Where Did DEI Go?

How the work around diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging has changed in northern Michigan

By Craig Manning | June 1, 2024

In 2020, DEI was everywhere. From governments to businesses to sports teams, nearly every entity was thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion with new levels of reflection, urgency, and intent.

Four years later, things look different. The inciting incident that triggered a global reckoning around racism in 2020 faded from the headlines. DEI became a political football, with states like Florida taking aggressive steps to limit or outright ban it. And other global issues, including wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, took center stage.

We recently passed the four-year anniversary of May 25, 2020—the day a white police officer murdered George Floyd, an unarmed black man, during an arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This year, the anniversary prompted headlines decrying the unfinished work of DEI.

From MinnPost: “Four years after George Floyd’s killing and the subsequent uprisings, some promises remain unfulfilled.” From the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder: “George Floyd: His death moved the world—but the community he died in is standing still.” From the Los Angeles Times: “Four years after George Floyd and now we have the backlash.”

These articles and others highlight failed reforms, fading commitments to DEI, and an unchanged status quo. Some of those shifts are on full display right now: Take North Carolina, where the board of governors of the University of North Carolina college system recently approved a policy repealing its DEI requirements. (The UNC system had implemented those policies in 2019, pushing its 17 college campuses to hire chief diversity officers, work toward DEI goals, and more.)

Given this backdrop, Northern Express wanted to know: Have northern Michigan’s DEI requirements been similarly diminished and dismantled? Or are organizations here still focused on this work?

DEI in Education

Of all the places where DEI has faced backlash, none has been quite as pronounced as education. Last spring, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that prohibited state and federal dollars from being spent to “advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or promote or engage in political or social activism.”

In compliance with that legislation, the University of Florida announced this past spring that it had “closed the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, eliminated DEI positions and administrative appointments, and halted DEI-focused contracts with outside vendors.” Other states, including Texas, Utah, and Alabama, have passed similar legislation.

But no similar legislative efforts have gained traction in Michigan. As a result, DEI efforts continue at education institutions throughout the state, including here in northern Michigan.

When Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) adopted a new strategic plan in 2022, one of the five core strategic goals was to “cultivate an inclusive environment that fosters a sense of belonging and delivers equitable opportunities so all students and employees are able to thrive and succeed.” Two years into the plan, the college has completed two of its five DEI objectives, including the adoption of a “statement of definition and purpose” around DEI and the implementation of new “staffing and resourcing for DEI efforts.”

The college’s key hire was Marcus Bennett, long part of the residence life department and now doing double duty as special assistant to the president for DEI. In that role, Bennett has spearheaded NMC’s efforts to complete its DEI objectives, including still-in-progress goals of implementing DEI training for all employees, addressing barriers to entry and success for “vulnerable student populations,” and making existing NMC systems, policies, and procedures more equitable.

When asked about his philosophy around DEI, Bennett points to the fourth often excluded letter of that acronym: B, for “belonging.” While DEI is the more common term than DEIB, Bennett vastly prefers the latter.

“For me, it’s all about trying to make it so that anyone can come to NMC and feel welcome,” he says. “When the college’s strategy was first set up for DEI, it didn’t have that belonging piece. When I came onboard, I added it, because we want everyone to feel a sense of belonging when they’re on our campus or taking classes. Data shows that when you have that sense of belonging someplace, you’re going to want to stay there.”

Right now, belonging efforts at NMC range from events geared toward specific cultures or groups—like an annual LGBTQ Pride Carnival on campus in the summer or a powwow to honor Native American graduates in the spring—to engagement with local elementary schools. The latter effort, Bennett says, is an attempt to reach economically disadvantaged students and families in the community early, so they start seeing NMC, and college in general, as a place where they could someday belong.

“A lot of times, people who grow up in rural areas just think ‘OK, I’ll get my high school credentials but nothing outside of that,’” Bennett says. “Part of DEIB in this region, for us, is communicating to young students that they have an opportunity to get an education. By going into schools and building a relationship, we can create opportunities for these students who maybe never thought about college to see themselves at NMC.”

Belonging is also a key piece of the puzzle at Interlochen Center for the Arts. As director of DEI, Esther Triggs does training sessions with every Interlochen staff member and student throughout the year, and also hosts a BIPOC affinity space for students and adults on campus.

While those touchpoints are important, Triggs says many of the DEI efforts at Interlochen these days are actually student-led. A “DEI student voice team,” for instance, organizes an annual culture fair “to highlight all the different cultures that we have on campus” and has formed a partnership with the Interlochen Arts Academy Presents team to make sure concerts and other open-to-the-public campus events are accessible to all.

Triggs acknowledges the backlash that has swirled around DEI, but says Interlochen has mostly been spared from it—something she attributes to the institution’s long history of welcoming students, campers, faculty members, and performing artists from all over the world.

“[DEI] has always been a huge part of the fabric of our institution,” Triggs says. “And because of that, we do expect people to understand that we’re a global community with lots of different people, different religions, different identities, different everything.”

DEI in Medicine

While momentum around DEI may seem to have tapered off in the public consciousness, Munson Healthcare’s Joe Santangelo says it’s the opposite in the healthcare ecosystem. A pediatrician, Santangelo is Munson’s chief medical, quality, and safety officer. He’s also one of the executive sponsors of the healthcare organization’s DEI task force.

“In the healthcare space, there is more conversation happening around DEI right now than ever before,” Santangelo says. “A lot of that is driven by the pandemic, where we saw a lot of inequities in healthcare exposed across the country. Recall the statistics about the death rate from COVID early in the pandemic among black and brown people compared to white people. The kind of disparities that we were seeing spurred a lot of introspection, thought, and work in the medical world around how we’re approaching different populations.”

Those conversations have been particularly active at Munson, Santangelo says, even despite the fact that the region is hardly Michigan’s most racially or culturally diverse. As a sprawling rural hospital system, Munson serves a vast community of people from a broad range of socioeconomic situations.

“In that sense, we do have a lot of diversity in our area,” Santangelo stresses. “So, DEI for us means we have to pay a lot of attention to making sure everyone gets the same level of excellent care, regardless of where you’re coming from.”

That big-picture view has allowed Munson to tackle issues that, while they might not immediately scan as DEI-related, do indeed connect to quality of care.

“It’s hard to navigate the healthcare system at times, and that’s not specific to Munson. That’s just healthcare in America,” Santangelo says. “When we’re thinking about solving that problem, DEI is incredibly important, because we can’t make it easy for one group to navigate the healthcare system and leave other people out.”

DEI in Business

Hagerty was one of the local businesses that made its first big DEI hire in 2021, bringing in Mary Garcia—previously a DEI leader at household-name enterprises like Lockheed Martin and Hilton—to be its director of diversity, inclusion, and belonging.

Speaking to Northern Express sister publication the Traverse City Business News in 2022, Garcia said she hoped not only to make Hagerty a more welcoming workplace for all, but also to push beyond the walls of the company by increasing diversity, inclusion, and belonging in the automotive world at large.

Three years later, those goals are still on the road. Last year, Hagerty launched its first three Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), a type of structure defined by Great Place to Work as “voluntary, employee-led groups whose aim is to foster a diverse, inclusive workplace aligned with the organizations they serve.” Hagerty’s first ERGs—Multicultural @ Hagerty, Women @ Hagerty, and Caregivers @ Hagerty—are designed to “foster a sense of allyship internally,” according to Hagerty.

“As we learn more about the unique perspectives of our co-workers, we are compelled to support each other, which ultimately ties back to our values and commitment to our members and partners,” Hagerty said about the ERGs in a statement provided to the Express.