University Fires DEIAB Staff to Recover Revenue

In a bid to balance a multi-million dollar loss in revenue from international students, the University of New Haven has fired or merged the responsibilities of some 46 faculty and staff members since June 2025.

Jens Frederiksen, UNH president, and other cabinet leaders confirmed growing student concerns about missing staff during a public assembly with the undergraduate student government association in October.

Included in that figure are staff members under the umbrella of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility and belonging. Some have been terminated, while some have had their responsibilities merged under different titles. The position of vice president for institutional diversity and inclusion, created by the USGA vice president of community advocacy and diversity in 2023, has been eliminated since the firing of Barbara Lawrence in May.

This academic year, the university has 2,300 fewer students attending on F-1 student visas, which effectively removed $28 million from the university’s 2025-2026 budget, according to Frederiksen and Deborah Flonc, associate vice president for budgets and financial planning.

Figures from 2023 show 83% of the university operating budget comes from enrollment. Flonc said the dip in enrollment has been anticipated since March, within the annual budget proposal period. While Frederiksen described the international enrollment cliff as ‘catastrophic’ during talks with students, Flonc feels differently, expressing her excitement for career services and student affairs initiatives.

“I wouldn’t even call it a crisis necessarily,” Flonc said. “What we are going through right now is a blip, and it is a phenomenal opportunity for the university to really dig into all of the different departments.”

“We’re doing a lot of assessing at a very granular level to make sure that we’re investing in the right areas of the university,” said Flonc, "and sort of redirect funding so that it's in places that make sense.”

At an October town hall meeting hosted by the USGA and the Graduate Student Council, Frederiksen answered questions about the school’s financial challenges. Frederiksen withheld comments pertaining to ‘personnel matters’, as he referred to them as.

Together, roughly 140 students attended, as well as multicultural RSO leaders like Nicole ‘Nikki’ Rosario, president of Latin American Student Association. “But I think what people are asking is,” said Rosario, “how is the university looking to help the minorities who are directly being affected?”

“Though we do get a certain sense of support, it does feel a little empty when these people are being fired.” Rosario said, “That's a group of people who [are] losing their voice.”

“Well, it's always a little bit more complex than that, right?” Frederiksen said to Rosario, “What I can say is that funding will continue, and if there are individuals who are leaving, for whatever reason that may be, that we will continue to invest in that area and continue to have staff there to support.”

At the meeting, Gabriel Aliendro, diversity peer educator in the myatt center for diversity and inclusion, asked Frederiksen, “How are we establishing a community on campus despite this recent cycle of terminations? Because we cannot effectively establish a community without grounded foundations within the faculty.”

“I could be sort of delusional and say we're going to spend and we're going to invest,” said Frederiksen in return, “but then there wouldn't be any programs to run, right?”

When contacted by Horseshoe, Frederiksen issued a statement in which he said that “no particular demographic was targeted” in the firing process.

“The university carefully approached its reduction in headcount through a workforce-planning process,” said Frederiksen. “We also conducted a reassessment of functional needs to ensure that staffing decisions were made thoughtfully, responsibly, and in support of the institution’s long-term goals.”

Jen Cinque, vice president of human resources, declined an interview with Horseshoe and said, “Based on the response [Frederiksen] provided, I do not have any additional information or context to offer.”

Bonnie Urciuoli, professor of anthropology at Hamilton College, says Black students rely on multicultural faculty mentorship for success, in the ethnographic study "Neoliberalizing Markedness: the Interpolation of ‘Diverse’ College Students.". Affiliations within the university, she says, provide students isolated bubbles of opportunity where there are none elsewhere.

Before he was fired in September, Kenneth Notorino Jeffrey was MCDI assistant director and advisor to four Black and Latino organizations. Jeffrey helped to coordinate the ‘Men of Color Collective,’ a Black mentorship affinity group, with other faculty. His door was marked with flowers and affirmations from students before the nameplate was removed by facilities.

In March 2025, the mentorship group changed its name to “Men's Collective.” Brian Ibarra, former faculty in the dean of students office, founded MOCC but left at the start of this semester.

Timothy Prince, who had been coordinator of leadership diversity and inclusion since 2023, also left the university in October, saying he struggled with the decision because of his relationship to students in multicultural RSOs.

“Nobody ever thinks it’ll happen to them,” said Prince, “but I’ve seen three waves of this.” The job terminations of his friends and colleagues pressured Prince toward the ultimate decision of leaving his position in the center for student engagement leadership and orientation.

Prince said he offered to stay with the university if he was promoted to assistant director of the Myatt Center, but administrators asked him to wait a year to have that conversation.

Prince’s UNH position, listed in the university job opportunities index, is now titled “Assistant Director of Student Leadership & Intercultural Engagement”. That is three roles merged into one new position, (MCDI assistant director, associate director for fraternity/sorority life and programming and coordinator for leadership diversity and inclusion). The recent change removes “DEI” from Prince’s former title.

One of the first to hear of faculty firings was Sheraud Wilder, a senior in psychology and president of the Gamma Alpha Tau chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.

Jurea McIntosh, sister of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc., told Wilder she was terminated in July from her role as associate director for fraternity/sorority life and programming. Since beginning her role in 2024, McIntosh has frequently collaborated with Prince to advise the multicultural Greek Council.

“Jurea tirelessly worked day in and day out,” said Wilder in a letter to Horseshoe Magazine, “to ensure that the FSL community was not only revived but thriving prosperously. Only to silently exit the university without any acknowledgment of the impact she left.”

In Urciuoli’s study, she listened to stories from students and staff and explored the conflicts instigated by university leadership in their mistreatment of crucial student services, which are “seen from the outset as a diversity delivery vehicle.”

One surveyed student echoed Wilder’s sentiment. “One by one all these people who were so key in bringing us here started leaving,” they said, “and we started to see the qualms about our program on this campus.”

Urciuoli’s research builds on a 2011 study, Ilana Gershon's ‘Neoliberal Agency.’ The capacity or act of exerting power, the agency to bring about change, is different from Gershon's ‘neoliberal agency.’ In agreement, Urciuoli says BIPOCs’ choices “are between limited possibilities, with the structural reasons for the limitations systematically overlooked.”

Therefore, institutions have continued loosely establishing DEIAB programs, Gershon says, “as long as the cultural difference at stake can be commodified or otherwise marketed.”

“For the more racially marked,” Urciuoli said, “their primary social function is their appeal…these [constructed pressures] reinforce rather than mitigate students’ markedness because they are the only ways in which students can acquire symbolic capital.”