Great news! The University of Mississippi has just announced it will be closing its DEI department, the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement.
The University’s DEI department has been the driving force behind “Pathways to Equity,” a five-year university wide strategic plan committed to equity and racial justice.
Everything under “Pathways to Equity” at the university – including curriculum content – has been increasingly managed through the prism of intersectional ideology.
According to public records requests that MCPP submitted, Ole Miss is still spending millions on its various DEI initiatives. The head of the Division of Diversity alone, Shawnboda Mead, is on a salary of $246,881 a year.
If Ole Miss really is going to dismantle the apparatus of woke ideology, great. I fear, however, that what we have here is merely a rebrand.
Chancellor Glenn Boyce, who made the announcement about the name change in an email, must surely sense that the political climate is changing. Alumni are increasingly reluctant to donate to what they perceive as ‘woke’ academics who despise their values.
Boyce seems to be trying to head off anti-DEI legislation.
Until now, Mississippi’s liberal Senate leadership has been able to block various bills that would tackle DEI in our public universities. However, the Senate leadership is increasingly weak, if not yet a lame duck.
Mississippi’s weak Senate leadership failed to block school funding reform in the last session, despite every effort. The weak Senate leadership will only grow weaker in 2025 and may not have the strength to keep blocking anti DEI law.
Boyce perhaps senses this, and has cooked up a deal with the good ole boys to try to head off the anti DEI legislation we need.
Governors in many nearby states have taken effective action against DEI ideology, issuing executive orders. Curiously, our governor has chosen not to take any action against ‘woke’ ideology despite mountains of evidence action is needed. This is puzzling.
I suspect this may change. The urge to appear on news outlets or get noticed by political campaigns may soon exceed the desire to keep in with university bureaucrats.
The rising generation of Republican leaders in our state, such as State Auditor Shad White, are clear that they want to see an end to using public money to promote divisive, race-based DEI ideology.
Chancellor Boyce’s move seems to me as much an attempt at deflection, as it is a serious effort to root out woke ideology. What the university really wants is to head off legislation that would outlaw the promotion of an ideology that is increasingly commonplace among third rate academics in our public universities.
University administrators across America have made a Faustian bargain with their ultra progressive faculty. They tip toe around the cultural Marxists on campus, allowing them to promote extreme leftist ideology, in return for a quiet life.
University administrators have appeased the ‘woke’ monster in the hope that it might eat them last.
This is why the Division of Diversity might be going, but it is to be replaced by a new Division of Access, Opportunity, and Community Engagement. The new Division will be run, it has been reported, by the same head who ran the old one.
Mediocre academics at the Department of English will, I suspect, continue to “embrace diversity, inclusion, and equity as central to the scholarly mission” while “recognizing the ongoing legacies of systemic inequity within the institutions of our academic field.”
Nothing in Boyce’s announcement suggests he is about to get serious about rooting out ultra-leftist academics that hold tenure. If there is any new commitment to ensuring intellectual diversity at Ole Miss, I must have missed it. Far easier to keep feeding the monster, rather than confront it.
If Boyce was serious about ending DEI, he would commit to running the university on the principle of equality – treating every person equally – not equity – the idea that outcomes should be manipulated to tackle perceived or historic disadvantages.
In just three years, DEI has become indefensible.
Here at MCPP we will keep punching the bruise until this deeply divisive, extremist ideology is no longer being pushed on young minds using your tax dollars. The moral case for discriminating against some of today’s students because of what happened before they were even born has collapsed.
Mississippi’s weak Senate leadership might not appreciate our efforts to end DEI, but so what? The values we teach the next generation of young people in America are vastly more important that the feelings on any ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ politicians.
I am not convinced that rebranding the DEI department is going to be enough to stave off legislation. I doubt that all the free tickets to all the football games will be enough to prevent change.
Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
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