A few dozen people gathered Friday on the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus to push back against an effort by the
Trump administration to get universities to do away with diversity, equity and
inclusion policies and commit to political neutrality.
In exchange, the colleges and universities that comply get preferential
federal funding.
“We’re here today to say, ‘we’re the real UNC,’” said UNC
sophomore Kiersten Hackman.
Specifically, the UNC students and staff who gathered Friday
at the UNC’s Quad urged the university not to accept President Donald Trump’s “Compact
for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts said in a faculty council meeting
on Friday that the university is not signing the compact.
“There are some parts of the compact that we are
already doing and there are some parts that would be difficult or impossible,”
Roberts said. “There’s no way we can sign the compact as written and we don’t
plan to.”
The compact would require universities to ban any DEI in
hiring and admissions, freeze tuition and cap international enrollment at 15%. It
would also require universities to curb criticism of conservative ideals and
prevent disruptions caused by student protests.
In May 2024, the UNC System Board of Governors voted to
replace its policy on DEI. It led to the elimination
of diversity-related positions, programs and grants at universities
across the state, including UNC-Chapel Hill.
Related: NC
universities eliminate programs, decline grants to comply with Equality Policy
Previous: New
memo from UNC System orders schools to prove DEI policies are eliminated
The Trump administration initially sent the proposal in
October to nine universities: The University of Arizona, Brown
University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], the
University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University
of Texas, the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University.
Now, any college can sign the proposal. Hackman said she
wanted to see UNC preemptively say “no” to the compact.
“We’ve seen other universities who weren’t part of the
initial nine who were asked to accept the compact, and they’ve come out to say
that if they were asked, they would not accept the compact,” Hackman said.
More than a dozen schools have declined to sign Trump’s compact
already. It includes Brown University, Dartmouth, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of
Virginia.
“What we’re here today asking is not only reject that
compact in its formality, but also stand with students in a way that UNC has
not been standing with students in the past,” Hackman said.
