(LifeSiteNews) — The University of Michigan (UMich) claimed to shutter its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office last year but still spent $15.3 million in the current school year to pay 162 employees focused on diversity-related tasks, a new review has found.

The College Fix reports that the analysis by economist Mark Perry found that UMich did scale back some of its DEI activities, but for the most part, DEI staff remained and the agenda was simply rebranded.

The Office for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion is now called the Access & Opportunity Office, staffed by 71 employees assigned to diversity-related tasks; an additional 91 employees outside the office work for DEI projects like the “LGBTQ Spectrum Center,” Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs division, Trotter Multicultural Center, and Center for the Education of Women.

“Staff titles have changed, and some diversity programs and offices have been rebranded, but much of UM’s commitment to advance DEI campus-wide remains robust, perhaps just less visible to the public than before,” Perry said, finding no layoffs or cost-savings related to such “diversicrat” employees.

“Some academic units, like the Michigan Law School, continue to publicly state on its website a ‘commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion as central to our mission as an educational institution,’ so the reduced emphasis on DEI at the unit level may vary across units at UM,” he continued. “Other examples include Michigan Library’s ‘commitment to diversity’ and actively working ‘to ensure that tenets of diversity and antiracism influence all aspects of our work.’”

On more positive notes, UMich did abandon its 5-year DEI 2.0 plan and associated mandates for all university units, and faculty members told Perry they are no longer inundated with emails advertising and encouraging them to promote diversity initiatives.

Still, the report highlights the extent of the challenge for those seeking to “de-woke” higher education, and the lengths administrators will go to preserve identity activism.

The indoctrination of students with left-wing ideology on sexuality and other left-wing agenda items has long been a major concern in American education, from K-12 schools to colleges and universities, from libraries to athletic and restroom policy to drag events to classroom materials to even “transitioning” troubled children without parental input. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas.

Yet despite being framed as in service of “tolerance,” such efforts generally go hand-in-hand with rising intolerance of dissenting views. American institutions of higher education, even many that are private and/or nominally religious, have long been recognized as breeding grounds for anger and hatred toward mainstream conservative views, a problem taking on special alarm amid what conservatives call a rising trend of left-wing support for political violence, such as open celebrations of the September 2025 murder of populist influencer Charlie Kirk.

The toll of such an activist bent often extends well beyond politics. Last year, insiders from the University of California-Los Angeles’ (UCLA’s) prestigious David Geffen School of Medicine warned that the school’s diversity fixation had led to a crisis in which more than half of students in various cohorts admitted since 2020 fail standardized tests for basic medical knowledge of subjects ranging from emergency medicine and family medicine to internal medicine and pediatrics.

The Trump administration has issued executive orders to deny federal funds to educational entities that indoctrinate students through Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) programs. Many states have introduced similar crackdowns on so-called “woke” indoctrination in education. Last August, UMich’s hospital system was forced to agree to suspending its gender-transition practices for minors in the face of federal pressure.