Dive Brief:
- North Carolina lawmakers are asking the University of North Carolina System to detail spending on all diversity-related training from the current and last three fiscal years.
- A letter from the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations last month requests an inventory of all diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, or DEIA, training programs across the UNC system’s 17 institutions. Lawmakers wanted documents delivered to them by close of business March 28.
- Legislators broadly defined DEIA in the letter and said it referred to topics spanning from white supremacy to social justice.
Dive Insight:
Republican lawmakers nationwide have taken aim at colleges’ diversity efforts, with an eye on banning them at public institutions. Such is the case in Florida, South Carolina and Oklahoma.
Conservatives have alleged DEIA programs have broken from their original intent and become a primary focus of colleges’ operations, to their detriment.
DEIA programs, however, are in part institutions’ attempts to correct past wrongdoings against historically marginalized students.
The North Carolina lawmakers’ request is exhaustive. Their letter contains 10 bullet points of items they want, including descriptions of materials used in DEIA trainings and their cost.
