A scholarship at one of North Carolina’s universities is being pulled from the school after the university’s anti-DEI policies sought to prevent the money from being targeted to Black students. As the school’s “equality” changes threaten additional resources for Black and other minority students, a major HBCU may benefit from UNCW’s loss.
UNC system targets African American scholarship as part of new ‘equality’ changes
The Upperman family has announced that it is pulling a scholarship in the family’s name from the University of North Carolina Wilmington over a disagreement about diversity.
The scholarship honors the legacy of Dr. Leroy Upperman, a prominent Black physician who practiced in the Wilmington area and supported and mentored doctors and students there. The UNCW scholarship in Upperman’s name is now administered by his daughter, Linda Upperman Smith, who also personally mentors students who receive the award.
The Upperman scholarship at UNCW has been dedicated to supporting students with an interest in issues relevant to African American students. Scholarship recipients are not required to be Black, though it has typically been awarded to Black students, who make up about 5% of the student body.
However, after the UNC System Board of Governors replaced its previous diversity, equity and inclusion policy with a new “equality” policy in 2024, UNC schools have had diversity programs and initiatives aimed at minority students eliminated or altered.
Eddie Stuart, UNCW’s vice chancellor for advancement, explained that the university will no longer accept donor agreements specifying that “special consideration will be given to students who have demonstrated experience in or commitment to working with [fill-in-the-blank] community,” meaning the Upperman scholarship would have to change its criteria to continue.
Upperman scholarship to be moved, African American Center could also be at risk
Upperman Smith recounted, “I was told that because of the change in the Board of Governors’ DEI guidelines, I could rewrite the award to take the African American part from the scholarship.”
After being presented with the requirement to change the language of the scholarship, “I discussed it with my adult sons, and we decided the climate may never change,” Upperman Smith said. “There’s no way that we’re going to not follow my father’s wishes for the money to go to an African American student, so we’re not changing the wording.”
Instead, Upperman Smith announced she will remove the scholarship from UNCW rather than being forced to change its purpose.
“We will move the endowment to a university where it’s pretty likely that an African American student would get it based on the population,” she announced. “At this point we’re looking at Howard University,” Upperman Smith said. Howard is where her father attended medical school.
In addition to endowing scholarships, the Upperman family’s donations helped establish the Upperman African American Cultural Center at UNCW in the 1990s, and 20% of the family’s donations to the university support the center.
Over the past four years, UNCW’s funding for the Upperman African American Cultural Center has dropped by 65%, with funding for Centro Hispano and the Mohin-Scholz LGBTQIA Resource Center also seeing significant budget and staffing cuts.
The cuts, also brought about by the new equality policy, led Upperman Smith to stop making new donations to the school.
“When they dismantled the staffing at all the diversity centers at UNC Wilmington, for example, I just blew my top behind that, but I knew I had no power,” Upperman Smith said, “but the power that my family does have is the power of the purse.”
She has indicated that the family will also remove its funding from the center if the school removes “African American” from the center’s name.
The fate of the Upperman African American Cultural Center at UNCW remains undecided. But the scholarship bearing the family’s name will now leave the North Carolina institution, possibly for the HBCU where its namesake attended medical school.