Illinois University Nursing Program Receives Grant for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiative in ‘Racial Healing

A university in Illinois has received a grant to promote “racial healing” and will hire a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consultant to revise its nursing program.

The Department of Nursing at Elmhurst University received a $25,000 grant to hire the consultant to “ensure its Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) curriculum fully integrates diversity, equity and inclusion concepts,” the university said in a press release.

Becky Hulett, director of the school’s MSN and Doctor of Nursing Practice programs, said in the press release that the grant would “help us come up with the concepts we want to measure in our curriculum, how to measure those concepts, then integrate them into our curriculum.”

“We’re hoping to get people more comfortable talking and learning about the intersectionality of our lives and society,” she added.

The grant came from the Healing Illinois initiative, which the state describes as a program “designed to support communities across Illinois to begin or continue the work of racial healing in their communities.”

“The ongoing oppressive and structural tactics that uphold systemic racism and inequities highlight the need for racial healing, and the need to address the underlying systems that have created the conditions where vast racial disparities are allowed to exist,” the website for the program says. “As we move ahead with the work of systemic change, we must also lay the groundwork for community healing, acknowledging the harm done to communities of color and providing the space for healing.”

The Healing Illinois program is set to give out up to $4.5 million in grants to promote “racial healing activities.” The program lists four “major goals” for the initiative:

1. Build knowledge and understanding of racial healing and equity in communities across the state

2. Strengthen trust and relationship building, among the residents of Illinois

3. Expand opportunities for communities and individuals to begin to heal from the harms caused by racism

4. Increase awareness and media engagement focused on racial healing and equity

Laura Morgan, a retired nurse who works for the non-profit Do No Harm, told The College Fix that Elmhurst’s announcement was “disappointing.”

“While it’s not surprising to see this type of indoctrination happening in an Illinois university, it’s still disappointing, especially when a private university is accepting public funds to support it,” Morgan told the outlet.

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Morgan also said that “[w]hile several states have taken measures to remove DEI from their institutions of higher education, Illinois continues to plunge headlong into institutionalizing divisive race-based ideology through its taxpayer-funded entities like the Department of Human Services.”

She also criticized the program for having little to do with nursing.

“This grant contains all the well-worn language about systemic racism and inequity and seeks to create ‘racial healing practitioners.’ This is not nursing; it’s engaging in radical initiatives that seek to create social justice activists rather than nursing leaders,” she told the Fix.