The University of Wisconsin-Madison closed its diversity division last year, but an investigation found that 91 of the unit's 98 employees simply moved to other departments — most keeping the same job titles, including nine with "diversity" or "DEI" still in their official designations.
The Center Square reported that the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Education Achievement, which had employed about 100 people earning more than $7 million annually, was shuttered in July following a state-commissioned audit that found the university could not account for its total diversity spending or measure whether that spending was effective.
According to Just the News, Republican state lawmakers who pushed for the audit have expressed frustration with the university's response. Critics contend the restructuring amounts to a bureaucratic shell game — dissolving a department on paper while preserving its functions and personnel across campus.
The road to the division's closure began in 2023, when Wisconsin lawmakers withheld $32 million in state funding until the Board of Regents agreed to curtail the expansion of diversity-focused positions. The state's 13 public universities receive more than $1 billion annually in taxpayer funding.
The subsequent audit, commissioned by Republican legislators, identified problematic employee bonuses, travel expenses, and other spending within the division. Auditors concluded the university lacked a system for tracking its overall diversity expenditures or evaluating their effectiveness.
In January 2025, the division's leader, LaVar Charleston, was demoted to a professor position in a separate department. Charleston had been earning more than $360,000 per year, and the demotion reduced his salary by approximately two-thirds. The university announced the full closure of the division six months later.
Employment records obtained by The Center Square show that of the 98 people working in the division at the time of its closure, only seven lost their positions in August, September, and October. The remaining 91 were reassigned throughout the university.
State Rep. Amanda Nedweski, the Republican vice chairperson of the House Committee on Colleges and Universities, offered a blunt assessment of the outcome. "The closure was purely cosmetic," Nedweski said. "Not only is the university not tracking what is being spent, it doesn't even have a way to measure whether it's producing the results it was set out to produce."
University spokesman John Lucas pushed back on the characterization, saying in an email that employees' duties may have changed even if their titles did not. He described many of the transferred staffers as overseeing "sponsorship-linked student support programs."
"These types of programs continue to exist and are working to further broaden or revise programming within their new units," Lucas said. He added that the university has increased the frequency and scope of financial reviews to prevent future spending issues.
That assurance rings somewhat hollow when taxpayers consider that nine employees still carry titles explicitly referencing "diversity" and "DEI," and several earn annual salaries exceeding $100,000. Changing the organizational chart while preserving the payroll is not the kind of reform that restores public trust.
State Rep. Jerry O'Connor, a Republican on the House universities committee, expressed ongoing frustration with the university's posture toward elected officials. "The university system doesn't think they're accountable to anybody but themselves," O'Connor said. He noted that Republican majorities in the state House and Senate have limited ability to compel direct changes because Democratic Gov. Tony Evers can block legislation. Evers' office did not respond to an interview request, and the governor is not seeking reelection this year.
The situation at UW-Madison is unfolding against a broader national backdrop. President Donald Trump last year threatened to investigate and withhold federal funding from universities over their diversity programs, raising the stakes considerably for institutions that rely on both state and federal dollars.
When a university spends more than $7 million a year on a division, cannot demonstrate what that money accomplishes, and then "closes" the operation only to redistribute nearly every employee and title elsewhere on campus, taxpayers are right to ask what accountability actually looks like in higher education. The answer, at least in Madison, appears to be: not this.