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.
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
In the 18 months since the Coalition for Carolina was formed, more than 22,000 people have joined our email and social media networks.
We are alumni, friends, family, faculty, students, staff and supporters of the University. Many of us live in North Carolina, and others live in Utah, Maine, Florida, New York, other states, and overseas.
Yet, one member of the UNC Board of Trustees continues to attack us on Twitter, on Facebook and in paid newspaper ads.
He claims that our coalition’s “sole purpose is to try to convince North Carolinians that Republican-appointed trustees are hell-bent on destroying the university.”
He is wrong.
What we want is for members of the Board of Trustees – whatever their party or ideology – to put Carolina first.
We want the trustees to embrace and work within the shared governance model that has served Carolina for decades.
We want trustees to advocate for adequate faculty compensation and badly needed repairs and renovations.
We want the trustees to protect tenure – and academic freedom.
We want the trustees to protect Carolina’s accreditation.
We want the trustees – and politicians in Raleigh – to stop meddling in the University’s day-to-day workings.
We want the trustees to stop ambushing the Chancellor and faculty with poorly conceived, ideologically driven new departments and schools.
We want good governance and a spirit of cooperation among trustees, the administration, faculty, students and, yes, alumni.
That spirit is the Carolina Way.
It serves the University far better than shrill partisanship.
Let’s put partisan politics last and Carolina first.
When I had the honor of serving on the Board of Trustees (2003-2011), trustees put party, politics and personalities aside. We put the University first. Times certainly have changed.
I feel compelled to correct statements Marty made that aren’t true. Marty said I am a Democrat. No, I have been a registered unaffiliated voter for a number of years.
He said our coalition is a partisan vehicle. No, we are Democrats, Republicans and Independents.
He said the University, its administration and former trustees mismanaged finances and failed students and the State of North Carolina. No, that is demonstrably false.
He is correct that when I was a trustee and board chair (2007-2009), Carolina faced severe budget challenges. That’s because the legislature imposed draconian budget cuts on all universities after the 2008 recession. We overcame that challenge.Carolina became one of the nation’s top five university recipients of federal research dollars, $2 billion in revenues. We attracted faculty members who do groundbreaking research that fights AIDS, Covid, genetic diseases like Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and other diseases.
We worked across party lines to secure permanent funding for the Lineberger Cancer Center, which has saved countless lives of North Carolinians and their families. We funded the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), which brings together researchers, government, and industry to develop and deploy advanced technologies that enable research discoveries and practical innovations.
Applications for admission to UNC have soared in the last two decades. Over 57,000 students applied for 4,800 slots in the Class of 2026. These students and their parents don’t think Carolina is failing.
The bipartisanship – truly, the nonpartisanship – behind that success is jeopardized by partisan attacks like Marty’s.
His is part of a national pattern of far-right political attacks on public universities, led by Governors Ron DeSantis of Florida, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Greg Abbott of Texas. Marty’s essay ran in the North State Journal, a conservative publication with close ties to the public relations firm that he and the trustees hired, apparently to attack our Coalition.
They won’t stop us from shining a light on what several of the current trustees are doing. Instead of supporting and advancing the University, they are sowing disruption and disrespect.
Our audience includes thousands of people – Democrats, Republicans and Independents – who are concerned about political interference at Carolina. One example: The legislature has taken away the power of the Governor of North Carolina to appoint any trustees at any university. Why? Because he’s a Democrat. Elected officials certainly should have a voice in the University. But legislators represent 170 separate districts. The governor, Democrat or Republican, represents the whole state.
Historically, UNC has been served well by shared governance: trustees, administration, faculty and student leaders working together. Today, we see pure politics, not good governance.
Our Coalition will stand up to political attacks. We will stand up for the University’s independence and academic integrity. We will stand up for the light that is the University of North Carolina.
The legislature, specifically the NC Senate, appears to be trying to make college and community college accreditation a political issue, which it never should be. Accreditation is a highly focused, disciplined process for all schools that receive certain federal contracts as well as those whose students receive certain scholarships, particularly Pell grants – federal needs-based scholarships that fund full-time and part-time college and vocational school students. The proposed Senate bill ( use this link if you get an error as they sometimes block referrals from our website https://www.ncleg.gov/BillLookUp/2023/S680) may sound innocuous, but it isn’t. Its key tenets are:
It requires UNC system schools and community colleges to change accreditors every accreditation cycle (about every 10 years).
It requires that the new accreditor to be chosen from “a preferred list” that is compiled by the Board of Governors.
It allows one party to sue a person who raises an accreditation issue that leads to a college being found to be “out of compliance” for accreditation if that person is determined to have made a false statement (a reasonable sounding process that in past instances has chilled whistleblowers who fear that their truth will be labeled lies).
It is always risky to change accreditors, but when politicians are trying to drive an accreditor change and dictate the list from which a new creditor can be chosen, it becomes dangerous.
In addition to the fundamental actions imposed by the bill, cited above, let’s delineate a few more concerns raised with inadequate accreditation:
Potential loss of $1.5 billion in federal financial aid funds: this is the amount Carolina alone receives in federal financial aid funds; the total system received much more. This does not include research funding of other institutional grants which may rely on a recipient being accredited.
The process becomes politicized when politicians are the driving force behind changing accreditors. Lack of political influence is a core piece of all significant accrediting agencies so this alone would pose a problem to most reputable and highly quality accreditors.
Threats to AcademicSTANDARDS: Accreditation helps ensure a certain academic quality across different colleges and universities; and therefore, protects students, faculty and the value of degrees for those who have already graduated. If politicians force colleges to change accreditors without a valid reason or sufficient evidence, it threatens academic quality and undermines the integrity of the institution.
Impact on Reputation: Changing accreditors can create a perception that an institution has failed to meet the standards of its previous accreditor, which can have a negative impact on its reputation. This will not only effect enrolled students, but past graduates.
Loss of Institutional Knowledge: Accreditation requires a deep understanding of a college or university’s operations, policies, and procedures. When an institution changes accreditors, it loses that institutional knowledge and expertise that it has built up over many years. New agencies would take much longer and place a much more significant burden on administrators when they have to acquaint new accreditors with their policies and practices. This adds administrative costs to the schools.
Students who transfer to another institution or who seek additional educational degrees risk not being accepted if their degree comes from a school that has a lower standard of accreditation.
According to the Urban Institute, “The accreditation system in American higher education began in the late 1800s and early 1900s as a way for colleges and universities with high academic standards to distinguish themselves from institutions that claimed to be colleges but had curricula similar to many high schools (Harcleroad 1980).” Accreditation is intended to be an objective process that evaluates academic quality based on agreed-upon standards. One concern of all accreditors is that the institutions not have undue influence by political decision-makers or influencers as politicization undermines objectivity and credibility in the scholarly process and erodes academic freedom.
What happens when an accrediting agency has a concern regarding the actions or activities of a member institution? The accrediting agency contacts the institution and asks for clarification, initially in the form of a relatively standard letter. This is what happened when UNC’s accrediting agency, SACSCOC, sent a letter to Chancellor Guskiewicz earlier this year asking for more information about the recent action by Carolina’s trustees regarding the proposed School of Civic Life and Leadership. Chancellor Guskiewicz responded, providing detail about how the university intended to assess and, if approved by the faculty, create the new program. That satisfied, and therefore concluded, the SACSCOC query here.
When the institution responds the agency decides whether the answer was sufficient to satisfy the question. If it is sufficient, there is no further action — as was the recent case with Carolina. If it is not sufficient, there will be further conversations between the accrediting agency and the school. Sometimes additional information is needed and at times penalties are imposed. It is everyone’s goal – the accreditor and the school – for the accreditation to stand.
Chancellor Guskiewicz’s response to the recent SACSCOC letter satisfied the agency that proper processes were being followed at this time. However, that did not satisfy our legislature. Almost as soon as Senator Berger learned that SACSCOC intended “to send a letter” asking for clarification about the proposed new program – standard procedure when an accreditor has a question – he introduced bill 680, (Revise Higher Ed Accreditation Processes). This was his reaction to a presentation by the head of SACSCOC to the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina.
Recall Chief Justice Felix Frankfurter’s four essential freedoms of a college or university in deciding Sweezy vs New Hampshire: Universities have the right (1) to determine who may teach; (2) what can be taught; (3) how it is taught; and (4) who will be admitted. Pushing changes in accreditation harms these essential institutional freedoms. Further, Carolina is currently accredited by the highest level and quality of external accreditation. Changing accreditors from an accreditor like SACSCOC would likely result in a lower quality accreditation of our programs, which would damage past, present, and future generations.
Because of the serious consequences noted above, we’ve decided to host a webinar with a panel to discuss the potential ramifications of Senate Bill 680. We’ll send out invitations to the webinar once the logistics are complete. In the meantime, we want to point out that this draft bill sponsored by Senator Berger also raises alarms and concerns because it seems eerily similar to the extremist action that Ron DeSantis took in Florida against their college accreditor, but with an even more severe twist given its allowance of litigation.
It is critical that we not stand still here. Contact representatives and alert your neighbors to the threats this bill proposes. The vast majority of colleges and universities in the southeast are accredited by SACSCOC. If the North Carolina university system and community colleges seek a lessor accreditor we all stand to lose.
Yes. There appears to be a national playbook for the egregious governance overreach happening at Carolina.
The Chronicle of Higher Education obtained, through public-records requests and which have not been previously reported, emails which … “shine light on an increasingly popular mode of intervention into public higher ed. In establishing the Hamilton Center, Florida joined other states— Arizona, Texas, and Tennessee — that have in recent years given millions to fund civics-related units at state universities. Plans are underway for such a school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which some professors oppose. These moves have been inspired, at least in part, by criticisms that professors lean too liberal, that debate on campus is imperiled, and that teaching the foundations of Western thinking is no longer a priority. Those criticisms are all the more alive in Florida — a state with a governor who has warned against universities becoming “hotbeds for stale ideology” and recently announced plans for a host of reforms to the state’s colleges, including the imposition of a Western-civilizations curriculum.” Follow this link to read the entire article.
(This video clip was first published by Fox News and can be found on this Fox News post.)
And, if Florida is the model, it will get worse for Carolina and colleges in the UNC system.
“In recent months, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has laid out a comprehensive vision that would place public higher education under extraordinary state control. A bill introduced this week would write that vision into law.
[Florida]House Bill 999 takes up almost every bullet-pointed goal that DeSantis included for public higher education in a press release last month. It would prohibit public colleges from funding any projects that ‘espouse diversity, equity, and inclusion or Critical Race Theory rhetoric,’ no matter the funding source; allow boards of trustees to conduct a post-tenure review of faculty members at any time for cause; and put faculty hiring into the hands of trustees. It also has new specifics DeSantis hadn’t proposed, such as a ban on gender studies as a major or minor. ‘This bill will be a gut punch to anyone who cares about public education in a democracy or academic freedom or the fact that our system of higher education is the envy of the world,’ said Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors. ‘Because higher ed in America is organized around the fact that research and teaching and decisions involving research and teaching are best made by experts and scholars in the field.’” Follow this link to read the entire article.
Don’t believe it can happen in North Carolina? Not only is it happening, as cited above, with trustees overstepping their authority in instructing Carolina to create a new academic program promoted to right-wing media as a way to increase conservative faculty before even consulting/advising the faculty or the chancellor, but just last week the UNC Board of Governors made their move and it was reported by Fox News like this:
“University of North Carolina moves to ban ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ statements in anti-woke backlash … NC voted to ban DEI statements and compelled speech from admission, hiring, promotion and tenure … The University of North Carolina (UNC) moved against encroaching woke culture and voted to ban diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) statements and politically preferential hiring. UNC voted to ban DEI statements and compelled speech from admission, hiring, promotion and tenure at its Board of Governors meeting Thursday.”
Michelle Goldberg writes in a New York Times opinion piece; Florida Could Start Looking a Lot Like Hungary
“Last week, one of DeSantis’s legislative allies filed House Bill 999, which would, as The Tampa Bay Times reported, turn many of DeSantis’s ‘wide-ranging ideas on higher education into law.’ Even by DeSantis’s standards, it is a shocking piece of legislation that takes a sledgehammer to academic freedom. Jeremy Young, senior manager of free expression and education at PEN America, described it as ‘almost an apocalyptic bill for higher education,’ one that is ‘orders of magnitude worse than anything we’ve seen, either in the recent or the distant past.’” Read more here.
D.G. Martin’s opinion piece on WRAL entitled; UNC’s ‘Don’t ask; Don’t tell’ policy,begins with; “If UNC-Chapel Hill is to recruit the new school’s faculty “across the ideological spectrum,” it will have to inquire about prospective faculty members’ connections, something the UNC System’s Board of Governors has now prohibited.” Follow this link to read more.
(Spoiler Alert: It Doesn’t Include Creating New Academic Programs)
Last week I read an editorial in the Wall Street Journal expressing consternation that the UNC-Chapel Hill’s accrediting agency plans to ask for more information about University plans—launched by its Board of Trustees–to create a new School of Civic Life and Leadership. According to the WSJ, questions from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges constitute a political power play that also boosts the cause of faculty members “angry that the trustees created the school without their assent.” Both fair points, perhaps, but there followed a conclusion that gave me pause.
The WSJ wrote:
”But the North Carolina state constitution delegates responsibility for universities to the Legislature, which “shall provide for the selection of trustees . . . in whom shall be vested all the privileges, rights, franchises and endowments heretofore granted or conferred upon the trustees of these institutions.In other words, the UNC trustees are doing their duty under the law to protect the best interests of higher education in the state.”
The editorial’s authors can be forgiven for assuming, like most people probably do, that UNC-Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees (BOT) holds wide-ranging governance powers, entitling it to take steps like directing University administrators to create a new school. But the BOT’s role in the University is actually more advisory than executive, making its recent directive a cause for concern regardless of one’s opinion on the merits of the proposed School of Civic Life and Leadership.
It’s true that the North Carolina Constitution includes the provision cited by the WSJ. But not long after the current NC Constitution was adopted in 1971, the General Assembly reorganized and expanded the University of North Carolina to comprise what is now a 16-institution system. The powers of the trustees of what had been known as the “Consolidated University” were now vested in the newly created UNC Board of Governors. Thereafter the BOG had pretty much all governance powers over the UNC system and its constituent institutions. (I sometimes wish that weren’t the case, but it is.)
At the same time, the General Assembly mandated separate boards of trustees at each of the UNC institutions, and gave those boards limited, mostly advisory powers. Each is authorized to:
“. . . promote the sound development of the institution within the functions prescribed for it, helping it to serve 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. Each board shall serve as advisor to the Board of Governors on matters pertaining to the institution and shall also serve as advisor to the chancellor concerning the management and development of the institution. The powers and duties of each board of trustees, not inconsistent with other provisions of this Article, shall be defined and delegated by the Board of Governors.“
NC General Statutes Sec. 116-33.
So, the “privileges” and “rights” ascribed by the WSJ to the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees have long since been held by the Board of Governors. A few other statutes confer some additional responsibilities on the boards of trustees, such as the power to establish a campus law enforcement agency. But for the most part they possess only those powers that the BOG has delegated to them.
Over the fifty years since the modern University of North Carolina’s creation, the BOG has conferred a wide array of responsibilities on the boards of trustees, such as the adoption of tenure policies and procedures, hearing and deciding a variety of faculty, staff or student appeals from administrative decisions; appointing chancellor search committees, overseeing endowments, and approving matters such as who will receive honorary degrees, the annual budget, head coach and athletic director contracts, appointment and compensation for certain non-faculty employees, certain types of capital projects, campus master plans, the acquisition or disposition of real property, and new campus building architects, sites and designs.
Not a trivial set of responsibilities, but they do not include the authority to instruct an institution to create a new academic program.
And given the central importance of a university’s academic programs, it’s not surprising that the BOG has set out expectations about how new programs shall be proposed and approved. Fundamentally, those expectations are rooted in an understanding that each campus should determine what academic programs will work best for its students and community, subject to alignment with UNC System values and priorities. Each constituent institution must establish and follow a clearly defined process for the review and approval of proposals on its campus to plan or establish new degree programs, and UNC-Chapel Hill has done so. As to the BOT’s role, UNC-Chapel Hill’s policy provides only that, upon reviewing and approving such a proposal, the Chancellor is required to “update the Board of Trustees as appropriate” before forwarding it to the UNC System for review.
Some may argue that the general mandate to the BOT to “promote the sound development of the institution” is all the authority the Board needs to propose a new School at Carolina. A lawyerly response would be that specific statutory and regulatory provisions take precedence over more general provisions, and as explained above, the specific regulations concerning creation of new academic programs clearly don’t give the BOT the power to mandate such a step. Another way of saying it is that if the General Assembly or the BOG thought the BOTs should be involved in formulating and proposing plans for new schools within the UNC campuses, they could have provided for it in setting out a detailed framework for such decisions—and they did not.
Why does any of this matter?
First, it matters because in requesting “that the administration of UNC-CH accelerate its development of a School of Civic Life and Leadership,” the BOT has strayed from its statutorily authorized role, as further defined by the Board of Governors, and that’s rarely a good thing.
Also, honest recognition that the BOT has exceeded its authority in this situation may in turn make the on-campus protests more understandable—and, one hopes, stem the editorial eye-rolling that has met complaints that the BOT has ignored shared governance and disrespected the faculty’s historic and legitimate role in curriculum development.
Finally, it matters because the “sound development” of the University, and especially of its academic programs, can’t happen without study, preparation, and deliberation, principally by those who will be charged with ensuring that such programs succeed. Chancellor Guskiewicz has pledged to run the proposal for a School of Civic Life and Leadership through the University’s normal channels, with input from faculty and the kind of detailed budgetary planning required for such an initiative. But one wonders whether that review will be so overshadowed by political crossfire and misgivings over the way the BOT has jump-started this matter that the new School, if it goes forward, will be too tainted to succeed.
It didn’t need to happen like this. At their best, the UNC System boards of trustees understand and respect their proper role in university governance. They engage in meaningful, two-sided conversations with the campuses they are pledged to support and to represent to the wider university and to the State. They do their best to learn and appreciate their institutions, so that any criticism they make is grounded in fact and insight. They listen as much as they instruct. That approach seems to have been discarded by the UNC-Chapel Hill BOT in favor of quick and decisive action. By failing to stay within its lane the BOT may have ensured that its effort to bring a conservative perspective to campus life is doomed to failure.
David M. Parker, BA 1980; JD, 1984
Other News:
On Friday, February 17, 2023 the UNC-CH Faculty Council met to address the “bucket of chaos” created by UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees as described above. During the meeting the council passed two resolutions. One of the resolutions made clear that the previously approved “IDEAS in Action Curriculum” is different from the proposed new school and should not be used to confuse the public or justify the recent governance overreach. The second resolution directly addressed the recent overreach actions and made clear the faculty’s role in creating new schools. Follow this link to watch a video of the meeting and/or read the resolutions.
The faculty resolutions were covered in the News &Observer in a piece entitled; A standoff: UNC-CH faculty pushes back against trustees on conservative program | Opinion. In this opinion piece, Ned Barnett points out that; “Much of what the board says it’s trying to promote – exposing students to different political views and teaching the skills of civil and constructive debate – are already at the center of a recently adopted academic program, IDEAS in Action.”
The N&O piece also highlighted a blog post from Dr. Art Padilla. In this post, Dr. Padilla summarizes problems with the BOT’s actions as follows:
“Here’s the real problem: A nebulously defined conservative school, sponsored by a rotating lay board, with untenured teaching or adjunct professors residing at the bottom of the professorial pyramid and providing instruction in no discernible majors or disciplines, with uncertain job prospects for any graduates, and with anemic mainstream faculty support, could possibly be successful and could outlast the board members who promote it. But that’s not the way to bet. There must be better solutions.”
Further, it has been revealed that trustees are using university funds to pay a PR firm to make their egregious actions more palatable to the public. The N&O says the name of the PR agency hired by the trustees is Eckel & Vaughn, a Raleigh firm. The contract is for $50,000. The article goes on to quote trustee Preyer as saying the board hired the PR agency to counter commentary from The Coalition for Carolina — a privately funded organization. Preyer did not explain why the battery of PR talent already retained by the university was not sufficient, or why the initial PR efforts were concentrated in right leaning media. Both Coalition for Carolina co-chairs Roger Perry and Dr. Mimi Chapman provided commentary in the N&O coverage.
The blindsided faculty continues to be baffled and disturbed by the recent governance overreach actions. The commentary below first appeared in NC Policy Watch on February 13, 2023. The Coalition for Carolina has been granted permission to republish it in entirety.
Commentary: UNC Chapel Hill trustees misfire with rushed and ill-conceived plan to launch conservative school
Two weeks ago, the UNC Board of Trustees arrived in Chapel Hill hellbent on launching yet another salvo in the campus Culture Wars. They surprised everyone with a resolution calling for the creation of a new “School of Civic Life and Leadership.” Comprised “of a minimum of 20 dedicated faculty,” this proposed school would help develop student “skills in public discourse” in the service of “promoting democracy and serving to benefit society.”
Though camouflaged in reasonable language, the true intent of the resolution was revealed soon after its passage. Aided by a public relations firm, the BOT launched a media campaign to score cheap political points with conservative pundits. The Wall Street Journal just so happened to have a supportive op-ed ready to publish within hours of the meeting. A day later, Board of Trustee Chair David Boliek appeared on Fox News assuring viewers, “this is all about balance.” “We have no shortage of left-of-center, progressive views on our campus.” “The same really can’t be said about right-of-center views, so this is an effort to try to remedy that.”
From there, the Board of Trustees rode out of Chapel Hill on a wave of praise from conservative commentators who have long convinced themselves that they are victims of intellectual persecution on college campuses. Fox News called their actions “a rare win for free speech.” The Wall Street Journal praised them for “trying to revive the academic ideal of a campus as a haven for inquiry and debate.” The Pope Foundation-funded Martin Center hailed the resolution for “leading the way on free expression, viewpoint diversity, and academic freedom.” The conservative-leaning “National Association of Scholars” called the move “a stark contrast to the authoritarian radical monoculture that has claimed most of higher education.”
But there was just one glitch: the BOT apparently never told anyone who actually works at or attends the university.
Bypassing or ignoring traditions of university governance
Faculty had questions. It is a university’s faculty, after all, who teach the classes, design the curriculum, and conduct the research that makes them nationally-renowned scholars in their respective fields. Faculty began to ask for clarification, wondering why the trustees didn’t share their grand plans with the people who teach at the university.
The Chancellor and Provost, both insisting they were also surprised by the announcement, played along in support of the Board, asserting that such a school was good for democracy and that it actually originated from earlier faculty conversations. Striking a different tone from previous reports in conservative media, they insisted that faculty would lead the effort to create the curriculum for the new school.
But that’s not how the Board of Trustees initially presented the program to their conservative constituents, the only ones they seem to think matter. As Trustee John Preyer told The Wall Street Journal, the new school would eliminate “political constraints on what can be taught in university classes.” Preyer has yet to offer any specific examples to back that well-trod myth about college courses, leading to further confusion about the goals of the new school.
A few days after the announcement, tempers flared at a meeting between faculty leaders and the Chancellor and Provost. Some of the faculty spoke with a tone that led another trustee to conclude, “the Faculty Executive Committee’s discussion clearly demonstrates why we need this school.”
There are several issues at play here. One is the longstanding tradition of shared governance at American research universities. Another is the blatant overreach by a Board of Trustees that is unqualified to dictate the curriculum at a major public university. It should go without saying that the members of the Board of Trustees are not college educators. They are stewards of a faculty that includes people with decades of research and teaching experience. But the trustees seem not to care about expertise, only their perceptions of political affiliation. And their stated intention of sidestepping “left-of-center” faculty and to create curriculum designed to favor Republicans reveals just how ignorant they are of the practical workings of the university they are entrusted to oversee.
Duplicating and undermining existing departments
Conservatives have long dreamed of a greater presence on UNC’s campus, and it is certainly within the BOT’s power to use private money to build a Conservative clubhouse that might offer s safe space to debate hot-button political issues. Many in the UNC community would certainly be upset over such a nakedly political imposition, but such a center would probably just end up becoming a relatively benign venue for right-leaning lectures and social gatherings. But the trustees want something else. They want to use public money and the resources of the university to alter the curriculum in service of their political whims.
Faculty in this proposed new school would teach in fields that already exist at UNC—History, Political Science, School of Government, Philosophy, etc., effectively duplicating portions of several departments. Budget estimates for this school reach as high as $12.65 million per year by the 2026-27 academic year.
Meanwhile, Hamilton Hall, the building that houses UNC’s Departments of History and Political Science, ranked #11 and #12 in the country, is falling apart. Both elevators are routinely inoperable and there is lead in the water fountains. Some faculty have even been asked to consider giving up their office phones to save money on the bill. And numerous faculty positions remain unfilled. It is especially galling for the Board of Trustees to shirk its existing stewardship responsibilities while demanding tens of millions of dollars to recreate the excellent departments that the university already has.
Furthermore, there have been calls from conservative quarters to freeze out existing faculty from the formation of this new school, meaning that historians won’t be vetted by historians and philosophers won’t be vetted by philosophers. Who is going to uphold academic standards if the university’s own world-class faculty aren’t involved? The BOT insists that it will no longer act as a rubber stamp, but they’re not qualified to make such judgements about curriculum. They don’t tell football coach Mack Brown which base defense to run for the same reason they don’t tell English professors which books to teach. There is a great irony in paying people to be experts in something and then disregarding that very expertise.
Altering and twisting the backstory
Now, the BOT is trying to rewrite the narrative they initially crafted about their own school. In a recent op-ed, Boliek and Preyer insisted that the idea came directly from the curriculum created by faculty, admonishing “those obsessing over process and prerogatives.” The need for the school, they further argued, is demonstrated by a survey conducted early in 2022 that gauged student responses to “free expression and constructive dialogue” on campus. “Those who maintain,” they castigated, “that the university already provides an environment of collegial debate and tolerance of varying viewpoints ignore recent research showing that more than half of Carolina’s conservative students and one in five centrist students censor themselves.”
But the Trustees’ interpretation of the survey is just as flawed as their curricular ideas. The vast majority of students didn’t care enough to bother filling it out, leading to a response rate of only 11% at UNC-Chapel Hill and 7.5% across the UNC System. If such a crisis really existed, surely the response rates would have been much higher. As it is, the survey results boil down to just a few hundred students, many of whom were freshman at the time.
Even allowing for a skewed and unrepresentative sample, the survey offered no evidence that UNC’s existing faculty or course offerings contributed negatively to this so-called problem. Students marked race, policing, and guns as the most difficult topics to discuss. These are challenging issues for nearly every American to examine, and there is no reason to believe that a new wave of professors would better teach these topics simply because they identify as conservative. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite: 89% of conservative respondents to survey agreed that “Professor[s] encouraged participation from liberals and conservatives alike.” The students also overwhelming reported that professors do not push political views in class. And the proposed faculty for the new school would be fixed term, not tenured, meaning that they wouldn’t have the same protections of academic freedom.
Ironically, Boliek and Preyer have simultaneously revealed their shortcomings as critical thinkers, institutional stewards, and campus leaders. They seem to misunderstand the very survey they themselves cite as evidence of need. On the basis of that misunderstanding, they propose a budgetary boondoggle, earmarking tens of millions of dollars to essentially duplicate departments that are already underfunded. And they propose all of this not as a last resort, but as a first strike, given that the BOT has never undertaken any other action to help improve campus climate in ways that might foster productive dialogue.
Sowing confusion and anger
Since passing their resolution, the BOT has done nothing but sow confusion and anger. A few have continued to launch potshots at faculty through the media while refusing to answer any questions directly from faculty. And now, UNC is left with another media circus and even possible questions about accreditation. Perhaps the greatest tragedy in all of this is the trustees’ abject failure to demonstrate the very type of civil discourse they say is needed on campus. Why the need for secrecy? Why the media blitz? Why are the trustees attacking professors in conservative media? Why not answer questions from the very people who will be tasked with building this school?
It still remains unclear exactly what the trustees are calling for or who they expect to complete their bidding. At worst, it’s a naked power grab that will further impose a political ideology over the campus and curtail academic freedom. At best, it’s a policy whose design will create an inefficient redundancy by duplicating existing departments, thus weakening them all and making UNC worse at what it already does best.
I know the trustees profess to love the university. But it’s hard for anyone to take this seriously so long as the trustees themselves fail to articulate a consistent and clear vision for their new school, while using the great university that already exists as a political prop in the culture wars.
William Sturkey is a professor of history who specializes in the history of race in the American South at UNC Chapel Hill.
The UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees (BOT) and the UNC Board of Governors (BOG) have again made headlines for governing actions that run counter to the decades long success of shared governance which has made Carolina a great university.
Shared governance is the practice of involving all stakeholders in the decision-making process at a public university. It creates a democratic process where faculty, staff, students, and administrators have a voice and can express their views on issues that affect the university. Shared governance at public universities is crucial for the success and sustainability of these institutions and is a fundamental aspect of higher education. It is important that shared governance be preserved to:
Ensure that the university community is involved in shaping the direction of the institution.
Promote transparency and accountability.
Maintain a culture of open communication that fosters trust among the university community.
Guide better, informed decision-making with different perspectives taken into consideration.
Help maintain the academic freedom and autonomy of the university so that the university remains focused on its mission of advancing knowledge and promoting the public good.
When shared governance is destroyed by governance overreach it can restrict academic freedom and autonomy, leading to a lack of creativity and innovation in teaching and research. This can result in a decrease in the quality of education and research, and can negatively impact the reputation of the university.
The most recent action to violate the principles of shared governance is a BOT proposal to create an entire new school. The proposed “School of Civic Life and Leadership” was proposed and voted on without any input or knowledge from the faculty, chancellor, students or staff normally charged with making such decisions. Not only that, but the process for making the proposal included a public relations roll-out featuring an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, glowing coverage in other conservative publications, and BOT Chair Boliek immediately appearing on Fox News to suggest that the move may be politically inspired by saying;
“We … have no shortage of left-of-center, progressive views on our 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 really remedy that with the School of Civic Life and Leadership, which will provide equal opportunity for both views to be taught at the university.”
Such a move has been received at Carolina with confusion and concern. To his credit; Chancellor Guskiewicz has responded with a restrained, but firm reminder of the proper process for creating a new school;
“I appreciate the encouragement of our Board to build on the work we have done and I share the ideal that our students are served by learning to listen, engage, and seek different perspectives that contribute to robust public discourse.
Any proposed degree program or school will be developed and led by our faculty, deans, and provost. Our faculty are the marketplace of ideas and they will build the curriculum and determine who will teach it, just as they determined the capacities laid out in our new IDEAs in Action Curriculum. I will be working with our faculty to study the feasibility of such a school and the ways we can most effectively accomplish our goal of promoting democracy in our world today.”
Other responses have not been so restrained and have clearly pointed out the egregious nature of governance overreach by the BOT. Below are a few of those responses:
“To say the UNC community was surprised is an understatement. Neither the faculty, administration or even the UNC System office had heard of this plan to create a new school out of whole cloth. The trustees’ actions tear up longstanding, well codified principles of university governance and replace civil discourse with secrecy and confrontation. Their tactics make the proposal, in its current form, radioactive at best and possibly dead on arrival.”
“When UNC law professor Eric Muller first read the editorial headline, he said his eyes fell out of his head. On Jan. 26, the Faculty Executive Committee member was in a Zoom meeting when he saw a screenshot of a Wall Street Journal editorial titled ‘UNC Takes on the University Echo Chamber.’ I thought: how on Earth? How on Earth could the Wall Street Journal know this,” Muller said.”
“Mimi Chapman, chairperson of faculty, said she was “flabbergasted” in response to the exclusion of faculty input in the decision, which she said she considers to be an attack on shared University governance.”
“Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) voted to establish an entire new school (School of Civic Life and Leadership) with 20 faculty (to include a substantial number of Republicans) and its own dean without informing the faculty or administration. Before telling anyone on campus about the decision, the board chair bragged to conservative outlets that the school would be a “remedy” to academic indoctrination.”
…
“In his media victory lap, the UNC board chair didn’t dispute the framing of events as the imminent establishment of a conservative school. Further, he told Fox News that the new school would hire Republican professors as a solution to the imbalance of ideologies on campus. If there’s a remedy, there has to be a problem—which is apparently that liberal professors indoctrinate their students. He also said that UNC had a “world-class faculty.” Would such faculty be lousy professors who do a poor job of teaching? Will the new Republican professors be more competent and not indoctrinate students? Evidently, he thinks so—how else could the new hires ‘remedy’ the problem?”
…
“This matters a lot for science. If politicians can paint academics as master indoctrinators around Black history and political rhetoric, then they can do the same thing with issues such as climate change, evolution, and public health topics spanning COVID-19 to gender-affirming care, abortion, and gun control.”
The second governance action that raises questions and creates confusion is a BOG proposal on “compelled speech”. The proposed solution, for an unknown problem, prohibits asking employees or applicants to “affirmatively ascribe to or opine about beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles regarding matters of contemporary political debate or social action.” (See their full proposal here in agenda item A-8 on page 19 of this PDF.) No one seems to understand what problem this proposal is trying to solve. In fact, The News and Observer (N&O) covered the meeting and quotes President Hans and general counsel Andrew Tripp as having no good reason for the change. The specific quote from the N&O reads:
“Neither Hans nor system general counsel Andrew Tripp pointed to a specific example of when a system employee had forced anyone to voice specific beliefs, affiliations or principles. There was not “one particular event” that led to the policy proposal, Hans told reporters after Thursday’s full board meeting.”
Here at the Coalition for Carolina, we would like to clearly understand why politicians and the university governing members they’ve appointed in NC are doing this. What problems are they trying to solve? What, what exactly, has moved the BOT and BOG to conclude that our university system and Carolina – having thrived on the national scene for centuries –needs these new policies right now? In a properly operating shared governance model these questions would have been addressed prior to the proposals being made public. So far we have not able to identify any pressing issues, challenges, or problems that called for these solutions.
With respect to the “compelled speech” proposal, the BOG indicates that they are willing to take public comments before voting on it, but the BOG page for public comments is not accepting public comments at the time of this writing.
John Hood of the John Locke Foundation wrote a column saying that investment in the UNC System is not a good does not provide a high enough ROI. Hood is wrong and Higher Ed Works published an excellent response that lays out the case for investing in college very well. We asked for, and were granted, permission to republish their response below.
Too Narrow a View
RALEIGH (January 25, 2022)
Some folks measure the value of higher education solely by how much its graduates make.
Most of us know there’s a lot more to it.
In a column this week, John Hood of the John Locke Foundation contends that North Carolinians don’t receive an adequate return on what he calls a “relatively large” investment in the University of North Carolina System.1
In a classic example of viewing education as a private rather than public good, Hood cites a Texas-based outfit that measures return on investment only by comparing the earnings of graduates. By its measure, the University of South Dakota ranks best in the country in lifetime returns.2
Go Coyotes!
He also cites a report from the James G. Martin Center that recommends phasing out programs in law, pharmacy, dentistry and social work at UNC-Chapel Hill and law at NC Central University, as well as fine-arts degrees and language, psychology and liberal-arts degrees at other campuses.3
Regarding such programs, even Hood acknowledges “most of the students who enter them know very well their chosen careers are unlikely to be lucrative. They have chosen those careers because they value other forms of compensation more — personal fulfillment, a calling to help others, or a desire to live and work in a particular kind of community.”
He goes on to suggest they can be reduced to two- or three-year degrees, without explaining how.4
Hood conveniently omits the state constitution’s mandate to provide North Carolinians with a college education for “as far as practicable … free of expense.”5
And to contend that the state doesn’t see substantial return on investment from its investment in the UNC System is simply absurd.
AS UNC-CHAPEL HILL PROVOST CHRIS CLEMENS – an acknowledged conservative himself – laid out in a November column, the state gets more than its money’s worth for the $540 million a year it invests in UNC-Chapel Hill.
“The first thing our faculty and staff do is multiply the money by raising $1.16 billion more dollars in externally-funded research, an amount that places UNC in the top 10 federally-funded research universities in the US, higher than Harvard, MIT, or UCLA. Research at UNC develops new cancer therapies, supports highway safety, helps understand the effect of storm surges on the nation’s coastlines, and even discovers new exoplanets. Research money employs about 9,500 people in 90 counties of North Carolina, and generates $90 million in purchases from 6,500 businesses in 95 of our counties,” Clemens wrote.6
Not to mention that UNC grad Kizzmekia Corbett helped develop the Moderna vaccine for Covid-19.7
That’s not a bad return on investment – or service to mankind.
The university collects over $400 million in tuition from 30,000 students – some portion comes from outside the state, while the rest keeps North Carolina students at home “while providing the #1 best bargain in higher education for the student from North Carolina,” Clemens wrote.
Those students come from 98 North Carolina counties, 40% of them from rural areas.
“Eighteen percent of these students will be the first in their families to graduate from college. They will become the physicians, lawyers, artists, historians, business executives, government leaders, engineers, and teachers of tomorrow. They will emerge with a great education, a diploma from one of the top five ranked public universities, and well-prepared to be the workforce of the future that will attract new industries to North Carolina,” Clemens wrote.8
As Winston-Salem businessman Don Flow puts it, “The UNC System is the most important institution for creating economic wealth in North Carolina.”9 The UNC System granted more than 62,000 degrees last year to graduates who will help fuel North Carolina’s booming economy.10
Inventions from UNC-Chapel Hill have led to formation of at least 274 NC companies, Clemens wrote.
“These companies employ over 9,000 North Carolina citizens and generate $14 billion in annual revenue in our state. Together with UNC’s affiliated enterprise, UNC Health, itself a $4B enterprise, these companies and our campus research operations represent 2.9% of the state’s gross domestic product. The estimated tax revenue from this slice of our economy is more than the $540 million in appropriations allocated to us…
“Even though it sounds like a deal that is too good to be true, the public employees of the first and most public university in the US deliver on this promise year after year. It’s an investment the people of North Carolina can make with confidence,” Clemens concluded.11
The UNC System can always improve, of course. But please, don’t try to say there’s not enough ROI on the state’s investment.
