The University of Michigan Unveils DEI 2.0

If you’re still scratching your head, wondering, “What the hell is DEI?” I have great news for you! The sequel just dropped! U-M just launched their new “strategic five-year plan,” literally called “DEI 2.0,” without a shred of irony. How many meetings do you think it took to come up with that title?

Like most sequels, DEI 2.0 is worse than the original. Zero stars out of five.

If brevity is the soul of wit, academia sure loves being droll. They can’t say what they think, because hearing their thoughts summarized in plain English makes them sound so, so stupid. They have to cook up 60-plus-page pdfs of word salad, jargon, and gobbledygook to pulverize you into submission. A show of force so large and obtuse that you can’t possibly engage with its content. 

Normal people will never read this entire document. The faculty won’t even read it, let alone the students. I doubt even half the DEI office read the whole thing. Maybe they wrote it in ChatGPT. 

Of those 60 pages, only pages 5-8 have anything of much substance. They list several detailed initiatives of this program. Let’s break down a few of them:

Enhancing Graduate Student Diversity

“Rackham will finalize the report and recommendations advanced by a graduate faculty ad hoc committee aimed at increasing equity, diversity, access and opportunity for international graduate student applicants.”

Code for: more Asian grad students. 

Staff Talent Acquisition Services

“The human resources departments of both U-M and Michigan Medicine will continue to consult with and advise units on fair, equitable processes and resources that reflect our DEI values while meeting the expectations of prospective employees.”

Code for: Build DEI measures into every hiring process across the university. Give the DEI office control over the university’s HR system.

Michigan Program for Advancing Cultural Transformation (M-PACT) in the Biomedical and Health Sciences 

“M-PACT aims to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion in biomedical and health sciences by recruiting 30 new tenure-track assistant professors across 11 schools, colleges and units. M-PACT will train a pool of accomplished senior faculty with a commitment to DEI to serve as Sponsor-Mentors for the 30 new faculty hires. These same core faculty will serve as agents of change in their respective departments as part of a university-wide strategy to foster a more diverse, equitable and inclusive scientific community.”

Code for: Hire 30 new woke biomedical professors, and train existing professors to be more woke (using roughly $80 million in funding).

Enhancing Black Student Representation & Experiences

“The university will assess, refine, and develop strategies and student support programming, open to all, that produce equitable opportunities for access, success and a sense of belonging for Black students, in particular. This will include increasing responsiveness to Black students’ unique needs through the creation of feedback mechanisms that allow for input by Black students and allies to support and enhance university programs, priorities, and resource allocation.”

Code for: Start more programs for black students (and only black students). No mention that affirmative action programs were recently struck down by the Supreme Court. Oh, and add a hotline for (only black) students to complain.

Enhancing Religious, Spiritual & Interfaith Diversity on Campus

“The U-M will institutionalize a Secular, Spiritual, Religious and Interfaith (SSRI) campus-wide initiative that supports cross-unit collaborations and strengthens institutional partnerships. As a first step in creating a positive climate for students, faculty and staff from all faith backgrounds, as well as those who do not belong to any faith community, in year 1, the university will appoint a cross-campus working group to begin planning, management and coordination of the initiative.”

Code for: Fund a committee about religious diversity that will only say, in the end, that everyone needs to gather around the campfire and sing Kumbaya. 

Enhancing Vendor and Investment Diversity

“To broaden its impact, the university’s Business & Finance (B&F) Division will embed DEI priorities within all of its functions and processes to ensure that external partners and vendors understand the depth of its institutional commitment.”

Code for: Create a patronage network. Only do business with companies ideologically aligned with DEI. Give the DEI office authority over the university’s business partnerships.

DEI Education and Training Resources Curriculum

“In order to reach U-M’s 60,000+ faculty and staff, additional trainers will be recruited to offer more sessions and provide unit-specific instruction. Train the Trainer programs will ensure that expertise is developed internally, and a dedicated DEI consultant will support unit leaders through needs assessments, coaching and customized resources.”

Code for: Hire more DEI trainers and consultants to police the university. Hire DEI trainers for the DEI trainers themselves to make sure they stay on brand. Build confrontational DEI measures into every department.

DEI in Carbon Neutrality and Sustainability Efforts

“To advance the university’s commitment to addressing climate change and prioritizing environmental justice, U-M is establishing key leadership positions to guide this work. The University recently established the role of Associate Vice President for Campus Sustainability (AVPCS).”

Code for: Hire another expensive Vice President with a long title and team underneath him to pontificate about global warming.

Inclusive History Project (IHP)

“The Inclusive History Project (IHP) is a multi-faceted, multi-year presidential initiative to study and document a comprehensive history of the U-M by honestly and critically re-examining the university’s past as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Code for: Fund a self-hatred initiative for a faculty committee to bash the history of U-M.

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Reading between the lines on all of these initiatives, the main goal of DEI 2.0 is control over personnel decisions across the entire university. Each initiative ends in a conclusion that they will either hire new faculty/staff that will advance DEI goals, train existing personnel on DEI, or subject potential entrants to the campus environment to DEI requirements. This all costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

The soviets called their economic plans “five-year plans” too, by the way. They had lofty slogans, just like the DEI office. The plan reads, in point No. 1, “We will strive for organizational change in the service of greater diversity, equity and inclusion.” Exactly—organization change, meaning, change the organization by changing its people.

For example, 80% of unit plans specify a need for DEI training for faculty search committees. This shows their true goal. Search committees are responsible for hiring all new faculty on campus, and DEI training and requirements for search committees ensure that all new faculty hires conform to ideological requirements. This is, ultimately, how the commissars affect campus life most severely over the long term, by ruthlessly ensuring that all new faculty conform to their views. 

U-M’s DEI 2.0 initiative largely amounts to spending more money to hire more DEI bureaucrats, so hitting these programs at their source, their funding, would be an effective measure at stemming the tide. At the end of the day, DEI departments are mostly a make-work program for offices filled with email job flunkies with sociology degrees. That’s why their supreme advice always amounts to more DEI employees, more funding, more offices, more committees. 

The problem is that the institution has given them real power to expand their funding, reach, and influence. Beyond just getting jobs for their friends, they can actually start to implement their ideology across the board. We can laugh at their silly PDF all we want, but U-M is actually giving the DEI crowd what it’s pushing for. Yet if the diversicrats simply vanished, went away, were fired, would anyone miss them? Florida, which recently banned state funding for all DEI programs across their university system, has the right idea. 

Bobby Mars is an artist, alter ego, and former art professor. Follow him on X at @bobby_on_mars.