Policy Constraints on Diversity: Development of Michigan Education From French Catholic Colonialism to Unfettered Neoliberalism

Abstract

Following the Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger decisions in 2003, the University of Michigan (UM) intensified efforts to promote campus diversity and position itself as a national leader within the Court’s suggested 25-year horizon for affirmative action. Throughout the state’s history, UM’s liberalism ran counter to its historical trajectory. From the initial visits of Catholic missionaries to Detroit until the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Michigan education developed in the French Catholic tradition, providing opportunities for Indigenous people, immigrant Europeans, and Africans escaping enslavement. Founded as a Catholic academy in Detroit in 1817, the UM had a liberal ethos in a territory where American immigrants brought white racist values to territorial courts and governance.

Michigan’s education system developed with local control of schools and autonomy for universities, constraining diversity due to persistent segregation. UM became a high-tuition, privatized university in the 1980s as Detroit evolved into a predominantly Black school system by 2000. Unequal school funding hampered implementation of a college preparatory curriculum, and the state’s electorate blocked further integration by eliminating affirmative action through a referendum. Postsecondary policies in the early 21st century focused on merit aid and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) preparation, making four-year colleges less affordable for low-income students, especially graduates of Detroit’s underfunded public schools. The UM commitment to diversity, as imperfect as it was in a neoliberal policy context, remains among the National Center for Institutional Diversity’s legacies under Professor Phillip Bowman’s leadership; his theories and research continue to inform holistic admissions at UM and other elite universities.