Free Republic

When news broke that UNC-Chapel Hill had plans to create a new School of Civic Life and Leadership, it was inevitable that there would be some confusion. But nearly two months later, some UNC faculty members and local media outlets have continued to drive a false narrative about the school’s creation and the university’s governance practices. On January 26, trustees voted to “request that the administration of UNC-CH accelerate its development of a School of Civic Life and Leadership.” The resolution passed unanimously with little discussion. The following week, at a meeting of Chapel Hill’s Faculty Executive Council, faculty members...

The University of North Carolina imposes Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) throughout its medical system. Last year, vice dean for DEI at the medical school, E. Nathan Thomas, declared, “We’re infusing DEI into the fabric of the School of Medicine and the institution.” In 2021, UNC Health hired its first Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer at $126,000/year. Neither employee holds a medical doctorate; both serve the UNC School of Medicine Health Executives Committee.Executive Dean of the School of Medicine, Cristy Page, co-authored a paper about systemic racism in the healthcare workforce, which read like a wordsearch puzzle of woke...

On its “Inclusive Language” website, UNC-Chapel Hill reminds readers that words have consequences: “To fully represent the diversity of our students, faculty, staff and everyone in our community,” UNC states, “it is important to use language that supports [our] values.” Such prose is standard fare on equivalent sites across higher education. Yet a discerning reader might be a little surprised by one sentence on the UNC site, specifically: “Carolina is committed to creating an inclusive and equitable learning environment for every Tar Heel.” As the previously mentioned reader already knows, “Tar Heel” is a term with a messy history. Though...

Members of the UNC Board of Governors are not happy. A years-long effort to align teacher training with the best scientifically proven methods to teach reading has fallen flat on its face. Given the grim state of literacy in the state, a January report outlining UNC-System schools’ failures is particularly egregious. According to a recent third-party review of UNC educator preparation programs (EPPs), only UNC Charlotte’s EPP is properly grounding teachers in research-based literacy instruction methods, also known as the “science of reading.” The skills addressed in that science include phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics and spelling, fluency, vocabulary, and...

Since the birth of affirmative action in the 1960s, universities have been the leading advocates and sacred sanctuary for the principles put forth. Diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, is what affirmative action has devolved into today -- a totally biased, discriminatory practice now utilized throughout most employment sectors in America. During hiring, promotion processes, and the like, equal opportunity that affirmative action touted has degenerated into DEI’s equal outcomes. The former expected job qualifications to be met; the latter does not. Amazingly, the University of North Carolina (UNC) has just taken steps to eliminate DEI from campus mandates. Here's...

In the midst of the Covid pandemic, the UNC Board of Governors made the decision to take some pressure off potential applicants by implementing an emergency waiver for the System’s standardized testing requirement. Voting in July of 2020, the UNC Board of Governors temporarily waived the testing requirement for 2021’s spring, summer, and fall terms at all UNC-System schools. Neatly disguised as necessary (since testing centers were closed or canceling tests) and practical (since no at-home testing option was available at the time), this waiver opened the door for future “emergencies” to further diminish standards. As many expected, in May...

While North Carolina is often considered a “purple state,” the composition of UNC-System campaign contributions is anything but bipartisan. OpenSecrets data indicate that campaign contributions to Democrats among UNC-System employees outweighed those to Republicans by more than 20 to 1 in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. The total dollar amount of UNC-System political contributions per election cycle has generally increased since 1990. However, the 2020 election cycle stands out, as more than three times as much money was contributed to campaigns during that election season than in any other cycle on record. Perhaps attributable to the divisive nature of...

If it’s a conspiracy theory, it is one that has a lot of evidence to back it up.A whistleblower from the EcoHealth Alliance has come forward with an allegation that COVID was manufactured in a lab–and the funding came from the CDC and was funneled through the EcoHealth Alliance. The whistleblower is no low-level factotum: it comes from the former Vice President of the organization himself.A former vice president for the EcoHealth Alliance, a major funder of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, claims that his organization “developed” SARS-CoV-2 through gain-of-function research that makes viruses more dangerous.“The process of developing SARS-COV2...

On August 1st, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina submitted an amicus brief siding with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in its attempt to use race as a factor in university admissions. The amicus brief comes at a time when the future of affirmative action is being litigated in the Supreme Court. A group called Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), which represents college students who allege discrimination based on their status as members of a non-preferred race, has sued both UNC and Harvard University for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI prohibits discrimination...

Colleges and universities nationwide are quickly adopting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideologies, and the UNC System is no exception. In recent years, this has led to DEI-inspired task forces, departments, and hirings, and DEI has become embedded in all 16 of the schools’ strategic plans. For readers who are unfamiliar with the flaws of DEI ideology, the Martin Center’s recent report on Critical Social Justice is useful reading: [Critical Social Justice] begins with criticism or critical analysis, where activists unmask the supposed hidden realities of the world. America seems to be a place of equal opportunity or fair admissions,...

... While UNC did, in fact, offer Nikole Hannah-Jones a position, which she did, in fact, accept, there was a devil in the details. The job she accepted did not come with tenure; it came with a five-year contract with an option for tenure review. Whatever the interior machinations at the Hussman School, this was not an unreasonable offer. Hannah-Jones, quite simply, had not done the sort of academic work that tenure rewards. Journalism and academia are two very different animals. Nonetheless, she fomented a public campaign to be granted tenure, alleging racial discrimination in the process. To no one’s...

North Carolina’s public universities have a problem with free expression, and it mostly doesn’t come from censorious administrators or biased faculty members. Instead, it’s the students themselves who muzzle free speech. “Many UNC System students do indeed have significant concerns about expressing political views on campus.” So state the findings of a comprehensive, carefully designed survey from a team of researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC-Greensboro. “These concerns arise disproportionately from students who describe themselves as conservative, but they affect students of nearly all backgrounds. And contra a common narrative that liberal-leaning faculty members attempt to impose their views on...

Since the rise of social media, many students have gotten used to discussing difficult topics within the protection of their own echo chambers. Students are often not expected to defend their points of view or engage with others of differing opinions. While universities frequently support such closed-mindedness with “safe spaces” and the barring of certain speakers from campus, some university programs and faculty are attempting to push back against this anti-intellectual trend. One such program is housed at UNC-Chapel Hill, the mission of which, in part, is “to teach a diverse community of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students to become...

On March 11, UNC-Chapel Hill announced the appointment of a new dean for the Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Raul Reis, whose hiring was approved by the board of trustees, will officially begin his duties on July 1. An important backdrop to Reis’s appointment is the unsuccessful hiring of “1619 Project” author Nikole Hannah-Jones as Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism. This time last year, news outlets were closely following the heated controversy that consumed UNC-Chapel Hill over whether or not to grant Hannah-Jones a tenured position. When the university’s board of trustees requested more information before bringing...

The UNC School of Medicine just released an “update” to its lengthy Task Force to Integrate Social Justice into the Curriculum Report. According to the school’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion web page, “the UNC School of Medicine appreciates the Task Force’s work, its feedback, and recommendations,” and this status report “includes important context relative to those recommendations.” Ironically, the document is notable for both how little it says and how much it reveals about DEI at the UNC School of Medicine (SOM). Some background. In November, the Martin Center published my article titled UNC School of Medicine’s Quiet “Diversity, Equity,...

Race has arguably become the single most important defining characteristic of a person in today’s society. Rather than concerning itself with scholarship, character, personality, or work ethic, today’s universities now treat students and faculty as if their race supersedes all of their other qualities. One example of this is UNC-Chapel Hill’s Race, Racism and Racial Equity (R3) Symposium. According to the UNC Office for Diversity and Inclusion, the symposium is “a series of virtual events that bring together scholars and researchers from across campus to share their work with Carolina and the broader community.” The events are co-hosted by the...

Alumni have been making their voices heard over the past few months. After seeing the alarming direction that their alma maters are taking, alumni at institutions such as Davidson College, the University of Virginia, and Washington & Lee have decided to unite around the principles of free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity. These alumni groups aren’t working in isolation, they are part of a national organization called the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA). UNC-Chapel Hill is the latest group to join AFSA. The UNC Free Speech Alliance is an alumni-led, independent organization dedicated to free speech, diversity of opinion,...

BREAKING: The Supreme Court agrees to hear a pair of cases that challenge the race-based affirmative action policies for admission at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The cases likely will be argued next term.

In 2014, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed suit against the University of North Carolina. Its complaint argued that the university had engaged in intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity to the detriment of SFFA members. The suit followed in a line of cases challenging the admissions policies of universities, where students from certain groups were given preferences over students who were not in those groups. In a pair of 2003 cases involving the University of Michigan, the Supreme Court ruled that universities were in violation of the law if they used a rigid quota system (Gratz...

In May, the UNC School of Medicine revised its Guidelines for Appointment, Reappointment, and Promotion. Now, faculty seeking promotion must tout their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. One sample DEI statement, posted on the School of Medicine website, shows what that requirement might entail, concluding with a nod to the concept of intersectionality. "As I move forward in my career, I intend to continue to include issues of equity and inclusion in my bedside teaching. I commit to annually attending a seminar offered by the University Office of Diversity and Inclusion to learn more about the intersectionality of race,...