Let’s hope they stand their ground…
The University of Michigan’s Board of Regents failed to vote on whether or not to defund its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program but decided that diversity statements are no longer required, NBC News reports.
“There are no plans to make any cuts to these programs.”
“Many have DEI completely wrong, instilling terror and fear for a reason I must attribute to ignorance at best, malice at worst.”
Other students, like Nicholas Love, challenged the institution to look at “who it serves, who it excludes, who it claims to be and create a model where we are consistently improving access to education and prosperity.” However, some board members are eager to get rid of DEI in Michigan, claiming the money could be used for students instead. “It is my hope that our efforts in D.E.I. focus on redirecting funding directly to students and away from a bloated administrative bureaucracy,” Mark Bernstein said, according to Fox News.
Michigan’s Black students look at the school’s DEI initiatives as a failure, calling efforts “superficial” and portraying “a general discomfort with naming Blackness explicitly.” A spokesperson for the school’s Black Student Union, Princess-J’Maria Mboup, said: “The students that are most affected by D.E.I. — meaning marginalized communities — are invested in the work, but not in D.E.I. itself.”
Prior to being elected as the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump pledged to pull back on DEI at colleges receiving federal funding. Schools like Texas and Florida have banned DEI programs at their state-funded universities. At Michigan, physics professor Keith Riles hopes for the elimination of all DEI programs, calling them “discriminatory” along with the Black Lives Matter Movement being a “grift.”
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Source: Black Enterprise
