By: Nick Binotti
Several Ivy League schools have been put under a national microscope recently for applying the right to free speech inconsistently. These universities are giving some groups unwavering protection to protest, while shutting down other groups altogether. These inconsistencies have one common denominator: Higher education’s unwavering devotion to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
DEI’s focus on race and gender is credited for much of the divisiveness on college campuses these days and Illinois’ university system is not immune. Look no further than the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where Communication 9 goes as far as to tie faculty performance evaluations to professors’ commitment to DEI. We outlined problems with the university’s initiative here.
But what also deserves attention are the growing DEI bureaucracies and the significant financial costs associated with them. Illinois’ universities are building out big teams led by executives with big pay, the highest among them Sean Garrick, Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His total compensation in 2023 is reported at $352,000, according to the Illinois Board of Higher Education.
But he’s just the tip of the DEIceberg.
Top heavy DEI roles come at a big cost.
In a state with the most units of local government in the country, it should be no surprise that Illinois’ higher education system is fragmented. Each university has its own DEI bureaucracy and, within each bureaucracy, its own flavor of DEI leadership.
The result is an administrative hodgepodge that can make it difficult to track how pervasive DEI is embedded in each institution. Chief Executives, Chancellors, Vice Chancellors, Associate Vice Chancellors – the titles for DEI executives are nearly as diverse as the department themselves. And their total compensation is anywhere from Doris Houston’s $155,000 at Illinois State University to Garrick’s $352,000.
Keep in mind the names in the table below are only the top officials listed in the Illinois Higher Board of Education’s salary database. There are many, many more lower-level functionaries we’ll have to work to identify in future reporting.
Below we break down some of the bureaucracies within the entire system. The list is not meant to be comprehensive because universities are still not consistent with their reporting, nomenclature or role definitions.
University of Illinois System: In addition to Garrick, UIUC also has an Associate Vice Chancellor for Access and Equity and an Executive Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity.
Meanwhile, University of Illinois at Chicago has a Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Engagement who makes $237,000 and also has an Executive Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity. All told, there are over a dozen director-level DEI staff under the UofI umbrella.
DEI is not just a Human Resources thing either. UIC also has an Office of Procurement Diversity.
Southern Illinois University: Under the System Office, which oversees numerous locations under the SIU umbrella, Sheila L. Caldwell is paid nearly $250,000 as the Vice President for Anti-racism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer. Meanwhile, SIU-Carbondale has a Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and SIU-School of Medicine has an Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.
Northern Illinois University: Vernese E. Edghill-Walden was being paid nearly $250,000 to serve as the Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Office. Past tense because she recently accepted a position at Bucknell University.
Eastern Illinois University recently hired their inaugural Executive Director & Senior Diversity and Inclusion Officer, whose duties begin in 2024.
Governors State University hired their first Chief Diversity Officer back in 2021. That person left GSU the following year.
Illinois State University has Doris Houston, a Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer.
Western Illinois University has an Office of Justice, Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (JIDE) with an interim director.
Northeastern Illinois University has an Executive Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).
Chicago State University, a school whose current enrollment is 77% African American, seemingly has no formal DEI department at this time.
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The veil is slowly lifting on every college campus. What lies underneath is a vast network of largesse and bureaucracy that we are only beginning to unearth.
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Good article – thanks for writing
Doris Houston is no longer the DEI officer at ISU. Story for the new person is on http://www.illinoisstate.edu. Look under Media Relations.
Complete marxism – your Democrats of today :
https://www.city-journal.org/article/claudine-gays-dei-empire
Great article but one criticism directed at all who pen outstanding and critical articles on DEI: why never any mention of the obvious?!
DEI are communist political minder systems. Period!
Not only are they costly, but they don’t even have the intended effect. Chief Diversity Officers have no effect on faculty diversity. https://www.nber.org/papers/w24969
Gotta be the easiest job and route to a giant salary and retirement gig ever. Total scam embraced by weak boards and politicians.
In short, DEI is a benign name for putting those that achieve at a disadvantage to those that don’t or won’t to make them feel better about themselves.
Fresh faced young liberal new students feel thing’s like this are necessary but then can’t figure out why tuition is so high.
Few years ago I looked at Metra’s budget and saw there were roughly ten people with some sort of diversity title. Now it’s not in the budget, people are probably still there in the same position but with a different title.
What role does a DEI administrator serve other than to repeat, repeat, repeat: “hire POC; admit POC”, regardless? Merit is discredited. Standardized-tested achievement is discredited. Accomplishments are discredited. A tape-recorder would be cheaper. These posted DEI-position salaries are disgraceful, simple payback to a handful of fortunate POC folks granted opportunity to milk the progressive “white guilt” system. Ditto for the POC folks who inhabit DEI administrative roles in corporate businesses. Make-work positions, each and everyone, with little literal function other than to ensure more hires on sole basis of skin color identification, which allow university and corporate boards to virtue-signal… Read more »
DEI has carved out its own spoils system within the higher education system, that expands with each under qualified BIPOC hire.
DEI – Democrat patronage
Yes, it’s a spoils system.
DEI = Division, entitlement, and intimidation.
Folks, another reason to stack. In a future life that DEI officer will waiting tables.
Daaaam, $352K + benefits + pension for a DEI gig at UIUC!!
That $$ goes a long way in Champaign.
The cost of wokism is skyrocketing. But forget about the astronomical cost for a second and ask yourself whether we need DEI offices at all. Exactly what are the mission statements associated with these entities? The liberal elite wants to reprogram young people to parrot the progressive mantra of the day. They censor any organization or individual that has a different view from their woke handbook and keep them off campuses. What are they afraid of?
Afraid of dissenters that speak the inconvenient truth.
Like Ben Shapiro says, universities these days exist for DIE. That is their sole purpose, DIE. It’s not to educate, it’s not to inform, but rather, to distribute the spoils of a former prestigious university system to the next generation of future Democrat voting elites. When you see it from this perspective, it all makes sense, and you understand why they are so reticent to abandon DIE and will fight to the Supreme Court, and even defy the law, to perpetuate DIE. Resistance to DIE is an existential threat to the people in the university system itself, that’s why they… Read more »
Do we need communist political minder systems (DEI) in America like they have in Cuba and China and Venezuela?! Why no, but even asking such a question demonstrates how America has DEVOLVED!