UNC-CH board removes DEI funding from next year's budget

UNC-Chapel Hill's Board of Trustees on Monday approved the transfer of $2.3 million in diversity and inclusion spending to public safety priorities in the 2024-25 budget.

The trustees held a special meeting Monday morning. The board is scheduled to hold its regular meeting Wednesday and Thursday.

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The UNC System Board of Governors is expected to vote next week to eliminate diversity goals and jobs at member institutions, including UNC-Chapel Hill. A Board of Governors committee last month approved a complete rewrite of the system's existing diversity, equity and inclusion policy.

The move is likely to create job losses at the Chapel Hill campus, said trustee Dave Boliek.

"Clearly the Board of Governors has signaled by their policy and you had comments from legislative leaders that they're looking toward leadership at the university level," Boliek, a former chairman of the Board of Trustees, said in an interview. "We're providing it. We're leading."

The $2.3 million is money from state-appropriated dollars and trust fund money that were "immediately identified," Boliek said. The system office identified that money, he said. The university's operating budget in 2023-24 was $4.2 billion.

The new Board of Governors policy calls for each institution to certify by Sept. 1 that it "fully complies with the university's commitment to institutional neutrality and nondiscrimination."

It does away with current policy that establishes "system-wide diversity and inclusion metrics and goals" and created a "UNC System diversity and inclusion council."

At the meeting, Boliek said: "I think that DEI is divisive. I don't think it's productive. I don't think it gives a return on investment to taxpayers and to the institution itself."

https://www.wral.com/story/unc-board-of-trustees-removes-dei-funding-from-budget/21428683/

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