A prestigious national academic group accused Thursday that the North Carolina legislature had interfered politically in the University of North Carolina for more than a decade, creating a hostile academic and racial climate on its campuses, including the flagship in Chapel Hill.
A report by the American Association of University Professors describes how Republican lawmakers, after taking office in 2010, gained control of the University Board of Governors and trustees of its 17 separate campuses, influencing the appointments of chancellors and closing specialized academic centers. to combat poverty, pollution and social injustice.
After reviewing tensions over the removal of a statue of a Confederate soldier in Chapel Hill, known as “Silent Sam,” and decisions on a job offer for New York Times journalist Nicole Hannah-Jones, the report concludes that racism is institutionalized. in the system. In a state that is about 20 percent black, 5 percent of UNC teachers are black.
In response to the report, Kimberly van Noort, senior vice president of the university system, said it was a “relentlessly gloomy image of one of the nation’s strongest, liveliest and most productive university systems” and “impossible to compare” with. thriving campuses. She listed achievements, including reduced tuition, improved graduation rates among low-income students and minorities; and investments in six historic institutions serving minorities.
The association’s report, she added, “does not contain empirical data on the true health of the university system.”
Earlier, the administration tried to address the racial issues criticized in the report by setting up a working group to study the heritage of race and racism in North Carolina’s state higher education system, which issued its own report in 2020.
Many state university systems have come under political pressure, especially in states with Republican-led legislatures that view universities as centers of liberal indoctrination.
Recent problems on American college campuses
While acknowledging that several university systems have been the subject of political interference, the professors’ association said in a report that the frequency and intensity of controversy at UNC, combined with poor system and campus management, were unique.
The association, a national monitoring organization, has no official authority over universities and its actions are largely symbolic. But the report – and a possible formal sanction from the group – could tarnish the reputation of the nation’s oldest social system and one of the most prestigious. This could also be detrimental to future recruitment efforts.
Michael K. Berent, a professor of history at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, who heads the organization’s North Carolina department, said he hoped the report would change.
“We need to make sure that there is no country that unilaterally controls the Board of Governors and the Boards of Trustees,” he said.
The report says the Republican takeover of both chambers of the General Assembly in 2010 – achieved for the first time in more than a century – marks the beginning of what he calls a “new era”.
Appointed to the University Board of Governors as well as the trustees of individual campuses have become “more homogeneous Republicans, more interested in the political ideologies of campus participants and less experienced in higher education than their predecessors,” the report said.
By order of the legislature, the system began reviewing 237 specialized centers on campus in 2014, culminating in the closure of three centers.
Two were led by teaching critics of state leaders, and one, the Institute for Civic Engagement and Social Change at North Carolina Central University in Durham, was funded by the George Soros Open Society Foundations, a frequent target of conservative anger.
In 2016, Pat McCrory, the outgoing Republican governor, signed a law depriving his Democratic successor, Roy Cooper, of the power to appoint appointments to campus-level boards, leading to almost complete Republican legislative control over the university system.
The following year, the board banned Chapel Hill’s law school from litigation, eventually voting to ban the Civil Rights Center from accepting new clients, many of whom were poor.
The report also undermines legislative interference in the appointment of university officials, including what he calls a “very unorthodox” method of searching the chancellor.
Instead of the traditional procedure in which university search committees select finalists, the new policy gives the system president the right to nominate two candidates for chancellor, one of whom must become a finalist.
Although technically out of place at the time, the procedure was used to appoint Darrell T. Alison in 2021 as rector of Fayetteville State University, one of six state institutions that serve mostly colored students.
The board of trustees had added Mr Alison, a former school selection lobbyist, to the list at the last minute, although he was not selected by the search committee and critics said he lacked authority.
But the worst criticism in the report has to do with race-related issues.
It tells the story of Carol Folt, the former chancellor of Chapel Hill, who now heads the University of Southern California.
Under pressure from the board to find a place for Silent Sam, who was toppled by protesters, Ms. Folt announced instead that she was resigning and removing the remains of the statue.
The board then agreed to pay the Sons of Confederate Veterans $ 2.5 million to build an off-campus site for the statue. One graduate student wrote on Twitter that the university was returning the “return of racists” statue.
The agreement was annulled by the court.
The report also criticizes the university’s attitude toward the job offer of Ms. Hannah-Jones, a writer for The Times magazine and project manager of 1619, which seeks to restructure the country’s history by outlining the effects of slavery and the contribution of black Americans to the center of the national narrative.
Although the Chapel Hill Department of Journalism recommended that Ms. Hannah-Jones, who is Black, be offered a permanent professorship, the university reportedly offered her a hired job instead, following pressure from a powerful donor.
Following a public protest, the trustees eventually voted to give her mandate. But Ms. Hannah-Jones turned down the offer and joined Howard University.
The report says the Silent Sam and Hannah-Jones dispute “sent a message to colored teachers across the system, making them feel unwanted, underestimated and insecure.”
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