Announcement comes amid ongoing criticism about university’s $250 million DEI programs
On the heels of criticism about its massive diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, the University of Michigan announced plans Monday to launch a new program focused on “civil discourse.”
University President Santa Ono said in a news release the Institute for Civil Discourse will serve the public institution’s three campuses.
It will provide resources to “strengthen debate and dialogue across the vast spectrum of ideologies and political perspectives,” the release states.
“We learn by confronting different arguments and different perspectives,” Ono said. “Michigan is the place to do this — to show our community and nation that civil discourse is not just possible, it is the very best way to learn and to solve problems. It is fundamental to our democracy.”
The institute will include a director and an advisory board made up of scholars with “a broad range of ideological viewpoints,” according to the release.
The university also plans to ask “individuals and foundations across a range of perspectives” to help fund the new center.
English Professor Scott Lyons, a leader of the university’s Kateri Institute for Catholic Studies, told The Fix the new program could be a “significant improvement,” depending on who is chosen to lead it.
He suggested a “traditional conservative like Robert P. George, or a committed classical liberal like Jonathan Haidt, or even a heterodox leftist pragmatist like Musa al-Gharbi” — professors who value “real differences” and “genuine dissents.”
“It will be a real challenge for Michigan to pull this off because of its longstanding 1960s-style progressive culture, but it could be done and might just turn out great,” Lyons said in an email Tuesday.
Lyons also urged university leaders to “think carefully about the nature of the problems such an institute will be charged with solving.”
“The names of those problems will not end in ‘-ism.’ They will have everything to do with free speech and thought, with the end of (self-)censorship and cancel culture, and with a rebirth of free and flourishing academic discourse culture at Michigan,” he told The Fix.
In an X post Monday, university Regent Sarah Hubbard welcomed suggestions for scholars that the institute could host. Hubbard has been critical of the university’s DEI programs.
“This action will be incredibly important at @umich for bringing greater diversity of thought to our campus,” she wrote. “We need to be open to all ideas and philosophies as we work to build more tolerance in our community.”
The university has faced questions for its attempts at similar projects in the past. In 2022, one “diversity of thought” forum appeared to include only liberal viewpoints, The College Fix reported at the time.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, the university ended diversity statements in faculty hiring and promotion decisions, The College Fix reported.
However, several members of the Board of Regents at their monthly meeting denied reports they plan to cut spending on its $250 million DEI programming.
Physics Professor Keith Riles spoke out against DEI at the meeting, telling the regents the ideology “is a particularly toxic form of affirmative action.”
UMich employs nearly 250 employees focused on DEI with payroll costs exceeding $30 million annually, The Fix reported earlier this year. UMich DEI efforts have included a DEI manager for its botanical garden and a $100,000 hip-hop performance for its DEI 2.0 launch party.
MORE: Anti-DEI speech by a UMich physics professor goes viral
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