The University of Michigan (UM) has spent around $250 million on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives since 2016, which have led to high tensions among students and faculty on campus, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
UM pledged an initial $85 million in 2016 to jumpstart its new DEI push and spent over $18 million in 2022-2023 on DEI-specific hires alone, according to the report from the NYT. Despite numerous efforts to increase DEI efforts, the university’s campus has spawned a “culture of grievance” through conflict from protests, civil rights complaints and alleged hate crimes.
The university launched “DEI 1.0” in 2016 as an attempt to increase diversity efforts on campus, creating multiple small units around the university, where a larger, more central diversity office would track each smaller unit’s implementation of DEI in coursework and budgeting, the NYT reported.
A second phase of the original DEI strategy called “DEI 2.0” expanded efforts following a 2022 survey that claimed students and faculty felt less of a sense of belonging than at the start of the initiatives due to flaws in its rollout, according to the NYT. “DEI 2.0” added extra training, “anti-racism dialogue” and special consultants for the individual DEI units on campus.
Even though the DEI efforts were meant to create a sense of belonging, a 2022 survey of the campuses’ climate found that students were less likely to interact with those of a different race, religion or political beliefs than before the push began, according to the NYT. Civil rights complaints on campus also skyrocketed from 200 in 2015 to over 500 in 2023.
The campus has also been home to a flurry of pro-Palestinian protests since the October 2023 attack by Hamas against Israel, including an incident where a large red “X” was painted on a Star of David on a boulder near campus, according to the NYT. A second Star of David with an equal sign and swastika was written on benches outside of the campus Hillel.
Some campus anti-Israel protesters also spoke out against the school’s DEI initiatives, including some student protesters holding up a sign that read “DEI 2.0 = Funding Genocide!” as a response to the university breaking up an encampment, the NYT reported.
Daicia Price, the DEI director at UM, was told that there was “a place in hell” for individuals who chose to remain neutral on the stance of the Israel-Hamas war after being pressured to give an opinion on the school’s behalf, according to the NYT.
Despite the university’s numerous efforts to expand DEI since 2016, the percentage of black student enrollment this fall has remained low, with only around 5% of students being black, according to the NYT.
The University of Michigan did not immediately provide a comment to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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