University of Michigan’s ‘Watershed Moment’

The decision by the University of Michigan to do away with soliciting diversity statements for faculty hiring, promotion, and tenure strikes us as a newsworthy development. The school, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on one of the most expansive, and expensive, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the country, has become one of the first selective, public universities to rein in a contested diversity policy on its own terms. The policy about-face, as our Novi Zhukovsky reports, came out of a vote Thursday by the school’s Board of Regents. It follows the recommendation, offered in October, by an eight-person faculty working group that tackled the issue back in June. They concluded, after carrying out school-wide surveys and reviewing reports, that diversity statements “have the potential to limit viewpoints and reduce diversity of thought among faculty members.” Their dispatch also showed that most Michigan faculty members were in agreement in believing that diversity statements, which are often viewed as political affiliation litmus tests, “put pressure on faculty to express specific positions on moral, political or social issues.” Little mental gymnastics is needed to understand why an individual who is applying for a position at a liberal-dominated university might choose to align with the pack. Still, though, the new policy marks a noteworthy concession for a school that has positioned itself, for nearly a decade, at the vanguard of the DEI effort. One higher education expert, John Sailer, of the Manhattan Institute, describes the move as a “watershed moment.” He writes on X: “Michigan spearheaded the practice of diversity statements — and encouraged other universities to use them. Now, it’s the first ‘blue state’ public university to nix them.” The immense effort by the Ann Arbor school to foster a so-called diverse and inclusive environment was documented in a Times exposé. It found that the school, since 2016, spent about a quarter of a billion dollars to “to enact far-reaching foundational change at every level, in every unit.” It cites a 2021 Heritage Foundation report which reported that Michigan, at the time, boasted the largest DEI bureaucracy of any public university — “by far.”The Times also concluded that the DEI policy overhaul was, to put it lightly, a failure. Black students at Michigan expressed their dissatisfaction with the new program, calling it a “well-meaning failure.” It did little to advance the enrollment of black students, which hovered stubbornly at four percent. Scores of students said that they became less likely to interact with people of different backgrounds or race as the program was rolled out. Further changes may be coming. The school’s Board of Regents, according to the Times, is also weighing shifting more of the school’s DEI budget into recruitment programs and financial aid for lower-income students. Does the school really think that they would be winning anyone over by penning a DEI “strategic plan” for their arboretum to claim that referring to a plant by its Latin and English name could occlude “other ways of knowing”? It’s possible that the school’s DEI backtrack may be driven, in part, by fear of President-elect Trump’s promise to hold accountable universities that have flouted Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars recipients of federal funding from discriminating based on race, color, or national origin. The president-elect has pledged to dismantle such DEI programs, which have allowed for, he says, “unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity.” Such foresight, though, is worth commending. A group of Columbia University faculty, staff, students, and alumni, known as the Stand Columbia Society, estimates 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 over the school’s various Title VI infractions. They urged the school not to “play chicken.”

University of Michigan’s ‘Watershed Moment’

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