DEI at Michigan--NYT article

[Anonymous]

A PP also wrote and linked to the only HBCU school in MI.

I was going to discuss that originally but thought better of it. It is a former business college that closed in 2015. It was reopened recently by a businessperson with a unique idea for a small program.

It currently serves a few hundred students as a recapitalized school focusing on product design. In particular sneakers. It's a valid but tiny program that's trying to help kids get jobs as creatives. It's unlikely it could scale. As far as I can tell it won't be able to grant more than associates degrees and it's not clear if it's granted any yet. So it still may be mainly a jobs training program on the way to community college type status.

If these antis can't bear for U of M to spend millions at a giant school with billions in annual budget, it's ludicrous to suggest repurposing such millions for a specialized design program for hundreds. Fox would love to cover that story.

Other than that tiny, specialized, and young program, there are no HBCUs in Michigan.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Why are some people here taking the "rebuttal" (a blog post by a subject who comes off badly in the article) at face value as the Gospel truth? The Times article was extensively edited and fact checked. If we're assigning weights to things, it's probably more reliable.

Did you read it?

NYT did not properly fact check.

What are some wires it made besides cutting Heritage?

*What are some errors it made besides citing Heritage?

So you didn’t read the rebuttal? Start there.

You mean the rebuttal from the DEI exec herself? Telling us all what a wonderful job she did? No conflict of interest there. How about an unbiased rebuttal?

Did you read it? She presents facts.

Carefully selected facts. She is not going to evaluate herself honestly. Come on. If an outsider would like to speak up for her I would be much more interested but this is all CYA.

Do you think it was ok for the NYT to omit the facts she presented?

Do you realized that this is how it works? Facts are omitted on both sides to present the narrative you want to tell.

Right. And she called out the facts that were blatantly omitted. Do you think they should have been included? Or maybe are you good with the narrative that the NYT was crafting.

Sorry that you thought a rebuttal by DEI exec defending herself was some sort of mic drop moment.

One of the more salient points was that the DEI funding covered scholarship money for low-income students of all races. That alone has to account for a substantial fraction of the $250M in spending. I swagged it at about $160M based on one annual funding estimate I found for one year x 8 years.

My kid attends Michigan and I live about an hour away. I am seeing the DEI office's sponsorship listed on presentations that are of interest to me. Most recently one about how the U.S. Census's definition of the Middle East has evolved over time. The kind of topics that are worthy of academic consideration.

In the recent 2024 general election, Ann Arbor's county went 70% Harris, 70% female (winning) Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin, and 70% female (winning) Congressional Rep Debbie Dingell. (Although Trump support increased vs. prior elections.) Suffice it to say that within Ann Arbor there is a constituency for what the DEI initiatives address.

I personally think the University has directed their managers to lay low. First not to fight fire with fire in a tense time that was before the election. And second because reasons and facts are not very important to DEI opponents anyway. As you can see if you look at fact-checker reporting - if you don't believe that, re-fact-check it for yourself...quite possible with the whole internet at your disposal. Trump is a falsehood machine and his allies follow suit. It's unbelievable to me as someone that grew up Republican.

Right now, in my opinion, the biggest DEI type issues on campus relate to the Israel-Gaza situation. What's going on with a more secondary administrative effort like a DEI 2.0 initiative is a sidebar to making sure there are not violence outbreaks on campus. This is truly a local issue due to the large Detroit metro Middle Eastern & Muslim community as well as the size of the U of M's Jewish community.

Trump's 2016 victory led to several clear nationally-publicized hate speech incidents in my kids' Michigan school district. That's what kicked off our local DEI initiatives. It's taken a long time for those to become productive (that's the truth). But they aren't very expensive and I'm seeing some positive signs. And certainly majority people are thinking harder and more carefully about how they treat people and what lesson plans actually contain.

So, I'm fine with how Michigan DEI 2.0 is going. As a market researcher, I believe the background social conditions have been worsening and that is outside the University's control. Those of you who are anti-DEI don't have any skin in this game and are not bringing anything besides reiterating what you (maybe) read in one article. And some vague complaints about being a US taxpayer. I know I can't convince you but your arguments are unimpressive and you don't seem to have any local connections.

So, it's your position that the NYT is one of Trump's "allies?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are some people here taking the "rebuttal" (a blog post by a subject who comes off badly in the article) at face value as the Gospel truth? The Times article was extensively edited and fact checked. If we're assigning weights to things, it's probably more reliable.

Did you read it?

NYT did not properly fact check.

What are some wires it made besides cutting Heritage?

*What are some errors it made besides citing Heritage?

So you didn’t read the rebuttal? Start there.

You mean the rebuttal from the DEI exec herself? Telling us all what a wonderful job she did? No conflict of interest there. How about an unbiased rebuttal?

Did you read it? She presents facts.

Carefully selected facts. She is not going to evaluate herself honestly. Come on. If an outsider would like to speak up for her I would be much more interested but this is all CYA.

Do you think it was ok for the NYT to omit the facts she presented?

Do you realized that this is how it works? Facts are omitted on both sides to present the narrative you want to tell.

Right. And she called out the facts that were blatantly omitted. Do you think they should have been included? Or maybe are you good with the narrative that the NYT was crafting.

Sorry that you thought a rebuttal by DEI exec defending herself was some sort of mic drop moment.

One of the more salient points was that the DEI funding covered scholarship money for low-income students of all races. That alone has to account for a substantial fraction of the $250M in spending. I swagged it at about $160M based on one annual funding estimate I found for one year x 8 years.

My kid attends Michigan and I live about an hour away. I am seeing the DEI office's sponsorship listed on presentations that are of interest to me. Most recently one about how the U.S. Census's definition of the Middle East has evolved over time. The kind of topics that are worthy of academic consideration.

In the recent 2024 general election, Ann Arbor's county went 70% Harris, 70% female (winning) Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin, and 70% female (winning) Congressional Rep Debbie Dingell. (Although Trump support increased vs. prior elections.) Suffice it to say that within Ann Arbor there is a constituency for what the DEI initiatives address.

I personally think the University has directed their managers to lay low. First not to fight fire with fire in a tense time that was before the election. And second because reasons and facts are not very important to DEI opponents anyway. As you can see if you look at fact-checker reporting - if you don't believe that, re-fact-check it for yourself...quite possible with the whole internet at your disposal. Trump is a falsehood machine and his allies follow suit. It's unbelievable to me as someone that grew up Republican.

Right now, in my opinion, the biggest DEI type issues on campus relate to the Israel-Gaza situation. What's going on with a more secondary administrative effort like a DEI 2.0 initiative is a sidebar to making sure there are not violence outbreaks on campus. This is truly a local issue due to the large Detroit metro Middle Eastern & Muslim community as well as the size of the U of M's Jewish community.

Trump's 2016 victory led to several clear nationally-publicized hate speech incidents in my kids' Michigan school district. That's what kicked off our local DEI initiatives. It's taken a long time for those to become productive (that's the truth). But they aren't very expensive and I'm seeing some positive signs. And certainly majority people are thinking harder and more carefully about how they treat people and what lesson plans actually contain.

So, I'm fine with how Michigan DEI 2.0 is going. As a market researcher, I believe the background social conditions have been worsening and that is outside the University's control. Those of you who are anti-DEI don't have any skin in this game and are not bringing anything besides reiterating what you (maybe) read in one article. And some vague complaints about being a US taxpayer. I know I can't convince you but your arguments are unimpressive and you don't seem to have any local connections.

So, it's your position that the NYT is one of Trump's "allies?"

PP. I was not referring to the NYT there.

[Anonymous]

Criminy, all this whining about DEI. Send your kid to Liberty and be done with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Criminy, all this whining about DEI. Send your kid to Liberty and be done with it.

DEI is pretty bad medicine

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Criminy, all this whining about DEI. Send your kid to Liberty and be done with it.

Jiminy Cricket! DEI is as dated as your language. It’s over. The rebuttal was the last gasp from someone trying to save their ass and job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Criminy, all this whining about DEI. Send your kid to Liberty and be done with it.

Jiminy Cricket! DEI is as dated as your language. It’s over. The rebuttal was the last gasp from someone trying to save their ass and job.

Check back in four years and let's compare who is still employed.

Probably all of us, actually.

[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.

Because it's a naked money-grabbing scam.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Because it's a naked money-grabbing scam.

Most of the money went to scholarships for low-income kids from Michigan, most of whom were white...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Criminy, all this whining about DEI. Send your kid to Liberty and be done with it.

Jiminy Cricket! DEI is as dated as your language. It’s over. The rebuttal was the last gasp from someone trying to save their ass and job.

Check back in four years and let's compare who is still employed.

Probably all of us, actually.

Sure thing. DEI is already being scrapped and has been for a while. But i guess you’re not able to read the writing on the wall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Criminy, all this whining about DEI. Send your kid to Liberty and be done with it.

Jiminy Cricket! DEI is as dated as your language. It’s over. The rebuttal was the last gasp from someone trying to save their ass and job.

Check back in four years and let's compare who is still employed.

Probably all of us, actually.

Sure thing. DEI is already being scrapped and has been for a while. But i guess you’re not able to read the writing on the wall.

See you in 4 years. I'll look up this thread when my kid graduates. By then it will be DEI 3.0.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Criminy, all this whining about DEI. Send your kid to Liberty and be done with it.

Jiminy Cricket! DEI is as dated as your language. It’s over. The rebuttal was the last gasp from someone trying to save their ass and job.

Check back in four years and let's compare who is still employed.

Probably all of us, actually.

This post didn't age well

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Criminy, all this whining about DEI. Send your kid to Liberty and be done with it.

Jiminy Cricket! DEI is as dated as your language. It’s over. The rebuttal was the last gasp from someone trying to save their ass and job.

Check back in four years and let's compare who is still employed.

Probably all of us, actually.

Sure thing. DEI is already being scrapped and has been for a while. But i guess you’re not able to read the writing on the wall.

See you in 4 years. I'll look up this thread when my kid graduates. By then it will be DEI 3.0.

DEI is toxic. No university will ever try this bullshit again. There are consequences now.

https://www.michigandaily.com/news/news-briefs/umich-announces-cuts-to-all-dei-programs/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Criminy, all this whining about DEI. Send your kid to Liberty and be done with it.

Jiminy Cricket! DEI is as dated as your language. It’s over. The rebuttal was the last gasp from someone trying to save their ass and job.

+ a million.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Criminy, all this whining about DEI. Send your kid to Liberty and be done with it.

Jiminy Cricket! DEI is as dated as your language. It’s over. The rebuttal was the last gasp from someone trying to save their ass and job.

Check back in four years and let's compare who is still employed.

Probably all of us, actually.

This post didn't age well

NP. Did you bump this today because Michigan decisions will be out this afternoon?