Project 2025's Mike Howell targets UNC courses that mention diversity and LGBTQ+ topics

A senior Heritage Foundation official and co-author of the far-right Project 2025 agenda has filed a comprehensive public records request targeting more than 70 courses at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, demanding access to teaching materials that reference diversity, race, gender, and LGBTQ+ identities.

According to UNC’s public records portal, Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, submitted the request on July 2, asking UNC to turn over syllabi, lecture slides, assignments, and internal communications that include any of 30 flagged terms. Among them: “transgender,” “LGBTQ+,” “cisgender,” “queer,” “intersectionality,” “nonbinary,” “white privilege,” and “restorative justice.” The request spans content shared since Jan. 19, 2025, and directs the university to search platforms such as Canvas, Microsoft Teams, Signal, and Slack.

The courses flagged by the Oversight Project include Gender and Sexuality in Islam, Transnational Black Feminist Thought and Practice, Islam and Sexual Diversity, Race and Gender in the Atlantic World, and Black Families in Social and Contemporary Contexts. Also targeted are courses like Diversity and Inclusion at Work, Diversity in Education, Social Theory and Cultural Diversity, and Gender and Sexuality in Middle Eastern Literature.

Howell cited two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump earlier this year, Executive Orders 14151 and 14173, which condition federal funding on the elimination of DEI-related content. In the request, Howell argued that the records “will shed light on potential inconsistencies between internal practices and public representations made by officials in a matter of substantial national importance.”

Since taking office in January, Trump has aggressively implemented policies that target diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, as well as gender and LGBTQ+ protections. Though he previously distanced himself from Project 2025, calling some of its authors “severe right” and its proposals “seriously extreme,” his administration has moved swiftly to enact many of its recommendations. The nearly 1,000-page blueprint, authored by the Heritage Foundation and allied organizations, calls for the dismantling of DEI programs, bans on transgender military service, elimination of non-discrimination protections, and the closure of the Department of Education. Many of the document’s contributors now hold key posts in federal agencies.

Scholars have long cautioned that excluding race, gender, and sexuality from coursework risks reinforcing bias rather than promoting academic neutrality. The American Psychological Association encourages inclusive curricula that reflect students’ lived experiences. In a 1992 paper, psychologist Susan B. Goldstein noted that even cross-cultural psychology can marginalize women and LGBTQ+ people when it generalizes findings from white, heterosexual men as universal. She urged faculty to treat diversity as central to understanding human behavior, not an elective or ideological add-on. A study in the Harvard Educational Review found that engagement with racially diverse peers enhances students’ critical thinking, academic growth, and civic awareness.

UNC has not yet fulfilled the Oversight Project’s request. A university spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed, which first reported the story, that course materials are “the intellectual property of the preparer” and the university is still determining what, if any, documents will be released.

Chris Petsko, a professor whose course was among those targeted, told Inside Higher Ed he will not comply. He said the request is an intimidation tactic designed to distort academic work and stifle inclusive teaching. On LinkedIn, he advised fellow faculty to review institutional intellectual property policies.

Howell dismissed objections. “Syllabi are public records and belong to the public,” he told Inside Higher Ed. “If a professor is too much of a wimp to let me read his syllabus then he’s in the wrong business.”

Howell has previously drawn scrutiny for hypocrisy. In 2024, The Advocate reported on a 2012 Yelp photo showing Howell smiling beside a friend in drag, despite his vocal condemnations of drag culture and LGBTQ+ rights. When contacted, Howell confirmed the photo’s authenticity and dismissed it as Halloween mischief.

GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis called Howell’s behavior “the definition of hypocrisy” at the time, adding that Project 2025 is a “dangerous, unhinged playbook” that exposes the intent of “anti-LGBTQ extremists hell-bent on destroying democracy.”