Education

Notre Dame Calls DEI ‘Equally Important’ As Catholicism In Hiring Decisions

Matthew Rice/Wikimedia Commons

The University of Notre Dame’s top academic officer told faculty that hiring women and minorities is “equally important” to the school’s mission as hiring Catholics.

John McGreevy, the university’s provost, outlined the hiring priorities in a faculty-wide Jan. 17 email obtained by the National Catholic Register. The provost argued the “complexity of our mission” called for Notre Dame to implement a new hiring guide, slated to go into effect July 1, to “evaluate candidates equitably.”

“One important goal is to hire Catholic faculty and other faculty deeply committed to our mission to ensure continuity with our past and our future as the world’s leading global Catholic research university,” McGreevy wrote. “A second overlapping and equally important goal is to increase the number of women and underrepresented minorities on our faculty so that we become the diverse and inclusive intellectual community our mission urges us to be.”

The @NDLaw school seeks to “educate a different kind of lawyer.” Part of that process is training in the realm of diversity, equity, and inclusion.@NDStories talks to DEI director Max Gaston about how his new podcast gives a window into his work. LISTEN: https://t.co/ZaNJW9YA9b pic.twitter.com/qi7uazYzMT

— University of Notre Dame (@NotreDame) January 27, 2023

The email prompted Scott Yenor, a political scientist at Boise State University, to write an extensive analysis of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies at Notre Dame for the Claremont Institute. His report estimated the university hosted 167 DEI-related events and spent roughly $6 million on diversity personnel salaries in 2024.

In announcing the university’s DEI “task force” in 2021, Father John Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president until 2024, said “only in this way can we live up to our Catholic mission.”

McGreevy reportedly sent the email just days before President Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening to cut federal funding to universities promoting DEI policies. The Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Craig Trainor, also warned universities to eliminate DEI practices or risk losing federal funds. It remains unclear whether these directives will affect Notre Dame, which receives millions in federal research grants annually.

In his executive order, the president said such policies “undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”

Trump also promised to “forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based” and end government programs that “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life,” in his inaugural address.

The University of Notre Dame did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.