Kenan-Flagler to Use New $170M Building for DEI Work

Concept rendering of the new Steven D. Bell Hall via Kenan-Flagler Business School (obtained from chapelboro.com)

Is this how UNC sold the project to legislators? 

When UNC-Chapel Hill leadership approached the General Assembly for funding to construct a new business school building, they probably didn’t tell them they planned to use the building, in part, for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

But now that legislators appropriated the money and construction is underway, Kenan-Flagler Business School says it will empower a new Senior Associate Dean of Culture and Inclusion to help determine programming in the building. The apparent bait-and-switch comes as the school begins a new chapter under new leadership.

In a job posting late last year for the Senior Associate Dean spot, Kenan-Flagler said the new hire will “partner alongside Facilities to maximize the opportunity to leverage the new $170 million building” to “promote a climate of belonging, engagement, and inclusion.”

“This position will also work with Facilities to drive an inclusive, community culture in the new building to ensure well-being and comfort, both physically and mentally…”

Is this stuff as bad as DEI efforts in other UNC schools that premise career advancement on social justice action? No, it’s not close.

But two points come to mind. First, it seems to us that a business school should use its buildings to prepare students to succeed in the cutthroat world of business, not to push DEI or “ensure well-being and comfort.”

The world – especially the industry some Kenan-Flagler students will soon enter – does not care first and foremost about their well-being. Curating a sanitized environment based on how students wish the world to be does not prepare them to operate maturely outside of their comfort zone. But that’s a decision for the business school leadership, not us.

The second (and more serious) problem is the apparent bait-and-switch to get legislators to spend the money. If Kenan-Flagler planned to use the building, in part, for DEI efforts, then they should have said so.

And the posting came just weeks after a Kenan-Flagler alumnus and current faculty member, Chijioge “Chi” Nwogu, publicly lambasted the school for not focusing enough on DEI.

In the op-ed, Nwogu recounted his “shock” as an MBA candidate in 2017 when a mandatory class competition involved an Exxon-Mobile case study. He didn’t like that Exxon-Mobile’s former CEO Rex Tillerson had joined the Trump administration.

“So rather than participate, I along with two classmates boycotted the competition and internally circulated a letter,” Nwogu wrote in the op-ed.

Just a few years later, Nwogu is now mentoring budding entrepreneurs at the business school and issuing demands for more DEI initiatives.

Kenan-Flagler has long been among the country’s top-ranked business schools. But recent signals suggest the school may soon produce students less like Bank of America’s former CEO and more like Bud Light’s former marketing director.