DEI is front and center at the University of Michigan as the institution announced two changes to its initiatives on Thursday. The university announced it was no longer asking for diversity, equity, and inclusion statements from prospective faculty. It’s also expanding a scholarship program intended to help in-state students afford college tuition.
The Go Blue Guarantee has updated its eligibility criteria based on applicants’ income and assets, from $75,000 a year to $125,000 a year. At Thursday’s regents meeting, President Santa Ono said the change was part of the university’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.
“We're so looking forward to the opportunities it will provide to students and families from all across the state. Outstanding individuals who will find a University of Michigan education is within their grasp,” he said. The change will make an additional 2,200 current in-state students eligible for the program. That would expand the total number of students who have benefited from the program to 10,000, Ono said.
The changes apply to all three U of M campuses and will take effect next fall.
Regent Sarah Hubbard, who has criticized diversity statements in the past, said the expanded scholarship program, institutional neutrality policy and the updated policy on diversity statements encourage diversity of thought.
“[This] means we're open for business, for people from all walks of life,” she said at the meeting. Hubbard’s comments echo other faculty’s criticism of the university’s 10-year DEI plan. That plan used to allow departments to solicit statements from prospective faculty about how they would contribute to the university’s DEI goals.
But Provost Laurie McCauley announced on Thursday that they were no longer allowed to. The decision is based on recommendations from a faculty committee that researched the efficacy of DEI statements, according to university statements.
But some faculty at the University of Michigan are disputing the university’s official explanation.
The report does say the committee recommends dropping the statements as part of the hiring process. But that recommendation came with two others, said Germine Awad, professor of psychology.
“All of those recommendations were meant to be implemented in concert with one another,” she said. “So it was meant to be holistic and all conducted together, not just to implement the first one.”
Awad is on the faculty committee that looked into how departments at the university use diversity statements in their hiring, promotion and tenure processes. The other two recommendations said the university should incorporate DEI statements in teaching and research instead, while providing support for faculty to write clearer statements.
“That's a little bit beefier and substantive, compared to people saying, ‘I really value diversity and inclusion,’ where [it] doesn't really give any examples of how that's done,” Awad said.
The committee surveyed over 2,000 faculty members. A slim majority said that DEI statements don’t cultivate diversity, they just put pressure on faculty to express certain opinions. That’s why the committee recommended a different approach, according to the report.
In an earlier report released this summer, the committee recommended leaving the question up to individual departments within the university. That report is summarized in the October 31 report. The regents rejected that recommendation, she said.
The committee requested more time to consider their recommendations, the university’s statement and a spokesperson said.
Several members of the U-M community spoke at the regents meeting on Thursday about their concerns that the university’s DEI plan could be scaled back. DEI initiatives are not in danger of being defunded, the regents said at the meeting.
Awad feels the university has not followed the committee’s recommendations by only implementing one of the three parts of their report. The decision is disappointing, she said.
“I think it was really just part of a broader attack on DEI,” she said. “And this is just one mechanism to do that.”
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