(TotalConservative.com) – The board of trustees for the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill decided that virtually all funding for diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) initiatives and programs will be cut, a controversial decision during a time of ongoing pro-Palestinian protests across university campuses.
The board voted on Monday, May 13, to slash $2.3 million from DEI efforts and allocate that money towards public safety initiatives instead, a decision that could potentially eliminate the entire DEI office at the school.
Marty Kotis, the vice-chair of the school’s budget committee, blamed the anti-war protests for the necessary alterations. Kotis said that it was “important to consider” all students’ needs, amounting to around 30,000 people, rather than the needs of “just the 100 or so” disrupting operations at the university.
According to Kotis, the campus protests have resulted in several arrests and are the main reason additional public safety resources need more funding. It appears that UNC is also trying to get ahead of an upcoming vote among the state’s Committee on University Governance about restricting DEI policies on campuses across North Carolina.
Although the move comes in the wake of large protests against Israel across the country, especially on university campuses, the battle against DEI programs has been ongoing for years in several states, such as Texas, Utah, and Florida.
Florida in particular has severed the power over DEI departments in its education system. At the beginning of the year, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis passed legislation that banned federal and state dollars from going toward university DEI programs and activities.
The battle against the ideology behind DEI is also related to the Supreme Court decision last year that struck down so-called “affirmative action” policies that allowed colleges to discriminate based on race in order to meet campus quotas for minority students. The practices were originally designed to create equal opportunities for minorities, but now arguably allowed preferential treatment for those minorities.
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