Category: Shared Governance

A New Assault on Carolina is Happening

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We are seeing signs of a more extreme political assault against UNC – and indeed all of higher education.

Trustees Welcome a Harsh Critic

Heather Mac Donald, a fellow from the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, spoke last week to the external affairs committee of the UNC Board of Trustees. She told the trustees that eliminating affirmative action “will greatly improve the ability of UNC to fulfill its mission of knowledge. What you must understand, if I may be so bold as to say so, is that racial preferences harm their alleged beneficiaries.”

She claimed that affirmative action had led universities to admit unqualified and ill-prepared students – a charge that was immediately countered by a trustee, the Chancellor and the student body president.

Here is a fact check about the most recent UNC-CH 4-year and 6-year graduation rates:

  • Overall student body: 83% (4-year); and 92% (6-year); 
  • Underrepresented students: 77% (4-year); and 90% (6-year);
  • First generation college students: 77% (4-year); and 89% (6-year).

Most institutions would be thrilled to have our 4-year graduation rates as their 6-year rates. 

Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz told Mac Donald, “There’s one thing I just want to be clear about, and that is that every student at Carolina has earned their way to Carolina.”

Trustee Ralph Meekins said, “UNC was not admitting students that were not qualified.”

Student body President Christopher Everett, an ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees, responded to Mac Donald at the full board meeting the next day.

He showed slides highlighting several campus leaders and successful students who are students of color.

“The individuals that I just shared with you all are nothing less than extraordinary, and we earned our spots at Carolina, not because of the color of our skin, but because of the contents of our hearts and the will to make our university a better place,” Everett said. “We are not average. We don’t need handouts. And we definitely did not flunk out when we came to Carolina.”

Korie Dean reported in The News & Observer, “Everett said he hoped the board, when making decisions about guest speakers in the future, would see him and the other students he presented and choose speakers who did not ‘question our worth.’ Everett’s remarks were met with hefty applause from meeting attendees.”

We at the Coalition for Carolina whole-heartedly agree.

Read Dean’s story here: https://www.newsobserver.com/article281684893.html#storylink=cpy

Watch Mac Donald’s presentation to the trustees here: https://www.youtube.com/live/ichgkU_a4Bw?si=hvlVy4v8zWTiCzsV

We don’t know who invited Mac Donald to the committee, but Ramsey White is the committee chair. Mac Donald was introduced by Doug Monroe, acting president of the UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance.

The Alliance had hosted Mac Donald the night before, where she delivered a wide-ranging and free-wheeling attack on higher education. We respect her right to speak, even as we disagree. Here are highlights from her speech:

  • Many Black students are not up to the challenge, but universities are so “desperate to get their numbers of Black students up, even if doing so imposed a terrible handicap on those students”.
  • Admissions screening for resilience, leadership and community involvement is “preposterous and condescending” and that “no admissions officer has the capacity to evaluate.”
  • University leaders “are committed to a victimhood narrative.”
  • She attacked what she labeled as “the diversity/DEI bureaucracy” on campuses.
  • She attacked female campus leadership because “females way, way outscore on the trait of neuroticism”.
  • She says that not everyone needs to go to a four-year college and proposed that colleges may be able to cut enrollment by as much as 90%.
  • She mocked majors such as marketing. “Are you kidding? You should be reading Aeschylus, you idiot.” (Note: We are all for Aeschylus, but the University is a big tent able to accommodate study of ancient Greece and modern business.)
  • She concluded with her wish that UNC be reformed to conform to her ideology, but believes today’s universities are “irredeemable.” “It is hard to start a new institution that has that prestige…that’s why I like the re-founding idea of UPenn so much because you’ve got the legacy prestige, but you’re starting out on better principles… maybe UNC will give me reason for hope.” We certainly hope not.

Watch her talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twexKz0fT-s

The National Right-Wing Attack

In an article posted Thursday by Inside Higher Ed, “The Right-Wing Attack on Academia, With a Totalitarian Twist,” John K. Wilson writes:

“Today, conservative activists will launch a public campaign to enact new model legislation called the General Education Act. Behind this bland name is a proposal for the most radical assault on faculty and academic freedom in American history. If the model legislation were to be enacted, lawmakers would force public colleges to adopt a uniform general education curriculum devoted to conservative values, give a new dean near-total power to hire all faculty to teach these classes and then require the firing of many existing faculty members in the humanities and social sciences, including tenured professors.

“The GEA’s extreme ideas are not the babblings of some obscure blogger. They are a joint proposal from three leading conservative groups—the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, and the National Association of Scholars.”

Read Wilson’s article here: https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2023/11/16/new-front-right-wing-attack-academia-opinion

Where We Stand

At the Coalition for Carolina we believe a diverse Carolina is a strong Carolina and that all students, faculty, and staff from all background belong here. Our mission is to monitor these continued attacks, get out the facts and mobilize our 25,000-plus followers to support the University.

We’ll keep doing that.

Here’s what you can do:

  • Educate yourself. Watch Mac Donald’s presentations and read Wilson’s article.
  • Share your concerns with friends, colleagues and leaders.
  • Email, write and call UNC trustees and legislators.

Tell them to keep Carolina a place where discovery and education are paramount and political agendas are left at the door.

Legislature Mandates Rapid Action On Controversial UNC School

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Faculty and administrators at Carolina are grappling with a new mandate from the

North Carolina General Assembly – “because we have to,” as one said.

Today we present two reports on the “School of Civic Life and Leadership” that legislators

and trustees are pushing.

In the 1,400-page state budget passed last month, the legislature inserted a provision that:

  • Appropriates $4 million for the school.
  • Requires that 10-20 faculty members be hired from outside the university.
  • Requires that a dean be hired by the end of this year.

The Coalition for Carolina has expressed our concern about political interference

that can damage the University’s reputation for academic excellence.

We’ll be watching what happens with the school. We’ll keep you posted.

While presenting both reports makes for a longer than desired newsletter, we’re including both posts to conveniently give you the full perspective. 

Goldstein: Lemons to lemonade – The UNC School of Civic Life

(This was originally posted by Higher Ed Works on October 19, 2023)

By Buck Goldstein

CHAPEL HILL (October 19, 2023) – I’ve attended many faculty meetings at UNC Chapel Hill over the last 20 years. I assumed I had heard everything.

Between the athletics controversies, the removal of Silent Sam, Nikole Hannah-Jones’ tenure application and now the School of Civic Life and Leadership, the faculty seems to have touched all the bases. The meetings are characterized by challenging questions, off-the-wall reactions, and carefully lawyered statements.

But on October 6, I got an unexpected surprise. Jim White, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, was concluding a status review of the new School of Civic Life and Leadership when an obviously angry faculty member asked, “Why are we even doing this?”

White paused for fully five seconds.

Then he looked up and said, “Because we have to.”

The response was deafening silence. White’s candid, clear, and transparent response was so powerful there was nothing else to say.

THE BACKSTORY to this jaw–dropping moment of candor began when the UNC Board of Trustees –  without any consultation with the faculty or the Chancellor – announced the creation of a School of Civic Life. Members of the Board followed up with a series of media interviews that humiliated the Chancellor and the faculty, ignoring the basic norms of shared governance.

The Trustees made no attempt to hide their objective. They intend to hire conservative professors to balance out their perception that UNC students are being brainwashed by liberal faculty. To top it off, the North Carolina legislature chose to get into the weeds and included in the new state budget instructions on the number of faculty to be hired, the administrative structure, and a timetable for implementation, among other details.1

As it turns out, while legislators were tinkering with matters they knew little or nothing about, UNC faculty and administrators concluded they could turn the lemons they were handed into lemonade.

CHANCELLOR KEVIN Guskiewicz and Provost Chris Clemens decided at the outset that the new School would be housed in the College of Arts & Sciences and its leader would report to the Dean of the College.

Dean White then convened a group of faculty thought leaders and told them the new School must be faculty-led and built to last beyond the current political climate.

They responded by defining the school as: (1) providing a home specifically for the study and practice of public discourse, civic life and civic leadership; (2) providing an intellectual grounding in democracy and the American political experience; and (3) serving to support conversations and research on these topics.

The day before Dean White’s presentation to the faculty, he named an acting director of the new School and nine distinguished professors who will begin teaching classes in the spring. They include:

  • A history professor who writes for both academia and The New York Times on religion;
  • A music professor who receives funding from the State Department to bring American hip-hop artists to Africa;
  • A philosopher who studies the ethics of artificial intelligence; and
  • A communication studies professor who advises Republican political campaigns.

Sadly, the inaugural faculty does not include any professors of color. It has been reported that none applied or agreed to be nominated.2

At the end of his presentation, Dean White stressed that by adhering to basic university processes and norms, the new School will be built to last. By attracting distinguished professors who are also great teachers, the School will appeal to a broad range of students. Embedded in the College of Arts & Sciences, the School has been embraced by professors from the disciplines that are foundational to a liberal education and therefore will be perceived as a serious endeavor.

Hopefully the hard work to make the new School a reality will be recognized for what it is – a good–faith effort to embrace what began as a declaration of war with the faculty – and turn it into something worthy of the nation’s first public university.

This good faith was demonstrated by the new acting Director, Sarah Treul Roberts, who told a reporter: “This is an amazing opportunity, as a faculty member, to get to build something and develop an entire new school from more or less scratch. It’s one of those opportunities that I think there will be ample interest in across all viewpoints, across all backgrounds, across all ideologies.”3

At the end of Dean White’s presentation, someone asked, “Do you think you will be able to pull this off without interference?”

His answer: “I certainly hope so.”

Buck Goldstein, a Professor of the Practice in the School of Education and University Entrepreneur in Residence at UNC Chapel Hill, retired from the faculty June 30.

1 https://www.ncleg.gov/Sessions/2023/Bills/House/PDF/H259v7.pdf, pp. 161-162.
2 https://ncnewsline.com/2023/10/12/unc-chapel-hills-controversial-new-school-moves-forward-with-new-faculty/.
3 Ibid.

The uncivil origins of the School of Civic Life and Leadership at UNC

(This was originally posted by NC Newsline on October 19, 2023)

By MICHAEL SCHWALBE

Civil discourse in a democratic society must entail more than a polite exchange of views. It must also entail honesty, freedom from coercion, and commitment to rules that all participants understand and agree to, and which are not subject to unilateral change by one party seeking advantage.

Ironically, all of these characteristics have largely been absent from the process through which UNC-Chapel Hill’s new School of Civic Life and Leadership has been created. The very process through which the school has come about was both undemocratic and contrary to basic principles of civil discourse.

The new school was swathed in dishonesty from the start. As far back as 2017, the UNC system Board of Governors, a group consisting mainly of Republican political appointees, began entertaining the idea of creating a “conservative center”—to use UNC Provost Chris Clemens’s words—to offset a perceived liberal bias among UNC faculty.

In 2017, the board invited Princeton University professor Robert “Robby” George, described by New York Times Magazine as America’s “most influential conservative Christian thinker,” to talk about the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions that George had founded at Princeton.

Professor George advised against creating a program that might look like no more than a safe space for conservative snowflakes. Better to promote such a program, George suggested, as aimed at “expanding the range of viewpoints” on campus. But this language was a bit of public relations legerdemain, as George surely knew.

Two of the principal funders of George’s James Madison Program, the ultraconservative John M. Olin Foundation and the equally far-right Bradley Foundation, knew what they were getting for their money: a conservative beachhead in academia from which to wage battle against liberal ideas. 

But right-wing ideological warriors knew that a frontal assault would provoke stronger opposition. James Piereson, executive director of the Olin Foundation, advised a strategy of depicting these conservative outposts as benign efforts to add new voices and criticize reigning orthodoxies. Piereson went on to say that the best infiltration strategy is to co-opt a handful of sympathetic faculty members to push proposals from the inside, using claims of academic freedom to fend off objections from other faculty.    

Talk of balance and “expanding the range of viewpoints” was thus always rhetorical camouflage, not an honest description of what was afoot—at Princeton, at other universities around the country, and later at UNC-Chapel Hill. This language, however, does more than mask its users’ true intent. It also distorts the conversation by seeking to compel agreement about the dubious claim that there exists a lack of balance or viewpoint diversity in academia. Anyone who rejects this claim enters the conversation on the back foot and must do extra work to show that what others presume to be true is not.  

Of course, the point was never to have an open-ended discussion of what was really going on in the university, as was demonstrated time and again when UNC faculty politely argued that the conservative framing of the situation was inaccurate—and were ignored. The point was to promote conservative ideology against imagined liberal foes, and to minimize resistance by using dishonest and manipulative language.  

Dishonesty continued to blot the process of creating the school. When the UNC Board of Trustees passed a resolution in January 2023—much to the surprise and consternation of UNC faculty and administrators—directing UNC administrators to get busy creating the new school, the trustees’ defense of the proposal used the language of “promoting democracy” and “building skills in public discourse.” But this was just more smoke blown in faculty faces, though clearly a few were willing to inhale. 

A little over two months earlier, at the board’s fall 2022 retreat, trustees were tutored by Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. ACTA touts itself as non-partisan and committed to supporting liberal arts education, upholding high academic standards, and safeguarding the free exchange of ideas on campus. Again the language is tuned to charm academics.

But ACTA, like the James Madison Program, is funded by the same group of right-wing donors—the Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Koch Foundation, among others—whose true interests are economic. The freedom they’re seeking is to create academic spaces in which to promote free-market fundamentalism, small government, privatization, and lower taxes on corporations and the rich. They also hope to obscure their own efforts to undermine public discourse in U.S. society. 

To these economic actors, democracy matters only in as much as it threatens their power. One way to manage this threat is to create islands in universities, under the guise of championing viewpoint diversity, to help train conservative intellectuals—or at least inoculate students against critiques of corporate capitalism and free-market ideology. ACTA’s role in the process is to encourage trustees to aggressively pursue the curricular changes necessary to make this happen. After the UNC trustees passed the resolution that fast-tracked the School of Civic Life and Leadership, ACTA proudly took credit for inspiring it. 

A glimmer of truth shone through the cracks shortly after the resolution was passed. David Boliek, chair of the UNC Board of Trustees, told Fox News that there is “no shortage of left-of-center, progressive views” on the UNC campus and that the School of Civic Life and Leadership “is an effort to remedy that.” As if that wasn’t enough to give away the ruse, Boliek and trustees vice-chair John Preyer boasted to the Wall Street Journal that the new school would end “political constraints on what can be taught in university classes.” A subsequent WSJ editorial lauded the victory. 

Sadly, though not surprisingly, well-paid administrators at UNC have joined in gaslighting the faculty. In an email announcing nine faculty appointments to the new school, Jim White, dean of UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, described the creation of the school as a “faculty-driven process.” Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Faculty balked from the start, for the obvious reason that courses, curricula, and degree programs are the proper domain of subject-matter experts—faculty—not political appointees. As former UNC chancellor Holden Thorp said when asked to comment: “The board doesn’t have the ability to propose a class, to propose a degree, or—for God’s sake—to propose a school.” A true conservative, with due respect for the traditional governance structures of academia, would know that Thorp is right.     

So what rule of civil discourse can be inferred from how the UNC Board of Governors, the UNC Board of Trustees, and UNC administrators have behaved in this affair? Perhaps the rule is this: the powerless shall listen civilly when those who have captured the reins of the state proclaim that black is white, up is down, day is night. 

That’s actually an old rule, one that dominant groups have often used to discredit angry complaints from below. “Not that we’re going to do anything differently,” the subtext goes, “but if y’all aren’t going to be polite when you complain, we won’t let you speak at all.” Thus is the exercise of power covered with a veneer of civility. 

We might ask why university professors, hardly an oppressed group by historical standards, don’t react more militantly when they’re being snowed. One answer is that faculty, by virtue of training and inclination, retain a touching faith in genuine civil discourse—a belief that reason, evidence, and respectful argument will prevail. And so faculty participate politely, misled by a façade of civility into believing that what they say will make a difference. 

Not all faculty are so naïve, of course; and even those who might appear naive know that, vis-à-vis legislators, boards of governors, trustees, and administrators, they are not participating in a process of civil dialogue as equals. Which is to say, they are participating in a process under conditions that make real civil discourse impossible.  

Why? Because one side—in this case, the side of right-wing legislators and their minions—can coerce the other into agreement. One side controls the purse strings; one side is backed by the state; one side can materially hurt the other in myriad ways. This isn’t paranoia; it’s simply a recognition of how the system works. Faculty at UNC who watched the Board of Governors shut down the UNC Center on Work, Poverty, and Opportunity and prohibit the UNC Center for Civil Rights from litigating for civil rights know full well how things can play out when push comes to shove. 

Under these conditions of inequality between participants in a supposed process of civil discourse, an open sharing of views is not possible; reason can always be trumped by power; and demands by the powerful for civility amount to demands that the less powerful graciously accept their subordination. 

Earlier I mentioned a third condition necessary for civil discourse to occur: commitment to rules that all participants understand and agree to, and which are not subject to unilateral change by one party seeking advantage. As soon as the trustees stepped out of their lane and ordered the creation of courses, curricula, and a whole school, this rule was violated, as Holden Thorp pointedly noted. That’s why some faculty reported being “flabbergasted” by the trustees’ resolution.  

The party seeking advantage, in this case an ideologically-driven faction seeking to weaponize higher education in North Carolina, changed long-established rules in midstream, leaving faculty and some equally baffled administrators looking around and wondering what had happened. A few months later, Republican legislators cemented the victory by inserting funding for the new school into the state budget. By the time faculty realized they had brought a wiffle bat to a hardball game, the game was over. 

To call it “ironic” that a school supposedly dedicated to civic discourse has come about through an uncivil process is perhaps too nice. Irony, after all, can arise when bad luck perverts good intentions. But that’s not the case here. The intentions all along were to misrepresent what was being created and to use institutional power, not the force of honest, principled argument, to override objections. What this shows, yet again, are the limits of reason in the face of power and the need, sometimes, for impolite disruption. 

Stop the Dangerous Sneak Attacks on UNC Accreditation

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Dr. Jerry Lucido from Coalition for Carolina’s Accreditation Webinar

With no notice and no debate, the North Carolina General Assembly pushed through a controversial change that will hurt Carolina.

Higher Ed Works recently reported that “as most of North Carolina [were] sifting through 1,400 pages of a new, $30 billion state budget, Sen. Michael Lee slipped a provision from an unrelated bill into HB8 to require North Carolina colleges and universities to change accrediting agencies every cycle.” (.)

This is alarming, concerning, and requires outreach to legislators and the governor to stop it.

In the above video, Dr. Jerry Lucido describes how the NC legislature’s attempt to force an accreditor change on UNC System Schools would be extremely damaging to Carolina and others.

The move appears to be a continuation of NC Senate efforts to push an extremely costly, unnecessary, and burdensome change to the accreditation process on all UNC system schools and such a move could put Carolina’s accreditation at risk.

In May of this year, the Coalition held a webinar to explain the dangers of such a move.  .  During that webinar experts explained the dangers of forcing this change–along with the pros of staying with the current accreditor.  Additionally, Dr. Holden Thorp explained what might be motivating the NC Senate to make such a dangerous move.  Here is a clip of that explanation.

Dr. Holden Thorp from Coalition for Carolina Accreditation Webinar

What can you do to stop this dangerous, extreme, political and costly action? 

Contact Governor Cooper if you do not support the accreditation change requirement in House Bill 8 and ask him to veto House Bill 8 (HB8) where Senator Lee snuck in this requirement.

Contact legislators if you do not support the accreditation change requirement in HB8 and let them know that you would like any veto to be sustained.

 Here is a link to help you find your legislators.

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

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

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 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.

Guskiewicz on SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling

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UNC Chapel Hill shared this response to the June 29th SCOTUS ruling that struck down UNC-Chapel Hill admissions affirmative action practices.

Dear Carolina Community,

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. University of North Carolina, et. al., our case about race-conscious admissions. While not the outcome we hoped for, we respect the Supreme Court’s decision and will follow its guidance.

Carolina is committed to bringing together talented students with different perspectives and life experiences and to making an affordable, high-quality education accessible to the people of North Carolina and beyond. We are passionately public, and that will always be true. Our strategic plan’s first initiative is to “Build our Community Together.” We will build that community with you and work to provide a campus environment where all of our students know they belong and can thrive.

I know that this decision may raise questions about our future and how we fulfill our mission and live out our values. But Carolina is built for this, and we have been preparing for any outcome. Our leadership team will need time to thoroughly review the details of this outcome and its potential impact before determining specifically how we will comply with this decision. In the coming weeks, we will communicate our plans with the campus community.

For more information about this Supreme Court case, you can visit admissionslawsuit.unc.edu.

Sincerely,

Kevin M. Guskiewicz
Chancellor

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.

Important Accreditation Webinar Recording

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If you missed our webinar on accreditation you missed a really great discussion. The recording is now available and you can access it here: Coalition for Carolina Accreditation Webinar Recording

The bill to force an accreditation change is now moving through the NC House. Please contact your NC House Representatives and let them know whether you want to force this dangerous and costly process of continuous disruption in the accrediting process on North Carolina colleges.  Here is the link to who the house representatives are: https://www.ncleg.gov/Members/MemberList/H Please copy and paste this link into your browser.

It will only take you one hour to view the recording, but if you want to get a sense of what was discussed, Joe Killian does an excellent job summarizing the discussion in a piece published in NC Newsline.  Here is an excerpt of what Killian writes:

“A bill that would compel UNC System universities and community colleges to change accreditors flew under the radar in the recent flurry of higher education legislation at the General Assembly. But as Senate Bill 680 clears legislative hurdles on the way to becoming law, the public should pay attention to the “in the weeds” issue of accreditation, a panel of experts said Wednesday.

Accreditation has become a hot-button issue among conservative lawmakers and their political appointees. But the potential harms of making seismic changes to the long-established process are important to understand, the experts agreed.

“Quite frankly, I don’t think anybody’s paid much attention to it,” said Sallie Shuping-Russell, a former member of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, of the bill during the Wednesday panel organized by the non-profit Coalition for Carolina.

“Who the heck understands accreditation?” she said.But the issue is “really vitally important,” said Shuping-Russell, who also served two years as a public representative on the board of