The University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill’s board of trustees voted to end the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) department.
Funding for the DEI department will now go toward the campus police.
Marty Kotis, vice chair of the board’s budget and finance committee, said DEI is “discriminatory and divisive,” according to North Carolina Public Radio.
“I think that DEI in a lot of people’s minds is divisiveness, exclusion, and indoctrination,” Kotis said. “We need more unity and togetherness, more dialogue, more diversity of thought.”
Kotis further noted during the meeting, “We talk about peaceful protest, but when you destroy property or you take down the U.S. flag and you have to put up gates around it that costs money, or deploy officers to do that, North Carolinians are watching all this, and they are not happy. And I think it’s imperative that we have the proper resources for our law enforcement to protect the campus — and that means our property and that means our flag as well.”
The move to defund the DEI department follows UCS Chapel Hill students protecting the American flag from pro-Palestine protesters.
As protesters came to replace the American Flag with the Palestinian flag, fraternity brothers came to hold up the flag, singing the National Anthem.
