FEATURED
Program ‘designed to fund only scholarship with radical conclusions,’ expert says
Each year, the University of Michigan’s Inclusive History Project awards tens of thousands of dollars to research initiatives that examine the school “through an inclusive lens.”
The Inclusive History Project announced financial support for three initiatives during the 2025–2026 academic year, including one titled “Celebrating Feminist Psychology: Origin Points & Necessary Futures.”
The project’s description of “inclusive history,” including LGBTQ+ activism and Students for a Democratic Society, has prompted criticism from conservatives who are concerned that it advances a leftist ideology with public funds.
One education expert told The College Fix that this program is “heavily politicized.”
David Randall, the director of research at the National Association of Scholars, said it is “designed to fund only scholarship with radical conclusions, and employ only radical scholars.”
“The University of Michigan is not a real university so long as it subordinates free intellectual inquiry to political activism. Michigan’s citizens and policymakers may judge how much they wish to fund a politicized simulacrum of a university,” he said.
Randall said the Inclusive History Project points to the need for broader reform at the university, calling for widespread personnel changes to remove “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives.
“The University of Michigan needs a new university president, provosts, and deans, who are selected without input from existing professors, administrators, or other members of the education establishment,” he said. “Any search committee run by the education establishment will veto any dedicated reformer.”
“Newly hired and reformist administrative leaders could undertake to remove DEI policies and regulations and enforce these reforms, not least by removing noncompliant and sabotaging university staff, and by ensuring that faculty ceased to use DEI (formally or informally) in their hiring and funding,” he told The Fix.
Randall added that Michigan’s citizens should not anticipate the removal of DEI programs unless university leadership is fundamentally restructured.
UM’s “Celebrating Feminist Psychology” project will be headed by Sara McClelland. She researches “Gender & Feminist Psychology,” “Personality & Social Contexts,” “Race Ethnicity,” “Feminism,” “Psychology,” “Social Justice,” and “Diversity,” according to the school’s website.
Her university webpage says she “examines how social and political environments unevenly shape people’s intimate and reproductive lives.” She is a professor of psychology and women’s and gender studies.
The College Fix emailed McClelland on Jan. 23 requesting how much she received for “Celebrating Feminist Psychology,” but did not receive a response.
The Fix also emailed the Inclusive History Project on Dec. 18 and again on Jan. 23, but did not receive a response.
The Inclusive History Project, which serves as a unique department at the University of Michigan, provides research faculty with several avenues for funding, including $3,000 for “course redesign” and $5,000 for “course development,” according to its webpage.
The project’s “Research & Engagement Fund Large Grants” provides up to $25,000 for projects that “contribute to better understanding the university’s history of inclusion and exclusion.”
According to the project’s description, the mini-grants “provide funding for research projects, creative endeavors, and engagement activities that develop and share deeper knowledge of U-M’s history through an inclusive lens.”
Approved mini-grant projects examine topics such as “environmental justice, labor organizing and the formation of unions at the university, anti-apartheid activism, the range of divestment movements over time, LQBTQ+ activism, pacifist movements, well-known U-M examples like the Black Action Movement (BAM) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).”
The Fix reached out to the university to learn more about the program, but did not receive a response.
