University of Michigan’s DEI Policy Claims Using Latin Names To Describe Plants Could Erase ‘Other Ways of Knowing’
The school suggests that its botanical garden has a “responsibility to thoroughly examine and combat its participation in systemic injustices.’
Students at the University of Michigan should be careful with how they talk about flora and fauna or they might just find themselves in violation of the school’s diversity, equality, and inclusion policies.
According to a “strategic plan” issued by the university that investigates the “interlocking systems of domination” of botanical gardens and arboretum, referring to a plant by its Latin and English name could erase “other ways of knowing.”
The 37-page long document, which was issued last year, details the garden’s “responsibility to thoroughly examine and combat its participation in systemic injustices and co-create new ways forward with historically excluded communities.”
“When botanical gardens and arboreta display Latin taxa, English ‘common name’, and perhaps a brief scientific description, what other ways of knowing are not only missing but actively erased?”
The guideline surfaced last week when it was included in an article by the New York Times detailing the University of Michigan’s sweeping DEI programs.
The school has spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars since 2016 to achieve “far-reaching foundational change at every level, in every unit” in the ways of inclusivity. Such initiatives include making sure that every university “unit” has its own DEI policy — a requirement which led the university to hire over 241 employees who either work in DEI related offices or have the words “diversity,” “equity” or “inclusion” in their job titles.
However, the investment may have been all for naught.
For one, the initiative’s rollout did little in the way of improving the school’s black student enrollment, which has stubbornly hovered at around 5 percent. Black students at Michigan, meanwhile, expressed their dissatisfaction with the policy overhaul, calling it a “well-meaning failure.” Speaker of the university’s Black Student Union, Princess-J’Maria Mboup, told the Times that she viewed the effort as “superficial.”
The program may have even had a negative impact on campus culture. According to a survey released by the school, students and faculty reported that the climate on campus had become less positive since the program began. They also claimed that they became less likely to interact with people of different backgrounds or races.
