladly march others into death camps if given the chance to do so.
We cannot be naive about this. For every social justice movement with good intentions, there are evil people willing to use it as a trojan horse to carry out an awful agenda.