NC State: Rotten to the core?

The tide really is turning: Two weeks ago I reported the effort by Stephen Porter, a professor at North Carolina State University, to force it to eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs (DEI) from its many policies. Porter had been ostracized and demoted by its faculty and staff back in 2021 for daring to question these policies then, but managed to keep his job.

Though the university had claimed in 2023 it had dropped DEI and instead instituted a “institutional neutrality” policy, Porter had no trouble finding DEI requirements and webpages still scattered everywhere in its rulebooks and webpages.

He decided to go to war, to file complaints with the NC Board of Governors about four different violations of its own “institutional neutrality” policy.

To his surprise, less than two weeks later the university responded somewhat positively. First, the university eliminated DEI from its overall strategic plan. That this hadn’t been done earlier either indicates sloppiness and incompetence by NC State’s administration, or a real reluctance to eliminate DEI. Either way, they have finally done so.

Second, they have quickly removed the still standing DEI websites that Porter had cited in his complaint.

The College of Science’s Culture Charter has disappeared, along with the College of Design’s DEI Lexicon and the Office of Equal Opportunity’s DEI webpage.

Porter notes however that there are “still thousands of references to ‘DEI’ and ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ across university websites.” If these don’t start disappearing in a few weeks he intends to file new complaints for every single example.

Third, the university’s LGBTQ Pride Center has removed its requirement that students use each person’s preferred pronouns. The new rules had forbidden such requirements, and that the center attempted to keep them suggests it thought it was above the rules. No more.

Finally, Porter had called for the removal of the university’s “Land Acknowledgment” statements, which take an non-neutral political stand, implying that the European settlement of North Carolina was evil, stealing the land from the “many Indigenous peoples” there who in fact still rightfully own it. Though he reported this webpage had been removed, I found it was still very much alive. I suspect he will bring this failure to the college’s attention forthwith.

As Porter notes in summary, “All of this proves how much impact one person can have in the fight against DEI. As a great man once said, ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!'”

We must recognize however the reasons the university responded so positively now compared to its vicious hostile response to Porter’s same complaints back in 2021. Then the leftist swamp controlled all levels of government, academia, and culture, and considered itself god in these matters. It freely and without fear blacklisted anyone who dared challenge it.

America’s original lonely freedom warriors

Today it can’t do that any longer because others (led by Trump) are applying pressure against these racist policies, voted into power by the American people, all across the board. The university has been forced to face reality, that if it doesn’t clean up its act, it knows it will be sued for big bucks, while risking the loss of a lot of government funding.

Thus, one person can force change, but it won’t happen unless a lot of others join in. In 2021 Porter was alone in his fight. Now there is now an army of like-minded people in power, eager to back him up.

As I said, the tide has turned, and it has done so because of a handful of lone warriors refused to back down, and their courage against adversity inspired many others to join the fight.