In reference to dismantling Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, UNC System President Peter Hans suggested administrators intend to “stay out of it all together.” But what Hans doesn't understand is that administrators aren't removing themselves from the conversation — they are silencing everyone else. And I'd prefer they drop the illusion that they are eliminating divisiveness and instead say it with their chests: they don't care about diversity.
Defining the mere existence of the DEI office as administrative over-involvement in students' conversations is an obnoxious and ill-informed facade. It's performative and almost pretentious to take this step away, which inadvertently is a step backward, and disguise it as a newfound equality for students.
The UNC administration is acting as though they were so deeply intertwined with our socio-political debates that they needed to remove themselves. And even further, do so as if it were a noble act.
Preaching institutional neutrality as the foundation for removing the office promotes DEI as a politically-charged ideology. It's not.
Institutional neutrality cannot and will never exist. If in some hypothetical and somewhat dystopian world that institutional neutrality could form and stand, DEI would not be an attack on that structure. Rather, it would function to mitigate implicit bias and systemic inequities that inevitably exist.
According to the Board of Governors, removing DEI favors equality over diversity and inclusion. This illustrates every catastrophic misjudgment the Board of Governors has made toward DEI perfectly. The illusion of equality is not enough.
As much as the protesters of DEI detest Critical Race Theory, this is its existence at its finest. Racial discrimination is systemic and as we revert away from identifying diversity and race, as though it can be ignored, we fall back into an inequitable and unsustainable standing with one another.
The application of administrative impartiality seems to be measured by which political agenda they want to promote. The School of Civic Life and Leadership was recently established at UNC, intended to foster a free-speech culture and develop the capacities for civil discourse and wise decision-making, according to its website. David Boliek, the chair of the BOT who helped create SCiLL, shared that the school was an effort to remedy the lack of right-of-center views at UNC.
The truth is they don't want to limit their involvement at all, they just want to intrude where they can implement rhetoric that benefits them, and mute everything else. And I'd prefer they would just say that.
