The University of Michigan’s (UM) multi-million dollar diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) program may soon be dismantled.
The university’s board of regents has reportedly asked UM president Santa Ono “to defund or restructure” the DEI office amid growing criticism and public pressure, according to emails shared on X. The board is expected to vote on the matter on Dec. 5.
“I write to share information with you about impending threats to the University of Michigan’s DEI programming and core values of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Rebekah Modrak, faculty senate chair, wrote in an email to faculty senate members. “It has been confirmed by multiple sources that the Regents met earlier this month in a private meeting with a small subgroup of central leadership members, and among the topics discussed was the future of DEI at UM, including the possibility of defunding DEI in the next fiscal year.”
Calls for the university’s DEI program to come to a close surfaced after The New York Times exposed its failures and the vast amount of money being thrown at it.
“In recent years, as D.E.I. programs came under withering attack, Michigan has only doubled down on D.E.I., holding itself out as a model for other schools,” the NYT wrote in an October article. “By one estimate, the university has built the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any big public university. But an examination by The Times found that Michigan’s expansive — and expensive — D.E.I. program has struggled to achieve its central goals even as it set off a cascade of unintended consequences.”
Despite UM investing $250 million into DEI since 2016, students and faculty have reported a deteriorating campus climate since the program began and are less likely to interact with people of a different race, religion or political ideology, though these are “the exact kind of engagement[s] D.E.I. programs, in theory, are meant to foster,” the article stated. Attempts to create a more diverse campus also fell flat, with black enrollment at the university remaining a steady 5%.
The program also created a “culture of grievance,” with the office’s conception coinciding with an “explosion” of complaints on campus involving race, gender and religion, the NYT reported. Meanwhile, nearly 250 university employees were engaged in some form of DEI efforts on campus.
Modrak in her email referenced the article, calling it a “tendentious attack” that was “not well researched,” and claiming that the author “cherry-picked” examples of UM’s failures.
DEI staff cost the university approximately $30.68 million annually, with the average salary reaching $96,400, according to Mark Perry, an American Enterprise Institute scholar. Several DEI employees are paid more than $200,000 a year, while the department’s head makes upwards of $400,000.
“I think that across the ideological spectrum both regular citizens and policymakers have really shifted on issues of identity politics,” John Sailer, senior fellow and director of higher education policy at the Manhattan Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “I think a lot of people who would have at some point, probably just as a matter of knee-jerk reaction, supported diversity initiatives, have started to really reconsider what these initiatives are actually doing, and reconsider whether everything that falls under the name of DEI is actually something that they support. And so there was already the slow burn.”
The major catalyst of this change, Sailer explained, was the series of fiery protests that ravaged college campuses across the country after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which were “absolutely a big part of the story.”
“A lot of people were already skeptical of DEI,” Sailer said. “A lot of people were already of the opinion that these policies, even though they purport to be about diversity, in practice really have been about a particular ideological vision for higher ed. Then on October 7, I think a whole different part of the American electorate and a whole different constituency, many more people from the professional world looked at universities and thought, What on earth is going on? What is the problem here?”
The University of Michigan, like many other schools, was overwhelmed by violent protests that resulted in several arrests and criminal charges being filed against 11 students and alumni.
“It became clear that a part of the problem was we have these massive bureaucracies that should ostensibly promote treating people well,” Sailer continued. “And it was in fact a lot of people most involved with the DEI complex who were supporting these kind of radically anti-Israel, radically anti-West, at times, rudely antisemitic demonstrations.”
The reelection of former president Donald Trump on Nov. 5 likely played no small role in this shift either.
“I think now every elected official is aware that there’s something of a popular mandate to reform higher education, and that mandate existed before Trump was elected in 2024, but there’s also a kind of popular rebuke of the progressive identity politics,” Sailer said. “I have to think that the conversation that the University of Michigan’s regents are having about DEI would be different if there had not been this nationwide rebuke of identity politics that the election of Trump seems to represent.”
Trump has promised many reforms to the education sector, including abolishing the Department of Education entirely. The president-elect has also vowed to bring peace to Israel and Gaza and said that such efforts would help curb the rise in antisemitism in the U.S.
While several other schools have begun to dismantle DEI offices across the country, some in response to state laws barring the departments and policies, the case at the University of Michigan is unique. Most efforts thus far have been led by Republican lawmakers, such as in Texas and Florida, but in the blue state of Michigan, the university’s highest governing body is comprised almost entirely of Democrats.
“The fact that University of Michigan is an institution controlled by elected Democrats, the fact that its Board of Regents would consider doing something like this, I think it signals a broader shift,” Sailer said. “It’s a huge deal for the University of Michigan to even have this kind of reform on the table. It’s a huge deal because the University of Michigan is the exemplar when it comes to DEI. If the University of Michigan makes this decision, that marks a big shift.”
This move by the university could signal others to follow suit.
“It could be just a massive step towards broader higher education reform,” Sailer told the DCNF.
UM and the Board of Regents did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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