Rutgers University Spent $10 Million On DEI Staff In One Year

Academic advocacy for far-left ideologies like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and mass illegal immigration are not just for the ivory tower of Ivy League schools. State schools across the country are spending millions to advance DEI, raking in even more from foreign governments, and using their federal grants to fund social experiments.

According to a report from Open The Books, Rutgers University, for example, had 136 DEI-related employees as of 2023, with the total salary expenditure of $10 million. It has also taken in $285.5 million from foreign governments (including China and Saudi Arabia) since 2013 and received $3 billion in federal contracts and grants since 2020, much of which was spent on far-left priorities.

Rutgers is one of 11 schools with similar funding stories included in the report, designed to highlight left-wing institutional capture of higher education at every level of prestige and in every region of the country.

“What we’re finding with this new reporting is just how far the DEI worldview has penetrated our academic institutions. These are not Harvard or Princeton, where people have come to expect far-Left ideas,” John Hart, CEO of OpenTheBooks, told The Federalist. “The identity politics agenda is totally out of step with mainstream, state-run schools, yet they’re spending lavishly on this philosophy. It shows just how brazen and strident DEI backers had become in recent years.” 

“Even though it feels like the tide is turning against DEI, dismantling its infrastructure will not be easy,” Hart added. “The Trump administration is rolling back these programs within the federal government, so in some ways we’re going to see the battleground move to the states.”

DEI at Rutgers

The nature of DEI ideology is such that its adherents weave it into every aspect of organizational operation, from hiring to instruction to operations. That is the story at Rutgers (as it is at so many other schools), where some highly paid DEI advocates even affect the practice of medicine, like Dr. Haejin In, a surgical oncologist and first Associate Director of DEI and Chief Diversity Office on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team for Rutgers Cancer Institute.

Overall, 25 DEI-related staff at Rutgers receive salaries of between $100,000 and $200,000.

Many of the highest-paid professors are in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, where at least four professors make $200,000 or more, while 66 total individuals in the department serve as professors, lecturers, program coordinators, teaching assistants, and in other positions.

Classes have included “Social Justice Movements” and “Poverty, Inequality, and Gender.” While students can major in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, a requisite minor is also offered by the department along with Critical Sexualities, Social Justice, and Gender and Media minors.

According to the report, 11 DEI-related employees at the Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology are part of the School Climate Transformation Project, which is also sponsored by the New Jersey Department of Education, in order to work with K-12 schools to “promote systems-level change and inclusive and positive school climates.”

“Equity, particularly as it relates to communicating and engaging with school community members, is prioritized throughout each element of the SCCP and is attended to by both district–and school-level leaders,” the project states.

The Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice is another DEI-related program, which the school portrays as a “conduit for new knowledge and ideas, providing opportunities for Rutgers faculty whose inquiries address racism and social inequality to work collaboratively and effect meaningful action and positive change.”

The program is openly intent on transforming society into a haven for DEI, with the website describing it as a “universitywide intellectual corridor that escalates the likelihood that their explorations and findings will inform real-world decisions, providing solutions to problems that have been increasingly thrust into sharp focus in the United States and around the globe.”

Twenty-six DEI-related employees are on the payroll, including its executive director, Michelle Stephens, who earns a $341,746 salary.

Enobong Branch, who makes the same amount as Stephens, leads the school’s Equity and Inclusion Department, which includes another eight staff members on the payroll.

The Trump administration has issued guidance to K-12 schools and universities warning them that their federal funding could be cut due to their DEI programs likely violating Title VI civil rights law.

Federal Funding

Rutgers has received almost $3 billion in federal tax money, roughly $2.6 billion of which came through grants. That does not include money from government-backed student loans or the nearly-zero percent tax on its $2 billion endowment. (The Trump administration and conservatives in Congress have proposed heavily taxing endowments.)

The Department of Health and Human Services awarded about $1.2 billion in grants, while the Department of Education awarded $775 million and the National Science Foundation awarded $271 million. Slightly smaller grants came from the Department of Agriculture (almost $60 million) and Department of Defense ($53 million).

Some of the projects funded by tax dollars include a National Science Foundation-funded project to create a “‘theory around processes of social control, state practices and human agency’ about the deportation of ‘immigrants with criminal records’” in order to deepen the “understanding of the relationship between citizenship, the law, and policing practices that have so impacted racialized immigrant communities.”

Another assuredly seminal work is the National Endowment for the Arts-funded project to “support an ethnographic case study of the role of hip-hop-based arts education in facilitating youth community-building, agency, and activism.”

The Department of Agriculture was interested in how it could “convince Americans to eat more farmed seafood,” as opposed to wild caught seafood, in order to increase general seafood consumption among Americans and because the “consumer preference for wild over farmed fish limits the production and profitability of the aquaculture industry.”

In spite of Rutgers’ large endowment, the school still received nearly $290.5 million in Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Department of Education has canceled many far-left grants and contracts since Trump took office.

Foreign Funding

Rutgers has also raked in hundreds of millions in foreign funding since 2013. While most funding has come from places like the United Kingdom and Japan, the university has taken $26 million from China and partnered with the country on grants and scholarships through the Rutgers Beijing Center and the school’s China office.

The school decides to work with China even as Rutgers research itself has revealed concerning information about China. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and Rutgers professor, reportedly found a “smoking gun” that the coronavirus was created intentionally in a Chinese lab.

A study from the Rutgers-based Network Contagion Research Institute maintains that the Chinese government engages in “psychological manipulation” by wielding TikTok to generate support for its government and quash dissent.

From the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has given $630,000 and Qatar has given $327,000. As The Federalist reported, Qatar’s funding of American educational institutions serves as an avenue for propaganda.

Rutgers did not respond to a request for comment from The Federalist.

Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.