In October the NY Times published a devastating report on DEI efforts at the University of Michigan. UM has spent $250 million on DEI efforts over the last decade, more than any other university in the country. It employs a small army of DEI specialists for this purpose which is where a bit more than half of the DEI spending went, i.e. to cover their salaries. And yet, the percentage of black students at UM hasn't changed much in that decade. And instead of creating a DEI utopia on campus, most students say the climate has become worse rather than better.

Michigan’s own data suggests that in striving to become more diverse and equitable, the school has also become less inclusive: In a survey released in late 2022, students and faculty members reported a less positive campus climate than at the program’s start and less of a sense of belonging. Students were less likely to interact with people of a different race or religion or with different politics — the exact kind of engagement D.E.I. programs, in theory, are meant to foster.

To no one's surprise, at least no one who knows anything about DEI, what all that money has generated are lots and lots of grievances.

Michigan’s D.E.I. efforts have created a powerful conceptual framework for student and faculty grievances — and formidable bureaucratic mechanisms to pursue them. Everyday campus complaints and academic disagreements, professors and students told me, were now cast as crises of inclusion and harm, each demanding some further administrative intervention or expansion. On a campus consumed with institutional self-criticism, seemingly the only thing to avoid a true reckoning was D.E.I. itself. “D.E.I. here is absolutely well intentioned, extremely thoughtful in its conception and design,” said Mark Bernstein, a lawyer and a Democrat who sits on the university’s Board of Regents. “But it’s so virtuous that it’s escaped accountability in a lot of ways.”...

In 2015, the university office charged with enforcing federal civil rights mandates like Title IX received about 200 complaints of sex- or gender-based misconduct on Michigan’s campus. By 2020, that number had more than doubled. Last year, it surpassed 500. Complaints involving race, religion or national origin increased to almost 400 from a few dozen during roughly the same period.

So it's fair to say DEI has had an impact on the campus, but a lot of that impact has been negative. That story appears to have prompted the school's board to think about making some changes including getting rid of mandatory diversity statements in hiring.

Regents overseeing the university said in interviews that they expected the board to seek limits on so-called diversity statements in hiring and promotion decisions. The board may also look to shift more of Michigan’s overall D.E.I. budget into recruitment programs and tuition guarantees for lower-income students.

The changes under consideration would make Michigan one of the first selective public universities to rethink D.E.I. from the inside, rather than under legislative pressure. Democrats have a 6-2 majority on the board, which is elected by state voters and generally operates by consensus. Michigan’s state constitution provides regents ultimate control over the university’s finances as well as general oversight of the school.

Word has gotten out that some DEI programs might be on the chopping block and now supporters of those programs are fighting back. Ironically, proponents of the mandatory diversity statements are claiming that ending their use would be tantamount to "thought suppression." This is truly an Orwellian take on the topic since the whole point of diversity statements is to judge candidates based not on ability but on ideological conformity. Anyone who doesn't agree with the DEI framework is having more than their thoughts suppressed, they are not eligible to get a job. At the moment, about 2/3 of all job openings at UM require a diversity statement.

Leading the pushback is the school's chief diversity officer, Tabbye Chavous. She is rallying other DEI officers to try to hold onto their jobs and the money given to their many programs.

The school’s chief diversity officer, Tabbye Chavous, attacked The Times’s reporting in a lengthy response posted on LinkedIn. She argued that it had mischaracterized aspects of the program she oversees, did not focus enough on what she considered its successes and failed to sufficiently discuss her own scholarly and professional credentials.

Her post was widely circulated by other D.E.I. administrators at the university, according to emails obtained by The Times. Last month, Dr. Chavous’s office began publishing posts on Instagram to debunk purported myths about D.E.I. on campus, such as “D.E.I. funding is just spent on staff and retreats.”

But at least one of the claims being made on behalf of Chavous is not true. Her supporters have tried to suggest that the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which she runs, is responsible for managing a program called "Go Blue Guarantee" which covers tuition for low income students. A petition of support making this claim has been signed by nearly 2,000 people. Only it's not true.

A university spokeswoman said that Go Blue, though a component of the school’s D.E.I. strategic plan, was in fact “situated within and managed by” Michigan’s financial aid office.

The DEI supporters are also touting an increase in the raw number of black students at the school even though enrollment as a whole has gone up and black enrollment still hovers at about 5% while Black Americans make up nearly 14% of Michigan's population.

The backlash to any form of accountability for DEI spending, like DEI itself, may be doing more harm than good. At least one of the Democratic regents has seen enough.

“It is astonishing that we are not approaching this with any degree of self-reflection or curiosity,” said Mr. Bernstein. “And it is yet another example of how this area of activity considers itself to be beyond scrutiny. The moment of reckoning is fast approaching.”

Let's hope the moment of reckoning comes soon. As the top comment points out, when you've spent this amount of money and have little to show for it, it's time to reconsider.

After reading the NYT’s exposé on DEI an UM, I have no idea how on operation that has gone so wrong and done so little at such great expense could possibly be allowed to continue. What they have there is systematized racism operated by a well trained and dedicated cadre of brainwashed drones. The rot extends through the whole organization. The entire academic structure of UM should be considered for restructuring.

A reader from Michigan:

I know my father in law stopped donating because of the DEI.  I’m sure people don’t like their money wasted   And it is finally hitting home

When the failure is this obvious, people need to be fired.

A quarter of a billion dollars spent for what return? A "less positive campus environment" than when the program began and unchanged enrollment percentages for minority students? If the program is not fulfilling its goals, then it should be cut down in size. I'm 100% positive that the university can find more effective ways to spend that huge pile of money than on DEI administrators and a bureaucracy that appears to exist solely to sustain itself.

This is a cult that has taken over a university.

Buzzwords and ideological orthodoxy are fun. They get people excited in the same way that most cults do. But that's all it is: a cult. And hopefully this is the beginning of the end for funding these completely useless gestures and focusing on how to *actually* help disadvantaged groups see better outcomes.

UM was the testing ground for DEI. They went all in for a long time with funds, staffing and whatever programs those staffers could dream up. The results have been a complete failure. If we had real academics who weren't ideologically captured by the left, they would draw the obvious conclusions from that failure and apply them broadly to campuses around the country. That they are not doing that tells you a lot about the state of our academic institutions.