DEI at Michigan--NYT article

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Malcolm X was right, guilt ridden UMC white libs are the worst. Always "whitesplaining" to us black "folk" cause it makes them "feels" good to be the white knight. As a black person reading some of these posts it's really something to behold.

Do you think racism exists in the US today?

If so, do you think it should be addressed? How?

Probably not by sending a bunch of emails and surveys to disaffected students again and again the way Michigan does.

You’re minimizing the work they’ve done over the last decade, including better representation in faculty.

You mean they've mau-maued the faculty into regularly hiring less qualified candidates and made everyone sign terroristic "diversity statements". Yeah good job.

Do you know what terrorism means? It takes like 10 minutes for a faculty applicant to write how they’ve mentored a student of color before. It’s not an unreasonable demand.

Harvard and MIT thought it was an unreasonable demand, and ended the practice.

This is an incorrect read. They thought it was compelled speech.

An institution could force all of its faculty to walk for 5 minutes. That is not an unreasonable demand, but it is one that is unnecessary perhaps. Know what unreasonable means.

Reasonable compelled speech? Did you go to law school to come up with that distinction?

You’re genuinely obnoxious. If someone makes you write an essay,do you cry that it’s unreasonable. Grow tf up.

Deliberately misrepresenting this situation. It’s about forcing someone to take a preferred political position - aka compelled speech - within that essay.

But of course you understand that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

You read that article & your conclusion is that Heritage is wrong to be concerned about DEI initiatives at colleges? The message I took from this is that it is pretty interesting that the Heritage Foundation is the only entity to do a study on this topic. Why wouldn’t any of the proponents of these initiatives be excited about examining how valuable and productive they are?

Also, there are other studies showing that anti bias initiatives and training are counterproductive in the corporate world.

Heritage is also the entity that created project 2025. So it’s interesting that you find it interesting.

+1

It's nice that there are safe spaces on the internet for people like OP to air their grievances.

Doesn't mean I have to take them seriously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This will not end well for Michigan.

Ok? No one is forcing anyone to apply there. Pretty sure they're still receiving a sufficient number of applications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm X was right, guilt ridden UMC white libs are the worst. Always "whitesplaining" to us black "folk" cause it makes them "feels" good to be the white knight. As a black person reading some of these posts it's really something to behold.

Do you think racism exists in the US today?

If so, do you think it should be addressed? How?

Probably not by sending a bunch of emails and surveys to disaffected students again and again the way Michigan does.

You’re minimizing the work they’ve done over the last decade, including better representation in faculty.

You mean they've mau-maued the faculty into regularly hiring less qualified candidates and made everyone sign terroristic "diversity statements". Yeah good job.

“Interesting” that you automatically assume that means “less qualified”.

Guess we still need DEI.

+1 And bias training

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The money would probably be better spent on scholarships for disadvantaged, low income kids.

They have that for in-state kids.

https://goblueguarantee.umich.edu/ann-arbor/

Now compare the funding.

The clearest brochure I could find says $333M in undergrad aid in 2022-2023 (one year). Other literature is showing 90-100% of estimated financial need met under very middle class income levels.

I re-read the article. The $250M sum appears to be funding since 2016 when the DEI initiative being directly examined began.

So crudely, the DEI initiative since 2016 is in the same magnitude as one year of aid (low hundreds of $M). There are a lot of ways to deconstruct spending and all the details are not public, so I'll go with this as a comparison point. Elsewhere I saw that an older year (2019-20) of free college was $20M for just the "free" guarantee. So that would be $160M at that rate over 8 years. There were other sources of grants.

Found elsewhere: a proposed 570 space parking lot is $35M. For those who care about parking.

A new building for the B-school was $150M ish a decade or so back. Plus $135M renovation to other buildings in the complex.

I understand that many people implicitly oppose $250M in spend on DEI programs over 8 years. But the spend amount is not way out of line with other big ticket items and initiatives that the University is engaged in (and there are many of those). A services-providing organization that has revenues in the $10B range deals with large sums.

Rereading the article, I get the impression that the unexpected circumstances of the pandemic definitely complicate the assessment of success or failure. Particularly organizational culture and sentiment analysis.

It would be instructive to look at general societal surveys with similar time frames.

Or we could just declare the experiment a failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm X was right, guilt ridden UMC white libs are the worst. Always "whitesplaining" to us black "folk" cause it makes them "feels" good to be the white knight. As a black person reading some of these posts it's really something to behold.

Do you think racism exists in the US today?

If so, do you think it should be addressed? How?

Probably not by sending a bunch of emails and surveys to disaffected students again and again the way Michigan does.

You’re minimizing the work they’ve done over the last decade, including better representation in faculty.

You mean they've mau-maued the faculty into regularly hiring less qualified candidates and made everyone sign terroristic "diversity statements". Yeah good job.

“Interesting” that you automatically assume that means “less qualified”.

Guess we still need DEI.

Anytime they look into this it’s clear that faculty who are hired for diversity reasons are significantly less qualified by objective measures; publications, cites, research etc. Can you automatically assume that every candidate is less qualified? No, but odds are they were significantly less qualified.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The money would probably be better spent on scholarships for disadvantaged, low income kids.

They have that for in-state kids.

https://goblueguarantee.umich.edu/ann-arbor/

Now compare the funding.

The clearest brochure I could find says $333M in undergrad aid in 2022-2023 (one year). Other literature is showing 90-100% of estimated financial need met under very middle class income levels.

I re-read the article. The $250M sum appears to be funding since 2016 when the DEI initiative being directly examined began.

So crudely, the DEI initiative since 2016 is in the same magnitude as one year of aid (low hundreds of $M). There are a lot of ways to deconstruct spending and all the details are not public, so I'll go with this as a comparison point. Elsewhere I saw that an older year (2019-20) of free college was $20M for just the "free" guarantee. So that would be $160M at that rate over 8 years. There were other sources of grants.

Found elsewhere: a proposed 570 space parking lot is $35M. For those who care about parking.

A new building for the B-school was $150M ish a decade or so back. Plus $135M renovation to other buildings in the complex.

I understand that many people implicitly oppose $250M in spend on DEI programs over 8 years. But the spend amount is not way out of line with other big ticket items and initiatives that the University is engaged in (and there are many of those). A services-providing organization that has revenues in the $10B range deals with large sums.

Rereading the article, I get the impression that the unexpected circumstances of the pandemic definitely complicate the assessment of success or failure. Particularly organizational culture and sentiment analysis.

It would be instructive to look at general societal surveys with similar time frames.

Or we could just declare the experiment a failure.

But at the end of the other projects rhere was a new building, parking, renovations, etc. what did the $250m investment bring to the university? Van you identify any success?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm X was right, guilt ridden UMC white libs are the worst. Always "whitesplaining" to us black "folk" cause it makes them "feels" good to be the white knight. As a black person reading some of these posts it's really something to behold.

Do you think racism exists in the US today?

If so, do you think it should be addressed? How?

Probably not by sending a bunch of emails and surveys to disaffected students again and again the way Michigan does.

You’re minimizing the work they’ve done over the last decade, including better representation in faculty.

You mean they've mau-maued the faculty into regularly hiring less qualified candidates and made everyone sign terroristic "diversity statements". Yeah good job.

“Interesting” that you automatically assume that means “less qualified”.

Guess we still need DEI.

Anytime they look into this it’s clear that faculty who are hired for diversity reasons are significantly less qualified by objective measures; publications, cites, research etc. Can you automatically assume that every candidate is less qualified? No, but odds are they were significantly less qualified.

What if they are compelling teachers? What if the subjects they teach are of interest to student populations the University wants to attract?

My award-winning accounting prof had to go to another school because he didn't have enough publications. It was a loss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm X was right, guilt ridden UMC white libs are the worst. Always "whitesplaining" to us black "folk" cause it makes them "feels" good to be the white knight. As a black person reading some of these posts it's really something to behold.

Do you think racism exists in the US today?

If so, do you think it should be addressed? How?

Probably not by sending a bunch of emails and surveys to disaffected students again and again the way Michigan does.

You’re minimizing the work they’ve done over the last decade, including better representation in faculty.

You mean they've mau-maued the faculty into regularly hiring less qualified candidates and made everyone sign terroristic "diversity statements". Yeah good job.

Do you know what terrorism means? It takes like 10 minutes for a faculty applicant to write how they’ve mentored a student of color before. It’s not an unreasonable demand.

Harvard and MIT thought it was an unreasonable demand, and ended the practice.

This is an incorrect read. They thought it was compelled speech.

An institution could force all of its faculty to walk for 5 minutes. That is not an unreasonable demand, but it is one that is unnecessary perhaps. Know what unreasonable means.

Reasonable compelled speech? Did you go to law school to come up with that distinction?

You’re genuinely obnoxious. If someone makes you write an essay,do you cry that it’s unreasonable. Grow tf up.

Deliberately misrepresenting this situation. It’s about forcing someone to take a preferred political position - aka compelled speech - within that essay.

But of course you understand that.

+1

[Anonymous]

DEI creates resentment and increases racial conflict rather than lessoning it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay so takeaway is:

Michigan = bad
Don't let your kids apply to it.




Please

Right? As a Michigan parent, this is not going to matter. Michigan is still (like all the other top schools) going to be a huge prize. My kid is having the time of his life and getting a great education. People are always thrilled for him that he got in and is there. This article isn't changing anything.

He may be assumed to be a "DEI" grad by potential employers.

Yes, we lie awake nights concerned about our white, top grades, econ major kid being pigeon-holed in this manor.
But seriously, as others have posted, we have no regrets about part of the tuition money we've spent going to fund this experiment (if it even has - didn't see where the funds came from). Race relations in this country are fraught and complicated and Michigan is at least trying.

+1

I’ll take them doing something imperfectly over doing nothing.

Yeah - not at the cost and reach of these programs. “Trying” is not good enough for billions spent.

Meh. Many of the top schools were built and funded by the blood and sweat of black people.

They can spend a tiny fraction of their massive endowments to give it a go.

It’s not a tiny fraction. Did you read the article? There aren’t funds for things like parking because of these initiatives.

People can walk to the Arb with their legs.

America also wastes big money on parking.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking

We don’t need to waste money at all. That’s no argument.

And this is about the limited resources of U of Mich, not the US as a whole.

Ignore them. They are literally engaging in whataboutism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I srill just can't believe "Dei" stopped meaning "God." After a thousand years of Latin Mass it has been erased by the internet

So many layers of stupid here.

I know right. DEI is still GOD to many.

[Anonymous]

Didn't Earn It for sure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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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.

Well the DEI employees are probably benefitting.

The DEI employees are admin on welfare who send out a few emails a week.

There are over 500 full and part-time DEI employees.
More than 10% of them earn more than $100K/year.
The chief diversity officer makes over 400K

That seems like a beneficial to at least some of the DEI emplopyees

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Admin outnumbers faculty "The Ann Arbor campus grew to have nearly 16,000 nonfaculty employees, more than twice the number of full-time faculty members."

Administrative bloat is a problem.