INVESTIGATION: Wisconsin university closes DEI unit but keeps most staff working on equity issues

By Jared Strong
The Center Square

After concerns were raised about spending on DEI, the University of Wisconsin-Madison shuttered a department but kept most of the staff and their titles working on equity issues, an investigation by The Center Square found.

The former Division of Diversity, Equity and Education Achievement – which employed about 100 people who earned more than $7 million annually – had been mired in financial mismanagement and attacks from Republicans before the university closed it last year.

An audit found that the university had no grasp of its total diversity spending and whether it was effective, and auditors identified problematic employee bonuses, travel and other expenses in the division.

Its former leader, LaVar Charleston, was demoted to a professor job in a different department in January 2025. The university announced the division’s closure in July.

Charleston had been paid more than $360,000 each year. The move slashed his salary by about two-thirds.

Employment data obtained by The Center Square show that – like Charleston – nearly all of the division’s employees were transferred elsewhere in the university, and they retained their diversity-related monikers.

“The closure was purely cosmetic,” said Wisconsin state Rep. Amanda Nedweski, a Republican who is vice chairperson of the House Committee on Colleges and Universities. “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.”

The division’s goal had been “to create a diverse, inclusive and excellent learning and work environment,” according to the university.

At the time of its closure, 98 people were employed in the diversity division. Seven of them lost their jobs in August, September and October, university records show.

The other 91 employees moved to other departments. Nearly all of them kept the same job title, including nine whose titles explicitly contain “diversity” and “DEI,” an acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion.

Several of them have annual salaries of at least $100,000.

A university spokesman said the employees’ duties might have changed regardless of their static titles, and that many of the employees had overseen “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,” spokesman John Lucas said in an email.

He said the university has increased the frequency and scope of its financial reviews and made other changes to help prevent future spending problems.

State Rep. Jerry O’Connor, a Republican member of the House universities committee, has been frustrated by university leaders who he says lack transparency and recognition of lawmakers’ concerns.

“The university system doesn’t think they’re accountable to anybody but themselves,” he said in an interview with The Center Square.

State Republican lawmakers commissioned the audit that preceded the closure of the university’s diversity division. But O’Connor said they have little ability to make direct changes to public university functions — even though they hold majorities in the state House and Senate — because Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, can block them.

Evers’ office did not respond to an interview request. He is not seeking reelection this year.

Limiting or ending programs in state government that give preference to racial minorities and others has been a priority in recent years for Republicans in state and federal office.

In 2023, Wisconsin state lawmakers withheld $32 million in university funding until its Board of Regents agreed to curtail the expansion and scope of diversity-focused jobs. President Donald Trump last year threatened to investigate and withhold federal funding from universities because of the diversity efforts.

Wisconsin’s 13 public universities get more than $1 billion each year of state funding.