Category: Board of Trustees

Political Paycheck Protection

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Jim Blaine’s Firms Took PPP: Political Paycheck Protection.

Consulting firms owned by Jim Blaine, the long-time Republican political operative who was recently appointed to the UNC Board of Trustees, took over $80,000 in federal PPP bailouts – while being paid $800,000 by the UNC system.

Yes, a firm that advises right-wing clients on bashing the big-spending federal government’s bailouts and handouts happily took federal bailouts.

Danielle Battaglia of The News & Observer reported the PPP loans, which were forgiven, in a story headlined, “How US allowed pandemic relief to go to NC companies involved in politics and lobbying.”

The story said:

“Martin & Blaine, also known as The Differentiators and based in Raleigh, received a $59,620 loan on April 15, 2020, according to a database maintained by ProPublica. Jim Blaine and Ray Martin, who both previously worked for state Senate leader Phil Berger, own the firm….”

“A former company of Blaine’s, Blaine Consulting, LLC, also received a $20,832 PPP loan and had the loan and interest forgiven.”

The two loans totaled $80,452.

The N&O noted that companies engaged in lobbying or political activities could get loans “only if lobbying or political activity were not their ‘primary’ lines of work.”

In 2020, the N&O reported, Blaine and Martin worked together on a lieutenant governor’s race, a congressional race and with an organization raising money to ensure that Republicans maintain control of the North Carolina House and Senate.

Blaine is former chief of staff to Berger, the state Senate leader, and Martin is Berger’s former spokesman. Currently, they are advising Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop on his campaign for state attorney general.

They also work closely with Club for Growth Action, a conservative super PAC, the N&O reported.

From 2019 until this year, Blaine and Martin’s firm had a $15,000-a-month contract as “strategic advisers” to the UNC system.

They were paid over $800,000 during the same time they received PPP money.

They had to give up the contract when Blaine was appointed recently to the UNC Board of Trustees.

Martin told the N&O: “Our business has diverse revenue streams — very few of them involve political campaigns and zero of them involve lobbying. Like many small businesses, we lost work when the pandemic hit and we were concerned about the future.”

Bob Hall, a longtime elections watchdog and analyst of North Carolina politics, told the N&O that The Differentiators get a “huge amount of money” for political work.

“Maybe they also get a huge amount of money through corporate work,” Hall said. “But there’s no question that they’re a substantial political force in North Carolina. They remain behind the scenes but they’re still well-known and well paid.”

Perhaps, given his PPP experience, Blaine will be a strong supporter of student-loan forgiveness on the Board of Trustees.

N&O story: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article277845523.html#storylink=cpy

Image source: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article213990884.html

Next Trustees’ Chair: An Advocate – or Attack Dog?

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Members of the UNC Board of Trustees, especially the board chair, should first and foremost be advocates and champions for the University.

But John Preyer, who expects to be elected soon as the next chair, has in recent weeks attacked the faculty and administration.

First, Preyer has said he does not believe the University’s faculty council represents the true views of the faculty.

Second, at the July 27 board meeting, he questioned and chastised the Chancellor for saying that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Students for Fair Admissions affirmative-action case was “not the outcome we would have hoped for.”

“Why did we do that?'” Preyer asked. “‘Was that the right thing to do … trying to litigate a position that was found to be in violation of the law?'”

Let’s take each issue in turn.

Faculty Council

Why doesn’t Preyer respect the voting process and representative democracy?

Every year, the Office of Faculty governance staff looks at the faculty census and apportions the number of slots for the 93-member faculty council based on the number of faculty members in each school; for example, the School of Medicine has more representatives than the Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

All voting faculty are asked in a survey how they want to participate in faculty governance. 

A committee of current committee chairs and at-large members nominates individuals to different committees and to faculty council – always with an eye to three things:

  • people who are willing to do the needed work,
  • faculty members who have expressed interest in a committee’s subject matter
  • a mix of people, some with experience in faculty governance and some who are new to it.

Two people are nominated for each open position, and a faculty-wide election is held. 

That’s pretty democratic and representative, if you ask us.

You might argue that not everyone participates, thus weakening the process.  That’s true. But that is equally true in any election.

Why doesn’t Preyer respect this democratic process?

Affirmative Action (Students for Fair Admissions Case)

The campus fought the lawsuit for nine years because we believed it was mission-critical. The lower courts all ruled in favor of our admissions procedures. The first pillar of our strategic plan speaks to the need for a diverse and welcoming campus. 

So, no, the court’s decision clearly was “not the outcome we would have hoped for”! 

What outcome did Preyer hope for? Did he hope for our campus admissions team, the office of university counsel, and everyone else who worked so hard on this case to lose? Doesn’t he respect their dedication and hard work?

North Carolina has citizens of all creeds, colors, genders, and places of national origin. Serving the state means finding a way to include people from every swath of North Carolina on our campus. That is a worthy mission, one we should continue to fight for, in accordance with the law.

UNC-Chapel Hill was right to fight the case, and we are right to be disappointed that we lost.

A Time for Respect

The Board of Trustees’ bylaws say the board, “shall promote the sound development of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill within the functions prescribed for it, helping it to serve the people of the State in a way that will complement the activities of the other institutions and aiding it to perform at a high level of excellence in every area of endeavor.”

Will the man who might be chair respect that charge? Or will he use his position to continue the partisan politics attacks that in recent years have put Carolina’s reputation for excellence at risk?

Unlike the Southern segregationists who defied the U.S. Supreme Court’s school-desegregation decision in the 1950s, we will respect the Supreme Court’s affirmative-action decision.

We don’t agree with it, we don’t think it’s right, and we’ll work to change the court and the decision. But we’ll comply with it.

Preyer should respect the elected representatives of the faculty. He should respect the administration and staff. He should respect the University for standing up for diversity, equality and inclusion.

Texas A&M Shares UNC’s Shame

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Dr. Mimi Chapman is a professor at UNC’s School of Social Work. She joined the faculty in 2001 and was Chair of the Faculty from 2020 to 2023. She is a co-founder of the Coalition for Carolina.

As a frequent flyer, I’m well-versed in the virtues of various airlines. I’m an expert packer, ready to fly on a dime. Before the pandemic, I was on a plane twice a month or more, sometimes heading a few states over and sometimes to the other side of the world. Our family portfolio includes airline stock, so I keep up with the industry’s ups and downs. 

But never, even if I flew my own plane, would I call the airlines and tell them how to hire, fire, recruit, promote, assign and evaluate their pilots.

Yet, that is exactly what is happening in public higher education. Now, Texas A&M has joined UNC in the academic hall of shame. Just like here two years ago, a Black female journalist was recruited, then given the bait-and-switch to a much less stable employment status.

In the summer of 2021, I was finishing the first year of a three-year term as Chair of the Faculty at UNC Chapel Hill.  Pockets of post-pandemic normalcy were springing up: small indoor dinner parties, an occasional in-person meeting.

As someone who read The 1619 Project cover to cover when it first appeared in The New York Times Magazine, I was delighted to learn that Nikole Hannah-Jones would be joining our faculty.

In April, we heard that she would join us on a five-year, fixed-term contract. But in May, I learned that the situation was more complicated; she’d been approved by the faculty for tenure, but she couldn’t get a vote from our Board of Trustees, and therefore her offer had been changed from tenured to fixed-term.

Kathleen O. McElroy’s situation at Texas A&M is all too similar. A Black woman, a thought leader, a professor of journalism and media, writing in national publications about her views and scholarship, receives an offer inviting her to contribute to a program where she had come of age and launched her own career.

Student makes good, wants to give back to the place that gave them their start. An advancement officer’s dream. A feel-good story all around. Indeed, all of us get excited when thought leaders such as Hannah-Jones or Frank Bruni – who joined the university-that-shall-not-be-named down the road – join the academy.

I was more than a little starstruck thinking Hannah-Jones would be a colleague. Maybe we’d get to be friends? Gossip over drinks at the Carolina Inn? Would some stardust rub off?

But, behind the scenes, other actors were at work. Our trustees took the heat, but pressures came from interest groups, legislators and donors – all of whom believed they should have a say in how our campus does its work.

As I told our trustees at the time, the processes by which tenured or tenure-track faculty are hired are rigorous. They take hours of painstaking work. I calculated 170 hours for any one tenure decision, and that’s likely an undercount.

Reading of the trials of Professor McElroy, that difficult summer floods back: the hope, frustration and then disappointment. Students and faculty alike mobilized. The campus spoke with one voice. We moved the needle, and we were able to get Ms. Hannah-Jones the positive tenure vote she deserved. She chose not to accept it.

Seeing this again at Texas A&M fills me with sorrow. These women made plans. Resigned other positions. Prepared their homes for sale. Looked for new places to live. They were considering schools for children, saying good-bye to colleagues and friends in places they’d called home. They were excited about a new venture, a chance for a new kind of creativity in their work. Their partners or spouses were reorienting, supporting these smart, powerful women they love.

I wonder about people who demand that someone not be tenured or hired because their scholarship makes someone else uncomfortable. Do they stop to think of the human toll? Do they recognize that these women are not objects to grace the conference room table, but are accomplished people, with lives to manage and contributions to make?

Professor McElroy decided to return to her work at UT-Austin. She’s grateful, I’m sure, but perhaps also awkward. Do her colleagues at UT believe she no longer wants to be there? Will she feel at home again? What if UT hadn’t welcomed her back?

If the individuals who treated these women this way were treated the same way, I’ll bet that a river of grievance and head-rolling would roar down like a waterfall.

At UNC, the Hannah-Jones situation was not our first or last rodeo with outside political interference. They come fast and furious, sometimes bursting onto public view and always eroding campus morale.

We are hardly alone. Texas, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Georgia, Tennessee: the list of public higher education institutions under fire becomes longer by the day. But these controversies are not just headlines. The costs to the individuals involved – and to all of us – are steep.

The United States has the greatest university system in the world, responsible for scientific, artistic and economic advancement across generations. We know how to fly the plane, thank you. If you’re unhappy, let’s talk about it. If you don’t like the airline, choose a different one.

But unless you want me to pick your pilots, let faculty and administrators hire professors.

Dr. Mimi Chapman

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Related News:

In alarming and related news, Joy Alonzo, an expert on the opioid epidemic and a professor in Texas A&M University’s Department of Pharmacy Practice, was recently placed on administrative leave and investigated simply for raising questions about the political interference in higher education. 

Follow this link to read more about this incredibly chilling and horrific situation.

Who’s “Obsessed”?

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The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal has an obsession with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

In a July 10 post, the Center breathlessly declared, “Chapel Hill’s DEI Obsession Was Mandated at the Top: The Martin Center has uncovered a startling email from the chancellor’s office.”

In tones that echo UFO conspiracists, the post said DEI plans at UNC “may be traceable to an email sent on behalf of UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz in July 2020. The Martin Center obtained a copy of the email via a public records request last month and was startled to find an explicit directive that every Chapel Hill school or unit ‘submit measurable deliverables around diversity and inclusion initiatives’.”

Our response: So what?

DEI initiatives promote fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups that have been underrepresented or discriminated against.

Thirty years ago, as President of Sara Lee Corporation, Paul Fulton – one of our coalition’s founders and Chair of Higher Ed Works – wrote:

“What does strategic diversity really mean? I believe it means creating an environment that is attractive to and embraces a culturally diverse work force. It requires a management and peer attitude that recognizes that each employee has the ability to contribute to the enterprise, and that each has different needs and will require different types of support to succeed.

“The real goal of managing for strategic diversity is to enable all members of the work force, no matter who they are, where they came from, or how different they might be, to perform to their full potential. At Sara Lee, we see this as a goal that is absolutely consistent with our financial goals, because we must have the participation of all of our people if we are to continue to be successful.”

The Martin Center continually attacks our university. We eagerly await the day they say something positive about one of North Carolina’s most valuable assets.

Chapel Hill’s DEI Obsession Was Mandated at the Top

Defending Carolina’s priceless gem, Part 3 of 3

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the third installment of a three-part essay by Lloyd Kramer, a professor of history and former Chair of the Faculty Council at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he has been a faculty member since 1986. You can access parts 1 and 2 at the links below:

Affirming Academic Freedom at the Nation’s First Public University

Some academic colleagues and some critics outside the university argue that professors would be more respected or supported in the wider society if they remained silent or simply spoke quietly to members of the legislature and governing Boards.

Critics of the recent UNC faculty letter, for example, argue that legislative and Board interventions are mainly taking place because our university’s governing officials believe that institutional neutrality has given way to liberal ideological conformity. The outside interventions, in this view, would mostly disappear if the faculty adhered more closely to what key state leaders envision as the educational purpose of the university.

The Justification for Faculty Action

People within universities have obligations to look for the truth and to teach accurate information, yet they also have the right to interpret that information in new ways.  This search for knowledge inevitably reveals complex information and creates debates about disconcerting truths that some powerful people dislike (the realities of climate change, for example, or the effectiveness of vaccines or the history of systemic racism or the anti-democratic meanings of election denialism).

Our knowledge is always moving in new directions, and people on all sides of the political spectrum are tempted to denounce scholars as “ideological” whenever they describe new knowledge that challenges widespread beliefs. There would be no reason for outside interventions if academic institutions could assure state leaders that the ideas of their faculty and students generally converged with the main beliefs of governing officials.

In the real world of academic life, however, professors and students often express ideas or pursue actions that some influential officeholders view as objectionable or one-sided, so critics of the university have decided that outside interventions are needed to correct academic imbalances and fix political problems.

Has the faculty letter therefore exacerbated a conflict that would go away if professors would stop speaking out or if they would change their behavior? This is the kind of question that Martin Luther King, Jr., eloquently addressed in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” which he wrote after he was arrested in April 1963 for leading Civil Rights protests in Alabama.

Blaming People Who Protest for Causing the Actions They Dislike 

Birmingham’s city government and police forces were violently repressing the advocates for racial equality, and some local clergymen stated publicly that while the police interventions were regrettable, they would likely cease if the protestors reduced their public marching and stopped speaking in such challenging language.

The pastors suggested, in other words, that the protestors contributed to repressive public actions because they were pursuing actions that most of the state’s governing leaders disliked.

The significance of a faculty statement about academic freedom is by no means equivalent to King’s “Birmingham Letter,” but King responded to the pastors with insights that might offer useful perspectives for those who question the UNC faculty’s critical response to the legislative and Board divergence from the modern university principles of shared governance.

“We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension,” King wrote to his critics. “We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with…. In your statement” King continued, “you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion?…  Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock?”

Every strategic action carries risks.  But I think that almost 700 UNC faculty signed a recent letter opposing legislative and BOG/BOT campaigns to reshape their university because they see that the interventions continue to expand.

If silence is the only way to reduce or stop these interventions, then we need to ask if this strategy could become the faculty’s own version of academic hemlock.

Although no public statement can include all the nuances that may be needed to explain complex issues, I joined numerous UNC colleagues in signing the recent faculty letter because such statements offer an important (though modest) strategic action for defending the public value and cultural traditions of academic freedom.

By Lloyd Kramer

OTHER NEWS

Higher Ed Works:

Charlotte Observer:

Daily Tar Heel

URGENT NEWS – Legislature – Again – Politicizes UNC Board of Trustees

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We normally don’t send three emails in a week, but are making an exception to bring you timely news in hopes you can help make a difference with legislators.

The North Carolina General Assembly once again is poised to inject partisan politics into the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees.

The Senate is poised to pass a bill that will appoint as a trustee the chief political adviser to Senate President Pro-Tem Phil Berger.

James C. D. Blaine, II, of Wake County will serve a four-year term on the board.

We have nothing against Mr. Blaine personally. We do have great concerns that the legislature continues to stack the board with trustees whose main qualification is their political ideology.

This is part of an ongoing effort, including creation of the School of Civic Life and Leadership, to impose a right-of-center philosophy on Carolina.

Political interference like this would be just as wrong coming from progressive Democrats.

For decades, trustees put Carolina first and party last. The legislature and governor both appointed trustees.

But in 2016, the legislature took away the governor’s appointments. Why? Because he is a Democrat.

The legislature is putting Carolina’s reputation and its accreditation at risk.

Please help us by spreading the word to your friends, families and associates. Forward this email to them. Post it on social media.

Contact trustees and legislators. Let them hear your opinion.

Who is Jim Blaine?  Read our post from last year: https://coalitionforcarolinafoundation.org/who-is-jim-blaine-the-politically-connected-consultant-advising-unc-system-leaders/

You can support our Coalition’s work – and help us reach more people – by making a financial donation to our efforts. Click HERE.

Defending Carolina’s Priceless Gem – Part 2 of 3

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Part 2 – The History and Future of Academic Freedom at UNC

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the second installment of a three-part essay by Lloyd Kramer, a professor of history and former Chair of the Faculty Council at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he has been a faculty member since 1986. This piece was first published by Higher Ed Works.  We have been granted permission to republish it in entirety. If you missed part 1 you can follow this link to access it.

Over most of UNC’s history there were strict limits on academic freedom and free speech, but these limiting interventions often surged in response to the campaigns of Black North Carolinians to achieve freedom and equality.

The history of attacks on academic freedom at UNC

  • In 1829 the African American writer David Walker (who grew up in Wilmington, NC) published an anti-slavery book entitled Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. When copies of Walker’s book began to appear in North Carolina, the state legislature passed laws that criminalized the distribution of “seditious” abolitionist texts.

    No teacher or student could legally distribute abolitionist writings in the state’s schools and universities before the Civil War. There was no academic freedom for faculty or students to use anti-slavery texts at UNC.
  • In 1856 a UNC chemistry professor named Benjamin Hedrick stated in a letter to a local newspaper (not in his classes) that he supported the “Free-Soil” Republican candidate John Fremont in that year’s presidential election.  Both the faculty and Board of Trustees immediately voted to fire Hedrick from the university for his “political” statements about slavery, though another faculty member – the biologist Elisha Mitchell – had previously defended slavery in his public writings. 

    There was no tenure to defend academic freedom or free speech outside the university. Mitchell spoke publicly on the same issue as Hedrick, but Hedrick was fired, and Mitchell was honored. Mt. Mitchell carries his name, and we still have Mitchell Hall at UNC.
  • As Black citizens asserted their rights to vote and hold public office in the decades after the Civil War, the early 20th-century state legislature enacted Jim Crow segregation laws that effectively prevented African Americans from voting and blocked the enrollment of Black students at UNC-Chapel Hill.

    Until the late 1950s, no department could appoint Black faculty members or admit Black students.  There was no faculty control over this aspect of faculty hiring or student admissions.
  • When the Civil Rights Movement gathered strength in the early 1960s, members of the state legislature charged that it was a communist movement. 

    The General Assembly thus passed a speaker ban law which prohibited campus talks by anyone deemed to be a communist sympathizer (meaning also Civil Rights activists).  Academic freedom and free speech were again restricted.
  • In 2015, as some North Carolinians began to call for the removal of Confederate statues and the renaming of university buildings that honored enslavers or Klansmen, the state legislature banned the removal of such statues from public spaces; and the BOT (after renaming one building) passed a 16-year ban on renaming University buildings.

    Angry protestors eventually tore down the “Silent Sam” statue, and the BOT later rescinded its ban on changing the names of buildings, but there was still no legal way for faculty, administrators, or students to freely alter Confederate symbols on their own campuses.
  • In 2021, the faculty at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media recommended Nikole Hannah-Jones for a tenured faculty appointment, but the Board of Trustees stalled the faculty recommendation because of political opposition to her work on the 1619 Project.  Like David Walker in 1829, Hannah-Jones described historical patterns of systemic racism, and some legislators sought to ban her book (like Walker’s book after 1829) from North Carolina schools.

    Although a small majority of the BOT finally approved her appointment, there was strong outside opposition to a faculty recommendation for hiring and tenure, and Hannah-Jones accepted an appointment at another university.

This history of restrictions on academic freedom and faculty control over academic policies (and I have noted only a few salient examples) suggests why the recent faculty letter condemned four proposed or enacted interventions in the sphere of faculty autonomy and expertise. UNC’s long history shows that such actions are now reviving past patterns of legislative interventions, which have always claimed to represent or protect the views of most state citizens outside the university.

Today’s faculty therefore honor the struggles of past generations when they reaffirm the long-developing principles of academic freedom and the hard-earned expertise of academic scholarship.

Current Threats to Academic Freedom and Faculty Expertise

UNC Faculty who signed the recent public letter have good reasons to believe that the University’s national reputation, evolving diversity, and future ability to recruit faculty and graduate students will be adversely affected by new legislative and Board proposals.

We are now regularly losing faculty to private universities because our colleagues (especially faculty of color) are deciding that the struggle to flourish at UNC is not worth the price in their professional and personal lives. 

My own department has lost two valued colleagues to private institutions over the past two years, and our departmental experience is not unusual. People leave for many reasons, but faculty of color feel especially drawn to other places during these times at UNC. 

Recruiting new faculty colleagues will be difficult, however, when job candidates ask about tenure policies at UNC or ask about the university’s future commitment to diversity or ask why the BOT is mandating a new School that was proposed outside the usual academic processes of faculty governance. 

The national standing of UNC is thus threatened in the academic world, so professors are responding with explanations for why they oppose top-down interventions that increasingly affect their professional and intellectual work.

Future Faculty and Students at UNC

We can’t know the issues or concerns that faculty and students will face in future decades, but we can safely assume that the struggle for democracy – and the struggle for academic freedom that helps to sustain democratic societies – will remain important components of their intellectual communities and public lives.

I appreciate the ways in which our academic predecessors challenged recurring attacks on academic freedom by establishing tenure policies, securing faculty control over the curriculum and professional hiring policies, and defending their expertise as scholars and teachers.

We stand on the shoulders of those who built the great system of public universities in the United States, but how can we be sure that these achievements and traditions will endure?

Future generations will look back at our own era to find historical patterns of hostility for university cultures and to look for reassurance in the power of enduring academic values. They will face similar or new challenges in their own time, but they will also be protecting an intellectual baton that was carried in different ways during earlier centuries (even in 2023).

All of us make mistakes, and we cannot easily see the problematic aspects of our own actions or cultures which future generations will recognize and criticize. But choices must be made, and we should take public actions whenever we can – though we never know where our actions may lead or how others may view what we have done.

It seems unlikely that the recent faculty letter will have much immediate impact on policymakers who are trying to transform UNC because they believe it is hostile to conservatism or to their own political ideas.

Some version of a well-funded, new UNC School of Civil Life and Leadership seems to be emerging, whereas academic tenure may well survive for an ever-declining percentage of future university professors. The recent faculty letter thus responded to present-day issues with a defense of long-term principles, but these enduring principles should remain influential in shaping institutional values, memories, and identities.  

By Lloyd Kramer – Professor of History, UNC Chapel Hill

If you missed part 1 you can follow this link to access it.

Defending Carolina’s Priceless Gem – Part 1 of 3

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Part 1 – Academic Freedom is the Foundation for Great Universities

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the first installment of a three-part essay by Lloyd Kramer, a professor of history and former Chair of the Faculty Council at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he has been a faculty member since 1986. This piece was first published by Higher Ed Works.  We have been granted permission to republish it in entirety.

Almost 700 faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill signed a statement in late April to express their opposition to recent actions of UNC’s governing boards and to recent legislative proposals in the North Carolina General Assembly. 

Some skeptical colleagues have questioned the rationale for this statement, and critics outside the university have asked why professors in Chapel Hill are so concerned about policies that seek to reshape the culture and faculty influence within a public university that serves people throughout our state and far beyond North Carolina. 

Are close-minded professors simply refusing to listen to North Carolinians whose beliefs may differ from their own ideas? 

Why did UNC Faculty Write and Sign a Letter?

I am one of the professors who signed the statement, so I would like to offer my perspectives in a three-part discussion of why the letter became timely and important for many of my colleagues who work and teach at our state’s outstanding public university.

As a longtime faculty member and a former chair of the UNC-Chapel Hill Faculty Council, I have often gained valuable insights from my conversations with members of our Board of Trustees, so my concerns about the actions of UNC’s governing boards and legislative leaders do not come from personal conflicts with any specific individuals. 

I nevertheless disagree with evolving structural changes in the traditions of shared governance at the University, and my critiques of recent interventions reflect my belief that the UNC faculty must expand our dialogue with both our own Board of Trustees (BOT) and with the Board of Governors (BOG). 

The recent faculty statement is thus part of an ongoing effort to sustain this dialogue, to affirm the value of academic freedom, to protect UNC’s national stature, and to continue the best possible institutional service to North Carolinians.

Faculty members from every school of the university (including more than 220 from the Schools of Medicine and Public Health) signed this public letter, which expressed broad concerns about threats to the principle of academic freedom. 

More specifically, the letter (1) opposed a legislative bill that would eliminate tenure in state universities; (2) criticized another bill that would create a state-mandated graduation requirement for a course on American history/government (with a list of required readings); (3) challenged the BOG’s restrictions on various strategies to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion; and (4) stressed that BOT and legislative interventions to establish a School of Civic Life and Leadership violate long-established academic traditions of faculty governance. 

In the view of most faculty who signed the letter, such interventions in the university’s internal management of academic affairs have become part of an ongoing transformation of academic freedom that seeks to limit the faculty’s control over decisions about professional expertise, academic curricula, hiring processes, and the creation of academic departments or teaching-research programs.

The Mission and Achievements of the Nation’s First Public University

Like most of my colleagues across the whole university, I am deeply committed to the mission and achievements of UNC as key components of education and democracy in our state. 

I have therefore always appreciated the statewide support for our excellent university system as well as the opportunity to serve on UNC’s faculty for more than 35 years. But I also appreciate how the struggle to establish and protect academic freedom has required a long-developing, endless campaign in our state and university.

The current faculty continue to build on (and benefit from) 20th-century efforts to establish tenure and academic freedom, so I signed the letter because of the past history of attacks on academic freedom, the present-day attacks which are linked to that history, and the responsibility we have to pass these freedoms on to future faculty and students at UNC.

As 21st-century faculty members, we are like runners in a long academic race, who have been given the vulnerable baton of academic freedom by our predecessors and who must carry this baton toward the next generation in the ongoing campaign for a democratic society. 

It is not simply a historical coincidence that authoritarian regimes always deny academic freedom and remove dissenting faculty from their universities.  Academic freedom is one of the foundations of a democratic society. 

In our state and elsewhere, the legislative campaign to control what can or should be taught about history or gender or racial identities is now spreading from K-12 education into the governance of our public universities. There is a long history of such interventions, however, and the troubling legacy of that history remains important for every teacher who seeks to defend public education in our own era. 

By Lloyd Kramer – Professor of History, UNC Chapel Hill

In other news, The Assembly reports on what might be a case of right-wing retribution at UNC Wilmington for someone who told the truth.

“Van Dempsey knew that talking to the press about what he described as a directive from his chancellor to give a big university award for education to a conservative could cost him.

The Dean of the Watson College of Education at University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) put both the school leadership and a member of the Board of Governors on blast earlier this month for both the award and the response to protests over it. 

He was right. Dempsey was removed as dean Monday.”

Follow this link to read more.

Coalition Survey Results

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We wanted to know what you think about what’s going on at the University of North Carolina. So, we asked you.

Almost 500 of you – 486, to be exact – responded to our online survey last month. Here is what you told us:

  • You see an inherent value in pursuing higher education, and you are extremely positive toward UNC.
  • You have deep-seated belief that the state legislature is having a negative impact on the UNC system.
  • You believe that professors, faculty, and administration – not politicians – should have the greater role in deciding public university curriculum.
  • You are paying attention to recent debates involving UNC, and you recognize the importance of our coalition.
  • A significant number of you are willing to take action in support of our university and our coalition.

We were struck by your high degree of interest and concern. The poll was lengthy – 33 questions, many with multiple parts. Despite the length, nearly every person who started the survey completed all the questions.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll share more insights from the survey with you.

The Truth Matters

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Once again, some members of the UNC Board of Trustees aren’t shooting straight with the University community.

This time, it’s about origins of the ideologically driven “School of Civic Life and Leadership” that the trustees rammed through – with the support of politicians in the state legislature – without informing and adequately consulting the University’s faculty and administration.

Trustee Perrin W. Jones from Greenville has twice written articles, the latest on May 22, claiming that the idea for the new school “goes back years—and has involved faculty input from the beginning.” (Link below.)

That is what Abraham Lincoln once called “a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse.”

Here is what really happened.

Beginning in 2017, then-Chancellor Carol Folt and others at the University initiated discussions about a proposed “Program for Civic Virtue and Civil Discourse.”

But early conversations suggested that the goal was to create a new, donor-funded center that would explicitly embrace political, right wing ideas. Many faculty members strongly and vocally opposed that.

In 2019, Interim Dean Terry Ellen Rhodes announced the establishment of the Program for Public Discourse in the College of Arts & Sciences, to bring in various speakers and offer students a forum for debate.

Some faculty members still had questions and concerns, and a resolution to delay implementation of the program was presented to the Faculty Council.

The resolution failed, but that vote certainly didn’t represent faculty endorsement of the program. And the faculty clearly never endorsed creating a course-offering, degree-granting entity like the School of Civic Life and Leadership.

It certainly isn’t right to claim that what the faculty did then is an endorsement of what the trustees are doing now.

David Boliek, chair of the trustees, made clear the political purpose of the School of Civic Life and Leadership when he was interviewed on Fox News in February, introduced as someone “who helped create the school.”

He acknowledged “we have world-class faculty” at Carolina, but added, “We however have no shortage of left-of-center or progressive views on campus, like many campuses across the nation. But the same really can’t be said about right-of-center views. So this is an effort to try to remedy that.”

Now, legislators want to spend $2 million in taxpayer money on the school in each of the next two years – to promote “right-of-center” viewpoints.

Trustees and legislators shouldn’t be creating new degree programs and deciding what is taught at public universities like UNC, especially if the motivation is purely political. Whatever motivated the board of trustees, the process they deployed wound up shutting out the faculty and administration.

Further, we don’t know if a Faculty and Administration designed and implemented School of Civic Life and Leadership is a good idea or not.  Certainly, if its purpose is to promote a particular political agenda and viewpoint it is not.

Faculty members are reliable, professional and have been proven leaders for decades.  That is a major reason that Carolina is great. Any new program must include the faculty and administration from the beginning.

That didn’t happen here.

No “specious and fantastic arrangement of words” can prove this horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse.

Jones article: https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2023/05/the-true-story-of-unc-chapel-hills-new-school/

Watch the Boliek interview on our March 2 post: https://coalitionforcarolinafoundation.org/the-gop-playbook-for-intervening-in-higher-education/