Anisa Khalifa: Over the past decade, universities across America have embraced DEI policies intended to promote representation among historically marginalized groups. They opened offices and centers to support that mission — and hired staff to work with university employees and students. After the racial justice protests of 2020, more schools across the country rushed to embrace efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. But then… came the backlash.
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Unidentified Anchor: The debate in colleges and universities over diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives…
Unidentified Anchor: DEI programs are under attack by conservative lawmakers and activists.
Unidentified Anchor: The governor says she wants to stop quote, bad actors on campuses from pushing a quote, liberal political movement.
Unidentified Anchor: Similar legislative efforts in more than a dozen other states seek to shut down or pare back DEI efforts in higher education and government.
Anisa Khalifa: And now it’s arrived in North Carolina.
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Unidentified Anchor: Well, DEI is DOA at UNC.
Anisa Khalifa: I’m Anisa Khalifa. You’re listening to The Broadside, where we tell stories from our home at the crossroads of the South. This week, are we witnessing the death of DEI? And why?
Brianna Atkinson: Hi, I'm Brianna Atkinson, and I cover higher education at WUNC.
Anisa Khalifa: For the past few months, Brianna’s been reporting on a story that started in 2019. That’s when the University of North Carolina System's Board of Governors adopted a policy promoting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Brianna Atkinson: So it covered all 16 public universities in the state in addition to the North Carolina School for Science and Math.
Anisa Khalifa: And the plan for these schools was extensive.
Brianna Atkinson: It required each of them to have a DEI officer or somebody operating in a DEI officer capacity. It required each school to have data collection, so they had to collect... every university had to have someone representing them on a cross university council that the UNC system conducted. The UNC system also had their own DEI liaison that also oversaw kind of all the different DEI initiatives that were happening on campus.
Anisa Khalifa: But recently, Brianna says there was a major shift.
Brianna Atkinson: It was back in April and it actually started pretty secretly. Every time the UNC Board of Governors is going to meet, they release an agenda with the items that they're going to discuss that day. They made a very last minute agenda addition.
Anisa Khalifa: Added to the docket was a vote to repeal the DEI policy that affected the system's 48,000 employees and nearly a quarter million students. The motion passed in that committee and was eventually approved by the full board the following month.
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Unidentified Anchor: New today, the UNC Board of Governors voted to get rid of its diversity, equity and inclusion policy. This will affect all 17 public colleges and universities in North Carolina.
Anisa Khalifa: There's a North Carolina free speech law that sparked this, right? Or that's been cited as the basis for this. Can you tell us about that law?
Brianna Atkinson: Essentially, it tells universities and also university staff that are speaking on behalf of the university to avoid political controversies of the day or matters of social debate. But it's been around two years prior to when the DEI policy was first created at the UNC Board of Governors. So it's not something brand new that just happened that the Board of Governors is reacting to.
Anisa Khalifa: A lot of times this argument against DEI is framed as a free speech argument. Can you explain what that argument is?
Brianna Atkinson: I think that UNC System President Peter Hans explained it best in a Board of Governors meeting.
Peter Hans: An official university position would hinder free expression and stifle the open minded contest of ideas that is supposed to mark university life.
Brianna Atkinson: He was saying that universities aren't supposed to have opinions and by that way their staff aren't supposed to have opinions.
Peter Hans: Higher education does not exist to settle the most difficult debates in our democracy. Our role is to host those debates, to inform them, to make them richer and more constructive. That's a vital responsibility and we can't fulfill it if our institutions are seen as partisan actors in one direction or another.
Brianna Atkinson: It's, it's a little ironic because a lot of people that are against what the BOG is doing, they say that this is having an opinion, having a right wing leaning opinion, and they feel like it's partisan.
Anisa Khalifa: And to that point, this isn’t happening in a vacuum. There’s been a chorus of mostly Republican lawmakers who’ve been really critical of DEI. They’ve also argued that these policies are pushing a biased and even partisan position. How does this fit into larger trends around DEI on campuses in North Carolina?
Brianna Atkinson: I 'd want to extend it even more than just on North Carolina's campuses, because really this kind of attack on DEI has been happening since Florida kind of introduced anti DEI legislation. And then Texas, it's really a Southern, it kind of started in Southern states, um, Florida and Texas have both passed policies like in their legislatures against DEI offices. And that's led to hundreds of positions being cut, it's led to centers being shut down, and they are all saying essentially that it is political, schools shouldn't have opinions on political topics and North Carolina is following suit with what Florida and Texas are doing.
Anisa Khalifa: Why do proponents of DEI think this is happening now?
Brianna Atkinson: Yeah. The people that I've spoken with, um, some of them. I share a sentiment that this is happening because it's kind of the latest thing that's happening politically on a national scale. They all think that it's a political power play, essentially, kind of like when people were going against critical race theory, they feel like it's just an extension of that and it's critical race theory, but in college classrooms. And they think that the way that they're getting at that is by eliminating DEI jobs and DEI offices.
Anisa Khalifa: And all of this has been happening during a period of heightened tension on UNC campuses. Pro-Palestinian protests broke out in the Spring and got international attention — particularly at UNC-Chapel Hill.
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Unidentified Anchor: Protests against the war in Gaza have been taking center stage at campuses across the US.
Unidentified Anchor: Protests have spread right across the US, from the East to West coasts.
Unidentified Anchor: This afternoon hundreds marched through town, shutting down Franklin Street.
Anisa Khalifa: Brianna, how did that impact the conversation surrounding DEI funding?
Brianna Atkinson: A month after the Board of Governors Committee passed that policy in April. The UNC Board of Trustees had a vote to move DEI funding, which is about 2.3 million dollars of initiatives, to public safety. One of the board trustees, Vice Chair Marty Kotes, he said that because of the protest, they need more money to fund campus police. And since the BOG committee passed this policy, why not take it from DEI.
Marty Kotes: We talk about peaceful protest, but when you destroy property or you take down the U.S. flag, um, and you have to put up gates around it that cost money or deploy officers to do that, North Carolinians are watching all of this and they are not happy. And I think it's imperative that we have the proper resources for law enforcement to protect the campus. And that means our property. And that means our flag as well.
Anisa Khalifa: So, how did students respond to this decision by the Board of Trustees to redirect this funding to public safety?
Brianna Atkinson: This meeting that the Board of Trustees called was actually a special meeting that was held two days before a regular meeting that they were supposed to have. Um, the special meeting was all done remotely. People didn't even know that they were planning on doing this DEI redirect funding vote. So, over the next two days people react reacted on social media. They were really upset. They were upset with the connotation of essentially student protesters being blamed for DEI funding being moved to campus police and then at the regular Board of Trustees meeting, which was in person in Chapel Hill, student protesters came and they held a demonstration.
Protestors: Shame on you! Shame on you!
Anisa Khalifa: Is that an unusual thing for them to give such little notice or to have secret meetings like How does, how do these types of policy changes happen normally?
Brianna Atkinson: Oh, it is completely unusual. And going back to the Board of Governors alone, their decision was highly unusual too. When I was talking about earlier how it's been shrouded in secrecy, usually when there's policy changes, it is a months-long to a years-long process. There are presentations, there are stakeholder meetings, they're meeting with faculty, sometimes students are allowed to offer comments about how they feel about it. The DEI policy committee vote took four minutes. So it's completely, completely unusual.
Anisa Khalifa: And while all of this may be unusual, it’s a done deal here in North Carolina. Coming up after a break, we find out what the policy is being replaced with and if this means that DEI is really dead in higher ed.
So now that the DEI policy has been repealed, what has it been replaced with?
Brianna Atkinson: Yeah, it's been replaced with a new policy called Equality Within the University of North Carolina. This policy enshrines this ideal of institutional neutrality and a lot of it goes back to that campus free speech law, where they're saying university staff can't have political opinions, they can't endorse political opinions. But the policy itself is very broad, it's very vague, don't be politically controversial, and without really giving any context as to exactly what that is.
Anisa Khalifa: How do you define something as politically controversial? I mean, that can mean so many things to so many people, right?
Brianna Atkinson: It can.
Anisa Khalifa: So, who does this impact and how?
Brianna Atkinson: This impacts all of the public universities in the state, all of the students, all of the faculty members, all of the staff. They said that student groups aren't affected by this policy, but students use the DEI offices on their campuses, they use the centers on their campuses, and both of those things are directly mentioned either in the policy itself or in the additional legal guidance that was sent out to chancellors.
It's unclear right now, though, because of how broad the policy is, what is going to happen on campuses. Some of them have already said that they're closing their DEI offices. Some of them said that they're going to be making changes to their centers, but you can't really know the widespread impact it's going to have after that because in Florida and Texas, they told people at the start, Oh, no one is losing their job. Centers are fine. Less than a year later, hundreds of people lost their jobs and half a dozen centers are closed in Texas. Um, and I actually spoke with a lawyer and professor from Elon University about this, his name is Eric Fink, and he said essentially, because the policy is so vague and is so broad, people can use it to try to further along more closures even later down the road once everything is set in stone.
Eric Fink: Any person who thinks that something that's going on at the University of North Carolina transgresses this policy, or something is going on that they don't like, can make a complaint that this is transgressing the policy. They may be right or they may be wrong, okay? But even if they're wrong, it can still cause trouble.
Anisa Khalifa: Of course, this impacts a lot of campuses, a lot of students, but do you have a general sense of how students feel about this change?
Brianna Atkinson: Yeah, I have spoken, um, to students at multiple universities. Students have been getting together to have protests outside of and at board meetings. A lot of students are upset about the direction that this is going. Um, one of the students I spoke with is an NC State student, Isaac Hedges, who was essentially saying that marginalized communities already don't have enough support.
Isaac Hedges: And that has to be actively fought back against. Active programs have to be made to introduce that equity. It will not happen on its own due to the system itself.
Brianna Atkinson: And they feel like the UNC system is taking away the little bit of support that they do have at universities.
Anisa Khalifa: I know that might, this might not be like a direct line, but has this shift around DEI policy had any impact on private universities in North Carolina?
Brianna Atkinson: That is a really good question. We will have to wait and see for private universities. I spoke with one president at a private university, a private HBCU actually in North Carolina, and she said like she is welcoming any students who don't feel like they have a space on a public, public university because her university is going to continue to offer DEI and support. So it would be interesting to see if private universities kind of turn this into almost a sales pitch to say, Hey, you don't like what's going on, come on over to us. We don't have a university board of governors. We don't have to worry about, you know, where our money is going in terms of DEI initiatives. We have all these supports for you guys.
Anisa Khalifa: Like a recruiting plan.
Brianna Atkinson: Yeah.
Anisa Khalifa: What about historically black colleges and universities? How does this impact them? Because we have public HBCUs that are also in the UNC system, and they have a very different mandate than other schools. How are they handling this? Have you talked to anybody at an HBCU about what this is gonna mean for them?
Brianna Atkinson: Yeah, North Carolina is a hot spot for HBCUs. We have five public ones. We have the largest one in the United States, which is North Carolina A& T State University. Um, and HBCUs, I've reached out to them. I only got two responses back. North Carolina Central University said that they were reviewing the guidance and the policy and that they would have their decision in on time. Um, Winston Salem State University told me that they didn't even have a DEI office and they also said that they would have their information and changes in on time. They've been pretty quiet about it.
Anisa Khalifa: You mentioned a deadline that's approaching. Each school must comply with the new policy on that date. When is that deadline and what's going to happen then?
Brianna Atkinson: Yes, the deadline is September 1st. All university chancellors and then also the North Carolina School for Science and Math, they have to send their DEI plan essentially to UNC System President Peter Hans. They have to tell UNC System President Peter Hans essentially what DEI supports they're removing and how they are going to put it towards what they call student success initiatives. I looked up student success on the Board of Governors website and it's essentially things that like, increase the graduation rate and student mental health services. So for UNC Chapel Hill for example, some of their money might be going into CAPS. That's like their counseling and psychological services that they have. But yeah, we'll just have to wait to see what chancellors are going to do and how far they're going to take the policy, essentially.
Anisa Khalifa: So what do you think this means more broadly for the future of DEI at public universities in North Carolina? Is DEI really dead?
Brianna Atkinson: I don't think it's dead because students are too passionate about it. I think this means that students are going to have to be the ones that are advocates and students are going to have to be the ones that initiate these supports on their campuses. Because of how vague the policy is, one of the things that Eric Fink, the lawyer from Elon, was mentioning is that it'll likely cause a chilling effect. Staff members are going to be afraid to be super vocal for or against something because of this policy and because they don't want to get laid off due to this policy. Supports are going to change. Um, we've seen it happen in Florida. We've seen it happen in Texas. And because of how similar North Carolina is moving in that direction, we're likely going to face the same closure of offices and removal of supports like centers.
Anisa Khalifa: After our conversation with Brianna the deadline for compliance with the new UNC policy came and went. At the moment of publishing this episode, we still don't know just how extensive the changes will be at each school. If you’d like to follow Brianna’s continuing coverage of DEI at college campuses across North Carolina, we’ve dropped a link in the show notes.
This episode of The Broadside was produced by me, Anisa Khalifa and editor Jerad Walker with help from Charlie Shelton-Ormond. Our executive producer is Wilson Sayre. The Broadside is a production of WUNC–North Carolina Public Radio and is part of the NPR Network. You can email us at broadside@wunc.org. If you enjoyed the show, leave us a rating, a review, or share it with a friend! I’m Anisa Khalifa. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll be back next week.