Editors at National Review Online offer a positive assessment of recent developments at the University of Michigan. (Editor’s note: This Columbus, Ohio, native takes no pleasure in highlighting anything positive about that school in Ann Arbor.)
“Those are my principles,” Groucho Marx once said, “and if you don’t like them . . . well, I have others.”
The University of Michigan announced last year — presumably in anticipation of an antagonistic Trump administration — that it would “no longer solicit diversity statements as part of faculty hiring, promotion and tenure.” But even when removing that policy, the university firmly reiterated the value and necessity of DEI: “Diversity, equity and inclusion are three of our core values at the university,” the provost said, adding that “our collective efforts in this area have produced important strides in opening opportunities for all people.”
Well, it now apparently has other “core values.”
Last week, the University of Michigan announced that it will abandon a wide range of its DEI units and programs. Two offices dedicated to DEI will close, the current DEI strategic plan will be discontinued, and diversity statements will not be considered in any arm of the institution. Additionally, the university’s legal team will conduct a review to ensure that policies, programs, and practices comply with the law. The university, these days singing a very different tune, concludes the statement on an optimistic note: “We stand steadfast in our dedication to academic freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and to lifting the distinct, ineffable potential of every individual in our community.”
This is cause for celebration. While many higher education institutions had DEI bureaucracies, the University of Michigan had a totalizing DEI regime that sought to “enact far-reaching foundational change at every level, in every unit.” As the New York Times previously reported, professors were trained in “antiracist pedagogy” and given handouts on “Identifying and Addressing Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture,” while most students were required to take a class addressing “racial and ethnic intolerance and resulting inequality.”
