The University of Michigan has been credited with having one of the largest and most expensive diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies in U.S. higher education, but the woke edifice may be on the verge of crumbling.
The university said Thursday it will no longer solicit “diversity statements” in faculty hiring, promotions and tenure decisions, citing the findings of an eight-member faculty working group that found such pledges threaten free speech and divergent viewpoints on campus.
“Diversity, equity and inclusion are three of our core values at the university. Our collective efforts in this area have produced important strides in opening opportunities for all people,” Michigan Provost Laurie McCauley said in a statement in the University Record. “As we pursue this challenging and complex work, we will continuously refine our approach.”
The university emphasized that it does not have an “institutionwide policy” requiring diversity statements, but gives discretion to departments or “units” to ask candidates about their commitment to diversity as part of the hiring and advancement process.
The announcement came ahead of a Thursday meeting at which the Board of Regents is expected to consider downsizing the university’s extensive DEI bureaucracy, which has reportedly cost $250 million since 2016.
Ms. McCauley denied last week that the university is considering “fully defunding” diversity programs in response to a leaked memo from the Faculty Senate chair warning that the regents had discussed “the possibility of defunding DEI in the next fiscal year.”
An analysis by former Michigan economics professor Mark Perry, now an American Enterprise Institute scholar, found that the university employs 241 paid staff members “whose main duties are to provide DEI programming and services.”
He estimated the annual payroll of the full-time DEI staff at $30.68 million. That doesn’t include the 76 faculty and staff who work as part-time “DEI Unit Leads” aimed at advancing diversity in the university’s schools and colleges.
“We know of no other school that comes close to UM’s DEI headcount and therefore we are confident that UM has the notoriety as the No. 1 Diversity University in the country with no close competitors for that distinction,” Mr. Perry said in his January breakdown on X.
Michigan joined Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in abandoning diversity statements as the DEI campus culture undergoes a reckoning following last year’s explosion of antisemitism and anti-Israel protests at U.S. universities.
Critics blamed the uproar triggered by the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on the spread of the DEI framework, which labels ethnic and racial groups as either “oppressed” or “oppressors.” Jews and Israelis typically fall into the “oppressor” camp.
The Michigan working group issued a survey that found most faculty agreed that “diversity statements put pressure on faculty to express specific positions on moral, political or social issues,” the University Record said.
Such statements typically ask candidates for examples of how they have contributed to advancing diversity and inclusion in the past, and how they would do so if hired.
“Critics of diversity statements perceive them as expressions of personal identity traits, support of specific ideology or opinions on socially-relevant issues, and serve as a ‘litmus test’ of whether a faculty member’s views are politically acceptable,” said the Michigan working group report. “Thus, as currently enacted, diversity statements have the potential to limit viewpoints and reduce diversity of thought among faculty members.”
The university has more than 52,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at its flagship campus in Ann Arbor.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.