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Pummeled by both Republicans and Democrats, CEO Mark Zuckerberg defends freedom of speech above all

MARK Zuckerberg wants you to know that Facebook strives for diversity in its workforce — and not just on the basis of race or gender. The CEO says he works hard to recruit people who attended a state school, are rooted to their local communities and come from traditional backgrounds.

“We certainly do,” Zuckerberg said of his 40,000 mostly US-based employees in an interview with The Post.

“There’s a woman who runs our commerce product and is deeply religious,” he said. “The person who runs policies of the company is quite a prominent Republican. So we have people from quite different views, which I think might be a little bit different from most of the other tech companies. That’s something that I really focused on.”

Big tech companies, sports entities, Hollywood and the media have all faced criticism in recent years for the lack of cultural diversity in their leadership roles. It’s even a problem in the public sector. A whopping 40 percent of the 250 top American public-sector decision makers are Ivy League graduates, according to a National Journal survey. Only a quarter hold a graduate degree from a public university.

And boardroom members typically come from the elite ZIP codes of New York City, Washington, DC, Silicon Valley and their surrounding areas. Zuckerberg himself is an example of the problem: He grew up in the wealthy Westchester town of Dobbs Ferry and went to Harvard before dropping out to focus on Facebook.

That lack of representation from people who grew up in rural areas or Rust Belt cities — whose experiences include sitting in a pew on Sunday, getting a little dirt under their nails and owning a gun — has widened the cultural divide and led to our current polarized politi