Mississippi Office of the State Auditor Takes Aim at DEI Policies in Public Colleges
“the audit is about holding universities accountable for how they spend taxpayer dollars”
Other states have been doing this for a few months now. It’s a great trend.
Campus Reform reports:
DEI receiving ‘a performance review’ by state auditors in Mississippi
Mississippi’s public colleges and universities have until Thursday to send an accounting of their spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to the state.
The request comes from an Apr. 6 email sent by the Office of the State Auditor to the eight schools in the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHE). In her email, Laura Gray of the office’s Government Accountability Division calls the probe “a performance review” of DEI programs.
The Sun Herald recently shared a copy of the email sent to Delta State University in Cleveland and writes that the office made its request based on a similar audit by Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Fletcher Freeman, a spokesperson for the office, told Campus Reform that the audit is about holding universities accountable for how they spend taxpayer dollars.
Freeman says that the audit will also determine how universities define DEI because of the variation in programs from one university to the next. DEI programs, he continues, could involve “scholarships [for] underprivileged kids,” but they could also include training conducted by expensive contractors.
In Florida, documents obtained by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo provided context for DEI spending reported by universities in response to the DeSantis probe.
One set of documents shows the extent to which DEI programs at Florida International University (FIU) train students for “left-wing activism” and encourage them to think of people in terms of “oppressor” and “oppressed.”
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