The University of Michigan will eliminate its central diversity, equity and inclusion program, the school announced on Thursday, seeking to overhaul an ambitious and expensive initiative that it had long cast as a model for American higher education.
Michigan — one of the most prestigious public universities in the country — had for years steadily expanded its D.E.I. efforts even as conservative lawmakers and activists in other states successfully campaigned to defund or ban such programs. But on Thursday, amid intensifying pressure on colleges from the Trump administration, Michigan said it would discontinue its diversity “strategic plan,” known as D.E.I. 2.0, and effectively dismantle the large administrative bureaucracy constructed to drive it through the university’s colleges and professional schools.
In a campuswide email, officials said Michigan would expand its existing prohibition on so-called diversity statements in…
