Over 3,000 faculty, staff and students at the University of Michigan held an emergency meeting after the university announced it would close its Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion.

The closure is a response to the Trump administrations efforts to end DEI programming at colleges across the country.

The announcement, which reportedly resulted in at least 10 staff terminations, came as a shock to many across campus.

“It was just kind of, you know, a mixture of faculty and students and staff that were concerned about what’s going on and kind of felt blindsided by this,” said Mariel Krupansky, a lecturer at U-M.

Concerns raised during the meeting included the treatment of non-union staff, job security for DEI-aligned roles, and broader implications for academic freedom.

Krupansky also shared fears that decentralizing DEI programs could leave students without accessible resources.

“I predict that students will have more trouble finding out that they even exist and know that they have access to them,” she said.

Krupanksy said while she believes that DEI programs may have been an imperfect tool, the university’s decision was not reflective of the whole campus.

“I think the fact that over 3,000 people tried to show up to an emergency meeting… is evidence of that,” she said. “For those people who are doing that work every day, this is devastating.”

UM-Flint took a different approach to the announcement and rebranded DEI efforts under the umbrella of “Wolverine Hub of Opportunity, Persistence, and Excellence,” or HOPE.

“The fact that U of M Ann Arbor chose not to go that route, I think is telling,” Krupansky said.

She adds that the university’s decision to close the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion under threats from the Trump administration sends a bad message.

“President Ono, the regents and other university administrators are telling [Trump’s administration] that the university can be threatened into compliance and that they are not willing to litigate or challenge executive orders that clearly extend beyond the executive’s constitutional power,” Krupansky said.

University staff, faculty, and students launched the website umdeidefense.com to keep the campus up to date on future news and efforts to push back on the decision.

The University of Michigan responded to an interview request by saying it’s “passing on interview opportunities at this time.”