National Champions’ University is a Big DEI Loser

By: Chris Johnson

Michigan is celebrating the Michigan Wolverines’ big win of the national championship for the first time in almost 30 years against Washington State.

But that’s not the only news coming out of UM this week, and the other piece isn’t so positive.

A few years ago, in July of 2021, the Heritage Foundation released a report on nationwide state universities’ adoption of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology, specifically their hiring practices.

The three “Key Takeaways” from their report were: (1) “Promoting DEI has become a primary function of higher education, with DEI staff making up an average 3.4 positions for every 100 tenured faculty.” (2) “But data show that colleges’ vast DEI bureaucracy has little relationship to students’ satisfaction with their college or their personal experiences with diversity.” And (3) “State lawmakers should examine DEI efforts more closely to ensure public university resources are used effectively and appropriately.”

So, state universities are hiring a disproportionate amount of DEI personnel in relation to actual faculty, but, when comparing the satisfaction of the student bodies of institutions with a high emphasis on DEI to the status of the student bodies of institutions that do not emphasize DEI, there is little to no difference. So, is that something state government really wants to waste their money on?

When that report came out in 2021, the University of Michigan was the worst of examples with 163 DEI personnel. The University of Virginia followed with 94 personnel, while the average was 45. UM had nearly four times the national average of staff devoted to this Marxist agenda.

That was two and a half years ago. This past Monday, a UM Professor Emeritus Mark Perry PhD., released his own report on the University of Michigan’s focus on Diversity. According to Dr. Perry, UM now employs “241 paid staff members whose main duties are to provide DEI programming and services as either their exclusive or primary job responsibility. In addition, 76 faculty or staff members work part-time as “DEI Unit Leads” advancing diversity efforts in one of UM’s 51 schools, colleges, and units…” Perry is convinced that his university is still at the top of the DEI charts: “We know of no other school that comes close to UM’s DEI headcount and therefore we are confident that UM has the notoriety as the No. 1 Diversity University in the country with no close competitors for that distinction.” And all of that does not include unpaid personnel, which brings “the total number UM employees who advance DEI on either a paid or unpaid basis to well more than 500 and possibly as high as 600.”

All of that adds up to a whopping $30.7 million payroll for their diversity staff, with an average salary of $96,443, while UM’s Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion & Chief Diversity Officer, Tabbye Chavous Sellers receives $402,800. I would just like to point out the inequality between the average salary and the chief diversity officer’s…

While UM is paying over $30 million a year for staff to push this divisive and hateful ideology, the state of Michigan provides the university with just over $350 million a year, making their investment into DEI about 9% of the funding they receive from Michigan tax payers.

Meanwhile, Michigan’s Democrat governor Gretchen Whitmer is pushing more college attendance and expanding the governor’s office’s influence in education at all levels. Last month, she launched a new department in the executive branch, the “Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential,” which has as one of its primary goals an increase in college attendance.

That sounds good, right? Until we recall what Heritage concluded about universities these days, “Promoting DEI has become a primary function of higher education.” Is it any wonder that a radical liberal governor would launch a department with a primary function of increasing the amount of citizens receiving “higher education,” whose primary function in turn is pushing DEI?

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, sounds like an official way of saying “be nice,” but this is the ideology behind the “George Floyd riots” which led to violence and destruction of innocent people’s property and businesses. DEI has made qualified candidates for jobs be unhireable and ended careers, because someone had the wrong skin color or the wrong opinion on LGBTQ issues. DEI is a hateful, divisive ideology which is being taught at our institutions of “higher learning,” incentivized by our governments, and enforced by professionals and bureaucrats.

The University of Michigan is just one, if perhaps the worst, example. Universities are the factories for this kind of hatred of tradition and normalcy. It’s time we stop sending our kids to be their raw materials when we know the product is a loss of unity and a loss of freedom.

 

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