NEW: After Trump’s inauguration, the University of Michigan School of Nursing axed all its DEI programs. Or so it…

NEW: After Trump’s inauguration, the University of Michigan School of Nursing axed all its DEI programs. Or so it appeared—until we dug deeper. Turns out the school just renamed its DEI office the office of “community culture.” And all its DEI programs are still in effect.🧵

Amid Trump’s blitzkrieg of executive orders, a "diversity" tab with links to DEI resources was removed from the school’s homepage. And pages with "DEI" in the title were renamed and purged of the offending adjective, according to web archives we reviewed.

The main page for the school’s diversity office was taken down entirely, replaced with a new page for "Community Culture” that declares that "culture is at the heart of everything we do." None of the revised pages use the terms "diversity" or "DEI."

The changes seemed to indicate that Michigan was finally downsizing a bureaucracy that employs more than 200 officials and has cost the university nearly $250 million since 2016. But Mark Perry, a retired professor at the university’s Flint campus, decided to take a closer look.

It turns out the new pages link to the same DEI materials as the old ones, including a "DEI 2.0" strategic plan that is in effect through 2028. And lo and behold, the office of "Community Culture" employs all the same staff as the former diversity office.

The title of just one official, Patricia Coleman-Burns, has changed from "DEI Strategic Planning Co-Lead" to "Strategic Planning Co-Lead." The new office’s description also uses many of the same buzzwords associated with DEI, albeit not the acronym itself.

"When we talk about Community Culture," the new description says, "we're highlighting our commitment to addressing health disparities and making sure that equity and inclusion are integrated into every aspect of our work."

The tweaks to Michigan’s website illustrate how schools may attempt to get around Trump’s EOs and disguise their diversity initiatives without getting rid of them, keeping the programs and personnel but dressing them up in new language.

"These changes might serve as a blueprint for other schools to follow with similar deceptive changes," Perry told the Free Beacon.

"Schools at Michigan like Nursing are now attempting to maintain the ‘DEI status quo’ while hiding their DEI programming and services from the regents, media, taxpayers, federal and state government, and the public."

On Feb. 8, Perry wrote to Michigan’s Board of Regents about his concerns. By Feb. 11, the nursing school had removed many of the rebranded pages—as well as the list of staff members in the Community Culture office—from the public domain, though they still exist internally.

The rebrand is part of a larger game of cat and mouse between DEI officials and their newly empowered opponents. See, for example, PBS’s plans to defy Trump’s executive order by moving its top DEI officers to another department.

At Michigan, DEI was under scrutiny even before Trump’s reelection. In October 2024, the New York Times had published a 9,200 word exposé on the university’s diversity programs, which included trainings on "antiracist pedagogy” and handouts on "white supremacy culture.”

The report noted that Michigan’s school of nursing had gone on a DEI hiring blitz, bringing on a chief diversity officer, Rushika Patel, whose title has since been changed to "Assistant Dean for Strategic Education," according to the school’s online directory.

The change was one of the many made by Michigan in the wake of the New York Times report, which underscored how vulnerable the school could be when Trump returned to the White House.

While Trump has not directly outlawed DEI at colleges and universities, he has pledged to target schools that discriminate "under the guise of … ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’"

The nursing school’s DEI strategic plan, which is still available on the university’s website, could run afoul of Trump’s directive. It calls for expanding a "health equity" program designed for "disadvantaged and underrepresented minority (URM)" students, for example.

And the success of the plan will be measured by "headcount and demographic diversity." The plan also lists "increasing the demographic diversity of graduate and doctoral students" as an explicit goal of the nursing school, which conducts a biennial "DEI campus climate survey."

In a section on "inclusive teaching," the plan says that "DEI, social justice, and health equity" will be woven throughout the curriculum.

"[W]e are aware that we are up against many forms of oppression," the plan reads. "Given this context, and during this next DEI 2.0 period, the [School of Nursing] remains committed to mobilizing the incredible strength and potential of our School."

TLDR: It’s not clear how many universities are actually getting rid of their DEI bureaucracies. At schools like the University of Michigan, they’re just hiding them from public view. Read the fully story here: freebeacon.com/campus/exclusi…