UW System hires new chief diversity officer amid GOP pushback against campus DEI offices

A new chief diversity officer hired by the University of Wisconsin System will start just weeks after Assembly Speaker Robin Vos called for eliminating DEI staff at the state’s 13 universities.

Monica Smith will begin her role as the UW System’s associate vice president for equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging on June 12. UW System President Jay Rothman hasn’t announced the hire publicly, but praised Smith in a May 24 letter to chancellors and members of the UW Board of Regents, which also reaffirmed the system’s commitment to DEI.

“These principles are critical for our students inside and outside of the classroom,” Rothman said. “To that end, I am pleased to announce that Monica M. Smith has accepted my offer to join the University of Wisconsin System as Associate Vice President for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging. Monica comes to us from Augustana College and has a record of accomplishment in the development and implementation of inclusive and supportive learning and working environments.”

Smith will be tasked with supporting DEI offices and campus leaders across the UW System, working to increase access to universities and improve graduation rates for “historically underserved students.” She will also focus on recruiting diverse faculty and staff and ensuring an inclusive environment for all students, Rothman said.

“We know that when we support an inclusive environment at our universities, students are more likely to succeed, and recruitment and retention efforts are strengthened,” Rothman said. “These are key objectives within our 2023-2028 strategic plan, especially as we expand our efforts to include issues around veterans, disability status, socioeconomic status, first generation students’ status, and viewpoint diversity, in addition to dealing with underrepresented groups in our society. I look forward to Monica’s role in helping us achieve these goals.”

Attempts to reach Rothman and Smith for comment on the hire were unsuccessful.

The internal announcement of the Smith hire came less than a month after Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos criticized campus DEI efforts as an attempt to “indoctrinate” students with taxpayer money. During an interview with conservative talk radio host Jay Weber in early May, Vos said DEI staff were “burrowed in like a tick on every single college campus.”

A May 5 email from Vos’ office claimed the UW System spends around $16 million per year on more than 200 positions related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

“I’ve called for eliminating funding for these positions as our universities have gone from being institutions of higher learning to institutions of indoctrination,” Vos said. “The offices are teaching students to view the world entirely through the lens of race, which only grows the racial divide.”

As the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee puts its final touches on the 2023-25 state budget, Vos suggested the UW System could “show they’re serious” by reallocating funding to other areas.

“Anecdotally I have heard from people who have had to fill out DEI statements to apply for a UW job and graduate students who have had to admit to their white privilege,” Vos said in the email. “This is preposterous!”

The comments got Rothman’s attention. On May 11, he announced state universities will no longer require DEI statements from job applicants.

The pushback against DEI efforts on college campuses is part of a national conservative movement. The Chronicle of Higher Education is tracking 37 bills introduced by legislators in 21 states to ban colleges from having DEI offices or staff, ban mandatory diversity training, prohibit diversity statements in hiring and block colleges from using race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in admissions.

Many of those bills are based on model legislation from the conservative Manhattan and Goldwater institutes.

“There is a widespread consensus among conservative academics and higher education experts, as well as many centrist faculty, that university DEI offices are the nerve center of woke ideology on university campuses,” said a Manhattan Institute statement about its model bill. “DEI officers form a kind of revolutionary vanguard on campuses; their livelihood can only be justified by discovering — i.e. manufacturing — new inequities to be remedied.”

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on whether the use of affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional. Many analysts expect the court’s conservative majority to ban race-conscious admissions practices.

Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, says the DEI pushback is a purposeful effort to undo decades of work to increase diversity in higher education dating back to the early years of the civil rights movement.

“That’s the goal,” Granberry Russell told Wisconsin Public Radio. “That somehow by being race blind — some will say colorblind — will allow our country to be less divided and less discriminatory. And I think for our students, in particular, who are living and learning on our campuses, the goals that they have in mind are to the contrary.”

DEI staff’s role, Granberry Russell said, is to build capacity to ensure diversity and academic excellence.

“It’s clear that those are linked,” Granberry Russell said.