Faith leaders, community organizers and civil rights advocates will rally outside of Southfield’s Target store tomorrow April 12, according to nonprofit organization Michigan United Action.

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The rally is in response to the Target Corporation reversing its commitment to diversity equity and inclusion measures.

The Minneapolis-based retailer said the changes to its “Belonging at the Bullseye” strategy would include ending a program it established to help Black employees build meaningful careers, improve the experience of Black shoppers and to promote Black-owned businesses following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Target, which operates nearly 2,000 stores nationwide and employs more than 400,000 people, said it already had planned to end the racial program this year.

The Trump administration has threatened to cut off funding to organizations and corporations like Target to put pressure on abandon DEI initiatives.

Since Target’s decision to reverse course, the retailer has faced decreased stock prices and declining foot traffic.

–Associated Press writer Anne D’Innocenzio contributed to this report.

Other headlines for Friday, April 11, 2025:

• Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud is set to deliver his second State of the City address on April 15 at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center. 
  
• Nonprofit group Focus Hope is giving away free fresh food boxes on select Saturdays. All Wayne County residents are eligible to pick up a box of fresh food, which include halal chicken, fresh fruit and vegetables, condiments and more.
• Spot Lite Detroit is hosting an event featuring live performances and DJ sets from Arab artists in metro Detroit this Saturday.

Do you have a community story we should tell? Let us know in an email at detroiteveningreport@wdet.org.

Over 3,000 faculty, staff and students at the University of Michigan held an emergency meeting after the university announced it would close its Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion.

The closure is a response to the Trump administrations efforts to end DEI programming at colleges across the country.

The announcement, which reportedly resulted in at least 10 staff terminations, came as a shock to many across campus.

“It was just kind of, you know, a mixture of faculty and students and staff that were concerned about what’s going on and kind of felt blindsided by this,” said Mariel Krupansky, a lecturer at U-M.

Concerns raised during the meeting included the treatment of non-union staff, job security for DEI-aligned roles, and broader implications for academic freedom.

Krupansky also shared fears that decentralizing DEI programs could leave students without accessible resources.

“I predict that students will have more trouble finding out that they even exist and know that they have access to them,” she said.

Krupanksy said while she believes that DEI programs may have been an imperfect tool, the university’s decision was not reflective of the whole campus.

“I think the fact that over 3,000 people tried to show up to an emergency meeting… is evidence of that,” she said. “For those people who are doing that work every day, this is devastating.”

UM-Flint took a different approach to the announcement and rebranded DEI efforts under the umbrella of “Wolverine Hub of Opportunity, Persistence, and Excellence,” or HOPE.

“The fact that U of M Ann Arbor chose not to go that route, I think is telling,” Krupansky said.

She adds that the university’s decision to close the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion under threats from the Trump administration sends a bad message.

“President Ono, the regents and other university administrators are telling [Trump’s administration] that the university can be threatened into compliance and that they are not willing to litigate or challenge executive orders that clearly extend beyond the executive’s constitutional power,” Krupansky said.

University staff, faculty, and students launched the website umdeidefense.com to keep the campus up to date on future news and efforts to push back on the decision.

The University of Michigan responded to an interview request by saying it’s “passing on interview opportunities at this time.”

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Diversity, equity and inclusion is going away. It’s been the story for businesses and colleges in America over the last month. 

With pressure from the Trump administration and from the U.S. Department of Education, the University of Michigan and a number of other universities have removed their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices. 

But it’s not just the White House that doesn’t like DEI. It’s been criticized by some professors, students and public commentators as well.

Metro Producer Sam Corey sat down with two professors to understand how DEI programs work and what could happen as they go away. Robert Sellers is a professor of psychology and education, and the first chief diversity officer at the University of Michigan. Stacy Hawkins is a Rutgers professor, diversity consultant and DEI expert. 

The Metro has reached out to several University of Michigan regents who helped usher in the end of DEI practices and programming. We are still waiting to hear back from those state-wide elected officials. 

Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.

More stories from The Metro on Monday, April 7:

• Mallory McMorrow wants to bring a new generation to the US Senate
• Curbing the impulse to buy more stuff
• Former Sleeping Bear Dunes superintendent warns of cuts to national parks, public lands

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

The University of Michigan is closing its office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and shutting down diversity initiatives campuswide, in response to executive orders from the Trump administration and internal discussions on campus.

The moves were announced in a campus-wide email from university President Santa Ono and other top leaders Thursday afternoon.

The changes will also affect the Office for Health Equity and Inclusion at Michigan Medicine.

In the email, university leaders acknowledged the diversity initiatives had been successful on some measures.

“First-generation undergraduate students, for example, have increased 46% and undergraduate Pell recipients have increased by more than 32%, driven in part by impactful programs such as Go Blue Guarantee and Wolverine Pathways,” the email read. “The work to remove barriers to student success is inherently challenging, and our leadership has played a vital role in shaping inclusive excellence throughout higher education.”

The University of Michigan has frequently been at the center of conversations about diversity on college campuses; it was the defendant in two lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court in 2003, resulting in rulings that partially struck down affirmative action programs on campus at the time.

Last year, the New York Times reported on UM’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, saying the university had poured more than a quarter of a billion dollars into the programs since 2016, but many critics remained on campus.

In 2023, the university launched what it called its DEI 2.0 strategic plan, which was announced as a five-year plan to run through 2028. On Thursday, the university announced it would abandon the plan, as part of the other cuts to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on campus. It said it would also update university websites to remove mentions of the DEI efforts.

In a post on the social media site “X”, university regent Sarah Hubbard said cutting the DEI offices on campus would free up money to spend on other student programs.

Today the University of Michigan is ending implementation of DEI.

We are eliminating programs, eliminating affiliated staff and ending the DEI 2.0 strategy.

Late last year we ended the use of diversity statements in faculty hiring. This is now expanded university wide and…

— Sarah Hubbard, Regent @umich (@RegentHubbard) March 27, 2025

“We are eliminating bureaucratic overspending and making Michigan more accessible,” Hubbard wrote, citing the expansion of the Go Blue Guarantee scholarship program, which had previously been announced by the university.

Editor’s note: The University of Michigan holds Michigan Public’s broadcast license.