Top Midwestern university becomes latest college to roll back DEI initiatives as trend goes national
The University of Michigan became the latest institution to drop DEI requirements, citing risks to free speech and intellectual diversity on campus.
The University of Michigan is the latest public university to dismantle its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) as part of its faculty requirements, making it one of several universities this year to roll back DEI initiatives.
"The University of Michigan will no longer solicit diversity statements as part of faculty hiring, promotion and tenure," the school said in a news release Thursday.
University of Michigan Provost Laurie McCauley announced the decision to stop using the diversity statements following an Oct. 31 recommendation from a faculty working group, the university said. The group reportedly criticized the statements "for their potential to limit freedom of expression and diversity of thought on campus."
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"As we pursue this challenging and complex work, we will continuously refine our approach," McCauley said.
The university chose not to implement two other recommendations from the working group: integrating DEI content into teaching, research and service statements, and enhancing training on how to write and assess them.
Several other public universities this year have also rolled back their DEI initiatives and requirements.
Following Senate Bill 17 being signed into law this year, Texas public universities eliminated DEI offices, DEI-related positions and mandatory DEI training. This included layoffs and restructuring at institutions like the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M.
The University of North Carolina system redirected millions from DEI initiatives to public safety and discontinued DEI programs on campuses in May. The state also prohibited mandatory diversity statements for job applications in academia.
Iowa's three public universities — the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa — began eliminating DEI offices and reallocating funds after a state law was passed earlier this year.
Last year, Florida's restrictions on DEI in public universities were part of a broader set of education reforms implemented under Gov. Ron DeSantis, following the passage of legislation targeting DEI programs.
Universities aren't the only institutions rolling back DEI initiatives, and during his campaign, President-elect Trump vowed to eliminate DEI programs in federal agencies. In 2020, then-President Trump issued an executive order to ban "divisive" training for federal contractors. And the House Oversight Committee held a hearing last month about dismantling DEI policies.
"It is a multibillion-dollar industry that pushes a left-wing, far-left ideological orthodoxy in essentially every area of American life, which is why I've begun to call it the ‘DEI enterprise,’ instead of just DEI, so that people have a sense of what I'm talking about," Devon Westhill, a constitutional and civil rights attorney, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
Over the last four years, the Biden-Harris administration has encouraged DEI initiatives across several sectors of the federal government. In 2021, President Biden widened an executive order directing agencies to assess and "remove barriers" to equal opportunity through DEI policies. Another executive order signed that year was a government-wide initiative to embed DEI principles in federal hiring.
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