You almost have to pity the universities that have been bullied into building large Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies on their campuses. They believed that DEI would help them reduce prejudice and promote mutual understanding among students. Now they’re discovering a hard truth: DEI does just the opposite.

The New York Times Magazine just ran a lengthy profile of DEI efforts at the University of Michigan and discovered that, despite an enormous investment, the campus has “become less inclusive”, that “students and faculty members reported a less positive campus climate”, and that “students were less likely to interact with people of a different race or religion or with different politics”.

Rather than take stock of these failures, Tabbye Chavous, Michigan’s Vice Provost for Equity & Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer, has responded by denouncing the article as sexist and politically biased. In her rebuttal, Chavous demonstrates why DEI bureaucrats claiming to fight for harmony and against bigotry are producing the exact opposite.

One example Chavous offers of political bias in the New York Times piece is that it references a study I co-authored for the Heritage Foundation in 2021 counting the number of DEI bureaucrats at 65 universities. The New York Times cited our study to establish that the University of Michigan has, by far, the largest DEI bureaucracy of any large public university in the country.

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Importantly, Chavous does not dispute our findings. She could hardly do so given that we counted 163 DEI bureaucrats working for the University of Michigan while the university itself claims that it had 162 at about the same time.

It is not the accuracy of this research that Chavous objects to, but its affiliation with Heritage that she believes provides proof of political bias. As Chavous puts it, “the Heritage Foundation is a political organization—not a research organization or think tank that uses empirical standards.”

There is a word for judging people and their work by how you perceive their associates rather than by their individual merits: prejudice. Prejudice is when you pre-judge people based on the groups with whom they are affiliated rather than by what they do. Prejudice starts by assuming false characteristics of a group and then applies those falsehoods to each member of that group without examining those individuals.

Chavous doesn’t appear to have any issue with the work that we at Heritage did, nor does she explain why the New York Times would be in error to cite it. She clearly doesn’t like conservatives and appears to assume that we, and anyone who associates with Heritage, must be bad people.

If this were translated into a racial context, the bigotry of asserting that members of a group and anyone who associates with them must be bad is painfully obvious. As the head of DEI efforts at the University of Michigan, Chavous is professionally obliged to fight this kind of bigotry. But in responding to criticism, she reveals her own prejudices.

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Rather than treating people as individuals, the worldview that Chavous and DEI bureaucracies promote is that people should be classified into groups deserving of different treatment by virtue of their group identity. People classified as oppressors deserve to be stripped of their privileges, while people classified as oppressed deserve restitution for collective and historic wrongs their group has experienced. Chavous’s assertion that citing our research is proof of political bias
is not based on anything we did as individuals. It is based on the group with whom she classifies us.

Chavous also accuses the New York Times of sexism in their coverage because it did not describe her credentials or titles. In attacking me, however, she does not consider my credentials as a researcher capable of meeting empirical standards.

Chavous has her doctorate from the University of Virginia. Mine is from Harvard. She is a Professor of Psychology. I was a Distinguished Professor of Education Policy. She has 46 publications that have been cited at least 10 times. I have 119. Chavous doesn’t appear to know much about me and clearly didn’t care to find out before denouncing my work and anyone who references it as guilty of political bias.

If we want to understand why DEI has exacerbated problems on campus, we might look at Tabbye Chavous’ response for lessons. A giant bureaucracy that imposes political litmus tests and treats people by their group identities rather than as individuals is bound to produce the disastrous results that the New York Times reported were caused by DEI at the University of Michigan.