RALEIGH (May 24, 2024) – It’s 0.17% of NC State University’s budget.

A report last week revealed that NC State likely spends more on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs than any other university in the 17-campus UNC System – $3.4 million in 2022-23. Yet that amounts to “less than one fifth of 1 percent of the total University budget,” officials pointed out.¹

For universities with multi-billion-dollar budgets, that’s budget dust.

Yet the UNC System Board of Governors – and especially the Board of Trustees at UNC-Chapel Hill² – are hellbent on erasing those requirements.

That only underscores – yet again – just how political North Carolina’s public university governing boards have become.

Interaction Institute for Social Change | Artist: Angus Maguire

AS EXPECTED, the Board of Governors voted yesterday to repeal a 2019 policy that required each chancellor in the 17-campus UNC System to designate a senior administrator as its Diversity and Inclusion Officer and to develop metrics such as student and faculty demographics, achievement gaps, graduation and persistence rates, recruitment and retention and campus-wide surveys.

The Board replaced it with a policy that stresses “institutional neutrality” that is already part of a law that forbids state universities to ask potential students or employees for their positions on “political controversies of the day.”

The new policy requires the chancellor at each institution to report by Sept. 1 on reductions in DEI spending, any changes to job titles or position descriptions and how any savings can be redirected to “student success and wellbeing.”³

After a Board committee recommended the new policy last month with no discussion, two of the Board’s 24 members – Gene Davis and Pearl Burris-Floyd – spoke eloquently Thursday about the value of DEI. Then they both voted for the new policy.

Davis noted that the policy still requires compliance with federal and state anti-discrimination law and reaffirms free expression and academic freedom. “But it does not lessen our university’s commitment to diversity and inclusion,” he said.

Two members – Joel Ford and Sonja Nichols – voted against the policy.

UNC System President Peter Hans said it’s healthy for students to encounter both liberal and conservative ideas in college.

“And it’s vital that college administrators stay out of it altogether,” he said.

“Higher education does not exist to settle most important debates in our democracy,” Hans said. “Our role is to host those debates … and we can’t fulfill it if our institutions are seen as partisan actors in one direction or another.”

IN 2020, UNC-CHAPEL HILL adopted a new strategic plan called Carolina Next. The first strategic initiative in that plan was called “Build Our Community Together.” It called on the community to:

• “Together create conditions on campus that enable each other to thrive and feel like we all belong.
• “Enhance the educational benefits of diversity and inclusion through effective retention, recruitment and enrollment.
• “Prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion in teaching, research and service as well as in hiring, evaluation and promotion.”⁴

Has UNC-Chapel Hill, which loves to talk about its 230-year history as the nation’s first public university, really changed that much in four years?

Only the campus Board of Trustees has. And the Chancellor.

But in yet another example of the campus board jumping the gun, the Board of Trustees acted last week even before the UNC System board did to transfer $2.3 million from DEI programs at Chapel Hill to public safety.⁵

Now there’s a subtle message.

AT A BOARD MEETING later in the week, Trustee Ralph Meekins spoke about his fellow trustees’ precipitous action.

The trustees should not have acted before the Board of Governors adopted the policy and issued guidance on how to follow it, Meekins said. He noted that a Board of Governors committee recommended that any savings from DEI cuts go to “student success and wellbeing initiatives” – not public safety.

“We must be consistent with the Board of Governors,” Meekins said.

“The proposed Board of Governor(s) policy does not require the complete elimination of DEI programs, but calls for changes to be made and those changes to be determined by the chancellor at each school,” he said.

He noted that Interim Chancellor Lee Roberts – not the overreaching trustees – will ultimately decide how to implement the policy.

“UNC’s DEI programs oversee a wide range of activities on our campus, and I believe they are necessary on our campus,” Meekins said.

“While many would agree that some DEI efforts have become problematic and excessive – I’ve seen them myself – the fundamental principles of DEI and the ongoing need for development and support for the core of DEI principles are still key to the success of our campus. The Board of Trustees’ directive to do away with DEI entirely goes too far, and beyond what the Board of Governors is likely to require,” he said.

“This recent action … sends the wrong message to our students, prospective students and alumni regarding how UNC values and treats diverse populations on our campus.”⁶

YOU KNOW, those rogue Chapel Hill trustees might just earn another slap on the wrist from the System Office.⁷

Hans echoed Meekins’ comments yesterday, saying the trustees overstepped the UNC System’s policy on university budgets, which says only that the Board of Trustees can take an up-or-down vote on campus budgets and does not give them power to make line-item changes.

Asked whether public safety would qualify as a student-success program, he replied, “No.”

The System’s lawyer told Chapel Hill’s lawyer the trustees didn’t have that authority, Hans said, but Chapel Hill’s trustees “chose to disregard that advice.”⁸

PENDULUMS DO SWING, though, and some administrators apparently think the DEI pendulum swung too far in one direction.

It’s definitely swung too hard the other way now.

But the principle that undergirds Article IX, Section 9 of the state constitution – the part that says the General Assembly shall provide the benefits of higher education “as far as practicable … to the people of the State free of expense”⁹ – is that public higher education is for all North Carolinians.

Roberts said as much recently when he restored the American flag that had been lowered by pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

“This university doesn’t belong to a small group of protesters,” he said. “It belongs to every citizen of North Carolina – everybody in North Carolina. Everybody who goes to school here, everybody who lives and works here.”¹⁰

That’s right. It’s rooted in access for all North Carolinians.

Different students learn in different ways. Not every student starts in the same privileged place – some might need more of a boost.

And maybe, just maybe, a student should see a teacher who looks like her at the front of the class sometimes.

It might just make her – and her classmates – wiser for it.

THE UNC SYSTEM Board of Governors didn’t need to revisit a policy many of its own members voted for in 2019 – but they did so for political reasons, and to the detriment of the University community.

And the UNC-Chapel Hill trustees clearly overstepped their authority when they prematurely shifted funds from DEI to public safety, yet again embarrassing themselves and the University. Arrogance and ignorance are a dangerous combination.

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¹ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article288480553.html.
² https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article288473709.html; https://www.wral.com/story/unc-board-of-trustees-removes-dei-funding-from-budget/21428683/; https://www.wral.com/story/a-look-at-the-shift-in-dei-funding-at-unc-chapel-hill/21431305/.
³ https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/policy/doc.php?type=pdf&id=147.
⁴ https://carolinanext.unc.edu/plan/.
⁵ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article287152290.html.
⁶  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOoOszXNKv0, 38:50.
⁷ https://publicedworks.org/2024/04/a-well-earned-smackdown/.
⁸ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article288686745.html.
⁹ https://www.ncleg.gov/Laws/Constitution/Article9#:~:text=of%20higher%20education.-,Sec.,the%20State%20free%20of%20expense.
¹⁰ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b7BIw9khR8.