Republicans targeting ‘woke’ have a new focus: the UNC system

The Republican-led General Assembly has officially entered the war on diversity on college campuses.

The legislature’s first salvo came last week in a letter to the UNC System from the Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations. The letter, first reported by Policy Watch, requests an inventory of all employee training programs at the UNC System’s 17 campuses “which cover the subject matters of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (“DEIA”) or other similar topics.”

Lest there be any misunderstanding, the letter’s author, Derrick Welch, director of Senate majority staff government operations, helpfully included a list of what the lawmakers are focusing on:

“For purpose of this letter,” he wrote, ‘DEIA’ includes, but is not limited to, those subject matters which reference or discuss ‘diversity’, ‘equity’, ‘inclusion’, ‘accessibility’, ‘racism’, ‘anti-racism’, ‘anti-racist’, ‘oppression’, ‘internalized oppression’, ‘systemic racism’, ‘sexism’, ‘gender’, ‘LGBTQ+’, ‘white supremacy’, ‘unconscious bias’, ‘bias’, ‘microaggressions’, ‘critical race theory’, ‘intersectionality’, or ‘social justice.’

An inquisition into the UNC System’s diversity training is a bad idea and not an original one. This review is part of a national effort by conservatives to roll back the gains made by minorities at the gateway to greater education and political power.

Jay Smith, a UNC-Chapel Hill professor and the president of the state chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said of the letter for the General Assembly: “It’s a waste of the state’s time and resources and yet another example of political meddling in internal campus affairs. Across the country, the right wing has a well defined culture war script, and our legislators are dutifully following it.”

Conservatives have a case before the U.S. Supreme Court targeting race-conscious admission programs at UNC-Chapel Hill and Harvard. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is making the bashing of “woke” public universities a plank in his likely presidential campaign.

The UNC Board of Governors, having already shut down academic centers that focused on poverty, minority voting rights and protecting environmental diversity, recently moved to block UNC System schools from asking about political subjects when assessing applicants for admission, promotions or jobs. The move to end what the board calls “compelled speech” is intended to protect conservatives from being denied because of their political views, an occurrence that the board has shown no evidence of existing.

Now North Carolina’s Republican state lawmakers, who have led the way in suppressing the voices of Black voters, are rushing to get to the front of a movement to curtail university diversity efforts.

This new concern about the UNC System overly promoting diversity is especially rich coming from the Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations, a panel that exemplifies a lack of diversity.

Also known as Gov Ops, the commission is a kind of political hit squad for Republican leaders. It’s dominated by Republican lawmakers and co-chaired by House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger. Among its 38 members and four ex-officio members, five are Black and 37 are white – 31 of them white males.

Republican lawmakers may find it good sport to attack diversity training as a way to “own the libs.” But teaching about diversity isn’t about liberalism. It’s about mutual respect.

Lawmakers pressing UNC to reduce or end its diversity training helps no one, including white applicants and employees. What it will do is accelerate the departure of Black faculty members and send a signal to Black students that they are unwelcome. Both groups are already underrepresented on campuses outside of the system’s historically black colleges and universities.

All schools in the UNC System should strive to respect all the people they serve, people far more diverse than the makeup of the Joint Commission on Governmental Operations.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-829-4512, or nbarnet@ newsobserver.com