On Monday, the Board of Trustees at UNC-Chapel Hill agreed to redirect $2.3 million originally allocated for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives towards public safety measures in the budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year. The trustees convened in a special meeting on Monday morning, with their regular meeting scheduled for later in the week.

This is positive news; although, one wouldn’t know it from reading the News & Observer, WFAE, and WRAL. These media outlets have made a concerted effort to highlight the negatives, at least from a leftist point of view.

The News & Observer lamented the possible job loss for overly paid DEI administration officers, whose current job is to reinforce a dogmatic view of the world through the lens of race. Will someone please think of the wealthy bureaucrats! I have no doubt that these Marxist apologists will find work through their connections with other university systems that still advance these discriminatory programs masquerading as egalitarian principles.

A sentiment analysis of WFAE’s article reveals a more subtle disagreement with the BOT’s move to defund DEI. While it attempts to convey a nuanced perspective, it quickly pivots with great enthusiasm to blame UNC for “[creating] an environment that inevitably resulted in an escalation of force.” Good old victim blaming. UNC’s campus protesters are very familiar with this, as they tear down and rip up “missing” posters of “colonizer” toddlers who have been kidnapped. Yes, while Hamas has raped, murdered, and tortured Israelis, it was really the victims’ fault for not acquiescing to Hamas’ demands by not existing.

WRAL is perhaps my favorite, as its coverage seems to suggest that diversity itself is under attack. In a video, WRAL seeks to convey that the BOT no longer wants to advocate for diversity on campus. This is absurd. DEI programs have nothing to do with cultivating a diverse and inclusive environment.

Just because terms overlap doesn’t mean they are synonymous. That’s like saying the Democratic Party is the party of democracy. However, one merely needs to ask Dean Phillips for confirmation that they are not the party of democracy. If anything, DEI programs have been used to suppress diversity on campuses, especially in the case of Asian Americans.

If one gets the sense that I find the media’s response to the BOT’s decision to defund DEI programs to be somewhat biased and shallow, then you should trust your instincts.

For too long, we have watched a bad idea capture our institutions and impose its preferences on the rest of us. The sad part about this episode in our history is that we have seen it before. While eugenics and DEI are of course worlds apart in many ways, they do share the fact that they are racist initiatives spawned on campus by intellectual elites and packaged into seemingly enlightened (and well-funded) institutions.

Attempting to structure any program around the concept of race is problematic. It always has been, and it always will be. One does not get a special allowance simply because they come from a particular community group. This is the principle of equality: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

However, DEI programs attempt to reprogram people into thinking in Foucauldian terms: majority plus power equals oppression. This is the source of today’s movement towards “equity,” which is at the core of DEI. Unfortunately, “equity” governs the so-called pro-Palestinian protesters, which have abandoned the MeToo movement when it was Jewish women being assaulted.

DEI programs have been a profound failure, and it is time to move on from them. I strongly believe Americans will look back at this moment in history and wonder, “Why did we ever implement such a misguided idea as DEI programs?” How do I know this? Well, what are your thoughts on eugenics?

Mark Twain famously said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”