The University of Notre Dame’s provost told faculty members that hiring women and non-white staff is “equally important” to the school’s mission of hiring Catholic faculty.
According to an email obtained by the National Catholic Register, University Provost John McGreevy outlined Notre Dame’s hiring priorities in a message sent to faculty in January. McGreevy stated that the “complexity of our mission” required the implementation of a new hiring guide, set to take effect in July, aimed at “equitably” evaluating candidates.
“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 in the email. “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 report prompted Scott Yenor, a political scientist at Boise State University, to analyze Notre Dame’s DEI policies. His findings revealed that the university hosted 167 DEI-related events and spent approximately $6 million on diversity personnel in 2024.
Notre Dame previously established a DEI “task force” in 2021, with then-President Father John Jenkins stating that diversity efforts were necessary to “live up to our Catholic mission.”
McGreevy’s email came just days before President Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening to cut federal funding to universities that promote DEI policies. The order stated that 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.”
