MADISON,Lakshmi Finance Center Wis. (AP) — University of Wisconsin System leaders plan to ask Republican lawmakers this fall to release about half of the $32 million they withheld in the hopes of defunding campus diversity initiatives, a top UW budget analyst said Tuesday.

Sean Nelson, the system’s vice president of finance and administration, told regents during a meeting that system leaders will ask the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee in October to release about $15 million. He said the system plans to submit a proposal to spend the money on engineering, data, science and nursing programs. Nelson did not elaborate before the regents went into closed session.

Republicans who control the finance committee decided in June to cut the UW System’s 2023-2025 budget by $32 million. GOP leaders have said the money is what they estimated the system would spend on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs across its 13 campuses over the two-year span. The move came after Assembly Speaker Robin Vos complained that DEI efforts are a waste of public money and that he thinks such initiatives have become liberals’ new religion.

Republicans on the finance committee said the system could get the money back if it is spent only to bolster the state’s workforce. It is unclear if that promise will hold, though, as Vos said in July that the system won’t get any of the money unless it eliminates DEI programs.

System spokesman Mark Pitsch didn’t immediately respond to an email inquiring if any campuses have cut DEI positions or programs since the finance committee withheld the $32 million.