I remember (the one time I snuck into NIPS) a buuunch of papers on "fairness", and it was basically: "We have decided that this input should not affect the outcome. Does it? If so, how?"

So that seems like a pretty good actual "what's DEI?" - Does race/gender/sexuality/etc affect some outcome? Should it? If it does affect it and shouldn't, what we can we do about it?

That said... yeah, not gonna get a room full of anyone to agree on that. Starting with that "should".