DEI at Michigan--NYT article

[Anonymous]

Wow. This is a must-read.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/magazine/dei-university-michigan.html?ogrp=ctr&unlocked_article_code=1.Sk4.khuL.zeH0cPySU9KZ&smid=url-share

[Anonymous]

Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. $250 million on DEI bullcrap. Imagine how many scholarships that money could have paid for, how many professors' salaries or research initiatives. What a waste.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. $250 million on DEI bullcrap. Imagine how many scholarships that money could have paid for, how many professors' salaries or research initiatives. What a waste.

So wasteful. They will realize soon enough, though. They have a massive problem on their hands. It comes in the form of their students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. $250 million on DEI bullcrap. Imagine how many scholarships that money could have paid for, how many professors' salaries or research initiatives. What a waste.

So wasteful. They will realize soon enough, though. They have a massive problem on their hands. It comes in the form of their students.

OP here.

The craziest part of the article is that NO ONE seems to benefit from Michigan's DEI initiative.

Black students feel that they haven't benefitted.

Professors are living in fear.

Vast amounts of money spent, and it's had absolutely no measurable benefit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. $250 million on DEI bullcrap. Imagine how many scholarships that money could have paid for, how many professors' salaries or research initiatives. What a waste.

So wasteful. They will realize soon enough, though. They have a massive problem on their hands. It comes in the form of their students.

OP here.

The craziest part of the article is that NO ONE seems to benefit from Michigan's DEI initiative.

Black students feel that they haven't benefitted.

Professors are living in fear.

Vast amounts of money spent, and it's had absolutely no measurable benefit.

The programs are a bureaucracy that exists for its own benefit

[Anonymous]

The article lost me at this point:
"A 2021 report from the conservative Heritage Foundation examining the growth of D.E.I. programs across higher education — the only such study that currently exists — found Michigan to have by far the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any large public university. Tens of thousands of undergraduates have completed bias training. Thousands of instructors have been trained in inclusive teaching."

Why is the heritage foundation so obsessed with DEI? To them it may seem like a heavy-handed correction what U Mich is doing, but they took a calculated risk that this was going to be necessary to be a competitive university to attract younger generation of applicants so they invested accordingly.

[Anonymous]

I can’t help but think they would have been better off spending the vast majority of that money on high quality pre-k programs in neighborhoods with high rates of at risk and low income kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The article lost me at this point:
"A 2021 report from the conservative Heritage Foundation examining the growth of D.E.I. programs across higher education — the only such study that currently exists — found Michigan to have by far the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any large public university. Tens of thousands of undergraduates have completed bias training. Thousands of instructors have been trained in inclusive teaching."

Why is the heritage foundation so obsessed with DEI? To them it may seem like a heavy-handed correction what U Mich is doing, but they took a calculated risk that this was going to be necessary to be a competitive university to attract younger generation of applicants so they invested accordingly.

Because you can't espouse anything relating to conservatism without being afraid of DEI programs costing you your job.

[Anonymous]

Funny how parents are terrified of DEI but the students probably aren’t nearly as triggered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The article lost me at this point:
"A 2021 report from the conservative Heritage Foundation examining the growth of D.E.I. programs across higher education — the only such study that currently exists — found Michigan to have by far the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any large public university. Tens of thousands of undergraduates have completed bias training. Thousands of instructors have been trained in inclusive teaching."

Why is the heritage foundation so obsessed with DEI? To them it may seem like a heavy-handed correction what U Mich is doing, but they took a calculated risk that this was going to be necessary to be a competitive university to attract younger generation of applicants so they invested accordingly.

Not sure if that's rhetorical or if my answer is too cynical for you, but one reason they are going after it is that they realize that its a particular progressive position that is vulnerable because many, even left leaning, feel its gone too far. So they are attacking where they feel they can fracture the opposition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Funny how parents are terrified of DEI but the students probably aren’t nearly as triggered.

Did you read the article?

[Anonymous]

This will not end well for Michigan.

[Anonymous]

It’s sad because it seems like the effect of it has been to promote blame and division. Done properly, it’s about promoting understanding and growth. The professor asking for students to let him know if he was accidentally offending them was showing his willingness to grow and learn — the student who filed a complaint was unreasonable. I do wonder, though. if they overstate the problem by focusing on the most extreme crazies. Like if you polled that professors class, would 99 students say “gee, I really appreciated him saying that…”?
It’s hard to say. Part of the problem here is that over the past 10 years, the country has become much more divided and tribalist (in part due to people like Trump and Russian troll farms who foment these divisions very explicitly). So it’s hard to conclude that this is the result of the UM DEI program, unless we know whether polls of students nationwide would show the same increased sense of embattlement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The article lost me at this point:
"A 2021 report from the conservative Heritage Foundation examining the growth of D.E.I. programs across higher education — the only such study that currently exists — found Michigan to have by far the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any large public university. Tens of thousands of undergraduates have completed bias training. Thousands of instructors have been trained in inclusive teaching."

Why is the heritage foundation so obsessed with DEI? To them it may seem like a heavy-handed correction what U Mich is doing, but they took a calculated risk that this was going to be necessary to be a competitive university to attract younger generation of applicants so they invested accordingly.

Because you can't espouse anything relating to conservatism without being afraid of DEI programs costing you your job.

Heritage is no longer "conservative" as Reagan or McCain would have understood the term.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The article lost me at this point:
"A 2021 report from the conservative Heritage Foundation examining the growth of D.E.I. programs across higher education — the only such study that currently exists — found Michigan to have by far the largest D.E.I. bureaucracy of any large public university. Tens of thousands of undergraduates have completed bias training. Thousands of instructors have been trained in inclusive teaching."

Why is the heritage foundation so obsessed with DEI? To them it may seem like a heavy-handed correction what U Mich is doing, but they took a calculated risk that this was going to be necessary to be a competitive university to attract younger generation of applicants so they invested accordingly.

Not sure if that's rhetorical or if my answer is too cynical for you, but one reason they are going after it is that they realize that its a particular progressive position that is vulnerable because many, even left leaning, feel its gone too far. So they are attacking where they feel they can fracture the opposition.

+1