Free Republic

Conservative activist Kenny Xu, who’s fighting what he says are harmful diversity, equity and inclusion practices at US medical schools, says he’s notched another anti-DEI win at the University of North Carolina — with the help of a renowned, African-born, US-based heart surgeon. Xu persuaded Harvard-trained Dr. Nche Zama, 66, who was born in the Republic of Cameroon and immigrated alone to the US at age 14 with just $20, to speak at one of the anti-DEI events Xu organized in Chapel Hill in February aimed at getting the UNC medical school to back off its policies. Now UNC’s medical...

The University of North Carolina (UNC) medical school disbanded its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) task force without implementing its recommendations, just months after banning DEI statements from admission, hiring, promotion and tenure. UNC said it plans to disband its DEI Task Force, without implementing its recommendations, including integrating social justice into the school's curriculum. The UNC DEI document also included recommendations that were partially based on the DEI protocols of the Association of American Medical Colleges that requires students to study topics like "Unconscious Bias Awareness," "Understanding and Responding to Microaggressions," and "Understanding that America's medical system is structurally...

Last month, UNC-Chapel Hill faculty penned an open letter airing criticism of both the North Carolina General Assembly and the UNC Board of Trustees. Among their complaints was the allegation that the proposed new School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL) is a “clear violation” of governance principles. But the faculty don’t have the full story. More of the truth is finally coming out about the proposed school at UNC-Chapel Hill, my alma mater, where I am a member of the Board of Trustees. The idea for the new school’s pro-democracy curriculum goes back years—and has involved faculty input from...

Former Vice President Mike Pence appeared at the University of North Carolina this past week which, according to the student paper, resulted in some students leaving campus out of fear for “their safety.” The Daily Tar Heel reports that Pence spoke on April 26 about “a range of issues” at the “Saving America from the Woke Left” event sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation and the campus College Republicans. The UNC Young Democrats and members of 15 other student groups joined for a pre-Pence speech protest (pictured), dubbed “Saving America With the ‘Woke Left.’” Freshman Sawyer Husain, who’s from Pence’s...

Hundreds of professors at the University of North Carolina signed a public letter Tuesday opposing legislation that would require university students to take courses on America's government and founding documents. The 673 UNC Chapel Hill professors revealed the public letter Tuesday, arguing the new courses and another bill in the North Carolina House of Representatives would constitute an infringement on the university's "academic freedom." The first piece of legislation, House Bill 96, would require students to take a 3 credit-hour course covering America's founding and history. Required reading for the course would include the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence,...

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,...