UNC-Chapel Hill announced yesterday that the School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL) will become an independent academic unit – making it Carolina’s 15th independent academic unit, much like Kenan-Flagler Business School and Hussman School of Journalism and Media.
This transition is a bit maddening considering SCiLL’s status as the campus dumpster fire. The $1.2 million investigation into SCiLL’s disfunction and mismanagement wrapped up in March, and now the 400-page report it yielded is being hidden from the public.
And if that investigation and all of the allegations and negative press leading up to it weren’t enough cause for concern, just last week The Assembly released an enlightening and troubling piece about SCiLL’s ties to the gutted National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which also explains some of what SCiLL can point to as successes in the wake of scrutiny.
The story – as the headline “How Two Duke Alumni Helped Conservatives Take Over the NEH” suggests – is rooted in the NEH’s ties to Duke. But the story perhaps more concretely lays out these Duke alums’ connections to SCiLL, with embattled SCiLL Dean Jed Atkins previously spending 15 years on Duke’s faculty.
As The Assembly reports:
“… after the Department of Government Efficiency eliminated more than half of the NEH staff and tried to terminate 97% of its grants, Trump fired all but four members of the 26-person advisory board, called the National Council on the Humanities. Three of the remaining members, including [Keegan] Callanan, are conservative academics with ties to North Carolina; two of them spent their formative years at Duke University.
Callanan holds a doctorate in political science from Duke. More recently, he has advised UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Civic Life and Leadership, also known as SCiLL, and is close friends with its dean. William English, who was named the NEH’s acting chairman in April, attended Duke for both his bachelor’s degree and his Ph.D., which he completed in political science a year ahead of Callanan. Matthew Rose’s brother is a SCiLL professor who previously worked at Duke.
Nine former NEH staff and council members, most of whom Trump fired, said that the trio has formed a close-knit conservative cohort. The sources said the three back up each others’ arguments, while opposing any projects with a whiff of diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
The story – as expected from The Assembly – is fantastic and worth a full read. It does a deep dive into the conservative ideology fueling the men who help fuel SCiLL, including direct ties to Duke’s most abhorrent alum in the Trump Administration:
“[William] English and Trump right-hand-man Stephen Miller both led the Duke Conservative Union, and English told Duke’s student newspaper that during his Ph.D. years, he periodically advised Miller, who was then an undergraduate.”
The men’s direct ties to SCiLL’s leadership run even deeper:
“[Keegan] Callanan is longtime friends with SCiLL Dean Jed Atkins and has been involved in discussions about the school since before it was created. Rose’s brother, John, is a faculty member. Matthew Rose told The Assembly in January that he recused himself from discussions and votes about SCiLL. Neither Callanan nor UNC-CH responded to questions.”
SCiLL’s deep connections to the ideologues now steering NEH helped SCiLL score a $10 million grant at a time when the Trump administration was massively scaling back federal spending:
“…. Over the course of the two meetings, the council approved $75 million in grants, including a slate of projects connected to the country’s 250th anniversary this year, an editorial fellowship at conservative Christian magazine First Things, and millions to programs on civics and the American founding. Among those were the $10 million grants to UNC-CH’s SCiLL and the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education (FEHE).
…. At SCiLL, the funding will support eight new professorships, allowing the school to launch two new graduate programs.”
Through endless turmoil, SCiLL doesn’t have many “wins” to speak of, and this funding was something UNC’s administration celebrated. Now, apparently, it’s also part of justifying making SCiLL its own academic unit and putting it among UNC’s most respected and prestigious institutions.
How ironic that the people who railed against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and shut it down on Carolina’s campus are now the very same people using the tools of DEI to manipulate the ascension of SCiLL.
To quote Keegan Callanan from a 2018 panel: “You can call this affirmative action for conservatives if you like.”