The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, whose efforts to promote diversity have long been considered among the nation’s most ambitious, is closing its Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as well as its Office for Health Equity and Inclusion, university leaders announced Thursday.
For months, university regents have talked about scaling back the university’s DEI efforts, after some faculty, staff, and alumni complained that the program was discriminatory, divisive, and ineffective, and not worth the nearly $250 million that has been spent on it since 2016.
But the scope of Thursday’s cuts still came as a shock to many. Nationally, colleges have been shuttering DEI offices and abandoning diversity efforts to escape the ire of President Trump and in response to state lawmakers who’ve passed dozens of laws banning such programs and policies.
The changes happening at Michigan’s flagship are all the more striking given that there has been no state legislation requiring universities to scale back or cut their diversity efforts. In fact, this month, the Democrat-controlled Michigan Senate approved a resolution supporting policies that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Trump has issued several executive orders banning DEI and promised to investigate and revoke federal funding from colleges that discriminate against white, Asian, and Jewish students through so-called DEI programs.
Those orders added urgency to efforts that were already underway, UM officials said, to revise the university’s diversity efforts.
According to the plans announced Thursday by Michigan’s president, Santa J. Ono, and other top administrators, “student-facing” services will shift to other offices focused on student access and opportunity. The university’s DEI 2.0 strategic plan, the umbrella strategy for schools, colleges, and units, will be discontinued.
Faculty, staff, and administrators who had served as DEI leads across the sprawling campus will no longer be doing diversity work, Thursday’s email said. Diversity statements, which were halted for faculty hiring, will be ended campuswide.
“We remain committed to fostering an environment that values and supports every member of our community and honors diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences,” the administration’s announcement said.
That includes expanding financial aid and mental-health services. The university said it remains committed to spaces like the Trotter Multicultural Center and will continue to support cultural and ethnic events that enrich the campus.
The decisions to cut the DEI offices, the statement said, “have not been made lightly. We recognize the changes are significant and will be challenging for many of us, especially those whose lives and careers have been enriched by and dedicated to programs that are now pivoting.”
It’s not clear how many people will be laid off, but Rebekah Modrak, chair of the Faculty Senate, said she believed that those involved in the evaluation and assessment of DEI efforts are among those being cut. In a letter to colleagues Thursday, she wrote that an emergency meeting for faculty, students, and staff wanting to combat the cuts will be held Friday afternoon.
“The federal government is determined to dismantle and control higher education and to make our institutions more uniform, more inequitable, and more exclusive,” Modrak wrote. “They are using the power of the government to engineer a sweeping culture change towards white supremacy. Unfortunately, University of Michigan leaders seem determined to comply and to collaborate in our own destruction.”
Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, said in an interview Thursday, that “this is another example of universities running scared given the environment we have been living under for the last two and a half years with the dismantling efforts at the state level and now at the federal level. For one of the leading institutions in the country to back away from its commitment to advancing diversity in the comprehensive and successful ways the University of Michigan has done is reprehensible.”
Robert M. Sellers, a Michigan faculty member who was the university’s first chief diversity officer, and is married to the current chief diversity officer, Tabbye Chavous, said that cutting the people who evaluate whether the diversity efforts are effective and compliant with state and federal laws will put the university at greater risk. Chavous said her role has not been cut, but it’s unclear whether her title or the scope of responsibilities will change. She said she’s aware of seven people so far in her office who have received notices that they’re being laid off, and believes at least five people in the medical school and other areas are, as well.
“I am feeling a great deal of regret and disappointment and embarrassment for my university and my university’s leadership that they made a cowardly move not based at all in terms of the successes that have been achieved under the office’s DEI work,” Sellers, who has been at the university for 33 years as a student, faculty member, and administrator, said in an interview Thursday. “It’s clearly regarded as being among the best in the country and has data to back it up.”
The university did not make Ono, its president, available for comment.
The administrators who made the decision to cut the diversity office “did not listen to and explicitly excluded in conversations and committees anyone who had expertise in DEI,” claiming they couldn’t be objective, Sellers said.
“No one ever looked at a university budget and assumed accountants weren’t objective,” he said, “or looked at a health-related committee and said doctors and nurses were not objective and we need to get someone who doesn’t know anything about medicine to evaluate our efforts.”
Since the university’s DEI program began in 2016, it’s made important progress in supporting the success of all students, the university’s statement acknowledged. First-generation undergraduate students have increased by 46 percent and undergraduate Pell Grant recipients by more than 32 percent, “driven in part by impactful programs such as Go Blue Guarantee and Wolverine Pathways.” Those programs, aimed at expanding socioeconomic diversity, remain popular even among regents who support cutting other efforts.
In a post on X, Sarah Hubbard, a Republican regent, said the savings will allow the university to expand financial supports for all students. “Ending DEI programs will also allow us to better expand diversity of thought and free speech on our campus,” she wrote. “The end of litmus-test hiring and curtailment of speech stops now.”
Jordan Acker, a Democrat on the board who has complained that DEI promotes division and antisemitism, also supported the cuts, saying “the focus of our diversity efforts needs to be meaningful change, not bureaucracy.”
Last week, the university’s alumni association announced that it has ended its Lead Scholars Program, aimed at enhancing campus diversity, to comply with new federal laws and guidance.
