NC Senate leader seeks to ban DEI in colleges, limit campus bias investigations

Add North Carolina schools and universities to the growing list of places where Republican state lawmakers want to ban diversity, equity and inclusion policies — using a new bill that cleared its first committee hurdle Wednesday.

The UNC System has already taken steps to limit DEI policies. Last year, the system's Board of Governors cut its DEI policy and replaced it with one that emphasizes the importance of administrative neutrality. And earlier this year, the system said it is no longer requiring students to take DEI courses as a condition for graduation.

A bill filed by Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, would require the UNC System Board of Governors to adopt a policy that explicitly bans the promotion of DEI policies on campus, including in the classroom.

Divisive or beneficial? Questions linger as UNC system looks to cut diversity programs

Senate Bill 558 also originally sought to stop universities from investigating any allegations of hate speech on campus. But on Wenesday GOP lawmakers watered down that provision.

Colleges would still be allowed to investigate some allegations of hateful comments, under the newest version of the bill, but they'd be banned from "reporting or investigating offensive or unwanted speech that is protected by the First Amendment, including satire or speech labeled as microaggression."

"We've seen, across the country, students divided against students and trying to report conversations," Sen. Brad Overcash, R-Gaston, said to explain the ban.

The bill received broad opposition from Black lawmakers Wednesday, who raised concerns that the bill would hamper research and other work at Historically Black Colleges and Universities — or that it would lead to the end of financial aid for certain students or programs.

Sen. Gladys Robinson, D-Guilford, said the bill isn't needed and called it "an insult to the system" that will weaken the state's public universities.

In addition to her opposition to the bill more broadly, Robinson also raised the specific concern that Republicans are about to create a system in which Black students or other minorities would be banned from receiving scholarships based on their race to attend any public university in the state — but that white students would still be allowed to continue receiving scholarships, based on their race, to attend the state's public HBCUs. The legislature is just creating a system to give white students more advantages over others, she said.

In an interview after the hearing Robinson told WRAL she suspects the bill's supporters might not realize what the bill would actually do if it becomes law. And during the hearing, other Democratic lawmakers also raised a variety of other specific questions about what would happen if the bill becomes law, many of which its supporters weren't able to directly answer.

Senate Majority Leader Michael Lee, R-New Hanover, said he's willing to have conversations with critics about their concerns that the bill could have unintended consequences. But Sen. Caleb Theodros, D-Mecklenburg, said the legislature shouldn't pass legislation in the first place if it has no idea what the consequences of that new law might be.

The bill is part of a broad movement among Republican politicians nationally to crack down on DEI programs, including some that have been in place for years and other newer ones implemented in response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

Overcash said the focus on diversity is divisive, and that colleges and universities should be focused on academics without regard to identity.

"We need to focus on academic excellence, critical thinking and a free exchange of ideas," Overcash said.

Robinson said she sees the bill as a threat against academic excellence, saying it's clearly intended to scare professors away from teaching or talking about topics that conservative politicians don't like.

"Faculty has freedom to engage and talk about different topics," she said. "I think this is a threat to faculty, and they will see it like that as well."

Republican lawmakers have also advanced bills that ban public schools in the state from teaching what the bill calls "divisive concepts" about race, gender or the founding of America, and to ban state government agencies from having DEI-focused HR training courses, or rules for hiring and promotions.

'Not a ban on teaching history': NC Republicans say critics of bill to ban DEI in schools are wrong