University of Michigan Considering Rolling Back DEI Program Which Cost the School $250 Million

The University of Michigan’s Board of Regents, during its upcoming meeting, will consider rolling back the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which have faced fierce scrutiny for being among the most expansive — and expensive — in the country. On Thursday, the Regents will weigh removing their requirement for departments to issue so-called diversity statements, which one Regent, Sarah Hubbard, described as being “litmus tests for our faculty and academics when they’re applying for jobs and being considered for a promotion” and can “really limit” programs, she told Fox News. The board may also consider cutting diversity statements from the hiring and promotion process and shifting more of the school’s DEI budget into recruitment programs and financial aid for lower-income students, the New York Times reports. The Ann Arbor school faced fierce criticism after a New York Times investigation found that Michigan spent an eye-popping quarter of a billion dollars on its DEI progamming since 2016 to achieve “far-reaching foundational change at every level, in every unit” in the ways of inclusivity, but achieved questionable results. Such initiatives include making sure that every university “unit” has its own DEI policy — a requirement which led the university to hire more than 241 employees who either work in DEI related offices or have the words “diversity,” “equity,” or “inclusion” in their job titles. The initiative, however, appeared to fall flat. Black students at Michigan expressed their dissatisfaction with the policy overhaul, calling it a “well-meaning failure.” Speaker of the university’s Black Student Union, Princess-J’Maria Mboup, told the Times that she viewed the effort as “superficial.” Meanwhile, the school had little success with improving Black student enrollment, which stubbornly hovers at around 5 percent. The program may even have had a negative impact on the university’s campus culture. A survey released by the school showed that faculty and students viewed the climate on campus as worsening over the course of the program rollout. Students also noted that they became less likely to interact with people of different backgrounds or races. Further, the school became the subject of fierce mockery after a DEI policy for its botanical garden and abroretum was unearthed. The 37-page so-called “strategic plan” seeks to investigate the “interlocking systems of domination” of botanical studies, and goes as far as to say that referring to a plant by its Latin and English name could erase “other ways of knowing.” Ms. Hubbard acknowledged the intense “scrutiny” that Michigan has faced for its DEI program, adding that “we need to do something differently here.” Should the Regents choose to haircut the school’s sweeping diversity program, it would mark Michigan as one of the first selective public universities to backpeddle on its DEI initiatives via internal decision making, and not legislative enforcement. Universities around the nation, meanwhile, are bracing for President-elect Trump to take office, given his promise to hold universities accountable for their various Title VI infractions. That statute bars recipients of federal funding from discriminating based on race, color, or national origin. A group of Columbia University faculty, staff, students, and alumni, known as the Stand Columbia Society, estimated that their university could lose out on $3.5 billion in federal funding — 55 percent of the school’s annual operating budget — should the federal government pump the brakes on its financial support. Columbia, for one, faces at least three Title VI lawsuits over its handling of campus antisemitism. At least 14 other schools, including Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are subject to similar legal challenges.

University of Michigan Considering Rolling Back DEI Program Which Cost the School $250 Million

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