NC Republicans take aim at diversity initiatives in universities, state government

Public universities and other parts of state government should be banned from pushing pro-diversity views on state employees and college students, Republican state lawmakers say.

A bill to ban public colleges and universities from making students, or faculty and staff, talk about their beliefs related to “matters of contemporary political debate or social action” is working its way through House committees. The GOP-backed proposal cleared the House Education Committee on Thursday and has just one more to clear before a potential floor vote.

A similar effort is moving through the Senate. Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the legislature.

The Senate bill would ban all parts of state government — not just higher education — from requiring employees to state their opinions on political or social issues. It would also ban human resources training programs from touching on a dozen broad types of ideas related to sexism, white privilege, systemic racism and other related topics.

The Senate bill’s lead sponsor, Sen. Warren Daniel, a Burke County Republican, said the government shouldn’t be telling people, “this is the viewpoint you should have, based on today’s version of cultural morality, which maybe differed greatly from yesterday’s version.”

He added: “You can’t keep up sometimes.”

The bills are broadly worded, but their backers have been clear that it’s a reaction against a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.

Sen. Lisa Grafstein, a Raleigh Democrat, asked Daniel Wednesday if he intends for his bill to entirely ban DEI training programs throughout state government. He didn’t answer directly.

“This is about indoctrination training,” Daniel said.

Focus on UNC, NC State

As North Carolina’s population booms, it is becoming more diverse. From 2010 to 2020 the state’s population grew by 1 million people, and dropped from 65% to 60% white.

And in recent years many corporations, as well as universities, have increased their DEI trainings in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minnesota and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

Supporters of the bills have been motivated by reports in conservative media earlier this year about parts of the UNC System promoting pro-diversity views and asking prospective students, or employees, to affirm them.

The UNC School of Medicine made headlines earlier this year for a policy — since rescinded — that told faculty they’re expected to focus on helping DEI efforts, in addition to their teaching and research, to score highly on internal metrics for getting tenure or a promotion.

The policy said those efforts could include mentoring minority students, or attending a training session or a book club focused on issues of diversity or bias, among other options.

Republican lawmakers saw such requirements as an attack on conservatives. They fear diversity initiatives could be used to weed out Republicans from state jobs. As of 2022, according to state records, 89% of registered Republican voters are white.

Daniel compared it to the old Democratic Party machine from decades ago, which handed out state jobs as political patronage. Daniel’s home of Burke County in western North Carolina has a large number of state jobs in two prison facilities, a community college, a psychiatric hospital and more.

Burke County is now heavily Republican. But Daniel said when he was growing up and North Carolina was a one-party state, getting one of those state jobs required being part of the Democratic machine.

“If you weren’t a Democrat, you couldn’t get a job,” he said. “... It was subtly done. You might not have known it was happening. And of course later it was outlawed, in state law.”

But he said when lawmakers started hearing about universities focusing on diversity issues, he and other Republicans saw it as the second coming of that Democratic machine.

“We thought this type of thing would never come back,” Daniel said. “But then we started seeing it in some of the UNC hiring processes.”

A spokesman for UNC Health said the organization follows all the rules set for it.

“The UNC School of Medicine follows all UNC-CH and UNC system policies on promotion and hiring,” said Alan Wolf, the director of news and media information for UNC Health.

It’s unclear if any of the sorts of application questions or job requirements still exist within state government. For UNC-Chapel Hill specifically, in February the university’s board of governors voted to approve a new policy banning such questions — worded similarly to the bills, HB 607 and SB 364, that are moving through the legislature now.

That new campus-level policy bans UNC-Chapel Hill leaders from considering someone’s opinions or actions on “contemporary political debate” when deciding whether to hire a candidate, promote them or grant them tenure.

A spokesperson for UNC-Chapel Hill didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the UNC System declined to comment, saying the system doesn’t comment on pending legislation.

A UNC document explaining the recent policy change said it was done for First Amendment concerns: “The policy revision is designed to protect the staff, faculty, and students of UNC System institutions, ensuring they are not denied opportunities for employment, advancement, or admission on the basis of sociological or political viewpoints,” the document states. “This policy protects the right to exercise speech, or to refrain from exercising speech.”

North Carolina State University also had briefly asked prospective students to write a few sentences in their college application on what the phrase “a just and inclusive community” meant to them. The university removed that question from its application form in February, after it was highlighted by conservative groups including the Carolina Partnership for Reform and the Carolina Journal.

Spokespeople for N.C. State and the UNC System didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The GOP push to crack down on questions and training focused on diversity comes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers — in a case involving UNC-Chapel Hill — whether to end the practice of affirmative action. That ruling is expected this summer.

At the same time, Republican leaders in the state House have also proposed spending $4 million over the next two years to start a program at UNC-Chapel Hill called the School of Civic Life and Leadership, which would serve as a sort of incubator for right-wing views and research.

Dave Boliek, the chair of the university’s board of trustees, told Fox News in January that the campus has plenty of left-leaning academics and this new program will force more balance.