DEI Is a Waste and Distraction at the University of Michigan  

Despite the University of Michigan football team’s recent success, the football team isn’t as newsworthy as the institution’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The university has 241 employees in DEI-related positions and has spent over $250 million on DEI since 2016, making it the largest DEI bureaucracy in higher education. The costs of such an operation have been high, but the benefits have been unclear. Luckily, university administrations are now rethinking their prior decisions that have allowed for the growth of the DEI bureaucracy.

Michigan students like me periodically receive an email from Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer Tabbye M. Chavous regarding DEI on campus. The university is currently pursuing a “strategic plan [that] represents the University of Michigan’s continued commitment to ensuring a diverse, equitable and inclusive community with even more sharply defined goals, new innovations and investments, and enhanced measures of accountability.” Email updates sent to the study body about the initiative are largely ignored. After all, we already have piles of homework to do, club activities to attend, and football games to watch. No student has time to follow the progress of DEI on campus, which results in massive student apathy towards the issue. Many students don’t realize how many university resources are wasted on such an ethically questionable ideology.

KB

About the Author

Kyle Brown

Kyle Brown is chairman of Young Americans for Freedom at the University of Michigan.

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Despite the University of Michigan football team’s recent success, the football team isn’t as newsworthy as the institution’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The university has 241 employees in DEI-related positions and has spent over $250 million on DEI since 2016, making it the largest DEI bureaucracy in higher education. The costs of such an operation have been high, but the benefits have been unclear. Luckily, university administrations are now rethinking their prior decisions that have allowed for the growth of the DEI bureaucracy.

Michigan students like me periodically receive an email from Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer Tabbye M. Chavous regarding DEI on campus. The university is currently pursuing a “strategic plan [that] represents the University of Michigan’s continued commitment to ensuring a diverse, equitable and inclusive community with even more sharply defined goals, new innovations and investments, and enhanced measures of accountability.” Email updates sent to the study body about the initiative are largely ignored. After all, we already have piles of homework to do, club activities to attend, and football games to watch. No student has time to follow the progress of DEI on campus, which results in massive student apathy towards the issue. Many students don’t realize how many university resources are wasted on such an ethically questionable ideology.