North Carolina’s Public Universities Cut 59 Positions as Part of a Massive DEI Overhaul This Summer

Almost 200 diversity, equity and inclusion staff positions were either cut or reassigned across North Carolina’s public university system to comply with a systemwide policy that required institutions to reassess their diversity efforts, according to reports released on Wednesday.

In a first look at how the state’s 16 public universities complied with the new diversity policy — which removed mention of diversity jobs across universities and subsequently put them at risk of elimination — the institutions’ certification reports demonstrate varying approaches on how campuses chose to follow the new rule.

The University of North Carolina Board of Governors reviewed the reports on Wednesday, where they evaluated ranging actions that included diversity office closures and program changes. Millions of dollars were also redirected to student success initiatives, such as recruitment efforts and scholarships, as a result of cuts and realignments.

“The reports will be scrutinized far and wide. Some will say that the campuses went too far, some will say the campuses didn’t go far enough,” UNC system legal counsel Andrew Tripp said during the meeting. “It’s ultimately the Board of Governors that will judge campuses’ compliance.”

In late May, the UNC Board of Governors revoked and replaced its 2019 diversity policy, which outlined several diversity jobs and their responsibility for coordinating DEI efforts across the system. What replaced it was a policy focused on committing the system to equality of viewpoints, freedom of speech and institutional neutrality — leaving diversity positions and programs in limbo.

{snip}

The UNC system in June sent out sweeping guidelines that covered everything from student success initiatives to campus center programming to facilitate the changes to come. To prove compliance with the new policy, schools were required to submit certification reports that described eliminated positions, position reassignments, program changes and financial savings from cuts.

Information on how universities were following the guidance was largely kept under wraps — even from faculty members — before the Sept. 1 report submission deadline.

Now, over a week later, those newly released reports show universities eliminated 59 positions and reassigned 131 more, according to the certification report statistics summary.

{snip}