Two weeks ago, I filed a complaint citing four violations of the UNC System’s policies on institutional neutrality and the ban on compelled speech. The university has now conceded on all four three out of four counts—but they’re saying as little as possible about it.
Violation 1: Promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in university and college strategic plans
This is by far the most significant victory. When DEI is embedded in the university’s strategic plan, it provides cover for faculty and administrators to push it onto the rest of us. It also enables faculty to screen job applicants for ideological alignment by having them review the plan.
The Chancellor just sent out this email:
Violation 2: Promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion in college, department, and administrative websites across the university
The university is quietly scrubbing the websites I flagged in my complaint. The College of Science’s Culture Charter has disappeared, along with the College of Design’s DEI Lexicon and the Office of Equal Opportunity’s DEI webpage.
That said, there are still thousands of references to ‘DEI’ and ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ across university websites. I’ll wait a few more weeks to see if further changes follow. If necessary, I’ll escalate by filing a complaint with the UNC System office for every remaining instance.
Violation 3. Requiring faculty to use students’ preferred pronouns and making a refusal to use them a violation of University policy
The Pride Center has now removed this policy from its website—a significant victory for intellectual freedom.
Violation 4: Land Acknowledgment and Historical Neutrality
The land acknowledgement page has disappeared.
Update: I made a mistake, I did a search which resulted in a page not found, but a colleague points out it’s still there: https://www.ncsu.edu/land-acknowledgment. So this remains a battle to be fought.
All of this proves how much impact one person can have in the fight against DEI. As a great man once said, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
