A memo was sent out to all University of North Carolina system chancellors announcing that all course requirements related to diversity, equity and inclusion taught at UNC System schools are suspended on Feb. 5.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Jan. 21 titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” or Executive Order 14173, which requires removing all diversity, equity and inclusion programs and requirements from federally funded organizations. This includes all universities, public and private, that accept federal aid, which includes Elon University.
If the UNC school system did not comply with the order, it would risk losing its federal funding for research, which makes up 13% of the system’s annual budget — about $1.4 billion — according to Andrew Tripp, the UNC system’s senior vice president for legal affairs and general counsel, wrote in the Feb. 5 memo to the chancellors.
“Even though some form of additional federal guidance is expected, and the law in this area remains unsettled, the risk of jeopardizing over $1.4B in critical federal research funding is simply too great to defer action,” Tripp wrote.
Right now, Elon’s advancing equity requirement in the Core Curriculum is in line with the executive order, according to Jessica Carew, Elon’s assistant director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Elon Core Curriculum. While she was unavailable for an interview, in a statement to Elon News Network, Carew wrote that she is unsure how the law will impact higher education, particularly at Elon, in the next few months.
“In the context of Elon’s curricular requirements, these are all directly in line with ‘supporting equality of opportunity,’ supporting ‘traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement,’ and rejecting ‘illegal discrimination and preferences,’ each of which are concepts identified within Executive Order 14173,” Carew wrote.
Elon receives $5.8 million in federal funding, including $5.63 million from the Department of Education, $115,660 from the National Science Foundation and $65,816 from the Corporation for National and Community Service, according to the Department of the Treasury.
Randy Williams, vice president for Inclusive Excellence, was not available for an interview and did not speak on how it would impact the university but wrote a statement to Elon News Network.
“The Elon University leadership team monitors and discusses all executive orders, laws and regulations that have implications for higher education,” Williams wrote. “The leadership team examines each unique situation to understand the legal and regulatory requirements as they are proposed, changed or litigated.”
Alexandra Versace is a senior at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is co-director of the Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for student government. She said students weren’t happy to hear about the removal of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
“I don’t agree with that. I’m not a fan of it. I don’t agree with the executive order of Trump removing federal funding from anything involving DEI, the removal of DEIA within the curriculum and having that as a requirement came as a shock to me,” Versace said. “It wasn’t something that I hadn’t expected at all.”
While her role typically involves meeting with administration and students, she anticipates hearing from students about how student government can help support them with how they are feeling and what they need and bringing that to the administration. However, the requirement coming from a federal level makes finding a middle ground more complicated.
The classes are still being offered but not required for any general education or major-related curriculums. Chapel Hill’s Chancellor Lee Roberts and Provost Chris Clemens wrote in an email to UNC students Feb. 10 that the policy will not suspend current classes or change class content.
Similar to Elon’s AER, Chapel Hill has a U.S. diversity course within its Making Connection curriculum for graduation, which will no longer be a requirement. Versace said the U.S. diversity requirement was good for the school, but she is happy that the university will still be offering the course.
“It’s important to expose people to different information that they may not have chosen to receive themselves, but students are still able to take this curriculum,” Versace said. “If that’s something that they want to do, it’s just not something that can be forced for students to take.”
Elon professor of sociology Raj Ghoshal has been teaching about inequality for 15 years and currently teaches SOC3410: Racism & Race in the U.S., which counts as an AER. He said the repeal of the requirement at UNC is upsetting, especially as it is due to a federal level response.
“I think it’s unfortunate and sad that it is happening. I think it’s very clearly happening in response to external political pressure,” Ghoshal said. “If it’s anything like Elon, which I imagine it is, it’s not something that the university would have chosen to do on its own.”
The repeal of the requirement follows the UNC system’s policy banning diversity and inclusion offices and titles at its universities, which took effect in September. At Chapel Hill, this took the form of cutting 20 positions campus-wide, according to a press release from the university. The former D&I office had a budget of $1.8 million, which was invested in programs to support student success, faculty professional development and salaries of employees.
Chapel Hill’s Black student population is concurrently declining. The class of 2028 is made up of 7.8% Black students, while the class of 2027 is made up of 10.5%, according to a university press release. The total number of Black first year and transfer students dropped more than 25% for this academic year, according to The New York Times.
This decrease comes the year after the Supreme Court’s decision to stop the consideration of race in the admissions process, also known as affirmative action. In the case, UNC was accused of deliberate discrimination against Asian American students and using racial preferences.
“We’re seeing less and less diversity on campus, and if we’re not encouraging students to learn about diversity, I think there is going to be a lack of diversity at UNC in the future if nothing is done,” Versace said.
Ghoshal said it’s important to teach equity, particularly at predominantly white institutions, such as Elon. As of 2023, Elon’s undergraduate students are 78.4% white, according to its diversity dashboard.
“The tough questions that sometimes come up are questions about balancing difficult emotional content for people who are most directly impacted by it, with the fact that most people in the audience may not be directly impacted or affected by it,” Ghoshal said. “How do you balance teaching about racism and race to a lot of students who don’t have direct experience of being racialized, but then some students do, and the backgrounds, experiences, emotional needs, etc, of different types of students might be pretty different.”
Elon’s class of 2028 is the most diverse class in the university’s history with 23% of the population being students of color, according to Elon’s first-year class profile.
Elon’s AER policy passed with over 95% support from the faculty — a rare occurrence, Ghoshal said. He said this is due to the parts of DEI that aren’t often discussed — including having fair access to classrooms for students with disabilities and financial aid resources.
“My sense is that these types of policies generally have pretty strong support in universities, among faculty and among people who have more familiarity with what universities are doing, and the reasons for that are because most of what is embedded in policies and programs like AER is much more positive and unobjectionable than sometimes the political discourse leads us to believe,” Ghoshal said.
Ghoshal said the reason DEI classes came about was because of the interest in them, not the other way around, which increases their importance.
“The reason that this content is getting taught isn’t because it was externally imposed as a requirement. It’s because people engaged in education and people with background in the workforce recognized that it was important and started to see it kind of proliferating and wanted a framework to to include it,” Ghoshal said. “There is no necessity that if a requirement is formally struck down, there is no necessity that the content needs to stop being taught, and in fact, it may even make it more important to keep on covering topics like this.”
Ghoshal recommends that anyone who isn’t sure about AER or DEI policies should look more in depth into them — past the buzzwords that a politician uses.
“If you’ve heard a politician condemn certain buzzwords, you might have a negative reaction to it, but take a step back and think about it like, ‘Well, OK, if somebody’s against DEI, is it: Are they against diversity? Are they against inclusion? Are they against the idea that people should be able to go to college, even if they didn’t grow up wealthy?’” Ghoshal said.
Carew wrote that the politics surrounding DEI can stray from what it really means at a university like Elon.
“I can imagine there are people who would feel concerned, given the rhetoric and climate of this moment,” Carew wrote. “My response to this is that I personally am deeply dedicated to ensuring all of our students have the opportunity to learn, develop, grow, and evaluate the environments in which they find themselves through understanding multiple perspectives and a wide range of ideas, ideologies, data points, and contexts.”
Even if there is no requirement, Ghoshal said faculty should still talk about DEI in their classes no matter which subject it is — whether its social sciences, business or communications.
“Ultimately, students are going to graduate into a pretty diverse country. They’re going to be working in workplaces that are seeking to be inclusive,” Ghoshal said. “Taking away the requirement isn’t going to make the importance of those subjects go away.”
Ghoshal said DEI class requirements set students up for success after graduation.
“Most people in the world are not Americans. Most people in the United States are not upper class. People come from all kinds of different race and gender, backgrounds and so on,” Ghoshal said. “Universities continuing to highlight that this content is useful, important for careers and for being a citizen of a diverse country and world would be things that I would suggest.”
Carew wrote that the AER was established to prepare students for post- graduate life, including respecting human difference and becoming global citizens.
“A great deal of time, care, consideration, and varied perspectives were dedicated to the development of this requirement to ensure that it supports the values and mission of the university, as well as to ensure that it provides important learning opportunities for all students to prepare them for the critical analysis skills that are highly sought after in the workforce and by employers more specifically,” Carew wrote.
Carew also encourages students to look past the politics surrounding DEI and look to how the requirements better society.
“Recent efforts to alter the body politic’s understanding and perception of these concepts do not have to take root in our society,” Carew wrote. “They lie at the heart of our ability to unite and thrive as a nation dedicated to liberty and justice for all.”