On Thursday, the University of Michigan announced that it will “no longer solicit diversity statements as part of faculty hiring, promotion and tenure.”
Indeed, the writing is on the wall. Donald Trump has suggested including "reforming the accreditation system" and “taxing, fining, and suing” universities that rely on DEI for faculty hiring, according to National Review. University of Michigan, a school that was in the vanguard of institutions that wholeheartedly embraced DEI principles—spending lavishly on DEI offices, filling them with DEI radicals—has withdrawn its support for DEI statements in hiring faculty.
The Board of Regents is also considering other DEI changes that make the Board's announcement about DEI statements in hiring and promoting faculty a "watershed moment," according to a New York Sun editorial.
DEI programs did not make campuses more diverse and only bred fear and resentment among students of different races and ethnicities.
The immense effort by the Ann Arbor school to foster a so-called diverse and inclusive environment was documented in a Times exposé. It found that the school, since 2016, spent about a quarter of a billion dollars to “to enact far-reaching foundational change at every level, in every unit.” It cites a 2021 Heritage Foundation report which reported that Michigan, at the time, boasted the largest DEI bureaucracy of any public university — “by far.”
The Times also concluded that the DEI policy overhaul was, to put it lightly, a failure. Black students at Michigan expressed their dissatisfaction with the new program, calling it a “well-meaning failure.” It did little to advance the enrollment of black students, which hovered stubbornly at four percent. Scores of students said that they became less likely to interact with people of different backgrounds or race as the program was rolled out.
We all know that the left hates to retreat. They are going to fight tooth and nail to maintain DEI programs for exactly the reason that the right criticizes the programs: they stifle free speech and freedom of thought on campus, giving the left ideological supremacy by default.
Requiring a DEI-themed statement for hiring, promotion, tenure, or admission is nothing short of compelled progressive speech that can be weaponized against those who are deemed insufficiently left-leaning. Hopefully, the lack of such forced ideological declarations will allow a greater range of opinions to flourish on campus. But though we’re glad to see the University of Michigan pursue the right policy, there’s plenty more work to be done.
DEI is the cornerstone of woke ideology. The University of Michigan recognized this when they attempted to defend and redefine the term "woke" to justify keeping most DEI programs.
“MYTH: ‘Being woke limits free speech,’” the DEI office wrote in an Instagram post last Friday.
"FACT: ‘Woke’ means being aware and attentive, not limiting speech. DEl at U-M values open dialogue and understanding, creating spaces where diverse perspectives are shared and discussed freely during events and programs."
The comments to that Instagram post were revealing, to say the least. “Then why is the woke side of things pushing censorship so hard? Why are woke activists trained to shut down speech they don’t like?" one commenter asked.
Retired Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield, for example, wrote a 2023 op-ed in The Harvard Crimson to graduating students in which he stated: “Is anything lost by being woke? Yes, let me suggest there is. Instead of arguing the point, one begins to search for character defects and pounce when they are found. You blind yourself by taking offense because in doing so you are led to simplify the justice you think is so unquestionable. Instead of thinking about what justice might require, you try to shame opposition out of existence.”
Things aren't going to change overnight. The left spent a generation rewiring the brains of many young people and pulling that wiring out was only part of the solution.
Can students be taught to think freely? That remains to be seen.
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