The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees voted unanimously to dismantle their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programme, Fox News reports. The decision comes in the wake of a slew of anti-Israel protests across many college campuses, including NCU.
The university leadership will reallocate the $2.3 million originally dedicated to diversity initiatives to school safety, according to the Raleigh, North Carolina-based newspaper The News & Observer.
There has been a conservative pushback against diversity programmes at American universities for a long time.
Right-wing pundits and voters tend to believe that not only do they sow division between the races and discriminate against whites, but they also increase the tuition costs for students. Cutting unnecessary administrative costs would be the conservative answer to the student loan problem in the United States, as opposed to loan forgiveness favoured by the current Biden administration—despite it being ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in June 2023.
This story seems to confirm that these criticisms are valid.
In the last fiscal year, NCU Chapel Hill’s operating budget was just over $4 billion. ‘My personal opinion is that there’s administrative bloat in the university. Any cuts in administration and diverting of dollars to rubber-meets-the-road efforts like public safety and teaching is important,’ Board Chair David Boliek at NCU is quoted to say by The News & Observer.
The University of North Carolina Board of Governors are also meeting next Monday, and the members are expected to adopt the new, restricted funding for DEI programmes across all 17 public universities in the state.
We have seen the dismantling of diversity offices at other universities as well. For example, in March 2024, the University of Florida in Gainesville sent out a memo to its students and faculty,
informing them that their DIE office had been defunded, and the university is instead opting to use those funds for faculty recruitment.
Meanwhile, elevated campus security and police presence are needed due to the series of recent protests, with students showing their sympathy to the Palestinian state in the Israeli conflict, despite the government of Palestine being infiltrated by operatives of the terrorist group Hamas. These demonstrations even disrupted commencement ceremonies on many campuses across the US, such as in Los Angeles, California, Berkeley, California, and Baltimore, Maryland.
Certain pro-Palestine protests by university students have led to arrests, including one such incident at NCU Chapel Hill in April 2024.
“It’s important to consider the needs of all 30,000 students, not just 100 or so that may want to disrupt the university’s operations,’ NCU trustee Marty Kotis told the Observer about the reallocation of funds to the campus police and security.
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