RALEIGH — A North Carolina bill aimed at eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion practices within University of North Carolina System schools has passed the Senate and is now pending in the House.
Senate Bill 558 passed the Senate on April 9 by a vote of 28-18 with no Democrats voting in favor. Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden) is the bill’s primary sponsor.
“Unfortunately, college campuses are plagued with ‘DEI’ initiatives,” Berger said in a press release. “We want campuses to be welcoming environments for all students. It’s time for our higher education institutions to focus on their core missions, and this bill will do just that.”
If enacted, the UNC Board of Governors and State Board of Community Colleges would be required to adopt policies supporting the bill.
UNC System schools would be prohibited from engaging in “discriminatory practices,” compelling affirmation of “divisive concepts,” endorsing such concepts, maintaining DEI offices or employing staff promoting these concepts.
Institutions must annually certify compliance with these requirements to their governing board, which then reports to legislative committees.
The legislation also prohibits requiring courses related to “divisive concepts” for degree completion, with limited exceptions at the chancellor’s discretion for specific degree programs. The bill defines “divisive concepts” to include ideas relating to the inherent superiority of any race or sex, inherent racism or sexism, and individual responsibility for historical actions based on race or sex.
The bill includes provisions stating it should not be construed to limit First Amendment-protected speech, individual research or discussion of divisive concepts when the institution clarifies it doesn’t endorse such concepts.
The legislation also references President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order and emphasizes the importance of maintaining federal funding for North Carolina’s public higher education, which totaled $2.4 billion last year.
Examples of current courses at NC State identified by North State Journal that could potentially be affected include honors seminars such as “Music Beyond Binaries” and certain international studies courses that examine globalization through various perspectives that could be considered divisive by the bill’s standards.
The “Music Beyond Binaries” course delves into “high art” associated with “whiteness,” and the description states that students in the class “will learn to unpack binaries — binaries of gender, race, and sexual identity — as they have manifested in classical and popular music, from the songs of Taylor Swift, BTS, and Lil Nas X to the operas of Mozart and blues performances of Bessie Smith.”
A search for DEI in the NCSU course catalog under general education programming turned up HSS 201: Critical Thinking in American Life: Engaging Across Difference. The actual course materials were unavailable online, and the description says the primary goal is to “provide students from all disciplines with humanistic critical thinking skills that will be useful in their future professions.”
Ideas in Action seminars for first-year students at UNC Chapel Hill also appear to overwhelmingly contain racial and diversity themes, with courses such as “Gender Equity in STEM” and “Defining Blackness.”
A search of UNC Chapel Hill’s master course catalog for DEI turned up three courses, one being business course “Diversity and Inclusion and Work,” and another a journalism class called “Cultural Competency in Journalism and Strategic Communication,” which “uses a critical media literacy approach to foster awareness of how media as structure, practice, and product intersect with diversity, equity, and inclusion issues.”
In spring 2024, the UNC Board of Governors replaced its DEI policy with one emphasizing equality and nondiscrimination. The move followed the UNC Board of Trustees voting to eliminate $2.3 million in annual DEI spending and divert that funding to campus safety purposes.
By last fall, DEI position cuts systemwide totaled more than $17 million, with 59 positions cut and 132 reassigned across the system’s 16 schools.
Another bill filed by Berger addressing DEI in K-12 also resides in the House after being passed by the Senate in March.
Senate Bill 227 would prohibit K-12 public schools from promoting “divisive concepts” and “discriminatory practices,” and it would forbid public school units from compelling students or staff to affirm divisive concepts, providing instruction on such concepts or requiring professional development that includes them.
The K-12 bill defines “divisive concepts” as including ideas such as inherent superiority of one race or sex over another, inherent racism based on race or sex, and assigning moral characteristics or guilt based on race or sex.
The bill would also prohibit schools from maintaining DEI offices or employing staff whose duties would include promoting the prohibited concepts.
Exemptions for First Amendment-protected speech, independent research and impartial historical instruction aligned with state standards are included.
School conduct policies would be required to prohibit discrimination based on federally protected classifications, including antisemitism.
