Over 2,600 students could have had free tuition for the cost of IU's ‘Diversity Hiring Initiative’

Indiana University announced recently its new $30 million “Diversity Hiring Initiative,” a multi-year fund to accelerate the hiring of “professors from groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education.” 

Tuition and fees for an in-state student at IU’s main campus is $11,332 a year, meaning that $30 million dollars could cover one year’s expenses for over 2,600 Indiana students. 

President Pamela Whitten, who made the details public in an email obtained by Campus Reform, boasted September 21 that the fund will “support the academic needs” of the university in a press release. 

“Using reallocated funds from non-academic services, as well as external gifts, new faculty positions will be added,” Whitten explained in the university statement. 

[RELATED: University of Washington spends $5 million on ‘diversity initiative’ for faculty members]

The press release also quoted W. Quinn Buckner, chair of the IU Board of Trustees. 

 ”Our collective commitment to a more diverse faculty will have a positive impact on our university, as well as on our state and beyond,” Buckner said.

Many IU students, however, are not as ecstatic about the program as the president and board of trustees chair. 

In statement to Campus Reform, the university’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter said they are “disappointed” with IU and hope they “reverse course.” 

“YAF at IU is disappointed with the university’s decision to continue to use student fees and tuition for meaningless virtue signaling,” the statement read. “Hiring faculty based on the color of their skin is an abysmal moral decision by IU and we hope they reverse course on this racist waste of money.”

Elijah Gibson, the president of Young Americans for Liberty at IU, told Campus Reform that the multi-million-dollar initiative “represents an anti-meritocratic school of thought.”

“This new $30 million allocation of funds, which could certainly be used to actually improve the quality of education and life of students on campus, will instead go to hiring people not on their merits, but on their identity that they had no part in choosing,” Gibson added.

[RELATED: UPitt to hire professor of ‘oppression’]

The program will be overseen by The IU Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs, but it is only one of the university’s many “anti-racist” initiatives.

Other programs include a “gender equity task force,” a “health disparities fund,” and a recently unveiled “path to promotion and tenure for enhancing equity, inclusion, and diversity.”

Whitten only assumed the office of IU president in July, becoming the university’s first female president. The search committee that chose Whitten was described by the university as prioritizing minority and female candidates.

Campus Reform reached out to Indiana University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.